Tuning into Zootic Animacy: The Verve and Value of Animal Vitality
Ralph Acampora
Our live bodies are channels of biotic energy, and phenomenology is well poised to awaken awareness of this fact. Tuning us into animal vitality, phenomenology and its methodological cousin, hermeneutics, also set the stage for an assessment of zootic animacy’s worth. This evaluation brings with it an animal-appreciative ethos that can help guide our cross-species concerns and ecological endeavors.
Empathy, Intercorporeality, and the Call to Compassion: A Response to Ralph Acampora
Response by Scott Churchill
In his 2006 book Corporal Compassion: Animal Ethics and Philosophy of Body, Acampora offers up a most intriguing and challenging exploration of the ontology of animal life and of our relations to animals – as well as a provocative discussion of the ethical imperatives that issue forth from this experience.
There is an important shift from first person to second person awareness, especially when we embark upon the task of an ethics. One might say that the “second person” experience emerges when we first engage the other as a ‘thou’, which typically occurs at the moment we first address or are addressed by the other, whether as a speaking or non-speaking subject. It is precisely phenomenology’s failure to confront the ethical dimension in our being-with animals – as well as the paucity of existing phenomenological reflections on animal existence -- that Acampora seeks to redress. In doing so, he forges ahead in the true spirit of an explorer, inviting the rest of us to join him in his quest.
Ralph Acampora
Our live bodies are channels of biotic energy, and phenomenology is well poised to awaken awareness of this fact. Tuning us into animal vitality, phenomenology and its methodological cousin, hermeneutics, also set the stage for an assessment of zootic animacy’s worth. This evaluation brings with it an animal-appreciative ethos that can help guide our cross-species concerns and ecological endeavors.
Empathy, Intercorporeality, and the Call to Compassion: A Response to Ralph Acampora
Response by Scott Churchill
In his 2006 book Corporal Compassion: Animal Ethics and Philosophy of Body, Acampora offers up a most intriguing and challenging exploration of the ontology of animal life and of our relations to animals – as well as a provocative discussion of the ethical imperatives that issue forth from this experience.
There is an important shift from first person to second person awareness, especially when we embark upon the task of an ethics. One might say that the “second person” experience emerges when we first engage the other as a ‘thou’, which typically occurs at the moment we first address or are addressed by the other, whether as a speaking or non-speaking subject. It is precisely phenomenology’s failure to confront the ethical dimension in our being-with animals – as well as the paucity of existing phenomenological reflections on animal existence -- that Acampora seeks to redress. In doing so, he forges ahead in the true spirit of an explorer, inviting the rest of us to join him in his quest.