Abstract
There are cases in which a particular comparison is, structurally speaking, possible—but that kind of possibility is precisely the problem. Take an example: is it adequate to compare our treatment of animals with the Holocaust? Or do we encounter here a case of normative incomparability in the sense of stepping away from a comparative setting for normative, i.e. moral or evaluative, reasons? Given this backdrop, this paper has three goals: first, it gives a more elaborated account of the concept of normative incomparability; secondly, it refers to a scene from literature, namely J.M. Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Costello, to give a “think description” of a particular case in which we are confronted with normative claims about the (in)adequacy of comparing; thirdly, it aims at producing a tentative outlook on the demands of dealing philosophically with these kinds of severely evaluative, yet particularly moral disagreements. Looking back at different forms of incomparability, it will be argued that the normative form is an amplification of its indexical sibling while presupposing structural comparability.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
John Maxwell Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello, New York: Penguin Books, 2003, 113; all page numbers in brackets refer to this book.
- 2.
See Boria Sax, Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust, New York: Continuum, 2000, 156–157; Timothy M. Costelloe, “The Invisibility of Evil: Moral Progress and the ‘Animal Holocaust’”, in: Philosophical Papers 32:2 (2003), 109–131, 110.
- 3.
Cf. Jacques Derrida, “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)”, in: Critical Inquiry 28:2 (2002), 369–418, 394–395.
- 4.
Tom Regan, The Struggle for Animal Rights, Clarks Summit: International Society for Animals Rights, 1987, 76–77.
- 5.
See Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, New York: Harper Collins, 1975, 102.
- 6.
David Sztybel, “Can the Treatment of Animals Be Compared to the Holocaust?”, in: Ethics and the Environment 11:1 (2006), 97–132, 130; cf. also 99.
- 7.
Cf. Cora Diamond, “Eating Meat and Eating People”, in: idem, The Realistic Spirit. Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind, Cambridge, MA / London: MIT Press, 1991, 319–334, esp. 319–320.
- 8.
One could also claim that Costello’s way of putting the matter here—namely, that it is a question of thinking into the existence of someone else—is terminologically inaccurate, since “thought” is still too similar and close to reason, which she otherwise repudiates as an inadequate source for our sympathetic dealings with animals. A similar problem can be found in Wittgenstein’s discussion of a particular “way of thinking” (Denkweise) since what he is really after is a mode of wider expression, articulation, and even feeling. The same problem can also be found in Ludwik Fleck’s notion of a “thought style” or “style of thinking” (Denkstil) because what is meant here is not restricted to thinking either, but includes preferences, habituation, taste; see Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Part I, 3rd edition, ed. by G.E.M. Anscombe and Rush Rhees, transl. by G.E.M. Anscombe, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973, 1–172, § 597 inter alia; on Fleck (with several references) Babette E. Babich, “From Fleck’s Denkstil to Kuhn’s paradigm: Conceptual schemes and incommensurability”, in: International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 17:3 (2003), 75–92, 81.
- 9.
See Thomas Nagel, “What it is like to be a bat?”, in: idem, Mortal Questions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, 165–180, esp. 169 and 172.
- 10.
Ward E. Jones, “Elizabeth Costello and the Biography of the Moral Philosopher”, in: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69:2 (2011), 209–220, 214–15.
- 11.
See Janet Martin Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985, 6 and 10–11.
- 12.
This is, however, not to say that I think Jones is correct in characterizing Costello’s claim as a metaphor. Insofar as metaphors extend the meaning of a term and, hence, are not fully reducible to a nonmetaphorical expression, it is not easy to see where the metaphorical element lies when Costello relates the fate of animals to the Holocaust. But this refutation requires more space that would, given the context here, lead us astray; see Max Black, “Metaphor”, in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series 55 (1954/1955), 273–294, esp. 282–83.
- 13.
See Marjorie Garber, “Reflections”, in: John Maxwell Coetzee, The Lives of Animals, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999, 73–84, 74; see also Andy Lamey, “Sympathy and Scapegoating in J.M. Coetzee”, in: Anton Leist and Peter Singer (eds.), Coetzee and Philosophy. Philosophical Perspectives on Literature, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010, 171–192, who speaks of Costello’s “wild analogy” between the treatment of animals and the Holocaust (173).
