Charles Perrault, a French writer, was born on January 12, in 1628. Perrault popularized the story of Puss-N-Boots. In 17th century France, a land in which the memories of the Renaissance witchcraft trials (and their attendant cruelty to cats) were still vivid to some, in this land and since,the popularity of this story--of a cat wearing boots and cleverly acquiring a fortune for its owner--needs an explanation. I don't have one: what is the appeal of this story, is it a coded account of Protestant triumph, or an account of capitalist values. Not sure, yet.
Onora Sylvia O'Neill (August 23, 1941) is a British thinker. She studied at Oxford and received a doctorate from Harvard. After a noted career, in 1992, she accepted the post of Principal of N ewnham College, Cambridge, and since 2006 she has been Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge. Her 1997 paper, "Environmental Values, Anthroporphism, and Speciesism" contains a timely argument in which Dr. O'Neill, (she prefers that title to the "Baroness" to which her elevation to the peerage allows) points out inadequacies in the use of the term speciesism to argue against according humans more ethical rights than aspects of the non human world. A viewpoint that puts " a person torturing a cat is on a par with a cat torturing a bird," is not one she finds supportable. The link is to a downloadable version of this paper. We have this picture of Onora O'Neill, in 2002, at Newnham College: We meet in the Principal's lodge at Ne
Comments
Post a Comment