"species character of animal life"

a murmuration of starlings

[Image source: http://rosarubicondior.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/murmuring-starlings-do-it-naturally.html]


Like two looslely-held divining rods suddenly slithering across each other, two highly disparate reads (Mark Lilla and Vincent ) have suddenly brought Hannah Arendt into my focus.


A quick read of the opening pages of The Human Condition made me feel like there was nothing I wished to read more -- unfortunately, that's not an uncommon experience.


So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.   (Genesis 1:27)




There are two creation stories at the start of Genesis.


Arendt says in a footnote:

1 . In the analysis of postclassical political thought, it is often quite illuminat-
ing to find out which of the two biblical versions of the creation story is cited.
Thus it is highly characteristic of the difference between the teaching of Jesus
of Nazareth and of Paul that Jesus, discussing the relationship between man and
wife, refers to Genesis 1:27: “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the
beginning made them male and female” (Matt. 19:4), whereas Paul on a similar
occasion insists that the woman was created “of the man” and hence “for the
man,” even though he then somewhat attenuates the dependence: “neither is the
man without the woman, neither the woman without the man” (I Cor. 11:8-12).
The difference indicates much more than a different attitude to the role of woman.
For Jesus, faith was closely related to action (cf. § 3 3 below) ; for Paul, faith was
primarily related to salvation. Especially interesting in this respect is Augustine
( De civitate Dei xii. 21), who not only ignores Genesis 1:27 altogether but sees
the difference between man and animal in that man was created unum ac singu-
lum, whereas all animals were ordered “to come into being several at once”
(plura simul iussit exsistere) . To Augustine, the creation story offers a welcome
opportunity to stress the species character of animal life as distinguished from the
singularity of human existence.

The footnote glosses the following part of her main text, regarding "action" (one of the three key terms in this book, with a special definition of activity between human beings).

....       in its most elementary form, the human
condition of action is implicit even in Genesis (“Male and female
created He them ”), if we understand that this story of man’s crea-
tion is distinguished in principle from the one according to which
God originally created Man ( adam ), “him” and not “them,” so
that the multitude of human beings becomes the result of multipli-
cation . Action would be an unnecessary luxury, a capricious in-
terference with general laws of behavior, if men were endlessly
reproducible repetitions of the same model, whose nature or es-
sence was the same for all and as predictable as the nature or
essence of any other thing. Plurality is the condition of human
action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way
that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives,
or will live.

The "species character of animal life" reminds me of the observation by Hazlitt that I often seem to refer to.  Hazlitt was saying that we tend to experience nature in species terms: on our walk we see primroses and lambs, we don't usually have much awareness of them as individuals. Augustine is saying that animals don't have individual significance in the way that we do.


Following up the Augustine reference:

But it is ridiculous to condemn the faults of beasts and trees, and other such mortal and mutable things as are void of intelligence, sensation, or life, even though these faults should destroy their corruptible nature; for these creatures received, at their Creator's will, an existence fitting them, by passing away and giving place to others, to secure that lowest form of beauty, the beauty of seasons, which in its own place is a requisite part of this world. (from De Civitate Dei, xii, 4)

Now that we have solved, as well as we could, this very difficult question about the eternal God creating new things, without any novelty of will, it is easy to see how much better it is that God was pleased to produce the human race from the one individual whom He created, than if He had originated it in several men. For as to the other animals, He created some solitary, and naturally seeking lonely places,—as the eagles, kites, lions, wolves, and such like; others gregarious, which herd together, and prefer to live in company,—as pigeons, starlings, stags, and little fallow deer, and the like: but neither class did He cause to be propagated from individuals, but called into being several at once. Man, on the other hand, whose nature was to be a mean between the angelic and bestial, He created in such sort, that if he remained in subjection to His Creator as his rightful Lord, and piously kept His commandments, he should pass into the company of the angels, and obtain, without the intervention of death, a blessed and endless immortality; but if he offended the Lord his God by a proud and disobedient use of his free will, he should become subject to death, and live as the beasts do,—the slave of appetite, and doomed to eternal punishment after death. And therefore God created only one single man, not, certainly, that he might be a solitary bereft of all society, but that by this means the unity of society and the bond of concord might be more effectually commended to him, men being bound together not only by similarity of nature, but by family affection. And indeed He did not even create the woman that was to be given him as his wife, as he created the man, but created her out of the man, that the whole human race might derive from one man. (De civitate dei, xii, 21 complete)

[You would not, perhaps, suspect from Arendt that Augustine goes on to talk about "the unity of society and the bond of concord". Though in a way that sharpens her own emphasis on our necessary condition of "plurality" (and on politics as a way of negotiating it).]




Maybe I should continue Augustine's quotation on to the start of the next section, where it becomes clearer where his argument is going. It is not really so much about disparaging the life of animals as despairing that humans are so often worse.

And God was not ignorant that man would sin, and that, being himself made subject now to death, he would propagate men doomed to die, and that these mortals would run to such enormities in sin, that even the beasts devoid of rational will, and who were created in numbers from the waters and the earth, would live more securely and peaceably with their own kind than men, who had been propagated from one individual for the very purpose of commending concord. For not even lions or dragons have ever waged with their kind such wars as men have waged with one another. (Start of De civitate dei, xii, 22)