'I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we self-certain people tend to delineate around all we can achieve.' H. H Hannah Höch (1889-1979) was a German Dadaist, revolutionary artist, who she has been largely ignored by Art history, because of her gender. In early 20th century women artists have begun to emerge from the shadows of their male partners: Gabriele Munter girlfriend of Wassily Kandinsky, Sophie Tauber wife of Jean Arp, Lyubov Popova collaborator of the Russian artist Alexander Rodchenko and, not least, Frieda Kahlo, who is more famous than her Mexican muralist husband Diego Rivera.
Höch was born into an upper middle class, in Germany. In 1912 she began classes at the School of Applied Arts in Berlin, where like many female art students before and since she found herself steered away from painting and sculpture — serious men’s business — towards subjects supposedly more ‘suitable for a woman’, in her case glass design and graphic arts. But Hoch had ‘always had an experimental turn of mind’ , and in 1915 she embarked ‘almost recklessly’ on a relationship with the married Raoul Hausmann.
She chose the curriculum glass design and graphic arts, at the start of World War I, she left the school and returned home to Gotha to work with the Red Cross. In 1915 she returned to school, entering the graphics class of Emil Orlik at the National Institute of the Museum of Arts and Crafts. In 1915, Höch began an influential friendship with Raoul Hausmann, a member of the Berlin Dada movement. Höch's involvement with the Berlin Dadaists began in earnest in 1917. From 1926 to 1929 she lived and worked in the Netherlands. Höch made many influential friendships over the years, with Kurt Schwitters and Piet Mondrian among others.
(Photo; Hannah Hoch and Raoul Hausmann in front of her photomontage at the 1920 International Dada Art Fair in Berlin. P. s Hoch isn’t even mentioned in the history of Dada in Berlin, written by its notional founder Richard Hulsenbeck. Numerous major exhibitions and studies of Dada have failed to include any of her works. The one Dadaist who did include Hoch in his memoirs was Hans Richter.)
She was a bisexual “degenerate artist,” who turned art upside down with other dadaists. Hoch spent the years of the Third Reich living in the outskirts of Berlin, in a tiny suburban cottage, where she stayed for the rest of her life. She was a bold, anarchic, politically engaged woman, a contributor to 1920’s First International Dada Fair but it didn’t take long before she got written out of the movement’s history and labelled a “bob-haired muse of the men’s club” in one of obituaries. (Photo; Hannah Höch and Man-Ray, 1958, France)
Her artistic practice also incorporated graphic design and embroidery. During a time of radical social change, Hoch’s work provided a funny and moving commentary on society. Themes in Hoch’s work include relationships and perceptions of beauty, with the artist often questioning such concepts through her pieces. Other concepts that are explored include that of the New Woman which originated in Germany after the First World War.During the WW1 Dada had begun in Zurich in 1917, a protest anti war artistic movement of disaffected dadaist artists using provocative slogans and absurdist gestures to attack the culture, and the art, which they claimed, had caused the catastrophic war.
In 1936, Hoch and her fellow former-Dadaists were blacklisted and watched by the Gestapo. In 1938 she moved from the centre of Berlin to a cottage on the city’s rural outskirts, where she sat out the war and its aftermath, feeling as though she had ‘managed to disappear, as completely as if I had gone underground. Cut & Paste (When Fragrances Bloom, 1962, by Hannah Hoch photomontage on cardboard )
Höch is one of the major figures in the history of collage Art. She was a pioneer of photomontage, whose images of women presaged the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir and Second Wave Feminism half a century later, Hoch was a pivotal figure in Dada, the anti-art movement that outraged conventional opinion in the final years of World War One, working alongside iconic male artists such as George Grosz, Kurt Schwitters and Piet Mondrian, Raoul Hausmann and John Heartfield.
(Artwork; When Fragrances Bloom, 1962, by Hannah Hoch, photomontage on cardboard ) A synthesis of various media, concepts, and styles, the movement’s visual art and poetry deconstructed the elements of sound, language, form, color, and movement and stitched them back together in new ways to create objects and texts that followed the laws of child’s play—that is, laws by which any meaning is possible and none is required.
Portrait of DADA, by Hannah Hoch ('Dada talks with you, it is everything, it includes everything, it belongs to all religions, can be neither victory nor defeat, it lives in space and not in time.' Francis Picabia)
This rejection of adult-world conformity in favor of youthful nonsense offered a means of circumventing the strict and serious rules that govern thought, language, and meaning. “I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we self-certain people tend to delineate around all we can achieve,” declared Hannah Höch, the Berlin movement’s only woman artist and an originator of photomontage. Tristan Tzara’s “How to Make a Dadaist Poem” (1920)—which includes the directives “Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem. Cut out the article. Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag. Shake gently.”—resembles the instructions of a child’s rainy-day activity.
As a firm believer in a person’s right to artistic freedom, Hoch liked to experiment with different mediums to look at the various ways in which art could be produced.
(Burst Unity, 1955, by Hannah Hoch ) ( Max Ernst, the author of a collage graphic novel, Une Semaine de Bonté (1934), once said: “Collage is the noble conquest of the irrational, the coupling of two realities, irreconcilable in appearance, upon a plane which apparently does not suit them.”)
Hannah Hoch lived on until 1978, in time to see recognition of her contribution to 20th century art in major exhibitions in Paris and Berlin in 1976. Yet she received this belated acclaim with the same equanimity with which she had regarded her earlier neglect and the patronising, even hostile attitudes of her male colleagues. Thirty years ago it wasn’t easy for a woman to impose herself as a modern artist in Germany. She died in Berlin on May 31, 1978.
Hannah Höch (left) with Hans Richter, Juliet Man-Ray, Frida Richter, and Man Ray, 1958.
The First International Dada Fair, Berlin, 1920. L-R: Hannah Höch, Otto Schmalhausen, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield (holding his son Tom), Dr. Otto Burchard, Margarete Herzfelde, George Grosz (pictured on wall), Wieland Herzfelde, Rudolf Schlichter, Mies van der Rohe, unknown, Johannes Baader.
The 70s New York punk explosion or, if you like, the female Lou Reed.
Patti Smith welcomed His Holiness The Dalai Lama onto the Pyramid Stage during her Glastonbury Festival.
Smith paid tribute to the spiritual leader ahead of his 80th birthday, and read ‘a little birthday poem’ in his honour.
Addressing the crowd after her fifth song, 'Pissing In A River' - which she dedicated to "all our friends in Wikileaks", Smith explained that it was the spiritual leader's 80th birthday on July 6. "We are grateful to him for all his love of humanity and making people aware of the importance of saving the planet," she said, before reading a poem she had written for him. Glastonbury's Emily Eavis then bought The Dalai Lama onto the stage to huge cheers from the crowd. "I think it would be nice if Glastonbury wished The Dalai Lama a happy birthday," said Smith, before leading the audience in a rousing rendition of 'Happy Birthday'.
As he walked off stage, the sun came out for the first time today, and the band launched into People Have the Power, at the end of which Smith proclaimed: “Use your voice!”
“My generation had dreams and we’re still dreaming! We’re gonna change the fucking world!”
Also, Smith played Gloria' and 'Redondo Beach', Patti Smith covered The Who's 'My Generation' as the final song of her hour long set. During the song she accidentally tripped up and fell over. "Yeah, I fell on my fucking arse at Glastonbury," she beamed. "That's because I'm a fucking animal!"
His holiness then talked about compassion, self-confidence and the importance of friendship, before giving Smith a big hug.
I made it, but what the hell is that, I have no idea!;D
You know already, I hate common sense in Art.
As Oscar Wilde said "Art for Art's Sake". That works to me. So, I want to thank Oscar Wilde, and blame to Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky, because kandinsky inspired me in this case.
P.s Listen to my artwork and you can see the music 'New World Symphony' in my art.....
Enjoy :))
Khatia Shiuka
This Changes Everything; "Naomi Klein didn't think climate change was her issue but when she realised the close link between environmental destruction and inequality, everything changed. In Naomi's home country, the Canadian government granted virtual free rein to companies seeking oil in Alberta's tar sands, creating a boom town in Fort McMurray. Like large numbers of activists across the world, the indigenous population in Alberta protested the environmental damage. How can we connect the dots among movements around the world to tackle climate change and inequality at the same time? "
Naomi Klein describes that; Industrialized economies need to stop growing in order to avoid the worst of climate change.....
Naomi Klein; "The carbon record does not lie .... emissions are still rising; gases will trap heat for generations to come, creating a world that is hotter, colder, wetter, thirstier, hungrier, angrier. So if there is any hope of reversing these trends, glimpses won't cut it; we will need the climate revolution playing on repeat, all day, everywhere."
We deserve equal treatment! Equality, Justice & Freedom For All And Privilege For None!
Uncivilised and uneducated and uncultured is a person who is not ready for; Equality , justice and freedom for all and privilege for none! (K. Shiuka)
So, now great hi/story; A six-year-old, Ruby Bridges famously became the first African American child to desegregate an all-white elementary school in the South. When the 1st grader walked to William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans on November 14, 1960 surrounded by a team of U.S. Marshals, she was met by a vicious mob shouting and throwing objects at her.
One of the federal marshals, Charles Burks, who served on her escort team, recalls Bridges' courage in the face of such hatred: "For a little girl six years old going into a strange school with four strange deputy marshals, a place she had never been before, she showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn't whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier. We were all very proud of her."
Once Ruby entered the school, she discovered that it was devoid of children because they had all been removed by their parents due to her presence. The only teacher willing to have Ruby as a student was Barbara Henry, who had recently moved from Boston. Ruby was taught by herself for her first year at the school due to the white parents' refusal to have their children share a classroom with a black child.
Despite daily harassment, which required the federal marshals to continue escorting her to school for months; threats towards her family; and her father's job loss due to his family's role in school integration, Ruby persisted in attending school. The following year, when she returned for second grade, the mobs were gone and more African American students joined her at the school. The pioneering school integration effort was a success due to Ruby Bridges' inspiring courage, perseverance, and resilience.
Complementary Colours
( Khatia Shiuka) ( Color Wheel - The relationship between colors) ...)
Complementary colors are located directly across from each other on the color wheel Eg; red and green, violet and yellow, blue and orange.
Complementary pairs contrast because they share no common colors. For example, red and green are complements, because green is made of blue and yellow.
*
One sees the use of complementary color schemes in every aspect of our lives. During Christmas, red and green become inseparable, proving the simplicity and ease of complementary color schemes.
The use of gold on a rich blue background was a favorite of renaissance painters. Early evening or seasonal paintings utilizing the yellow and violet color scheme was common among impressionist painters like Monet and Serrat.
* Two colours, placed side by side, will appear differently depending on which colours are used.
The effect of this interaction is called simultaneous contrast. Simultaneous contrast is most intense when two complementary colours are juxtaposed directly next to each other.
For example, red placed directly next to green, if you concentrate on the edge you will see a slight vibration. Your eye doesn’t like resting on the edge. The two complementary colour in their purest, most saturated form don’t sit well together, generally. Waiting For Nothing
by khatia shiuka
The main point of focus of this work is to express a feeling and to create a noise lines, based a natural lines. ( Waiting For Nothing, by Khatia Shiuka)
I used Orange (complementary) and blue (primary), accentuate each other in my digital art 'Waiting For Nothing'. In this example I have used a very bold use of colour eg; The warm bright orange and a bright blue. I wanted to create a visual balance. I used the colour wheel to heighten the visual effect of simultaneous contrast. I wanted to move viewers eyes around the work. The sky have a very strong saturated orange. For the river I have used mix orange and blue colors effect. For the ground I used a warm bright blue color. This creates a nice visual balance, also interest for our eye, for example, blue and instead of using its direct complement (orange) we split the colour wheel and use the next colour along. For this example that would be a yellow orange. In this case the contrast of colors have created a vibrant look and an illusion of a warm sunset. In J.M.W Turner's paintings (I researched in the previous project) you can see how he has used a blue background to emphasis the bright orange sunset, too. In this case More i was inspired by American artist Mark Rothko, but it don't means my presently artist research don't influenced me. Turner and and the new film about J. MW Turner also effected me and my works.
So, in this work I have tried to express my feeling, plus between this two noise colors I created lines which was my aim. And I gained it, successfully.
(Colour Combination: Red - Orange and Blue (scheme))
( The Lovers space, by Khatia Shiuka)
Also the Red, and the Blue green (Bluegreen Vacations). I used same technics and materials. Just in this case i used The intermediate color; Blue-Green
P. s The Intermediate colors are made by mixing equal amounts of a primary and a secondary color.
Eg; This text is the Red- Violet intermediate color. :)))
Abstract Art, by Khatia Shiuka I used Primary COLORS; Blue, Red yellow and secondary color green.
My Major Art Project; Let there Be Line The Final Written Evaluation
Khatia Shiuka
My task was to make lines in art, photography and video. I had six weeks to complete this project. My inspiration on my major art project was natural lines, so I developed this idea into making lines not only in photography but in video and art , as well.
I used mind map and smart targets which helped me to manage my time and to evaluate my project, but I think most important ways of evaluating my project was the artists research. I have researched a few artists such as Russian suprematist Kazimir Malevich, Russian abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky,and French artist GILBERT GARCIN American artist Mark Rothko. In my Digital art and drawing I have experimented Rothko's colours. Also I have researched (again) German artist, and poet Max Ernst and Kurt Schwitters was a German dadaist artist, as well and based their experience, I have created a few collage artworks.
In This project I have analysis Swiss-German painter Paul Klee 's "Ancient Sound," and Australia's most outstanding artist John Brack's 'Collins Street, 5pm' and I have improved my critical thinking.
My Digital art was an important part of of the development of this project. I made my outcome by improving my photography and art into a more unreal. I did this by using technology and different programs such as PIXLR, Photoshop, Movie maker, Paint programs etc. This wasn't very easier way of making digital art, but i learned how to make art parallel work and practice. I tried to create new colours in the Digital Art, and in some cases I was successful, but I think I can create more creative new colors, and I will try in the future, again and again. So, I was happy enough with the online materials and the techniques i have used to make my solution adequate, but I'll use a different range of manufacturing techniques in the future.
The hardest part of making my major project was drawing on wood abstract art ( I was influenced by American abstract artist Mark Rothko) This was difficult as I struggled to get the right colors, but I think my materials was not the right ones. I was not satisfied when i worked on a wood, may because before I never had similar experience. In the near future I will try to draw again and I'll experiment new materials on wood.
Part of my research was a few dadaist artist and filmaker eg I was inspired by American artist, photographer and film maker Man Ray who was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements. I found very interesting Man Ray's short black and white film 'The Return to Reason', 1923 and a German painter, avant-gardist, filmmaker Hans Richter and his' film 'Ghosts Before Breakfast' 1928. Also, part of my research was British artist Simon Faithful, after research I created my own video art "Love Line' as my final piece (Video). At the start of making my final piece I thought everything was going to be aright and finished by the right time, but it wasn't so easy. I changed free times music. Also I've edited video few times, as well. (read and see here video art the Love line ; http://khatiashiuka13.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/im-waiting-here.html )
Generally, I am pleased with my final outcome, as I have spent a lot of time on it over the last six weeks. I like my video art which is my final piece and although, I like my photography, which I have taken in the Princess park. In this case I have represented the natural lines in my project. I like the colour schemes in my Digital artworks, which i have created based my photography and painting, but not in my abstract drawings.
I think, finally my major project is successful and If I had a chance to make any improvements, I would probably will be more carefully around materials and colors. Footprints by Khatia Shiuka
My primary aim was to create a lines in my art, photography and video. I've created a digital artworks based a unnatural, abstract lines. I also created photography, based on a natural lines. For the digital art I've used my own photography and contemporary technics and programs such as PIXLR editor, Photoshop, and other paint programs. Based well known artists such as Russian abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky, American artist Mark Rothko, Russian Suprematist Kazimir Malevich, I've created digital artworks. I have experimented American abstract painter Mark Rothko's colours, also based my favourite Dadaist artists’ experience, I have made a few collage artworks.
In this case my art is ‘for art’s sake’ and I only hope you will enjoy.
Khatia Shiuka
P. s So, Today, we have an Exhibition at the Arts Centre and I'm a little bit worry about !;((
In this case, I was inspired by the Dadaist artists such as Max Ernst and Kurt Schwitters who is recognised as 20 century's master of collage art. I made huge collage and next I pick some details in artwork. Dadaist artists used different materials in art, such as old papers, pictures, ticket etc. I used a lots of old pictures, my own photos which I took before in the Manchester art gallery and my friend's portrait. Also I used other pictures and pencils etc. ( K. S)
Ethics and the New Animal Liberation Movement
by Peter Singer
This book [In Defense of Animals] provides a platform for the new animal liberation movement. A diverse group of people share this platform: university philosophers, a zoologist, a lawyer, militant activists who are ready to break the law to further their cause, and respected political lobbyists who are entirely at home in parliamentary offices. Their common ground is that they are all, in their very different ways, taking part in the struggle for animal liberation. This struggle is a new phenomenon. It marks an expansion of our moral horizons beyond our own species and is thus a significant stage in the development of human ethics. The aim of this introduction is to show why the movement is so significant, first by contrasting it with earlier movements against cruelty for animals, and then by setting out the distinctive ethical stance which lies behind the new movement.
Although there were one or two nineteenth-century thinkers who asserted that animals have rights, the serious political movement for animal liberation is very young, a product of the 1970s. Its aims are quite distinct from the efforts of the more traditional organizations, like the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, to stop people from treating animals cruelly. Even these traditional concerns, however, are relatively recent when seen in the context of 3,000 years of Western civilization, as a brief glance at the historical background to the contemporary animal liberation movement will show.
Concern for animal suffering can be found in Hindu thought, and the Buddhist idea of compassion is a universal one, extending to animals as well as humans, but our Western traditions are very different. Our intellectual roots lie in Ancient Greece and in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Neither is kind to those not of our species.
In the conflict between rival schools of thought in Ancient Greece, it was the school of Aristotle that eventually became dominant. Aristotle held the view that nature is a hierarchy in which those with less reasoning ability exist for the sake of those with more reasoning ability. Thus plants, he said, exist for the sake of animals, and animals for the sake of man, to provide him with food and clothing. Indeed, Aristotle took his logic a step further- the barbarian tribes, which he considered obviously less rational than the Greeks, existed in order to serve as slaves to the more rational Greeks. He did not quite have the nerve to add that philosophers, being supremely rational, should be served by everyone else!
Nowadays we have rejected Aristotle's idea that less rational human beings exist in order to serve more rational ones, but to some extent we still retain that attitude towards non-human animals. The social reformer Henry Salt tells a story in his autobiography, Seventy Years Among Savages (an account of a life lived entirely in England), of how, when he was a master at Eton, he first broached the topic of vegetarianism with a colleague, a distinguished science teacher. With some trepidation he awaited the verdict of the scientific mind on his new beliefs. It was: 'But don't you think that animals were sent to us for food?' That response is not far from what Aristotle might have said. It is even closer to the other great intellectual tradition of the West — a tradition in which the following words from Genesis stand as a foundation for everything else:
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have domination over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
So God created man in his own image ....
