Animality in Contemporary Italian Philosophy

Felice Cimatti, Carlo Salzani, Felice Cimatti, Carlo Salzani, Felice Cimatti, Carlo Salzani

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030475079
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This volume provides an overview of contemporary Italian philosophy from the perspective of animality. Its rationale rests on two main premises: the great topicality of both Italian contemporary philosophy (the so-called "Italian Theory") and of the animal question (the so-called "animal turn" in the humanities and the social sciences) in the contemporary philosophical panorama. The volume not only intersects these two axes, illuminating Italian Theory through the animal question, but also proposes an original thesis: that the animal question is a central and founding issue of contemporary Italian philosophy. It combines historical-descriptive chapters with analyses of the theme in several philosophical branches, such as biopolitics, Posthumanism, Marxism, Feminism, Antispeciesism and Theology, and with original contributions by renowned authors of contemporary Italian (animal) philosophy. The volume is both historical-descriptive and speculative and is intended for a broad academic audience, embracing both Italian studies and Animal studies at all levels.

© The Author(s) 2020

F. Cimatti, C. Salzani (eds.)Animality in Contemporary Italian PhilosophyThe Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Serieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47507-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: The Italian Animal—A Heterodox Tradition

Felice Cimatti¹ and Carlo Salzani²

(1)

University of Calabria, Arcavacata di Rende, Italy

(2)

Messerli Research Institute, Vienna, Austria

End Abstract

1 Little History of a Belatedness

A few years ago, John Simons asserted the superiority of the Anglo-American approach to the animal question, claiming that “most wealthy western societies outside the Anglo-American nexus have not developed similar consciousness” and singling out Spain and Italy as examples of attitudes to animals “long conditioned by the Roman Catholic Church following the extremely animal-hostile theology of Thomas Aquinas” (2002: 11). Simons’ thesis is accompanied by stereotypical statements bordering the ridiculous, such as “it is, I believe, true that no woman in France has ever won a case for sexual harassment at work,” or “it is clear that health consciousness is far more a matter of public debate in the Anglo-American sphere than it is more generally. The issue of tobacco smoking is the best example here, but a concern with dietary matters also stands out” (2002: 5, 11). However, and despite the justified remonstrations of Damiano Benvegnù (2016: 42), from a purely historical point of view, this thesis is not entirely false: on the one hand, the precedence and primacy of British animal protection movements and associations in modern history is indisputable; on the other, these movements also established a sort of philosophical “orthodoxy,” which has marked for a long time the history of animal advocacy—even in the sexist, chain-smoking countries of Southern Europe. Simons’ thesis, moreover, reflects a long-standing bias, and in order to dispute it, one needs more than outraged and righteous protests.¹

A cursory look at the history of animal protection in Italy in a sense even confirms Simons’ prejudices. Giulia Guazzaloca has thoroughly researched this history and repeats Simons’ argument that a deeply rooted Catholic, anthropocentric, and creationist tradition played against the animal protection cause—together with the persistence of a predominantly peasant society, economic backwardness, widespread illiteracy, and the proud defense of local traditions (2018: 45–46 and passim).² All of this reflected abroad into the image of a country essentially disrespectful of animal welfare, a bias which has evidently persisted to these days. Moreover, Guazzaloca repeatedly insists that “it was very often thanks to British noblemen and noblewomen that an animal-friendly sensibility was brought to Italy” and that Italian animal protection societies “for a long time benefited from the financial and organizational support of foreigners” (2018: 17–18). The foremost example is the foundation of the Società torinese per la protezione degli animali (Turinese Animal Welfare Society, later to become the Ente Nazionale Protezione Animali—ENPA), whence customarily the history of animal protection in Italy is said to begin: the Society was created on April 1, 1871, by the physician Timoteo Riboli at the instigation of national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi and of Lady Anna Winter, Countess of Sutherland, thanks to whom it established a fruitful relationship with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in 1897 even received the honorary patronage of Queen Victoria. And this was not an isolated case: the analogous Roman Society was founded in 1874 by Terenzio Mamiani and Lady Paget, wife of the British ambassador and vice-president of the London Vegetarian Society; the Neapolitan Society was created in 1891 at the initiative of Elizabeth Mackworth-Praed; and even much later, in 1952, the Società vegetariana italiana (Italian Vegetarian Society) was founded in Perugia by Aldo Capitini and the British citizen Emma Thomas (Guazzaloca 2018: 18–20, 110). The essential and enduring involvement of British gentry had the effect that animal protection was long perceived in Italy as a foreign phenomenon, supported mainly by bourgeois and liberal elites—and to some extent this holds even today (Guazzaloca 2018: 61).

