Animal Ethics and Aesthetics Revisited

Abstract

This paper aims to establish a different (transspecies) model of (animal) ethics by challenging one of the dominant paradigms of contemporary ethics (and aesthetics), namely the ethics of otherness. The ethics of otherness, striving for openness and the avoidance of appropriation, pushes the animal into representability and ineffability, marking it as “wholly other”, which consequently leads to the impossibility of any kind of communication and mutual understanding, even self-understanding. It is in this context that the problem of anthropomorphism arises, a problem that is crucially linked to the central issue that feeds the ethics of otherness, the fear of uncanny proximity. Our thesis is that the most appropriate path to resolving the problem is not to try to undo the irresolvable tension between distance and proximity (to find a way out of the confrontation with the animal, either through the logos or through something that is supposed to transcend the logos), but rather the deconstruction of these attempts at transcendence that are the root of the issue. The relationship with the other can then be understood from the recognition of this paradox, an intertwining of understanding and misunderstanding, distance and proximity, or distant proximity.