“Elements toward a philosophical zoology”1

1. This text was originally published as “Éléments pour une zoologie philosophique” in Critique 375–376 (Aug.–Sept. 1978): 673–706.

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Notes

notes

1. This text was originally published as “Éléments pour une zoologie philosophique” in Critique 375–376 (Aug.–Sept. 1978): 673–706.

2. Cf. Diderot, Le Rêve d’Alembert (suite de l’entretien); “an orang-utang who looks like a saint John who preaches in the desert” (oeuvres de Diderot, Bibliothèque de la Pléïade 941).

3. La Fontaine, La Cigale et la Fourmi (I.1); Le Singe et le Dauphin (IV.7).

4. Cf. E. Benveniste, Communication animale et langage humain in Problèmes de linguistique générale (56).

5. A reference to Stéphane Mallarmé's phrase in “Crises de vers.” [Translator's note.]

6. It is P.-M. Schuhl who points out that one has to say metensomatosis (L’Oeuvre de Platon 97, librairie Hachette, 1954).

7. Cf. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Le Mythe platonicien du Politique, les ambiguïtés de l’âge d’or et de l’histoire in “Langue, discours, société,” Editions du Seuil, 1975.

8. Notice the connotations of imitation: e.g. “Une chemise façon soie.” [Translator's note.]

9. Literally, the phrase translates as “the stake of terrible battles.” [Translator's note.]

10. Marx's materialism (German Ideology I) encounters this problematic, in which man himself – through work – produces his own difference in producing his means of subsistence. Every theory of man as descending [issu] from animality and superseding it [la dépassant] through his own forces leads to a humanism. This is a consequence of materialism, which, being unable to conceptualize the fall, must conceptualize emergence. It is certainly true, however, that Marx's materialism is “scientific” and, as such, attempts to exclude any metaphysical resurgence around the figure of man.