The special issue, titled “Philosophy of Animality: Animals as Strangers” and co-edited by Michaela Fišerová, Maria Cristina Clorinda Vendra, and Veronika Konrádová, brings together an international community of thinkers working across ancient, modern, and contemporary philosophy. In their moral and aesthetic reflections, philosophers have often placed animals in an ambiguous space between outsiders and insiders within the “human” world.[1] By critically revisiting how philosophy has addressed the problem of strangeness in human-animal relations, this special issue invites us to question several “xenophobic” attitudes embedded in philosophical concepts and metaphors associated with animals, including the beast, the pest, or the threat. The status of the enemy is particularly evident in representations of so-called invasive species, whose agency challenges human manipulation and control. Focusing on the aesthetic imaginings and ethical justifications that shape how humans cohabit with animals, this collection of articles addresses a central question: why do animals appear in philosophy as strangers? To this end, this special issue organises different philosophical conceptualisations of animality along a three-field spectrum of openness to symbiotic interspecies cohabitation, ranging from contempt and vigilance through inspiring neighbourhood to respectful companionship. [1] Because the theoretical approaches and methodologies adopted across the articles in this special issue vary, terminology has not been standardized. The authors intentionally employ both “animals” and “non-human animals,” according to their respective theoretical frameworks, contexts, and conceptual emphases.
The book The Courage to Say No. Forms of Voluntary Submission, published by Ciprian Mihali, proposes a double challenge from the beginning: first, the courage to say no, not only to the permanent requirements of adaptation, alignment and uniformity imposed by social norms and institutions, but also to the tacit consent of the subject who, internalizing imperatives regarding continuous "optimization" and "self-reinvention", ends up dominating his own person. Through this voluntary submission, through self-discipline, adapted individuals are "produced", with a stable and performing life, but most often devoid of wonder and desire in search of a meaning of their own existence. But, "why the courage to say no, and not 'will', 'desire', 'power' etc.?" (p.38) asks the author. And what kind of courage is it? A heroic, exceptional, spectacular virtue or simply a negative gesture? For Ciprian Mihali, courage is a form of suspension of submission to the established order; it is the ability to stop consenting, even when the pressure of external authority or our own states of fear, habit, or convenience indicates the direction of conformity. "To be brave is to take risks" (p.39), the author states, together with Michel Foucault, for whom the decision of the parresian to tell the truth and to assume it implies the "risk of uncertainty" and "unpredictable consequences", at the moment of interruption of a known, safe, and above all comfortable course.
This article reads Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth as a posthumanist allegory of divine animality. It argues that Gus, an antlered child who is human, animal, clone, pharmakon, and god, is not merely a human–deer hybrid, but the pharmakon of the human species: the being through whom humanity seeks a cure and encounters its own extinction. Drawing on Derrida, Haraway, and Wolfe, the article shows how Sweet Tooth links plague, cloning, colonial violence, and species hierarchy. It then places Gus in dialogue with Andrej Dúbravský’s horned male nudes and Zone Blanche/ Black Spot, reading them as three modes of antlering: narrative-pharmacological, painterly-theophanic, and territorial-ecological.
János Apáczai Csere was the greatest Hungarian pedagogue, writer, translator, author of textbooks, theologian, and philosopher of seventeenth-century Transylvania, a distinguished representative of Cartesian thought, an eminent figure of the Transylvanian Puritan movement, the first Hungarian encyclopaedist, and the first Hungarian synthesiser of the sciences. Apáczai was the most significant representative of the peregrini who had attended Western universities; he had his principal work, the Magyar Encyclopaedia, printed in Utrecht (in 1655 with the date 1653), a Hungarian-language book intended for school use that summarised the entirety of the scholarship of his age. With him the period in which Hungarian philosophical texts were written exclusively in Latin came to an end, and the period of cultivating philosophy in the Hungarian language commenced. He is likewise associated with the first important Hungarian-language reception of one of the greatest philosophers of the age, René Descartes, who, according to the Transylvanian scholar, was “the reformer of all philosophy”, “the pride of the century”.[1] The most significant Hungarian thinker of the period, the first truly modern Hungarian philosopher, was János Apáczai Csere. [1] With the appearance of Bacon, Spinoza, and Descartes, seventeenth-century European philosophical development set out on a radically new path, that of empiricism and rationalism. In the spread of the new ideas in Hungary, the presence of the Czech scholar Comenius also played an important preparatory role; he was a representative of encyclopaedism, a fashionable trend of the age that soon came to dominate Protestant intellectual life. This current regarded the construction of a universal system of knowledge as its aim. The new outlook found adherents among the professors of the Lutheran College of Eperjes. Its principal representative, János Bayer, a follower of Bacon’s experiential philosophy, regarded the world as an integral whole composed of the elements of matter, light, and spirit, and considered the task of the thinker to be the discovery of the key to universal knowledge that illuminates everything. Like Bacon, he too hoped that the logical instrument for understanding the world was induction, the articulation of general laws derived from the examination of every individual case. (His pupil, Izsák Czabán, first in Wittenberg and then in Eperjes, already represented the fashionable materialist atomism of the period, frequently referring to the most important source of his theory, Gassendi’s atomism.) While Lutheran scholarship of this period oriented itself towards Bacon (and Gassendi), the Reformed tradition turned towards Descartes. Several professors in Debrecen fell under suspicion of Cartesianism. A characteristic representative of this era was Miklós Apáti (1662–1724), who, in his work on moral philosophy – alongside his emphasis on the freedom of inquiry and of the will – expressed enthusiasm for the mathematical method: he maintained that “God is the supreme mathematician”. Another thinker of the same period was János Pósaházi (1628–1686). Alongside his activities as polemicist and theologian – even while disputing Descartes’s views – he nonetheless confirmed Descartes, as well as other natural philosophers of the age, in his reflections on matter and the nature of motion.
