The Human-Animal Relation in Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4389220 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kevin Inston (0000-0003-3111-4652, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 37-53 |
| Publication date | 2019-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Paragraph (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0264-8334 • E-ISSN: 1750-0176 |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3366/para.2019.0287 |
| OpenAlex | W2911937810 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
The Discourse on Inequality disputes the human-animal hierarchy in its denunciation of social inequality as unnatural. Stripping away social artifice, it reveals a deep physical continuity between man and animals. As embodied creatures, they share mortality and vulnerability. Human animality does not, however, negate human difference. Man differs from animals through perfectibility: the freedom to change. That difference comes from the lack of any specifically human property, thereby challenging rather than confirming anthropocentric hierarchies. Any properties seen to distinguish man from animals are in fact improper, contingent and artificial. Human impropriety renders man always dependent on external relations for his development. Compassion, vital for a Rousseauian approach to animal ethics, allows man to experience this relationality, transporting him towards others as he identifies with their suffering as recalling the finitude and vulnerability shared by all creatures. For Rousseau, human difference, it is argued, enables rather than blocks identification with animality
Animal ethics · Anthropocentrism · Biology · Compassion · Creatures · Embodied cognition · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Expressivity · Hierarchy · Human animal · Inequality · Political science · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought · Ecology
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,25 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |