Animals in Us – We in Animals

Szymon Wróbel is a Professor of Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and at the Faculty of Artes Liberales of the University of Warsaw. He is a psychologist and philosopher researching contemporary social and political theory and philosophy of language. His two latest books are Deferring the Self and Grammar and Glamour of Cooperation.

• Contents: Szymon Wróbel: Intellectual Motivation to Undertake the Subject of Animality – Krzysztof Ziarek: The Modern Privilege of Life – Jan Hartman: Animals Are Good People Too – Piotr Laskowski: Wegen dem Pferd. The Fear and the Animal Life – Paweł Miech: The Father was a Gorilla. Psychoanalysis and the Animal Big Other – Mary Trachsel: Reviving Biophilia: Feeling Our Academic Way to a Future with Other Animals – Tadeusz Sławek: Unanimal Mankind. Man, Animal, and the «Organization» of Life – Jens Loenhoff: On the Notion of the Boundary in the Philosophical Anthropology of Helmuth Plessner – Krzysztof Skonieczny: Becoming Animal in Michel de Montaigne. Toward an Animal Community – Kathleen Perry Long: Evil and the Human/Animal Divide: From Pliny to Paré – Paweł Mościcki: The Cloth of Man. Contribution to a Study on the Human-Animal Pathos – Ewa Łukaszyk: From Agamben to Saville’s Bellies. Transgression into the Animal Condition in Post-Humanity, Primitive Humanity and Contemporary Art – Beata Michalak: Animals Hidden in Notes and Instruments – Clair Linzey: Animals in Catholic Thought: A New Sensitivity? – Rafał Zawisza: Not Being Angel. Manichaeism as an Obstacle to Thinking of a New Approach to Animality – Jacek Dobrowolski: Michel de Montaigne’s Atheology of Animality as an Example of Emancipation Tool For Modern Humanity – Szymon Wróbel: Domesticating Animals: Description of a Certain Disturbance – Tom Tyler: Quia Ego Nominor Leo: Barthes, Stereotypes and Aesop’s Animals – Mirosław Loba: On Animality and Humanity in Literature after the «Darwinian Turn» – Przemysław Kordos: Talking Animalish in Science-fiction Creations. Some Thoughts on Literary Zoomorphism – Joanna Partyka: Wolves and Women: À Propos the Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s Book.

«In his Introduction to this book, Szymon Wróbel writes about a peculiar animal turn taking place, suggesting that there has been a real breakthrough in comparison with the previous studies of the relation between what is human and what is animal. The existence of this breakthrough has been attested by the articles contained in this volume, which refer both to the context of tradition and the contemporary approaches. It is the first publication of its kind that juxtaposes what is human and what is animal in such a wide and varied way.» (Professor Paweł Dybel, University of Warsaw and Polish Academy of Sciences)«The volume is devoted to the topical subject matter of Animal Studies in the context of relations between a human and an animal. The texts it contains comprehensively present the entire semantic complexity of this relation, from the historical aspects, concerning the perception of animals in the western, philosophical and cultural tradition, through its theological and religious aspects, anthropological and ethical, linguistic, to the contemporary – philosophical and literary aspects. In this way, the book investigates the phenomenon of our increasing ethical sensitivity towards animals, which defines our contemporary cultural experience. But, of course, it does not only simply postulate a change in our relationship to animals – although this ethical message is very clear – but above all, and this defines its essential philosophical stakes, it postulates the fundamental reflection on and reevaluation of the role, which animality plays in our experience of ourselves: because this relation proves to be the relation towards ourselves, revealing the new dimension of our own, complex humanity». (Professor Paweł Pieniążek, University of Łódź (Poland))