The aim of this article is to offer a phenomenological reconsideration of the meat paradox through the lens of compassion toward animals. Rather than approaching the paradox primarily as a cognitive-affective conflict or a problem of moral inconsistency, the analysis examines the experiential structures through which it is constituted and lived. It begins with the experiences of hunger and eating, showing how animals may acquire contrasting significance as vulnerable living beings eliciting compassion and as sources of nourishment. The analysis then turns to corporeal proximity and distance, visibility and concealment, examining how these relations may shape, without determining, the emergence and exercise of compassion. Particular attention is given to the limits of compassionate responsiveness, from its possible anesthetization through distance and concealment to the affective strain associated with repeated exposure to animal suffering. Finally, the article considers emerging forms of meat production, arguing that the future of the meat paradox does not involve its resolution or disappearance, but its reconfiguration alongside changing relations between animals, food, and compassion.
This article reads Peter Singer’s animal ethics as the extremity of utilitarianism. Singer’s decisive achievement is to extend moral consideration beyond the human species by insisting that comparable suffering must be considered equally, regardless of the being who suffers. Yet this achievement also reveals the limit of utilitarianism. Once animal lives are translated into commensurable interests, pleasures and pains, singular beings risk becoming interchangeable units within a general economy of welfare. Sentience breaks with the anthropocentric boundary of morality, but personhood reintroduces a cognitive hierarchy among living beings. In the same way, aggregation allows the suffering or death of an individual animal to be justified by a greater total benefit, while replaceability reduces life to a position that another life can occupy. Drawing on Nicole Shukin’s concept of animal capital, the article develops a materialist critique of the affinity between utilitarian calculation and capitalist administration. Contemporary animal industries do not simply deny animal suffering. They measure stress, regulate pain and improve welfare while continuing to own, breed, process and kill animals as commodities. Humane reform may therefore alleviate suffering while leaving the material structure of exploitation intact. What must be stressed is that sentience should function as the minimum threshold of moral urgency, not as the sole measure of value. A relational and materialist animal ethics must begin from the singularity, vulnerability and interdependence of living beings. The task is not to abandon Singer’s insight but to radicalise it beyond the calculus of suffering and towards animal liberation.
This paper offers a reading of Plato’s Sophist centred on the image of the sophist as a “manifold beast” (226a6), described as “elusive to hunt down” (218d3). Far from being a mere metaphor, this characterisation plays a pivotal role in the dialogue’s dialectical development from both a methodological and an ontological perspective. Indeed, as a cunning prey, the sophist not only demands a sustained and flexible hunt capable of capturing him in his many guises but also compels his own hunters to reconsider their conceptual resources, ultimately leading them beyond Parmenides’ prohibition. On this basis, the sophist’s animality – depicted as a wild beast, almost monstrous – is not merely a denigrating device, but a theoretical one that drives philosophical inquiry into a dark and unexplored region: the intertwining of Being and Non-Being.
This study explores the concept of just peacebuilding in post-war contexts, examining the mechanisms and conditions necessary to establish sustainable peace grounded in justice and reconciliation. Moving beyond a narrow focus on the cessation of armed conflict, the discussion emphasizes the reconstruction of social relations, the promotion of human security, and the creation of legitimate institutions capable of addressing grievances fairly. The research highlights that peace is not a neutral process; rather, it requires active engagement from both state and non-state actors, including civil society, grassroots movements, and international organizations. These actors play complementary roles in promoting dialogue, fostering reconciliation, and strengthening the social fabric fractured by war. The analysis underscores the centrality of negotiation and peace agreements grounded in mutual commitment, with justice and fairness as guiding principles. Without genuine political will and inclusive participation, agreements risk becoming fragile truces vulnerable to collapse. Equally important, the study stresses that reconciliation entails a delicate balance between justice and compromise, as lasting stability often requires concessions that transcend unresolved historical grievances. Ultimately, the paper argues that sustainable peace cannot be reduced to temporary settlements or imposed arrangements. Instead, it must be rooted in ethical principles, shared responsibility, and institutional frameworks that guarantee accountability, fairness, and respect for human dignity. Peacebuilding, therefore, emerges as a dynamic and long-term process that integrates justice, reconciliation, and human development to achieve genuine stability after war.
This article focuses on the unique way in which Tove Jansson’s Moomin narratives illuminate fundamental questions in environmental aesthetics. It draws primarily on the original Moomin novels, with particular attention to Comet in Moominland (1946). The first part examines the Moomins’ relationship with their environment. It discusses Jansson’s use of the rhetorical device of the “text within a text” and the pivotal moment in the saga known as “the first experience of Moominpappa’s life.” The second part analyzes three types of attitude to the impending environmental catastrophe and identifies among them a specific Moomin version of the Kantian sublime.
The traditional dichotomy in the ontology of persistence is between endurantism and perdurantism. It presents a rigid conception of temporal existence. Endurantism rests on the ontological framework that entities are wholly present at each moment of existence. While perdurantism rests on the framework that entities exist as temporal extended aggregates. This paper interrogates this dichotomy and argues that neither ontological framework adequately captures the dynamics of the problem of how objects persist over time. Drawing on debates in the metaphysics of persistence, the paper argues that although the problem of persistence is a genuine metaphysical issue, understanding persistence within the confines of this dichotomy is conceptually limiting. The paper thus calls for a reorientation from the traditional dichotomy to a broader relational ontology where persistence is understood beyond endurantism and perdurantism. This paper is not an attempt to solve the problem of persistence, but to offer an ontological explanation that broadens the discourse beyond endurantism and perdurantism.
In this paper, my main aim is to look closely at a passage in the Section “Of the Reason of Animals” of Hume's first Enquiry and to see how a Husserl-based reading of it sheds light on the concepts of reason and inference as used by Hume. In section 1, I briefly resume the content and function of Hume’s “Of the Reason of Animals” both in the Treatise and the Enquiry; next, I bring in the some concepts and theories from Husserl and speak about the general affinity between Husserl and Hume; and finally, I read closely the selected passage from Hume's Enquiry with help of the Husserlean toolkit and show what Hume most likely meant by „reason“ and „inference“ (at least in this passage).
Hegel and Hobbes held distinctive and incompatible perspectives on necessity. Analyzing those perspectives contributes to a better understanding of their overall philosophies, especially in the case of their political philosophies. This article explores Hegelian and Hobbesian understandings of necessity in logical, ontological, theological, social, economic and political matters. In each of these fields, Hegelian necessity is proven to be more or less Hobbesian freedom and the other way around. This endeavor takes place with the aim of deepening the understanding of the political philosophy of both thinkers with reference to authority. The major objective of the article consists in revealing the subversive implications of Hegel’s political philosophy by placing it in contrast with the innovative yet authoritarian political philosophy of Hobbes. The paper advances by investigating how necessity is radically different in the philosophies of Hegel and Hobbes and how it reverberates in the above mentioned fields: logical, ontological, theological, social, economic and political. Since the writings of these both hugely influential thinkers are underlined by deep and powerful political nuances, I argue new light can be shed on their political philosophies, especially on that of Hegel, with the help of the comparative analysis this paper proposes.
The article revisits the critique of religion by Karl Marx in a critical philosophical perspective by both addressing the traditional understandings and current post-secular discourse. Though Marx is often characterized as having described religion as the opium of the people, this paper will point to the fact that, a more nuanced interpretation of his corpus, however, demonstrates that his dialectic is more nuanced than either the crude atheism or the political theology that he is said to have identified is able to offer. Relying on recent work by Hammer (2025), Vizcaiando (2024) and others, I would argue that the materialist critique of religion by Marx cannot be detached and disassociated with his larger social change agenda. But I also see a lot of philosophical contradictions in the stand of Marx, especially his inability to explain the existence of religious phenomena even in the post-revolutionary situations. This paper explores the need to supplement but not abandon the critique developed by Marx based on recent work by Habermas (2008), Žižek (2012), and Eagleton (2016). I suggest that religion is also ideological mystification and a reservoir of utopian wish a duality that, Marx acknowledged but not theorized. The paper concludes that a re-formed Marxist perspective on religion needs to drop any teleological notions concerning secularization and preserve the materialist emphasis on seeking to map religious consciousness into its socio-economic origins.
