Understanding animal worlds: analyzing the openness of the worlds of animals in the light of Uexküll and Merleau-Ponty
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2021-01-14
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nl
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Abstract
Understanding what others perceive, has always been a tricky question
for philosophers. In A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans Jakob von
Uexküll has expanded the question of the other into the realm of all animal life. His
theory of the Umwelt relates the perceived environments of animals to their own
personal perspective. As every animal has its own unique perceptions, due to the
subjective aspect of it, their worlds look fundamentally different. This raises the
question whether we can interpret such environments at all. Surely we can study their
perceptive organs and behavioral attitudes, but is this in the end not just an expansion
of our own subjective experiences of animal life? Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s
phenomenological approach towards animal life, as presented in The structure of
Behavior, and his concept of inter-animality, as explained in Nature and The Visible
and the Invisible, present a framework that allows for a bridge between ourselves and
the environments of animals, while at the same time acknowledging the uniqueness
and opacity of their perception and experiences.
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Faculteit der Filosofie, Theologie en Religiewetenschappen