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Here is a myth to make human beings feel their supremacy and their power. Man alone is made in the image of God. Man alone is given dominion over all the animals and told to subdue the earth. One may debate, as environmentally concerned Jews and Christians have done, whether this grant of dominion entitles human beings to rule as petty despots, doing as they please with the unfortunate subjects placed under their jurisdiction, or whether it was not rather a kind of stewardship, in which humans are responsible to their Lord for the proper care and use of what has been placed in their custody. One can point to one or two Christian figures, like John Chrysostom and Francis of Assisi, who have shown compassion and concern for non-human Creation. (Though even the stories about Francis are conflicting. There is one episode in which a disciple is said to have cut a trotter off a living pig in order to give it to a sick companion. According to the narrator, Francis rebuked the disciple - but for damaging the property of the pig owner, not for cruelty to the pig!) So far as the history of Western attitudes to animals is concerned, however, the 'dominion' versus 'stewardship' debate and that over the true nature of the teachings of Francis are both beside the point. It is beyond dispute that mainstream Christianity, for its first 1,800 years, put non-human animals outside its sphere of concern. On this issue the key figures in early Christianity were unequivocal. Paul scornfully rejected the thought that God might care about the welfare of oxen, and the incident of the Gadarene swine, in which Jesus is described as sending devils into a herd of pigs and making them drown themselves in the sea, is explained by Augustine as having been intended to teach us that we have no duties towards animals. This interpretation was accepted by Thomas Aquinas, who stated that the only possible objection to cruelty to animals was that it might lead to cruelty to humans - according to Aquinas, there was nothing wrong in itself with making animals suffer. This became the official view of the Roman Catholic Church to such good — or bad — effect that as late as the middle of the nineteenth century Pope Pius IX refused permission for the founding of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Rome, on the grounds that to grant permission would imply that human beings have duties to the lower creatures.
Even in England, which has a reputation for being dotty about animals, the first efforts to obtain legal protection for members of other species were made only 180 years ago. They were greeted with derision. The Times was so dismissive of the idea that the suffering of animals ought to be prevented that it attacked proposed legislation that would stop the 'sport' of bull-baiting. Said that august newspaper: 'Whatever meddles with the private personal disposition of man's time or property is tyranny.' Animals, clearly, were just property.
That was in 1800, and that Bill was defeated. It took another twenty years to get the first anti-cruelty law on to the British statute books. That any consideration at all should be given to the interests of animals was a significant step beyond the idea that the boundary of our species is also the boundary of morality. Yet the step was a restricted one because it did not challenge our right to make whatever use we chose of other species. Only cruelty - causing pain when there was no reason for doing so but sheer sadism or callous indifference - was prohibited. The farmer who deprives his pigs of room to move does not offend against this concept of cruelty, for he is considered to be doing only what he thinks necessary to produce bacon. Similarly, the scientist who poisons a hundred rats in order to determine the lethal dose of some new flavouring agent for toothpaste is not regarded as cruel, merely as concerned to follow the accepted procedures for testing the safety of new products.
The nineteenth-century anti-cruelty movement was built on the assumption that the interests of non-human animals deserve protection only when serious human interests are not at stake. Animals remained very clearly 'lower creatures' whose interests must be sacrificed to our own in the event of conflict.
The significance of the new animal liberation movement is its challenge to this assumption. Taken in itself, say the animal liberationists, membership of the human species is not morally relevant. Other creatures on our planet also have interests. We have always assumed that we are justified in overriding their interests, but this bald assumption is simply species-selfishness. If we assert that to have rights one must be a member of the human race, and that is all there is to it, then what are we to say to the racist who contends that to have rights you have to be a member of the Caucasian race, and that is all there is to it? Conversely, once we agree that race is not, in itself, morally significant, how can species be? As Jeremy Bentham put it some 200 years ago:
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate.
Someone might say: 'It is not because we are members of the human species that we are justified in overriding the interests of other animals; it is because we are rational and they are not.' Someone else might argue that it is because we are autonomous beings, or because we can use language, or because we are self-conscious, or because we have a sense of justice. All these contentions and more have been invoked to justify us in sacrificing the interests of other animals to our own.
One way of replying would be to consider whether non-human animals really do lack these allegedly important characteristics. The more we learn of some non-human animals, particularly chimpanzees but also many other species, the less able we are to defend the claim that we humans are unique because we are the only ones capable of reasoning, or of autonomous action or of the use of language, or because we possess a sense of justice. I shall not go into this reply here because it would take a long time and it would do nothing for the many species of animals who could not be said to meet whatever test was being proposed.
