Odległe i bliskie ciało zwierzęcia
The Close and Distant Animal Body

Author(s): Krzysztof Skonieczny
Subject(s): History of Philosophy, Ethics / Practical Philosophy
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: body; animal; flesh; phenomenology; ethics
Summary/Abstract: The chapter analyses the problem of the animal body from the philosophical perspective, focusing on the ambiguity stemming from the fact that it is difficult to grasp and familiar at the same time. In introductory remarks, the Author traces the neglect of the body (human and animal alike) in the history of philosophy. The chapter then uses Giorgio Agamben to point to the difficulty of distinguishing between the animal body and the animal itself (which, in philosophical discourses from Aristotle to Emmanuel Levinas, has been coded as being “pure body” without reason, soul or face). In contrast to this difficulty, the final parts of the chapter are devoted to a number of philosophical texts which help to understand the body as a locus of proximity between humans and animals. These include ethics-focused interventions of utilitarians and Christine Korsgaard, phenomenology-inspired theories of Ralph Acampora, and texts by Val Plumwood and Jolanta Brach-Czaina, problematising the question of meat.

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