History of Philosophy Group Talk (Elena Gordon, McGill)

The History of Modern Philosophy Group is pleased to welcome as its guest speaker Elena Gordon. Dr. Gordon is currently an Extending New Narratives Postdoctoral Research Fellow at McGill University, and she was previously an Anderson Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sydney. She mainly works on the philosophy of David Hume and has forthcoming work in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy detailing Hume’s account of fictions and childhood development. Her research for the Extending New Narratives project examines Catharine Macaulay’s (1731-1791) philosophy of education, with a particular focus on the essential role that Macaulay takes non-human animals to have in human moral and epistemic development.

Talk Title

Catharine Macaulay and the Necessity of Animals in Human Development

Talk Abstract

In Letters of Education (1790), Macaulay advances some rather curious claims about non-human animals and the role that they ought to play in our lives. Indeed, Macaulay’s Letters begin with the assertion that the happiness of non-human animals is just as important as human happiness, and that the failure to appreciate this has been overlooked because of certain “prejudices and [the] pride of our species” (1-2). At another point, she comes very close to advocating vegetarianism, when she proclaims that the consumption of meat is a “cruel necessity” (38). However, perhaps her most surprising claim about non-human animals is that she regards our interactions with them as necessary in the endeavour to attain human excellence, and as necessary in the early years of a child’s education. These are very surprising claims to read in the early modern period, since, in this time, philosophers were often keen to stress the differences between humans and non-human animals, and our superiority to them, rather than to emphasize the importance of non-human animals in human development. And so, one may wonder: What is the philosophical basis of Macaulay’s claims about the importance of non-human animal and human interactions? And how do interactions with animals fit into Macaulay’s vision for educational reform? It is these questions that I will answer in this talk.

One of six departmental Research Interest Groups, the History of Philosophy Group explores topics in ancient and/or medieval philosophy, the period from Descartes to Kant, and Jewish philosophy from the medieval period to the 20th century.