Contemporary societies possess unprecedented knowledge of ecological crises, yet responses remain profoundly inadequate. This paper argues that the problem lies partly in estrangement from the living world, understood as a failure of adequate participation. Drawing on phenomenology, recognition theory and critical phenomenology, I examine how recognition of other animals as perspectives of concern arises through embodied and affective relations, and how reifying conditions inhibit it. Such conditions both sustain exploitative practices that contribute to ecological crises and constrain response to those affected. I conclude by considering how conditions for recognition and response might be cultivated.
This paper examines the figure of the dog in ancient Greek imagination, tracing its representations from Homeric poetry to Platonic philosophy. It explores the ethical, social and political dimensions of human-canine relationships, focusing on the dog’s fundamentally ambivalent status. The first part analyses literary representations of dogs alongside the structural analogy between dogs and women, highlighting their shared social functions and parallel negative associations. The second part argues that Plato’s Republic reconfigures these inherited concepts through institutional and psychological strategies designed to channel canine and feminine agency towards civic cohesion, preventing psychic and political disruption as exemplified by the tyrant’s degeneration into a wolf-like nature.
This article examines Clark Wolf's recent humanistic interpretation of Hegel's Science of Logic, focusing on his defense of the plurality of concepts against what he identifies as the Platonic and metaphysical primacy of the singular Concept. While Wolf's project offers a sophisticated reconstruction of Hegel through a renewed engagement with Leibnizian rationalism and a critique of Kantian finitude, it also raises important questions concerning the ontological status of conceptuality. The article argues that the debate surrounding the singular or plural usage of “concept” is not merely terminological but concerns the very structure of Hegelian speculative logic. By reconstructing Wolf's critique of contemporary metaphysical readings of Hegel and contrasting it with positions advanced by thinkers such as Rolf-Peter Horstmann, H. S. Harris, and Robert Brandom, the article contends that the social and institutional constitution of concepts cannot exhaust the logical and ontological dynamics of the Hegelian Concept. Ultimately, the paper defends the view that Hegelian conceptuality cannot be reduced either to social pragmatism or to a static metaphysical monism, but instead demands a dialectical account in which the unity of Being and Thought continually rearticulates itself through historical, social, and conceptual transformations.
This article reconsiders Heidegger’s critique of modern subjectivity through the lens of the question of anthropocentrism. While he decisively rejects the modern conception of the human as the sovereign subject and denounces the technological reduction of beings to objects, his account of the human–animal relation remains deeply ambiguous. On the one hand, the human is displaced from the metaphysical centre and redefined through openness to Being and responsibility rather than domination. On the other, Heidegger repeatedly grants humans a unique ontological privilege that sharply separates them from other living beings, leaving unresolved whether his thought genuinely escapes the anthropocentric framework it seeks to challenge.
This article explores Donna Haraway’s understanding of otherness in the context of suffering of nonhuman animals, as well as biodiversity loss. Haraway emphasizes “significant otherness,” to respect animals by acknowledging them as strangers. While critics argue that her rejection of strict human-animal demarcation undermines moral accountability, her focus on situated encounters allows for responsibility to emerge. This, however, points to the risks of physical proximity, which often results in animals’ “killability.” By drawing on selected conceptual tools, the article points to valuing the lives of others through distance and imaginative connection rather than intrusive contact.
Jacques Derrida describes the moment when he realises he is no longer 'human' in his cat's eyes, as the cat looks at him naked without judging him. As he notes, he does not recount this encounter to speak about Kafka’s zoopoetics. Derrida examines the metaphysical hierarchy of anthropological difference built into our animal metaphors. His goal is to deconstruct the binary opposition embedded in the very concepts of 'the human' and 'the animal'. To better understand the moral pretence built into this ontological distinction, the article proposes a closer look at Franz Kafka's literary work, with its zoopoetic imagination in his 'animal' stories. By comparing Kafka's and Derrida's understanding of the violent cut between supposed human and animal nature, the paper reveals that both thinkers point to a triple zoopoetic hypocrisy. Using these findings to challenge contemporary discussions in animal ethics, the article proposes a different, more inclusive use of zoopoetics in human encounters with wild animals.
This paper analyzes the ‘cycle of desire’ in Schopenhauer’s philosophy: the recurring movement of lack, desire, negative satisfaction, and boredom as a consequence of his voluntarist metaphysics (Voluntarismus). The Will (Wille) is singular, pre-rational, and insatiable; pessimism (Pessimismus) follows as a necessary conclusion. Three dimensions arise from this foundation: compassion (Mitleid) as the basis of ethics; aesthetic contemplation as a temporary suspension of the Will; and inner transformation (Umkehrung des Willens), a turning that cannot be willed or practiced as method. Recent scholarship on boredom and consumer society situates its diagnostic value today.
