Abstract
The Bible recounts that in Eden, Adam gives names to all the animals. But those names are not only representations of the animals’ nature, rather they shape and constitute it. The naming by Adam contains in itself the divide between the human and non-human. Then, there is the Fall: Adam falls and forgets Being. Though he may still remember the names he gave to the animals in Eden, he is no longer sure about their meaning. Adam will have to try to remember his own intentions. Through this effort he can also become aware of how he thinks, who he is, and what was the natural order he knew before the Fall. Medieval bestiaries tell us this story. Bestiaries are works of word play populated by animal figures. They depend on back-and-forth anthropomorphization, or circular metaphor. Animal figures are portrayed as both a mirror of human nature and a window on it. Bestiaries served as means for the moral education of human beings and, at the same time, a way to criticize the current state of humanity, including political and ethical habits. Within the moral irony of medieval bestiaries we can find the origin of the invented nature that modernity will try, subsequently, to insert into natural rights discourse through the teleological oxymoron of their naturalized and naturalizing counter-factuality (natural rights will be simultaneously “being” and “ought,” nature and values/ends). I will propose a historical-semiotic journey through the ironic representations of the human-beasts from the ancient world to contemporaneity. The proposal resulting from this cultural excursion is that the words included in the many national and international Rights declarations operate much like the names Adam gave to the animals and still more as they were re-read in medieval bestiaries, both textual and musical. So, can the words of Rights still serve as musical scores, open to an infinite play of re-signification? If we were able to overcome the modern culture/nature and human being/animal dualisms, we could cast, today as in the past, a zoological gaze on human rights by means of contemporary bestiaries and, in this way, perhaps find the gist of rights’ names and our ever regained and ever lost again humanity.
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Notes
See [39: 12].
On Aquinas’ point of view see [41: 4–5, 124, 154]; however, in support of seeing violent behaviors as evidence of human beings’ fall from their human condition to a bestial one, see [41: 4]. Nonetheless, according to Thomas, the difference between the two kinds of violence consists in the teleological, intentional connotation of the human one because of its connection with intellect and, in this respect, its opposition to the violence of animals. The violent behaviors of animals should be considered as entirely driven by instincts and, consequentially, perpetrated for the mere sake of it.
An anthology of Aesop’s fables circulated during the Carolingian period and was attributed to the author Romulus, a presumptive Latin author who would have translated them from Greek (though this was probably an incorrect transposition of the name Phaedrus). We know that there were many versions of this anthology.
The scope of this essay requires limiting my analysis to the Western tradition. It must be recognized, however, that it should go back even further in time and extend more widely from a geographical point of view. For example, the Panchatantra should be analyzed, a Hindu anthology whose oldest versions appear to date back to the period between the second and the sixth century A.D.; or the Jataka (fifth century A.D.), a text on the Buddha’s previous lives including many animal figures. On the relationships between animals, life and divinities in the Hindu tradition, see [11, 28].
The title of a book, Il Ghigno di Esopo. Uno sguardo zoologico sui diritti umani (Aesop’s Grin: A Zoological Gaze on Human Rights) is the source of the section title [40].
At least, this is the narration included in Aesop’s Life, a text that circulated during the Middle Ages from the twelfth century, but which is of dubious dating (most likely, however, not older).
My translation.
Agostino d’Ippona, De Civitate Dei contra Paganos.
The work by Isidore from Seville to which I refer is Etymologiae sive Origines. It is very interesting to note that the self-recognition of the human—if we consider it as the real aim and/or result of all the practices of nomination and classification concerning the animal realm—constituted an effect and, at the same time, a connotation that were equally implicit in Jewish-Christian theological thought. Through its commitment to classify animals, while at the same time distancing humans from them, Western culture has always forged, even if indirectly, the human form, making it the leitmotiv of a large part of contemporary and, especially, post-modern speculative thought on animality: [1, 15, 17]. Both Benjamin and Canetti (see infra) are invoked by post-modern thought as benchmarks for the criticism against human/animal dualism. In my view, however, the ideas of these two authors have wider reconstructive implications than those the postmodern thinkers drew from them. To some extent, Benjamin and Canetti seem to be distant from post-modernist critics in their reluctance to go beyond the deconstructionist delegitimization of the extant categories (forged or adopted, in their view, by Western modernity).
This representation of the panther and its assimilation to Jesus Christ can be found in Physiologus, the prototype of medieval bestiaries, drafted in Alessandria in late second century A.D.