Guazzaloca argues however that, despite this little delay (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in Great Britain in 1824 and the Société Protectrice des Animaux in France in 1845), the Italian animal protection movements basically followed a development similar to that of their Anglo-American counterparts. If the animal cause was highjacked by official propaganda during the Fascist era (not, however, to the extent of the German case), the economic boom of the postwar years brought both the country and animal advocacy on a par with the other “civilized” countries. On a philosophical level, animal advocacy remained obviously a fringe phenomenon, but also presented some emblematic figures: for example, Piero Martinetti (1872–1943), an anti-Catholic and antifascist, better remembered for being one of the very few academics who, in 1931, refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the Fascist Party. The same did (or rather didn’t) also Aldo Capitini (1899–1968), like Martinetti anti-Catholic and an advocate of vegetarianism and a major figure in Italy’s postwar nonviolent movement. As Luisella Battaglia argues in her contribution to this volume, though perhaps marginal figures, Capitini (and Martinetti) laid the groundwork for what will later become the Italian philosophical reflection in animal ethics.

The emancipative unrest of the late 1960s and 1970s resulted, in Italy just as in all other Western societies, in the flourishing of many “liberation” movements, among which also appeared a galaxy of animal protection groups (mostly directed against vivisection). If Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (1975 ) was translated into Italian only in the late 1980s,³ the antivivisection pamphlet Imperatrice Nuda (Naked Empress, initially translated into English as Slaughter of the Innocent) by the Italian-Swiss activist Hans Ruesch was published in 1976 with great national and international impact, and in 1982 the architect and cofounder of the LAV (Anti-Vivisection League), Alberto Pontillo, even coined a new term, “animalismo” (today the most used in animal advocacy discourses), to identify a new, rational rather than merely compassionate and emotional way of relating to the animal question (cf. Guazzaloca 2018: 124).⁴

The delay in the translation of Singer’s founding text seems therefore to reflect again the general (albeit slight) delay of Italian thought in absorbing, and conforming to, the Anglo-American “orthodoxy.” The texts of the new wave of animal advocacy that hit Western societies since the 1970s were nonetheless well disseminated and debated also in Italy. The first anthology collecting essays by Singer, Ruesch, Tom Regan, and others was published in 1985, edited by philosopher of law Silvana Castiglione, and pivotal to this end was of course the work of Paola Cavalieri, who edited and introduced the Italian translation of Animal Liberation and was then to collaborate with Singer in The Great Ape Project (1993) (and therefore is perhaps the most internationally known figure of Italian animal advocacy). From 1988 to 1998, Cavalieri also founded and edited an influential journal, Etica & Animali, which introduced to the Italian audience the conceptuality of the (mostly analytical) Anglo-American tradition. Since the 1990s and the 2000s, with the so-called animal turn in the humanities and social sciences and the exponential growth of publications and discussions on the subject, Italy fully absorbed the terms of a debate by now become international and interdisciplinary, and too many would be here the names of people, movements, or schools of thought to be listed. A few journals deserve however to be mentioned, which, like Cavalieri’s Etica & Animali in the 1990s, greatly helped in disseminating animal philosophy in Italian academia and society at large in the 2000s and 2010s: Animal Studies. Rivista italiana di antispecismo (Animal Studies: Italian Antispeciesist Journal, 2012–present), Animot . L’altra filosofia (Animot : The Other Philosophy, 2014–present), and especially Liberazioni. Rivista di critica antispecista (Liberations: Journal of Antispeciesist Crit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: The Italian Animal—A Heterodox Tradition
• Part I. Animality in the Italian Tradition
• Part II. Animality in Perspective
• Part III. Fragments of a Contemporary Debate
• Back Matter