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Hobbes And Wolf-Man: Melancholy And Animality In Modern Sovereignty, Diego Rossello
Hobbes And Wolf-Man: Melancholy And Animality In Modern Sovereignty, Diego Rossello
Studio for Law and Culture
Homo homini lupus, man is a wolf to man, remains one of the most well-known and often quoted dictums in the tradition of political theory. Political theorists take this phrase by Thomas Hobbes in the Epistle Dedicatory of De Cive to illustrate the brutish, anarchical and violent condition of man in the natural condition, prior to the establishment of a civil state. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I suggest that this brief passage directs our attention to lycanthropy: an acute melancholic syndrome which 17th century physiologists thought could turn humans into animals. I suggest that Hobbes’s political theory stands for a …
“The Inalienable Rights Of The Beasts”: Organized Animal Protection And The Language Of Rights In America, 1865-1900, Susan Pearson
“The Inalienable Rights Of The Beasts”: Organized Animal Protection And The Language Of Rights In America, 1865-1900, Susan Pearson
Studio for Law and Culture
Contemporary animal rights activists and legal scholars routinely charge that state animal protection statutes were enacted, not to serve the interests of animals, but rather to serve the interests of human beings in preventing immoral behavior. In this telling, laws preventing cruelty to animals are neither based on, nor do they establish, anything like rights for animals. Their raison d’etre, rather, is social control of human actions, and their function is to efficiently regulate the use of property in animals. The (critical) contemporary interpretation of the intent and function of animal cruelty laws is based on the accretion of …