See [42: 91 ff.].
I employ this expression in the sense Blumenberg gave it [2: 45 ff.].
See, in this regard, [27: 35 ff.].
A historical-cultural background of the religious significance of animals can be found in [23], where the author shows moreover the crucial importance of the animal/human divide for the constitution of the human.
On the other hand the pedagogical and speculative use of music goes back to Plato. As for the relationships between music, education and cognition in Plato, see the seminal and wonderful work by [38].
As for the use and signification of animal figures in medieval and Renaissance bestiaries see the above mentioned Jacoviello’s essay “Lovely Beasts, Bestial Lovers: Animals, Righteous Men and the Semiotics of Musical Mirrors”.
An interesting work on the interpretation of Les Sauvage, in the light of Rameau’s cultural references, was carried out by [43].
In this regard, see for some very insightful remarks [46: 294]. Relying upon the above underlined moral significance of medieval bestiaries and their use of the reversal metaphor on the animal to distinguish between good humanity and bad humanity, Smith points out how beast/human dualism has always transformed into a metaphorical device to separate “us” from “them.” More specifically, Smith observes that in the effort to define which activities are properly human, social and political thought ends up dividing the world between human beings (generally identified with “us”) and non-human beings (more often than not embodied by all people Other than “us”): in short between “Us” and “Them”.
As for the quote from Francis Bacon’s Valerius Terminus see https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/bacon/francis/valerius/. For an analysis of the relationships between human beings, animals and knowledge, see [18].
In this regard, see again [27: 46–51].
My translation.
The human being is above the wolf on the creature scale and, precisely because of his superior intellect, he is able to laugh seeing himself metaphorically figured as a lupin hybrid. The assumption that superiority might be a source of laughter is even theorized in Hobbes’ De Homine. In this respect, the Hobbes’ thought seems to draw a full circle; as if the self-critical traits of the modern mind had already germinated in the switchbacks of his philosophical and anthropological speculations, as if that mind, through its own thoughts, had gazed at itself in the mirror.
In this regard, the most important work by Grotius is De jure belli ac pacis.
[13: 3].
[29]. This collection is included in another publication that gathers other aphorism collections by the same author and is edited by Roberto Calasso. It comprises translations of the aphorisms included in the anthology edited by H. Fischer, in 1955 and published in München by Kösel.
My translation.
Translation by McVity in [30]. As for the possible contamination from animals through contact or ingestion it is interesting to consider, by stepping backwards in time, what is highlighted in [41: 34–35]. The author analyzes the issue raised during the Middle Ages about the relationship between food and human nature. Thomas Aquinas took part in the dispute. The basic question was whether what human beings ate could somehow modify or contaminate their own nature. From this dispute and its possible resolutions, a long series of food prohibitions could emerge. As an example, Salisbury refers to the reluctance to allow the consumption of rabbit or hyena meat because of the presumptive sexual promiscuity of these animals. From the fourth century, questions were raised as to whether the consumption of this kind of meat could actually influence/contaminate human behavior, making those who eat rabbit or hyena promiscuous. Later, Aquinas addressed the issue and concluded that it is human nature that imposes its qualities on animal matter by converting it into human flesh and true human nature (Summa Theologica, Q. 119). As Salisbury points out, what matters is not so much Aquinas’ answer as rather the very fact that the question was raised. The raising of such a question shows the fragility of the border between humans and animals, or at least the perception of their possible, latent instability. The separation between these two realms provides a cultural answer. It gushes out from the ensuing conceptualizations of embodiment attached to the ingestion of the outside world. Even Aquinas’ conclusion to the issue of the peril of contamination through eating does not escape the generative dialectics of human-world-ingestion. Following his thesis, the human being imposes his nature on animal matter, but only provided that he previously or concomitantly differentiates himself from it. The human can therefore ingest (animal) meat without “bestializing,” but only as long as he does not behave like a beast. If he were to lose his constitutive human connotation, then contamination could no longer be excluded. His mirroring back in animals, even in their negativities, consistently teaches the human who he is, and why he is allowed to eat them: he is (insofar as he remains so) higher than them.
My translation.