There is a much shorter rejoinder. Let us return to the passage I have quoted from Bentham, for he anticipated the objection. After dismissing the idea that number of legs, roughness of skin or fine details of bone formation should 'trace the insuperable line' between those who have moral standing and those who do not, Bentham goes on to ask what else might mark this boundary:
Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
Bentham is clearly right. Whatever the test we propose as a means of separating human from non-human animals, it is plain that if all non-human animals are going to fail it, some humans will fail as well. Infants are neither rational nor autonomous. They do not use language and they do not possess a sense of justice. Are they therefore to be treated like non-human animals, to be fattened for the table, if we should fancy the taste of their flesh, or to be used to find out if some new shampoo will blister human eyeballs?
Ah, but infants, though not rational, autonomous or able to talk, have the potential to become adult humans — so the defender of human supremacy will reply to Bentham. The relevance of potential is another complicated argument that I shall avoid by the stratagem of focusing your attention on another class of humans who would fail the proposed test: those unfortunate enough to have been born with brain damage so severe that they will never be able to reason, or talk or do any of the other things that are often said to distinguish us from non-human animals. The fact that we do not use them as means to our ends indicates that we do not really see decisive moral significance in rationality, or autonomy, or language, or a sense of justice, or any of the other criteria said to distinguish us from other animals. Why do we lock up chimpanzees in appalling primate research centres and use them in experiments that range from the uncomfortable to the agonising and lethal, yet would never think of doing the same to a retarded human being at a much lower mental level? The only possible answer is that the chimpanzee, no matter how bright, is not human, while the retarded human, no matter how dull, is.
This is speciesism, pure and simple, and it is as indefensible as the most blatant racism. There is no ethical basis for elevating membership of one particular species into a morally crucial characteristic. From an ethical point of view, we all stand on an equal footing -whether we stand on two feet, or four, or none at all.
That is the crux of the philosophy of the animal liberation movement, but to forestall misunderstanding I had better say something immediately about this notion of equality.
It does not mean that animals have all the same rights as you and I have. Animal liberationists do not minimize the obvious differences between most members of our species and members of other species. The rights to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of worship — none of these can apply to other animals. Similarly, what harms humans may cause much less harm, or even no harm at all, to some animals. If I were to confine a herd of cows within the boundaries of the county of, say, Devon, I do not think I would be doing them any harm at all; if, on the other hand, I were to take a group of people and restrict them to the same county, I am sure many would protest that I had harmed them considerably, even if they were allowed to bring their families and friends, and notwithstanding the many undoubted attractions of that particular county. Humans have interests in mountain-climbing and skiing, in seeing the world and in sampling foreign cultures. Cows like lush pastures and shelter from harsh weather. Hence to deny humans the right to travel outside Devon would be to restrict their rights significantly; it would not be a significant restriction of the rights of cows.
Here is another example, more relevant to real problems about our treatment of animals. Suppose we decided to perform lethal scientific experiments on normal adult humans, kidnapped at random from public parks for this purpose. Soon every adult who entered a park would become fearful of being kidnapped. The resultant terror would be a form of suffering additional to whatever pain was involved in the experiments themselves. The same experiments carried out on non-human animals would cause less suffering overall, for the non-human animals would not have the same anticipatory dread. This does not mean, I hasten to add, that it is all right to experiment on animals as we please, but only that if the experiment is to be done at all, there is some reason, compatible with the equal consideration of interests, for preferring to use non-human animals rather than normal adult humans.
There is one point that needs to be added to this example. Nothing in it depends on the fact that normal adult humans are members of ~ our species. It is their capacity for knowledge of what may happen to them that is crucial. If they were not normal adults but severely brain-damaged humans - orphans perhaps, or children abandoned by their parents - then they would be in the same position as non-human animals at a similar mental level. If we use the argument I have put forward to justify experiments on non-human animals, we have to ask ourselves whether we are also prepared to allow similar experiments on human beings with a similar degree of awareness of what is happening to them. If we say that we will perform an experiment on monkeys but not on brain-damaged human orphans, we are giving preference to the humans just because they are members of our own species, which is a violation of the principle of equal consideration of interests.