- 14.
Although the “report” remains ambiguous, Peter says, “If I review my development and its goal up to this point, I do not complain, but I am not content. […] On the whole, at any rate, I have achieved what I wished to achieve. You shouldn’t say it was not worth the effort. In any case, I don’t want any human being’s judgment. I only want to expand knowledge. I simply report.” (Franz Kafka, “Report for an Academy”, available under: http://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/kafka/reportforacademyhtml.html)
- 15.
Red Peter explains, “I do not mean this great feeling of freedom on all sides. As an ape, I perhaps recognized it, and I have met human beings who yearn for it. But as far as I am concerned, I did not demand freedom either then or today. Incidentally, among human beings people all too often are deceived by freedom. And since freedom is reckoned among the most sublime feelings, the corresponding disappointment is also among the most sublime.” (ibid.).
- 16.
See also Karen Dawn and Peter Singer, “Converging Convictions. Coetzee and His Characters on Animals”, in: Anton Leist and Peter Singer (eds.), Coetzee and Philosophy. Philosophical Perspectives on Literature, 109–118, 116.
- 17.
This is not advocating behaviorism but rather underlining an important element related to it; see Dewi Z. Phillips, “On Really Believing”, in: idem, Wittgenstein and Religion, Basingstoke / London: Macmillan, 1993, 33–55.
- 18.
See on Costello’s (and Coetzee’s) plea for vegetarianism Marianne Dekoven, “Guest Column: Why Animals Now?”, in: PMLA 124:2 (2009), 361–369, esp. 364.
- 19.
Cf. Timothy M. Costelloe, “The Invisibility of Evil: Moral Progress and the ‘Animal Holocaust,’” in: Philosophical Papers 32:2 (2003), 109–131, 123.
- 20.
Stephen Mulhall, The Wounded Animal. J.M. Coetzee and the Difficulty of Reality in Literature and Philosophy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, 56.
- 21.
Jennifer Flynn calls Elizabeth Costello a “novella” (see her “The Lives of Animals and the Form-Content Connection,”in: Anton Leist and Peter Singer (eds.), Coetzee and Philosophy. Philosophical Perspectives on Literature, 315–333, 317); See also Robert Pippin, “The Paradoxes of Power in the Early Novels of J.M. Coetzee”, in: ibid., 22–23.
- 22.
This problem is discussed at some length by Stephen Mulhall who is consistent in his claim that this charge is then not only to be directed at Costello, but also at those who raise objections against her in the name of the singular character of the Holocaust; see Stephen Mulhall, The Wounded Animal, 70 and 72.
- 23.
Cf. Ido Geiger, “Writing the Lives of Animals”, in: Anton Leist and Peter Singer (eds.), Coetzee and Philosophy, 145–169, esp. 153.—There is a historical Abraham Stern, a rather dubious figure; on this topic see Andy Lamey, “Sympathy and Scapegoating in J.M. Coetzee”, 185.
- 24.
This has been debated in the so called “Historian’s Dispute” starting off with Ernst Nolte’s 1986 newspaper article “The Past That Will Not Pass” (“Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will”). In Nolte’s view, the decisive event of the twentieth century had been the Russian revolution in 1917, while causally connecting the Gulags with the Nazi concentration camps; his perspective is, for example, expressed in the following passage:
It is probable that many of these reports were exaggerated. It is certain that the ‘White Terror’ also committed terrible deeds, even though its program contained no analogy to the ‘extermination of the bourgeoisie’. Nonetheless, the following question must seem permissible, even unavoidable: Did the National Socialists or Hitler perhaps commit an ‘Asiatic’ deed merely because they and their ilk considered themselves to be the potential victims of an ‘Asiatic’ deed? Wasn’t the ‘Gulag Archipelago’ more original than Auschwitz? Was the Bolshevik murder of an entire class not the logical and factual prius of the ‘racial murder’ of National Socialism? Cannot Hitler’s most secret deeds be explained by the fact that he had not forgotten the rat cage? Did Auschwitz in its root causes not originate in a past that would not pass?
