Animals regularly populate philosophical texts as a foil to illustrate what it means to be human. How should we understand this human-animal divide? Not only does it inform us of who we are, it also tells us how we should relate to the larger non-human world. The Speaking Animal interrogates the human-animal divide by looking at our linguistic differences – how the speaking human subject is constructed through its opposition to the dumb animal. Alison Suen begins with an analysis of the ro...

"Stop slacking off!"Your parents may have said this to you when you were deep into a video-gaming marathon. Or maybe your roommate said it to you when you were lounging on the couch scrolling through Instagram. You may have even said it to yourself on days you did nothing. But what is so bad about slacking? Could it be that there’s nothing bad about not making yourself useful?Against our hyper-productivity culture, Alison Suen critically interrogates our disapproval of slac...

Throughout the centuries philosophers and poets alike have defended an essential difference—rather than a porous transition—between the human and animal. Attempts to assign essential properties to humans (e.g., language, reason, or morality) often reflected ulterior aims to defend a privileged position for humans..This book shifts the traditional anthropocentric focus of philosophy and literature by combining the questions “What is human?” and “What is animal?” What makes this coll...

What does it mean to be a responsible subject in a world of pervasive violence? How should we be responsible witnesses in the face of gross injustice? Indeed, how should we respond to atrocities that often leave us speechless and powerless?In this seminal volume, Kelly Oliver articulates a “response ethics” as an alternative to mainstream moral frameworks such as utilitarianism and Kantianism. Oliver’s response ethics is grounded in an innovative understanding of subjectivity. Inso...