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Corporal Compassion: Animal Ethics and Philosophy of Body

Ralph R. Acampora

4.14 · Rating details · 7 Ratings · 3 Reviews

Most approaches to animal ethics ground the moral standing of nonhumans in some appeal to their capacities for intelligent autonomy or mental sentience. Corporal Compassion emphasizes the phenomenal and somatic commonality of living beings; a philosophy of body that seeks to displace any notion of anthropomorphic empathy in viewing the moral experiences of nonhuman living ...more

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Hardcover, 224 pages

Published June 28th 2006 by University of Pittsburgh Press

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Apr 17, 2008 M. Bower rated it it was amazing

Shelves: philosophy, animals-diet-environmentalism

The longstanding tradition of conceiving the moral relevance of animal others as a valuation of discrete factors of mental complexity or sentience has in many ways proven itself to be an anemic moral theory in light of the widespread disagreement and partisanship that surrounds the contemporary animal ethics scene. There is a growing demand for more varied ethical approaches, informed by a wider and richer array of philosophical insights that avoid this anthropocentric bias. In Corporal Compassi The longstanding tradition of conceiving the moral relevance of animal others as a valuation of discrete factors of mental complexity or sentience has in many ways proven itself to be an anemic moral theory in light of the widespread disagreement and partisanship that surrounds the contemporary animal ethics scene. There is a growing demand for more varied ethical approaches, informed by a wider and richer array of philosophical insights that avoid this anthropocentric bias. In Corporal Compassion: Animal Ethics and Philosophy of Body, Ralph R. Acampora responds to this demand by exploring a phenomenological method to considering the ethics of human and nonhuman relations. Acampora attempts to explicate a shared somatic basis for compassion as an understanding of interspecies experiences, perceptions, and behaviors. He believes that, as bodily beings, we have the capacity to relate the phenomenological characteristics of embodiment intersubjectively and across species, thereby furnishing a rich locus for compassionate reflection. By enhancing ethical theory with felt insights into the shared struggles, fears, and interests inherent to corporal existence, Acampora hopes to redirect ethical discourse away from its traditional presuppositions.

One of the biggest virtues of Acampora’s scholarship is in his ability to incorporate a diverse range of philosophical disciplines and styles—including analytic, continental, feminist, and pragmatist—into a comprehensive examination of the ethical implications of a phenomenology of “somaticity”. In attempting to answer the question of how we should describe transhuman morality, Acampora looks at various angles within the history of philosophy. He carefully mediates between the interpretive ethical views afforded by Sartrean, Heideggarian, and Merleau-Pontyan existential and phenomenological frameworks, working through a range of discrepancies in understanding interspecies relationships, and constructing a phenomenological methodology that has been updated to accommodate those relationships. Acampora also repudiates Thomas Nagal’s famous challenge to animal phenomenology taken from philosophy of mind by arguing that our ability to relate our experiences to nonhumans is a function of being-with others (rather than “becoming others”). As a result, animal ethics is provided a much needed existential basis in shared somatic experience and “symphysical” moral value—or an axiology of physical togetherness.

A highlight of the book, Corporal Compassion includes an impassioned exploration of “ethics-in-action” (a distinction which sets it apart from applied ethics) for symphysical morality and somaticity in the context of laboratories and zoos. Acampora delves into the somaesthetic implications of phenomenological encounters with the carnal and the carceral in experimentation and confinement. Fascinatingly, he illustrates the extent to which imprisonment becomes an internalized feature of carnal existence—the worldhood of the animal forcefully mirroring its prison. Caging animals becomes individually, socially, and ontologically harmful from the standpoint of somaesthetic experience. It is rightly pointed out in the case of zoo captivity that the encounter with animal others is limited to a volitional act of “seeing”, rather than having the effect of directly engaged bodily consciousness, and the potential for somaesthetically guided moral growth is therefore hindered.

Acampora continues his helpful comparative approach by sizing up his thesis with other ethical theories. Of Singer’s utilitarian ethics, he concludes that while the vision of animal liberation may stray from his own conception of corporal solidarity, the two approaches should be seen as complementary, with interspecies compassion underpinning Singer’s attention to sentient suffering. Of deep ecology and ecofeminism, he determines that his symphysics of morality reflects, informs, and intensifies ecological holism, relationality, and the value of care. To this extent, I believe Acampora might also have much common ground with Marc Berkoff’s “Deep Ethology, Animal Rights, and The Great Ape” in developing an ethological method for understanding animality in terms of mutual corporal existence. In considering pragmatist conceptions of transhuman morality, he finds that his symphysical ethos dovetails with pragmatist views of embodied transaction entailing shared “horizons” of meaning. I might add that the imaginative feature of experiencing somaticity in being-with a nonhuman other also seems to suit a pragmatist view of moral imagination. Symphysical morality is given attention in light of applied ethics as well, with Dale Jamieson’s critique of zoos, eventually turning to a focus in Continental ethics on the “sensate nature of morality”.

