Read more
Different Beasts explores conceptions of animality and humanity as they emerge in the writings of Spinoza and in the ancient Chinese text known as the
Zhuangzi. The project thus brings together works from distant and different pasts to bear on debates regarding the human-animal binary in its many constructions. It also investigates what is at stake in the formation of responsible comparison--one that is contextually grounded and refined in detail--to understand how the complex machinery behind the human-animal binary operates in different philosophical systems.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: Cross-Cultural Philosophy and Critical Animality Studies
- A. Intersectional Critiques of Dualistic Thinking
- B. Seeking a Savior in "Monistic" Philosophies
- C. Why Compare? Critical Mimesis and New Areas of Inquiry
- D. Roadmap
- PART I. Reading Spinoza with the Zhuangzi: Conversations and Toolkits
- 1: Contexts and Means for Interpreting the Zhuangzi
- 1.1 Inching Out of Animality: Early Chinese Recipes for Power and Teachings for Humanity
- 1.2 Loitering Idly with Zhuangzi's Big but "Useless" Words
- 2: Contexts and Means for Interpreting Spinoza
- 2.1 Lifting Up and Placing Down Man into the Machine-World: Contested Routes to Knowledge and Salvation
- 2.2 Seeking True Philosophy, in the Proper Order, with Spinoza
- Conclusion: Strange Companions-Thinking about Animals with Spinoza and the Zhuangzi
- A. Form, Context, and Function
- B. Hermeneutical Challenges and Opportunities
- PART II. Portrayals of Human Distinctiveness
- 3: Rich in Complexity: Human Distinctiveness in Spinoza
- 3.1 "That Eternal and Infinite Being We Call God, or Nature"
- 3.2 Eliminating the Anthropomorphic God and the Theomorphic Man
- 3.3 What Distinguishes a Man from an Ass
- 3.4 A Ladder of Complexity: From Worm to Man
- 4: Pinnacles of Versatility: Human Distinctiveness in the Zhuangzi
- 4.1 The Ten Thousand Things under Heaven
- 4.2 Dethroning the Heart
- 4.3 Finding the Pivot of All Daos
- 4.4 What Distinguishes People from Turtles and Fish
- Conclusion: Admiring and Humbling Humanity
- A. Like a Worm, Like a Tree
- B. Finding Empowerment in a Univocal versus Polyvocal World
- C. Certainty with a Bias, Humility without an Agenda
- PART III. Animal Affects: Curiosity versus Threat
- 5: Zhuangzi and the Happy Fish: Animal Affects in the Zhuangzi
- 5.1 Wandering with the Fish, Zhuangzi, and Huizi
- 5.2 Effective and Affective Communication in the Zhuangzi
- 5.3 Bonding through Banter and Laughter
- 6: Spinoza's Serpentine Worries: Animal Affects in Spinoza
- 6.1 Making Use of Beasts as We Please
- 6.2 Choosing Eve over the Serpent
- 6.3 On Misanthropic Melancholy and Fraternal Cheer
- Conclusion: Affects, Solidarity, and Power
- A. The Cementing and Loosening of Human Bonds
- B. The Power to Include and Exclude
- PART IV. The Orderly and the Chaotic
- 7: Nature's Order to Civil Order: Onto-Political Formations in Spinoza
- 7.1 Individuation and Identity in an Orderly World
- 7.2 Uniting as One Mind and Body
- 7.3 Big Fish Eat Small Fish
- 8: Unmanaging the Personal and the Political Body in the Zhuangzi
- 8.1 From Unity to Fragmentation: Undermining the Heart of the Personal and Political Body
- 8.2 Transforming into a Rat's Liver or a Butterfly's Dream
- 8.3 Muddying the Waters: Reimagining Hundun and Antiquity
- Conclusion: The State of the World: The Topsy-Turvy and the Ship-Shape
- A. Tales of Identity and Disintegration
- B. In the Absence of Civil Order
- PART V. Humans' Animality: Textual Traces and Absences
- 9: Rethinking Animal Imagery in the Zhuangzi
- 9.1 The Zhuangzi on Distant Lands, Humble Professions, and Unruly Minds
- 9.2 Women in the Zhuangzi
- 10: Animalized Others in Spinoza's "Imagination"
- 10.1 On "Turks" and Common People
- 10.2 On Women, the Infantile, and the Sub-rational
- Conclusion: Our Kind
- A. Those "We" Uplift or Leave Behind
- B. The Limits of What "We" Can Imagine "Us" to Be
- Epilogue: Looking at There and Then to Reflect on Here and Now
- Index
About the author
Sonya Özbey is an assistant professor in the Department of Asian Languages & Cultures and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan.
Summary
Different Beasts studies conceptions of human and animal identity as articulated in the ancient Chinese text known as the Zhuangzi and in the works of the seventeenth-century European philosopher Benedict de Spinoza. By examining how, in these very different philosophies, notions of humanness and animality intersect with ideas about human unity and solidarity, social order, and social difference categories (such as gender, descent, and ability), Different Beasts opens new paths for understanding Spinoza and the Zhuangzi while also developing methodological insights into the practice of cross-cultural comparative philosophy.
Different Beasts critically engages with a long tradition of reading Spinoza together with Asian “wisdom literatures” and especially with canonical Chinese texts. Interpretations of these works, which are outside the mainstream philosophical canon (defined from a certain Euro-American perspective), often see them as premised on a harmonious view of the world, free of tensions between humans and the nonhuman world. Different Beasts adds to the literature of animality and to the practice of turning one's attention toward “non-canonical” philosophical texts to seek new understandings. However, it argues that the transformative potential of studying these texts does not lie in their allegedly harmonious view of the world but in the variety of ways they exhibit humans' uniqueness, foolishness, or superiority, which can help us further understand our own often contradictory investments in the human-animal binary.
Additional text
The volume, although concise, contains succinct comparative remarks on the very different roles reserved for religious thought and practice in the two traditions. It is a strikingly readable and surprisingly original contribution to an essential topic of religious studies.
