Abstract
Once upon a time a young man was walking through the woods on his way home from the market. In his pack he carried vegetables, fruits, and bread for his family. Wandering down the path and approaching a clearing, he happened to smell smoke. A quick investigation uncovered a bush overcome by low flames that were growing higher, and from the middle of the bush an adder called out for assistance. Tying one of the bread sacks to his staff and reaching it into the flames, the young man called to the adder to slip inside the sack and be lifted to safety. The adder complied and was saved. Away from danger the adder expressed his happiness and explained that some travelers had kindled the fire a few minutes before. The young man, pleased with himself after saving the adder and then putting out the fire, prepared to go on his way and suggested that the adder go in peace now and no longer harm men since he owed his life to a man’s kindness. The adder, though, turned to strike him.
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Notes
Taken from a Persian fable as recounted by Alexander Pope, “Of Cruelty to Animals” (1713) in Clarke (1990), 75–76.
Cf. my The Possibility of a Feminist Phenomenology (1993).
Hart(1992), 196.
Nagel (1974), 435–50.
Bekoff and Jamieson (1990), 414.
Bekoff and Jamieson (1990), 424.
Husserl’s “sympathetic understanding” of men in alien cultures might be expanded here to include animals (Cf. Cartesian Meditations, 133).
Clarke(1990),41.
Masson(1995), 89.
Masson (1995), 89. Masson goes on to remark that if “Tex had been raised by cranes, she would have fallen in love with one, as most cranes do. If George Archibald had been raised by cranes, with whom would he have fallen in love?”
Hearne (1994), 7–8.
Cf. Buytendijk (1943), 70, and “Toucher et être touché” (as referenced by Rollin (1981), 225.)
Chase (1991),115–16.
Cf. John Mohawk’s, “The Great Law of Peace,” in Daly (1994).
Lingis (1994), p. 157.
Carr (1986), 163.
Clarke (1990), 152. In other words, there is no sphere of human-ownness.
Dreyfus (1992), 267.
Sokolowski (1985), 218–19.
Clarke(1990), 105.
Masson (1995), 65.
Masson(1995), 166.
Masson(1995), 168.
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© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Steeves, H.P. (1998). Non-Human Life and the Boundaries of Community. In: Founding Community. Phaenomenologica, vol 143. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5182-5_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5182-5_6
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