Corporal Compassion concludes by reflecting upon the bearing symphysical morality holds for culture at large. By asserting the significance of shared somatic experience as a symphysical ethos (rather than a symphysical principle), Acampora succeeds in providing an enriching and insightful resource without restricting himself to a single narrow ethical theory. The implications of taking this phenomenological approach to the intermingling of compassion with somaesthetic insight should, however, accompany any serious consideration of transhuman relationships if philosophy is to guide culture to more encompassing moral awareness.
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Apr 21, 2008 Karl Steel rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Ethicists, Humanimal Thinkers

Shelves: theory, animals

As much as I like other other review, I have to call for a change of emphasis on one point. The reviewer, "M.," writes: He believes that, as bodily beings, we have the capacity to relate the phenomenological characteristics of embodiment intersubjectively and across species, thereby furnishing a rich locus for compassionate reflection. It's not that "we have the capacity"; rather, it's that this capacity of being with each other as bodily beings as bodied in a habitat, this "symphysis" as he cal As much as I like other other review, I have to call for a change of emphasis on one point. The reviewer, "M.," writes: He believes that, as bodily beings, we have the capacity to relate the phenomenological characteristics of embodiment intersubjectively and across species, thereby furnishing a rich locus for compassionate reflection. It's not that "we have the capacity"; rather, it's that this capacity of being with each other as bodily beings as bodied in a habitat, this "symphysis" as he calls it (see 78, where he contrasts the sharing of symphysis with the 'mere' projection of empathy), is fundamental, and therefore that the various Cartesians and other solipsists are the ones who must be compelled to argue their case. Thus, he writes, "...our moral starting position is already one of corporeal compassion with other species and so the burden of proof would not be upon anyone to justify transpecific 'traction' of moral symphysis but rather on the anthropocentrist who wishes to deny, dissolve, or otherwise dis-tract us from our proto-ethical predisposition toward somatic/animalic ties of conviviality" (94, original emphasis).

Although I agree *entirely* with the pragmatic, phenomenological ethics based on shared bodiment (note the lack of an em-, which is Acampora's quite deliberate style), I'd like to give this a 4.5 on the basis of gaps in its bibliography. I wouldn't be such a creep about this had Acampora not been at this subject since the early 90s. He develops many ideas out of 'Continental Philosophy,' but still doesn't really use Derrida, and what he does use is limited to (some of) the animal material ('Force of Law' was badly needed in some places, I think). I noticed his habitual 'strolling through thinkers' method (perhaps because I've done it myself) in which the question always becomes 'is their approach on animals good' rather than 'what can I do with this.' Generally speaking: too bad. This works well with Heidegger (who's well-known for his gross betrayals on the question of...animals (and others)), but perhaps not so well with Husserl (whose betrayal of animals is not so fundamental, I think, so far as I know). Merleau-Ponty of course is put to work, but Levinas appears only indirectly: there's no strong consideration on whether we can rescue Levinas's 'face' for transspecies contexts, pace Levinas's refusal to do so himself. And Deleuze and Guattari? Cixous? Elizabeth Grosz?? Just barely, if at all. And the use of Foucault is rather by-the-numbers. (however, I love his characterization of Agamben's The Open as "hyper-theory run amok" (174 n49)...but, for all that, he could have shown SOME awareness of Agamben's distinctions between bios and zoe in Homo Sacer, which is surely useful to animal studies). There are other gaps: there's none of the work on human meat-eating by Julia Twigg or Nick Fiddes, and Simon Glendinning's On Being with Others is strangely absent. And the section on Nietzsche's praise of animal 'wildness,' where Acampora describes Nietzsche's discovery of an authentic wild animality in the sadly docile bodied-despite-itself human, seems to reinstate the animal-human boundary simply by this discovery itself! It would have been better for Acampora to just let the Nietzsche stay in its original article.

I also wonder about the 'animist' bias. First sentence: "My aim in this study is to produce a proto-ethical essay on moral experience involving other animate beings" (xiii). I want a more thoroughgoing suspicion of life itself, since I think speaking in terms of "animate beings," despite Acampora's phenomenology, perpetuates the notion that "life," something separate, "dwells in" a body. That is, to speak of "anima" means to speak, however accidentally, of lived embodiment rather than a rigorously anti-Cartesian bodiment.

Nonetheless, despite these gaps, this book is essential for animal ethicists, animal rights activists (who need to lose Singer and Regan's mentalist biases), and for fans of phenomenology, especially people interested in the conjunction of ethics and phenomenology. It's clearly written, and short, and, again, I agree with it throughout, so there's no good excuse not to give it an afternoon. ...more

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