Available under: https://www.staff.uni-giessen.de/~g31130/PDF/Nationalismus/ErnstNolte.pdf (the German original stems from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 6, 1986); see also Stefan Berg, „Vergleichsweise orientiert. Eine orientierungstheoretische Betrachtung des Vergleichens“, in: Andreas Mauz / Hartmut von Sass (eds.), Hermeneutik des Vergleichs. Strukturen, Anwendungen und Grenzen komparativer Verfahren, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2011, 277–303, esp. 294–299.—Admittedly, this dispute deserves more attention than I am able to give it here, and, surely, it would provide alternative material to elaborate on normative incomparability.
- 25.
Robert Nozick, “The Holocaust”, in: idem, Examined Life. Philosophical Meditations, New York / London: A Touchstone Book, 1990, 236–242, 236.
- 26.
Ibid., 237.
- 27.
Ibid., 239.
- 28.
Ibid., 238.
- 29.
See ibid., 239 and 241; for a different account cf. Johann Frick, “On the survival of humanity”, in: Canadian Journal of Philosophy 47:2–3 (2017), 344–367, 360–362.
- 30.
I am following here David Sztybel, “Can the Treatment of Animals Be Compared to the Holocaust?”, in: Ethics and the Environment 11:1 (2006), 97–132, esp. 107–120; Sztybel lists 39 regards in four groups for a comparison between the Holocaust and the cruel treatment of animals.
- 31.
See Timothy M. Costelloe, “The Invisibility of Evil: Moral Progress and the ‘Animal Holocaust’”, 127.
- 32.
Sabina Lovibond, Ethical Formation, Cambridge, MA / London: Harvard University Press, 2002, x and 13; see also G.E.M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy”, in: Philosophy 33:1 (1958), 1–19, esp. 14.
- 33.
Cf. Ward E. Jones, “Elizabeth Costello and the Biography of the Moral Philosopher”, 216.
- 34.
See Stephen Mulhall, The Wounded Animal, 55.
- 35.
On this general and anti-rational doubt, see Anton Leist, “Against Society, Against History, Against Reason. Coetzee’ s Archaic Postmodernism”, in: Anton Leist and Peter Singer (eds.), Coetzee and Philosophy. Philosophical Perspectives on Literature, 195–220, 209
- 36.
Michael Funk Deckard and Ralph Palm, “Irony and Belief in Elizabeth Costello”, in: Anton Leist and Peter Singer (eds.), Coetzee and Philosophy. Philosophical Perspectives on Literature, 335–354, 347 and 350.—This also sheds light on the widely discussed relation between Coetzee and Costello. It is true that there are several biographical details that both have in common, and in that sense, they are indeed close, especially in regard to criticizing the treatment of animals. Nevertheless, all this does not allow for identifying both figures as lacking—a point underlined by Elizabeth becoming a hardliner—what Coetzee calls “self-insight” (113); cf. Karen Dawn and Peter Singer, “Converging Convictions. Coetzee and His Characters on Animals”, 109–110; Martin Woessner, “Coetzee’s Critique of Reason”, in: Anton Leist and Peter Singer (eds.), Coetzee and Philosophy. Philosophical Perspectives on Literature, 221–245, 237; Derek Attridge, “Coetzee’s Artists; Coetzee’s Art”, in: Graham Bradshaw and Michael Neill (eds.), J.M. Coetzee’s Austerities, Farnham / Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010, 25–42, 31; Barbara Dancygier, “Close Encounters: The Author and the Character in Elizabeth Costello, Slow Man and Diary of a Bad Year”, in: ibid., 231–252, 233.
- 37.
Cf. Robert Pippin, “The Paradoxes of Power in the Early Novels of J.M. Coetzee”, 38, footnote 10.
- 38.
Cf. Agustin Fuentes, “The Humanity of Animals and the Animality of Humans: A View from Biological Anthropology Inspired by J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello”, in: American Anthropologist 108:1 (2006), 124–132, 129.
- 39.
See Cf. Jacques Derrida, “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)”, 410–412; Elizabeth Susan Anker, “‘Elizabeth Costello,’ Embodiment, and the Limits of Rights”, in: New Literary History 42:1 (2011), 169–192, 185.
