by Animal cruelty and human dignity [embedded content] Throughout European history the idea of the human being has been expressed in contradistinction to the animal. The latter’s lack of reason is the proof of human dignity. So insistently and unanimously has this antithesis been recited … that few other ideas are so fundamental to Western anthropology. The antithesis is acknowledged even today. The behaviorists only appear to have forgotten it. That they apply to human beings the same formulae and results which they wring without restraint from defenseless animals in their abominable physiological laboratories, proclaims the difference in especially subtle way. The conclusion they draw from the mutilated animal bodies applies, not to animals in freedom,
Topics:
Lars Pålsson Syll considers the following as important: Politics & Society
This could be interesting, too:
Lars Pålsson Syll writes ‘These brothers and sisters of mine’
Lars Pålsson Syll writes What we do in life echoes in eternity
Lars Pålsson Syll writes The man who never wavered — Alan Bates
Lars Pålsson Syll writes Wie Identitätspolitik die Demokratie gefährdet
Animal cruelty and human dignity
Throughout European history the idea of the human being has been expressed in contradistinction to the animal. The latter’s lack of reason is the proof of human dignity. So insistently and unanimously has this antithesis been recited … that few other ideas are so fundamental to Western anthropology. The antithesis is acknowledged even today. The behaviorists only appear to have forgotten it. That they apply to human beings the same formulae and results which they wring without restraint from defenseless animals in their abominable physiological laboratories, proclaims the difference in especially subtle way. The conclusion they draw from the mutilated animal bodies applies, not to animals in freedom, but to human beings today. By mistreating animals they announce that they, and only they in the whole of creation, function voluntarily in the same mechanical, blind, automatic way the twitching movements of the bound victims made use of by the expert …
In this world liberated from appearance — in which human beings, having forfeited reflection, have become once more the cleverest animals, which subjugate the rest of the universe when they happen not to be tearing themselves apart — to show concern for animals is considered no longer merely sentimental but a betrayal of progress.