Lemm contends that gift-giving is an animal virtue and that it is in a competitive friendship with animals that there will be an enhancement of life.Clearly, this view is totally awesome and correct. My life would be tremendously enhanced if I could have a competitive friendship with, say, a bear, where we see who can eat more things and dance better. (I guess it depends on the animal. A competitive friendship with a sea snake might not be as good for me.) I really look forward to reading the paper, and you can bet that I'll be sympathetic to the author's position.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
I want a competitive friendship with animals
I'm writing a review of a Nietzsche anthology for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. I just read the introduction, which ends with summaries of each papers in the volume. From the end of the last summary:
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Lemm contends that gift-giving is an animal virtue and that it is in a competitive friendship with animals that there will be an enhancement of life.
So in this quotation, how am I competing with the animal in gift-giving? Mutually? Like I gave my cat, when I had one, kitty treats and catnip toys and he dropped mauled baby rabbits and birds and whatnot on my doorstep? (I think I won that round). Or am I competing with the animal in gift-giving to others?
That appears to be more or less the idea, Mary. And yeah, I think you're probably going to beat the animals at it most of the time.
At other points in the paper, the 'competitive friendship with animals' side comes up independently of the gift-giving. This would be kind of like the thing with the bear.
We're sure he means nonhuman (or "less interesting") animals?
Yeah, Michael... snakes are among the animals discussed in her paper. I think she's overreading a few metaphors from Zarathustra.
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