- 40.
This concerns either a set of relevant features, or amounts to refuting the (ontological) human-animal divide in general—as in Bruno Latour’s critique of “modernism” or Donna Harraway’s blurring the binary of human/animal by paying heed to a third party, namely cyborgs and artificial intelligence.
- 41.
Cf. Richard Rorty stating: “If pain were all that mattered, it would be as important to protect the rabbits from the foxes as to protect the Jews from the Nazis.” (Philosophy and Social Hope, London: Penguin Books, 1999, 86); see also Louis Tremaine, “The Embodied Soul: Animal Being in the Work of J. M. Coetzee”, in: Contemporary Literature 44:4 (2003), 587–612.
- 42.
A highly critical response to animal rights accounts (such as the ones by Peter Singer and Tom Regan) is given by Cora Diamond, “Eating Meat and Eating People”, in: idem, The Realistic Spirit. Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind, Cambridge, MA / London: MIT Press, 1991, 319–334, esp. 321 and 325; a counter-critique is given by Elisa Aaltola, “Coetzee and Alternative Animal Ethics”, in: Anton Leist and Peter Singer (eds.), Coetzee and Philosophy. Philosophical Perspectives on Literature, 119–143, 137.
- 43.
See Alice Crary, Inside Ethics. On the Demands of Moral Thought, Cambridge, MA / London: Harvard University Press, 2016, 125.
- 44.
On this Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962, §§ 74 and 76.
- 45.
Cf. Jacques Derrida, “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)”, 373.
- 46.
Anton Leist, “Against Society, Against History, Against Reason. Coetzee’ s Archaic Postmodernism”, 215.
- 47.
See Marianne Dekoven, “Guest Column: Why Animals Now?”, 366.
- 48.
Cf. Elizabeth Susan Anker, “‘Elizabeth Costello’, Embodiment, and the Limits of Rights”, 172 and 177–178.
- 49.
See Alice Crary, Inside Ethics, 227 and 229; Adriaan van Heerden, “Disgrace, Desire, and the Dark Side of the New South Africa”, in: Anton Leist and Peter Singer (eds.), Coetzee and Philosophy. Philosophical Perspectives on Literature, 43–63, esp. 60—who also highlights the South-African background and historical, i.e. Apartheid- and post-colonial context informing Coetzee’s Disgrace.
- 50.
Cf. Cora Diamond, “Having a rough Story about What Moral Philosophy Is”, in: The Realistic Spirit, 367–381, 371–372; Martin Woessner, “Coetzee’s Critique of Reason”, in: Anton Leist and Peter Singer (eds.), Coetzee and Philosophy. Philosophical Perspectives on Literature, 221–245, esp. 224 and 228; Alice Crary, “J. M. Coetzee, Moral Thinker”, in: ibid., 247–266, 252.
- 51.
This is Peter Singer’s critique of Coetzee and his ‘narrative’ approach; see his “Reflections”, in: John Maxwell Coetzee, The Lives of Animals, 85–91, 91.
- 52.
See Jennifer Flynn, “The Lives of Animals and the Form-Content Connection”, in: Anton Leist and Peter Singer (eds.), Coetzee and Philosophy. Philosophical Perspectives on Literature, 315–333, 328.
- 53.
In fact, the entire chapter 6 entitled “The Problem of Evil” is dedicated to the perils of literature; see EC, 156–182, esp. 160, 167, 173–174.
- 54.
Thomas Nagel, “What it is like to be a bat?”; see, for instance, this passage: “My point, however, is not that we cannot know what it is like to be a bat. I am not raising that epistemological problem. My point is rather that even to form a conception of what it is like to be a bat (and a fortiori to know what it is like to be a bat) one must take up the bat’s point of view” (172, footnote 8).
- 55.
The contrast between “matters of fact” and “matters of concern” is—slightly differently—used by Bruno Latour; see his “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern”, in: Critical Inquiry 30:2 (2004), 225–248.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
von Sass, H. (2021). The Curious Case of Normative Incomparability: Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello, and the Limits of Comparisons. In: Hagberg, G.L. (eds) Fictional Worlds and the Moral Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55049-3_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55049-3_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-55048-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-55049-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)