At the next Critical Antiquities Workshop, Andrew Benjamin (Monash/Melbourne University) will present his paper, ‘Living in Peace with Animals: Pythagoras’ Speech in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.’
Abstract
In the final book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pythagoras is provided with a speech that can be read as both the defence of and argument for vegetarianism. There are, however, a number of important delimitations built into the speech that add to its significance. For Pythagoras, eating animals is ‘impious’ (nefas). The position is unequivocal: ‘Refrain from polluting your bodies with such an impious feast’ (Parcite, mortales, dapibus temerare nefandis/corpora!) The inclusive use of the second person plural imperative parcite (‘refrain from’) reenforcing both the coverage as well the urgency of the claim. While the act of killing may be justified if animals menace human life—Ovid even argues that such killings occur without ‘impiety’—it remains the case that animals ‘should not be eaten’ (non epulanda fuerunt). For Ovid, and the claim is a specific one, they should not be killed to be eaten. In order to justify his position he refers to ‘former time’ (vetus … aetas) in which it was possible to live in ‘peace’ with animals. To the extent that this argument can be sustained, rights-based arguments no longer pertain since human/animal relations can be redescribed in terms of war and therefore the Ovidian legacy is the question of the possibility of living in peace with animals. The aim of the talk therefore is to investigate the extent to which Ovid’s Metamorphoses can be used to develop an argument for a relationship with animals structured in terms of peace rather than in terms of rights. While it falls beyond the remit of the talk, what this does is connect the question of the animal to more general philosophical concerns with peace, as for example occurs in Kant’s Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795).
The event will take place on Zoom on Thursday, November 7, 09:30–11:00 AM (Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne time).
The event will be in a hybrid format broadcast from the School of Humanities Common Room (Rm 822, Brennan-MacCallum Building, University of Sydney).
Here is the time in other locations:
Los Angeles/Vancouver: Wednesday, November 6, 2:30–4:00pm
Mexico City: Wednesday, November 6, 4:30–6:00pm
Chicago: Wednesday, November 6, 4:30–6:00pm
New York: Wednesday, November 6, 5:30–7:00pm
Santiago/Buenos Aires/Rio de Janeiro: Wednesday, November 6, 7:30–9:00pm
Dublin/Belfast/London: Wednesday, November 6, 10:30 PM–12:00am
Paris/Berlin/Rome: Wednesday, November 6, 11:30 PM–1:00am
Johannesburg/Athens/Cairo: Thursday, November 7, 12:30–2:00am
Beijing/Singapore/Perth: Thursday, November 7, 6:30–8:00am
Tokyo: Thursday, November 7, 7:30–9:00am
Darwin: Thursday, November 7, 8:00–9:30am
Adelaide: Thursday, November 7, 9:00–10:30am
Brisbane: Thursday, November 7, 8:30–10:00am
To register, please sign up for the Critical Antiquities Network mailing list to receive Zoom links and CAN announcements: https://signup.e2ma.net/signup/1930251/1916146/