El impenetrable corazón animal: Descartes y Condillac ante los animales

Hernán Neira

doi:10.4013/fsu.2013.143.05

Authors

Hernán Neira Universidad de Santiago de Chile

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4013/fsu.2013.143.05

Abstract

During French modernity, comparison between animals and humans is a key to understand what “human” is, as shown by Descartes’s and Condillac’s works. An analysis of these works allows us to see how, during modernity, two questions about animals arise. (i) How might one establish a foundation for a resemblance between humans and animals or, on the contrary, consider it illegitimate? (ii) How could one speak philosophically about animals if part of their essence seems to consist of being impenetrable for human knowledge? Reflecting on the position of Descartes and Condillac on animals makes it possible to clarify some of the challenges that contemporary zoophilosophy must solve.

Key words: Descartes, Condillac, animals, animal sensibility, sovereignty, zoophilosophy.

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Author Biography

Hernán Neira, Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Hernán Neira is both a writer and a University Professor. Chilean, born in Lima (1960), he received his undergraduate degree in Philosophy from the Catholic University in Santiago where he also directed Perspectivas, student magazine opposed to the dictatorship. From 1985 to 1992 he lived in Paris where he received his Doctorate in Philosophy at the Paris VIII University. He also studied sociology and linguistics at the l'École de hautes etudes in social sciences. He taught in France at the Institut d'études politiques (1991-1992), and in Chile in Universidad de La Serena (1984-1985) and in Universidad Austral (1993-2007), and has been invited to teach at the University of Chile, Diego Portales, Los Lagos, La Frontera and Santiago. Hernán Neira has algo given several conferences in Europe. Since 2008 he teaches philosophy in University of Santiago de Chile. In 2011 he was elected to the Academic Counsel of this university. His academic work is focused on political theory, literary theory and Latin-American culture. He has published scientific articles in Chile, the United States, Spain, the Netherlands and Cuba, and has received four times the support of the National Found for Science and Technology (Fondecyt).

Author of numerous books, he continues to be one of the most notable authors of the new generations. He has a distinguished voice that allows him to take on the genres of fiction as well as theory.

He has published one book of short-stories A golpes de hacha y fuego (By blows of axe and fire) (Editorial Planeta, Santiago, 1999) and two novels, El sueño inconcluso (The unconcluded dream) (Editorial Planeta, Santiago, 1999) and El naufragio de la luz (The shipwreck of the light) (Ediciones B, Barcelona, 2004). He has also published compilations of essays in El espejo del olvido (The mirror of forgetfulness) (Dolmen Ediciones, Santiago, 1997), and La ciudad y las palabras (The city and words) (Editorial Universitaria, Santiago, 2004). In addition, he has collaborated with the newspapers El Mercurio (Chile) and El País (Spain), and with the magazines Ecos de España y Latinoamérica (Germany) and Revista Atlántica (Portugal).

In 2003, with the novel El naufragio de la luz (The shipwreck of the light) he unanimously won the Dos Orillas award, given by five European publishing houses , that have translated his novel into French, Portuguese and Greek. All of which began circulation in 2005.