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Article: Sameness and difference.(In the Company of Animals)
- Article from:
- Social Research
- Article date:
- September 22, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 New School for Social Research. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Similarities and differences between us and animals have been a great focus of human interest for millennia, in cultures of the most various sorts. The title of this session is striking, though, in that it does not ask us to consider samenesses or differences between us and animals but sameness and difference. The title itself, then, suggests an all-or-nothing issue: is there some really big essential difference between us and animals--or is there some fundamental sameness? The title alludes to attempts, past and present, to see the relation between us and them in these all-or-nothing terms. So, for example, Descartes asserted that our essence as rational beings marked a ...