I heartsuit sign my dog

Political Theory

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 373-395

  Ferguson, Kennan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA   (United States)

Author keywords

Dogs; Ethics; Incommensurability; Love; Political philosophy

Indexed keywords

EID: 2542516306     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591703260692     Document Type: Article

References (81)

1. William James, "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings" in Essays on Faith and Morals (New York: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1943), 260.
2. Ibid. James also draws a parallel here between the incommensurability of dogs and people and the incommensurability of an "American traveler" and "African savages," the latter of whom, in his telling, do not understand the very basic nature of the written word.
3. Marjorie Garber's book Dog Love (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) lists a few of these and many, many other examples of people's love of dogs.
4. The main exception being recent immigrants from countries where dogs are valued differently, either as "filthy animals" or as tasty comestibles (first-generation Iraqi or Vietnamese immigrants, for example, who rarely own dogs as pets). See James A. Serpell, In the Company of Animals (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986), v-vi.
5. Garber, Dog Love, 42. Unfortunately, why this is so she never explicitly articulates, other than to say that they bring out extremes of emotion.
6. John Adams to James Warren, October 13, 1775, in Warren-Adams Letters, Being Chiefly a Correspondence among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren, 1743-1814, Volume 1 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1917-25), 137; quoted in James Turner, Reckoning with the Beast: Animals, Pain, and Humanity in the Victorian Mind (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 9.
7. John Adams to James Warren, October 13, 1775, in Warren-Adams Letters, Being Chiefly a Correspondence among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren, 1743-1814, Volume 1 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1917-25), 137; quoted in James Turner, Reckoning with the Beast: Animals, Pain, and Humanity in the Victorian Mind (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 9.
8. Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 84-85.
9. Turner, Reckoning with the Beast, 74-75.
10. George T. Angell, Our Dumb Animals, vol. 1 (1868-69), 37, quoted in Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 75.
11. George T. Angell, Our Dumb Animals, vol. 1 (1868-69), 37, quoted in Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 75.
12. Turner, Reckoning with the Beast, 77.
13. Quoted in Midas Dekkers, Dearest Pet: On Bestiality, trans. Paul Vincent (New York: Verso, 1994), 172. This from the author of The Foundations of Ethnology: The Principle Ideas and Discoveries in Animal Behavior.
14. Andrew Sullivan, "Dog and Man at Harvard," New York Times Book Review, November 17, 1996, 11.
15. The hardback version spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993) and can likely be said to have helped create an avalanche of dog-related books.
16. Michael Oakeshott, "A Philosophy of Politics," in Religion, Politics, and the Moral Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 119-37, at 122.
17. Ibid., 123.
18. In moral philosophy, this opposition between the practical and theoretical has its own specialized terminology: "the is-ought distinction," or the conflict between "value and fact." I will avoid these specialized terminologies, primarily because they tend to delineate matters only at the price of obfuscation.
19. Most overtly, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Richard B. Brandt, Facts, Values, and Norms (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. 123-63. Robert Nozick overtly lists them in The Nature of Rationality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), in his footnote to p. 141.
20. Most overtly, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Richard B. Brandt, Facts, Values, and Norms (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. 123-63. Robert Nozick overtly lists them in The Nature of Rationality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), in his footnote to p. 141.
21. Most overtly, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Richard B. Brandt, Facts, Values, and Norms (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. 123-63. Robert Nozick overtly lists them in The Nature of Rationality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), in his footnote to p. 141.
22. Most overtly, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Richard B. Brandt, Facts, Values, and Norms (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. 123-63. Robert Nozick overtly lists them in The Nature of Rationality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), in his footnote to p. 141.
23. Rawls, Theory of Justice, 103-4; James Rachels, Can Ethics Provide Answers? And Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), ix.
24. Rawls, Theory of Justice, 103-4; James Rachels, Can Ethics Provide Answers? And Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), ix.
25. Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1994).
26. Mary Midgley, Heart and Mind: The Varieties of Moral Experience (Sussex, UK: Harvester, 1981).
27. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 74.
28. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Avon, 1990); also for a more simplified account, see his "All Animals are Equal," in Applied Ethics (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986), 215-28.
29. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Avon, 1990); also for a more simplified account, see his "All Animals are Equal," in Applied Ethics (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986), 215-28.
30. See, for example, Daniel A. Dombrowski, Babies and Beasts: The Argument from Marginal Cases (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997).
31. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon, 1984); idem, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
32. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon, 1984); idem, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
33. Quoted in Peter Dews, Logics of Disintegration: Post-structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory (New York: Verso, 1988), 242.
34. See, for example, Jürgen Habermas, Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), or Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
35. See, for example, Jürgen Habermas, Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), or Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
36. Actually, there are three, but the "ordinary language" philosophy movement is clearly limited to meaning within human interlocution, and thus is of little relevance here.
37. Dana Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror: Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 67.
38. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (San Francisco: Harper, 1962), 237.
39. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, trans. Philip Maret (London: Methuen, 1948).
40. "Men," she argues (meaning "humans"), "are conditioned beings because everything they come in contact with turns immediately into a condition of their existence." Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 9.
41. Exemplary here is Arendt's discussion of love's dependence on the public realm. See ibid., 51-78.
42. Martha Nussbaum, Love's Knowledge (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1990), 274.
43. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminist Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
44. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminist Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
45. Other related political/psychological theories include "object relations theory" and "maternal thinking." See Melanie Klein, The Selected Melanie Klein (New York: Free Press, 1987), and Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (New York: Ballantine, 1989).
46. Other related political/psychological theories include "object relations theory" and "maternal thinking." See Melanie Klein, The Selected Melanie Klein (New York: Free Press, 1987), and Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (New York: Ballantine, 1989).
47. Carol Gilligan, "Remapping the Moral Domain: New Images of the Self in Relationship," in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, edited by Thomas C. Heller, Morton Sosna, David E. Wellbery, et al. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986), 237-52, at 240.
48. For an extended discussion of the ethical and political implications of this, see the collection of essays edited by Mary Jeanne Larrabee, An Ethic of Care: Feminist and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 1993).
49. Noddings is most explicit in this account.
50. Stan van Hooft, Caring: An Essay in the Philosophy of Ethics (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1995), 26.
51. Joan Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge, 1993).
52. See, for example, Lawrence Kohlberg, Essays on Moral Development (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984).
53. Other than Cuomo and Gruen, another exception is Rita C. Manning, who devotes a chapter to love of animals in Speaking from the Heart. Manning's treatment, however, is more a narrative of specific cases of caring (in particular, her decision whether or not to put a horse to pasture), the conclusions of which are simplistic: "those who have had a relationship with animals, with the earth, become, through these relationships, aware of the sacredness of the earth." Rita C. Manning, Speaking from the Heart: A Feminist Perspective on Ethics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992), 133.
54. Chris Cuomo and Lori Gruen, "On Puppies and Pussies: Animals, Intimacy, and Moral Distance," in Daring to Be Good: Essays in Feminist Eco-Politics, edited by Bat-Ami Bar On and Ann Ferguson (New York: Routledge, 1998), 129-42.
55. This is not, however, a slip back into a universalism of oppression; Cuomo overtly argues elsewhere that feminist ethics, being contextual and contingent, cannot (and should not) avoid being pluralistic. See her "The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism," in Ecological Feminist Philosophies, edited by Karen J. Warring (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 42-51.
56. Cuomo and Gruen, "On Puppies," 140.
57. The above quotation concludes: "... the feminist case for vegetarianism becomes even stronger."
58. See Singer's Animal Liberation, 22, and Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 324.
59. See Singer's Animal Liberation, 22, and Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 324.
60. Arnold Arluke and Clinton Sanders, Regarding Animals (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996).
61. Ibid., 67-71.
62. Though there are certain similarities between the efforts to control their reproduction: the political efforts to create programs to control and minimize the reproductive capacities of "drug addicts" and "welfare recipients" are suspiciously similar to the spaying of genealogically impure or wild dogs and cats.
63. Quoted in Alan Moorehead, The Fatal Impact: An Account of the Invasion of the South Pacific, 1767-1840 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 27.
64. See Glen Elder, Jennifer Wolch, and Jody Emel's sensitive and enlightening treatment of the ways animals are viewed in a culture more prone to sympathize with animals than with foreign cultural practices in "Le Pratique Savage: Race, Place, and the Human-Animal Divide," in Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature-Culture Borderlands, edited by Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel (New York: Verso, 1998), 72-90.
65. For example, "Question 3," an antiracing proposition passed in Massachusetts in the fall of 2000.
66. For a full range of examples of all these approaches from a variety of popular narratives, see Susan Chernak McElroy, Animals as Teachers & Healers: True Stories & Reflections (Troutdale, OR: NewSage, 1996).
67. Stephen St C. Bostock, Zoos & Animal Rights: The Ethics of Keeping Animals (London: Routledge, 1993), 62.
68. Singer, Animal Liberation, 255.
69. See McElroy's "true" stories in Animals as Teachers & Healers. See also the tales of those whose sexual drive fixes on animals in Midas Dekkers, Dearest Pet.
70. See McElroy's "true" stories in Animals as Teachers & Healers. See also the tales of those whose sexual drive fixes on animals in Midas Dekkers, Dearest Pet.
71. J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace (New York: Viking, 1999). Future citations are given parenthetically.
72. For Lurie, this caretaking is not dependent on the recognition of others, even of the dogs themselves. He notes that it matters to no one, even the dead dogs, how their bodies are treated after death, yet he goes out of his way to solemnize their cremation. Nor does it preclude particularity: he feels a particular attachment to one dog and resists killing it until the final page of the book.
73. Ian Hacking, "Our Fellow Animals," New York Review of Books 47, no. 11 (2000): 20.
74. Christopher D. Stone, "Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects," 45 Southern California Law Review 450 (1972).
75. The most philosophically formal of these approaches comes from Joel Feinberg, "The Rights of Animal and Unborn Generations," in Philosophy and Environmental Crisis, edited by William Blackstone (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974). See also Tom Regan's reply and expansion of Feinberg in All That Dwell Therein: Animal Rights and Environmental Ethics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 165-83.
76. The most philosophically formal of these approaches comes from Joel Feinberg, "The Rights of Animal and Unborn Generations," in Philosophy and Environmental Crisis, edited by William Blackstone (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974). See also Tom Regan's reply and expansion of Feinberg in All That Dwell Therein: Animal Rights and Environmental Ethics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 165-83.
77. Timothy Kaufman-Osbourne, Creatures of Prometheus: Gender and the Politics of Technology (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997).
78. Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modem Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), esp. 17-32.
79. Jim Johnson, "Mixing Humans and Non-humans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer," Social Problems 35 (1988): 298-310.
80. Donna Haraway, "Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s," Socialist Review 15, no. 2 (1985). It is no coincidence that Haraway's most recent manifesto celebrates the fuzziness of the pet/human barrier; see The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Signjfieant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm, 2003).
81. Donna Haraway, "Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s," Socialist Review 15, no. 2 (1985). It is no coincidence that Haraway's most recent manifesto celebrates the fuzziness of the pet/human barrier; see The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Signjfieant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm, 2003).