Why are we sometimes considered as animal? Why are we always compared to them? If we are dirty we are called pigs, if we aren't intelligent we called donkeys, etc. After reading Chapter 4 of Fernando Savater´s book, "The Questions of Life", we analyze some of Savater´s ideas and of other philosophers that he mentions.Fernando Savater has a lot of ideas about the relation between animals and humans. He brings up differences and similarities between both of them. One of his ideas in his book "The Questions of Life" is that animals use their intelligence to get and achieve what they need and want, the have something in mind, a goal. On the other side, humans use their intelligence to get what they need and want, but they are not always satisfied, they continue searching for more.
Another difference that Fernando Savater states in his book is that animal "conduct" is different to human "behaviour". Animals are born knowing almost everything and they have a predetermined conduct, for example all wolves have the same conduct; they are aggressive, they attack, etc. Humans learn everything through life, starting from our parents raising us and continue learning in school, and they have a behaviour; every single person have a different behaviour, even though some of us are raised together, we behave in a different way.
According to Ernst Cassirer, we are symbolic animals. He states this because he says that we express ourselves with symbols, signs that represent ideas, emotions, etc. I agree with Ernst Cassirer because it is true that we express everything through signs, and everything means something to us, for example a dove or an olive represents peace. He is absolutely correct in his idea.
The very best characteristic that makes us humans what we are today, that separate us from “regular animals”, if that is even an expression, is that we are symbolic animals, that we can communicate beyond the absolutely necessary, and can really explore pass the animal instinct. As you I also think that Ernst Cassirer is totally right.
ResponderEliminarMariel, I agree when you say that Cassirer is right when he calls humans symbolic animals, we do express ourselves with symbols. He's completely right but what I think Savater is missing when talking about him is linking this idea to animals also, for they are symbolic animals too. I used this argument on my post for this chapter saying how animals are symbolic too. Animals use a lot of symbols as humans do, however for some reason Savater discards this idea or even talking about it for what I disagree with him. Cassirer is right when referring to humans as symbolic animals, I do not know his state on animals, however I think he may also agree that they are indeed motivated by symbols. Since I can't have a talk with him, I relay on mi argument that animals use symbols too, and hopefully Savater will understand it since we are more alike than he would like to agree.
ResponderEliminarI agree completely with your post because I think that when people satisfy what they wanted to satisfy, then they start to search for things they didn't need the first time to be satisfied. We are unsatisfied animals that create more needs and that makes us very special and different from other animals.
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