In the example I have just given the superior mental powers of normal adult humans would make them suffer more. It is important to recognize that in other circumstances the non-human animal may suffer more because it cannot understand what is happening. If we capture a wild animal, intending to release it later, it may not be able to distinguish our relatively benign intentions from a threat to its life: general terror may be all it experiences.
The moral significances of taking life is more complex still. There is furious controversy about the circumstances in which it is legitimate to kill human beings, so it is no wonder that it should be difficult to decide whether non-human animals have any right to life. Here I would say, once again, that species in itself cannot make a difference. If it is wrong to take the life of a severely brain-damaged abandoned human infant, it must be equally wrong to take the life of a dog or a pig at a comparable mental level. On the other hand, perhaps it is not wrong to take the life of a brain-damaged human infant - after all, many people think such infants should be allowed to die, and an infant who is 'allowed to die' ends up just as dead as one that is killed. Indeed, one could argue that our readiness to put a hopelessly ill non-human animal out of its misery is the one and only respect in which we treat animals better than we treat people.
The influence of the Judeo-Christian insistence on the God-like nature of human beings is nowhere more apparent than in the standard Western doctrine of the sanctity of human life: a doctrine that puts the life of the most hopelessly and irreparably brain damaged human being — of the kind whose level of awareness is not underestimated by the term 'human vegetable' - above the life of a chimpanzee. The sole reason for this strange priority is, of course, the fact that the chimpanzee is not a member of our species, and the human vegetable is biologically human. This doctrine is now starting to be eroded by the acceptance of abortion, which is the killing of a being that is indisputably a member of the human species, and by the questioning of the value of applying all the power of modern medical technology to saving human life in all cases.
I think we will emerge from the present decade with a significantly different attitude towards the sanctity of human life, an attitude which considers the quality of the life at stake rather than the simple matter of whether the life is or is not that of a member of the species Homo sapiens. Once this happens, we shall be ready to take a much broader view of the wrongness of killing, one in which the capacities of the being in question will play a central role. Such a view will not discriminate on the basis of species alone but will still draw a distinction between the seriousness of killing beings with the mental capacities of normal human adults and killing beings who do not possess, and never have possessed, these mental capacities. It is not a bias in favour of our own species that leads us to think that there is greater moral significance in taking the life of a normal human than there is in taking the life of, for example, a fish. To give just one reason for this distinction, a normal human has hopes and plans for the future: to take the life of a normal human is therefore to cut off these plans and to prevent them from ever being fulfilled. Fish, I expect, do not have as clear a conception of themselves as beings with a past and a future. Consequently, to kill a fish is not to prevent the fulfillment of any plans, or at least not of any long-range future plans. This does not, I stress, mean that it is all right, or morally trivial, to kill fish. If fish are capable of enjoying their lives, as I believe they are, we do better when we let them continue to live than when we needlessly end their lives, though when we cut short the life of a fish, we are not doing something as bad as when we needlessly end the life of a normal human adult.
The animal liberation movement, therefore, is not saying that all lives are of equal worth or that all interests of humans and other animals are to be given equal weight, no matter what those interests may be. It is saying that where animals and humans have similar interests - we might take the interest in avoiding physical pain as an example, for it is an interest that humans clearly share with other animals — those interests are to be counted equally, with no automatic discount just because one of the beings is not human. A simple point, no doubt, but nevertheless part of a far-reaching ethical revolution.
This revolution is the culmination of a long line of ethical development. I cannot do better than quote the words of that splendid nineteenth century historian of ideas, W. E. H. Lecky. In his History of European Morals Lecky wrote: 'At one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity, and finally, its influence is felt in the dealings of man with the animal world.' Lecky anticipated what the animal liberationists are now saying. In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. The essays which follow show how this can be done, both in theory and in practice...
(Burst Unity, 1955, by Hannah Hoch )