My translation. This aphorism is included in the collection titled Nachts (1987; or 1955). Calasso points out in his essay Una muraglia cinese (A Chinese Wall) [5: 33]: “First of all, if Kraus is not a thinker but a thinking language, it will come as no surprise that his ideas unfold through opposite pairs, as the language structure requires, since it is the same language, from the phonological bilateral oppositions to the antinomies in the abstract lexicon, upon which oppositions are construed. Nonetheless, it would be merely naïve to consider Kraus’ neat enunciations, or the abrupt cuts that recur in his pages, semantically binding: it should always be borne in mind that the exceeding truth of aphorism is at play here. And, as exceeding truths, aphorisms work as a machine that cannot be used to describe the world of opposites, here translated in an oppositional language, but rather only to make them turn to their origin, which does not comprise them”.
On these aphorisms from Canetti, see [44: 62–63]; and, more broadly, the entire Chapter III, titled L’antidoto animale).
[6], my translation.
[7].
[7].
[8], my translation.
[8], my translation.
[8], my translation.
[12].
The Bestiario di Dino Buzzati [4] is a posthumous collection of literary and journalistic writings devoted to animals, arranged and edited by Guido Marabini in 1991, and later expanded in 2015 by Lorenzo Viganò.
[3]. In his Bestiario (330–360), almost fallen prey to a metaphysical mouse-phobia, Buzzati gives mice the part of emulators and, ultimately, ruler/executors of humankind. Something that seems to anticipate Günter Grass’ Rat (see below) by several years.
My translation.
[19: 3]. Grass’ entire novel exemplifies the author’s critique of radical Enlightenment, namely the myth of the self-sufficiency of an omniclassifying Reason. His position is epitomized in a poem included in the same novel, which describes the rise and fall of Reason’s Enlightenment dream. Nonetheless, Grass’ poetic words do not seem to be about erasing or repudiating modern Reason. Rather, they appear to complement the use of Reason with the dimensions of dreaming, the fable and, above all, humor, intended as vehicles for renewed dialogue with nature. The poetic composition begins (…and continues) with the following words:
Our intention was that men should learn/little by little/to handle not only knife and fork/but one another as well, and reason, too,/that omnipotent can opener.
That, once educated, the human race should freely,/yes, freely, determine its destiny and, free from its/shackles,/learn to guide nature cautiously,/as cautiously as possible,/away from chaos.
[…]
A special lesson enjoined us to watch over the sleep of reason,/to domesticate all dream animals until,/grown docile, they eat out of the hand/of enlightenment.
[…]
Then at last the education of the human race/was virtually complete. A great light/illumined every corner. Too bad that afterward/it grew so dark that no one/could find his school. [19: 136–137].
In an essay on Enlightenment, Grass points out that “the rooked wood of humankind holds in itself the instrument of Reason, knows how to handle it properly. In the same way, the process of Enlightenment, however much it went wrong, can also be re-arranged only through the very tools of the Enlightenment” [[20]: 2] [my translation]. As Sisto observes [45], in a very interesting essay on the relationship between the novel The Rat and Grass’ view of Enlightenment, “the writer proposes an ‘enlarged view’ of Enlightenment, capable of going beyond the constraints deriving from technocracy and utopia so as to patiently and wholeheartedly dialogue with nature.” Grass himself says in another text: “I want to commit myself to the service of an Enlightenment which enjoys people and gives them freedom of movement, is colored and accepts stains, and finally succeeds in convincing me that enlightening the fool to the point of transforming him into an enlightened fool means progress. I, however much subdued by this Enlightenment, would like for its everywhere predominant Reason to eventually be subjected to nature” [21] (my translation).
Sisto continues by emphasizing that “from such a conception of Enlightenment ensues, in literature, the necessity for humor. Despite the serious nature of the matter under discussion, the Rat—as well as any literary work—is first and foremost a game. […] This explains also the singular misunderstanding that occurred in a dialogue between the Nobel Prize laureate and the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu about the legacy of European Enlightenment. Referencing with admiration Bourdieu’s recent research, La misère du monde, Grass pointed out how it is completely devoid of humor, so important for his stories; in response, the sociologist replied that the choice, also literary, of showing the consequences of neoliberalism for what they are without indulging in laughter, mirrors the seriousness of our times. Bourdieu’s point of view looks more consistent, but Grass does not intend to retreat and stresses again the necessity to recover humor because it is a connotative ingredient of Enlightenment, that was wrongfully lost over time […].
[19: 371].
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Ricca, M. Ironic Animals: Bestiaries, Moral Harmonies, and the ‘Ridiculous’ Source of Natural Rights. Int J Semiot Law 31, 595–620 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-018-9547-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-018-9547-z