Paul Waldau
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195145717
- eISBN:
- 9780199834792
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195145712.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
Examining the common view that Buddhism is sensitive to nonhuman animals, this chapter concludes that the tradition has an ambivalent view of existence as a nonhuman animal, and that early Buddhists ...
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Examining the common view that Buddhism is sensitive to nonhuman animals, this chapter concludes that the tradition has an ambivalent view of existence as a nonhuman animal, and that early Buddhists were often very derisive and dismissive of the realities of nonhuman animals. Despite the central place of animal stories and their important emphases on continuity and compassion and the ethical achievements obvious in the First Precept (do not harm), recognizable harms to even the most complicated nonhuman animals, such as elephants, were deemed to be humans’ prerogatives under the moral order. The notion of “speciesism” illuminates features of how mainline Buddhism has come to understand the place of other animals even though there are subtraditions and important ethics‐based attitudes that do not easily fit the description “speciesist.”Less
Examining the common view that Buddhism is sensitive to nonhuman animals, this chapter concludes that the tradition has an ambivalent view of existence as a nonhuman animal, and that early Buddhists were often very derisive and dismissive of the realities of nonhuman animals. Despite the central place of animal stories and their important emphases on continuity and compassion and the ethical achievements obvious in the First Precept (do not harm), recognizable harms to even the most complicated nonhuman animals, such as elephants, were deemed to be humans’ prerogatives under the moral order. The notion of “speciesism” illuminates features of how mainline Buddhism has come to understand the place of other animals even though there are subtraditions and important ethics‐based attitudes that do not easily fit the description “speciesist.”
Stephen H. Webb
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195152296
- eISBN:
- 9780199849178
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195152296.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter argues that that the language of mutual giving is a form of communication we develop with some animals that allows both parties to maintain their own identities. This discourse lets us ...
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This chapter argues that that the language of mutual giving is a form of communication we develop with some animals that allows both parties to maintain their own identities. This discourse lets us understand the other even when we must do all of the talking. Of course, the difficulty is to articulate just how these giving relationships differ from economic transactions. Giving is a kind of rhetoric, a mode of communication that can be practiced even between those who do not share the same language, or who do not speak at all. This “language” is best examined in the everyday practices of dog lovers, but it can also be investigated in the much-maligned and discounted genre of fiction pertaining to animals.Less
This chapter argues that that the language of mutual giving is a form of communication we develop with some animals that allows both parties to maintain their own identities. This discourse lets us understand the other even when we must do all of the talking. Of course, the difficulty is to articulate just how these giving relationships differ from economic transactions. Giving is a kind of rhetoric, a mode of communication that can be practiced even between those who do not share the same language, or who do not speak at all. This “language” is best examined in the everyday practices of dog lovers, but it can also be investigated in the much-maligned and discounted genre of fiction pertaining to animals.
June O. Leavitt
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199827831
- eISBN:
- 9780199919444
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827831.003.0016
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
This chapter explores the possibility that Kafka’s abstention from meat and empathy for animals may have generated his large repertoire of narratives written from a mammal, rodent or insects’ points ...
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This chapter explores the possibility that Kafka’s abstention from meat and empathy for animals may have generated his large repertoire of narratives written from a mammal, rodent or insects’ points of view. Using the story “Investigations of a Dog” as a paradigm, the chapter argues that the canine narrator depicts a transformative spiritual experience which contains vivid traces of personal revelation. At the same time, the chapter shows how the ideology concerning the divine nature of animals and the vice of slaughtering animals which was ubiquitous during Kafka’s day is reflected in the prose. The canine narrator’s rhetoric may have actually been borrowed from the Christological occult discourse employed by the two vegetarian naturopaths who influenced Kafka’s life. This chapter attempts to demonstrate how their discourse deeply opposed the Jewish cabalistic attitude towards animal life, confirming that Kafka’s mystical life was largely shaped, not by Judaism, but by Christianized occultism.Less
This chapter explores the possibility that Kafka’s abstention from meat and empathy for animals may have generated his large repertoire of narratives written from a mammal, rodent or insects’ points of view. Using the story “Investigations of a Dog” as a paradigm, the chapter argues that the canine narrator depicts a transformative spiritual experience which contains vivid traces of personal revelation. At the same time, the chapter shows how the ideology concerning the divine nature of animals and the vice of slaughtering animals which was ubiquitous during Kafka’s day is reflected in the prose. The canine narrator’s rhetoric may have actually been borrowed from the Christological occult discourse employed by the two vegetarian naturopaths who influenced Kafka’s life. This chapter attempts to demonstrate how their discourse deeply opposed the Jewish cabalistic attitude towards animal life, confirming that Kafka’s mystical life was largely shaped, not by Judaism, but by Christianized occultism.
Susan Wiseman
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638734
- eISBN:
- 9780748651573
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638734.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines a different Renaissance imaginative sense of embodiment, which is how the soul inhabits the body. It looks at how the sense of transformation in sacramental processes was ...
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This chapter examines a different Renaissance imaginative sense of embodiment, which is how the soul inhabits the body. It looks at how the sense of transformation in sacramental processes was regularly registered in the popular imagination of the seventeenth century through animal stories. The chapter then studies the use of animal baptism to learn what a wide social range of people felt about the religious rites they participated in during times of political and social change. It also attempts to re-assess the understanding of the ‘popular’ during the Renaissance.Less
This chapter examines a different Renaissance imaginative sense of embodiment, which is how the soul inhabits the body. It looks at how the sense of transformation in sacramental processes was regularly registered in the popular imagination of the seventeenth century through animal stories. The chapter then studies the use of animal baptism to learn what a wide social range of people felt about the religious rites they participated in during times of political and social change. It also attempts to re-assess the understanding of the ‘popular’ during the Renaissance.
Susan McHugh
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816670321
- eISBN:
- 9781452947297
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816670321.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Beginning with a historical account of why animal stories pose endemic critical challenges to literary and cultural theory, this book argues that key creative developments in narrative form became ...
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Beginning with a historical account of why animal stories pose endemic critical challenges to literary and cultural theory, this book argues that key creative developments in narrative form became inseparable from shifts in animal politics and science in the past century. The book traces representational patterns specific to modern and contemporary fictions of cross-species companionship through a variety of media—including novels, films, fine art, television shows, and digital games—to show how nothing less than the futures of all species life is at stake in narrative forms. The book’s investigations into fictions of people relying on animals in civic and professional life—most obviously those of service animal users and female professional horse riders—showcase distinctly modern and human–animal forms of intersubjectivity. But increasingly graphic violence directed at these figures indicates their ambivalent significance to changing configurations of species.Less
Beginning with a historical account of why animal stories pose endemic critical challenges to literary and cultural theory, this book argues that key creative developments in narrative form became inseparable from shifts in animal politics and science in the past century. The book traces representational patterns specific to modern and contemporary fictions of cross-species companionship through a variety of media—including novels, films, fine art, television shows, and digital games—to show how nothing less than the futures of all species life is at stake in narrative forms. The book’s investigations into fictions of people relying on animals in civic and professional life—most obviously those of service animal users and female professional horse riders—showcase distinctly modern and human–animal forms of intersubjectivity. But increasingly graphic violence directed at these figures indicates their ambivalent significance to changing configurations of species.
