Contrasts between animals and humans
Philosophers often use the contrast between animals and humans as a rhetorical figure. It is easy to assume that this is because they are anthropocentric. But is this really why?
(Image removed) Pär Segerdahl has examined the tendency in philosophy to portray humans as positive beings that “have” some important capacity (like reason), while animals are portrayed as negative beings that “lack” what humans have. In a recent paper he tries to demonstrate that this schematic plus/minus opposition does not necessarily stem from anthropocentrism.
According to Pär Segerdahl, the contrast between animals and humans has a rhetorical function. Philosophers have ideals as thinkers. They have used the contrast to make people sensitive to those ideals. The philosophers write as educators of humankind.
“The philosophical ideal is connected to humanness for rhetorical purposes. The philosopher acts a bit like a parent disciplining defiant children by telling them to act like humans; otherwise they become like animals. The contrasts works to flatter and threaten humans into one or another version of philosophical thinking”, says Pär Segerdahl.
It is not really the human that is placed at the centre, but some form of philosophical thinking.
Read the article in Language & Communication: The rhetoric and prose of the human/animal contrast
By Josepine Fernow (Link removed)