Monday, July 08, 2013

All animals are equal …

… Thomas Nagel on John Gray’s ‘Silence of Animals’ - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Gray admires pessimists like Schopenhauer, Conrad and Freud, who find the sources of barbarism and cruelty in human nature, are not surprised by the continuing horrors of history and do not expect things to get better. Humanity’s historical record provides plenty of material for such a view; one has only to read the news every day. Yet those who have more hope for humanity than Gray are not unaware of the facts. It is a question of interpretation. From Gray’s point of view, Enlightenment figures like Kant and John Stuart Mill, who evoke better human possibilities, are purveying a consoling myth. From the opposite point of view, Gray is merely helping himself to the cut-rate superiority of the confirmed cynic.
The real problem here, it seems to me, is that we have no reliable information about animals' interior lives. Also, why limit ourselves to animals? Why not extend equality to plants as well?

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