>The same argument based upon the premise that some humans are only
>"marginally" human is used by Peter Singer. The problem stems from the
>fact that, despite their arguments against "speciesism," both Singer and
>Tom Regan are (paradoxical as it may sound) deeply committed to the
>traditional humanist question: "what is human?" Both of them think that
>what defines a "normal" human being (in Singer's terms a "person," as
>opposed to a "non-person" who is merely biologically human) is the presence
>of rationality, self-consciousness, and autonomous agency. Biologically
>human beings who can be said to lack them -- infants, the mentally ill, the
>very old, etc. -- become by definition "marginal" cases, since the standard
>of what being human means (in terms of moral considerations, not in terms
>of belonging to the species Homo sapiens) is, to begin with, set by *the
>idealized view of what a healthy and intellectually capable adult must be
>like* (in other words, a fictive person [independent individual] who is a
>bearer of rights in abstract individualism -- a persona indispensable for
>both Kantians and utilitarians). This standard of humanity has been
>criticized by feminists as well. For instance, the fictive person who
>matters in liberal political theory doesn't get pregnant. And that is why
>I think mature Marx's revision of humanity (concrete individuals =
>ensembles of social relations) is important, in that it de-emphasizes the
>humanist problematic of what is "essentially" human and what is
>"marginally" human.
Whatever our other differences, I am very much in sympathy with these points of Yoshie's
The privileging of concepts of rationality, self-consciousness, and autonomous agency is also to privilege the concept of conciousness - of what we are consciously pay attention to.
The fact that our attention continually shifts and that we live in a vast matrix of interconnections, many of which are only semi-conscious, gets overlooked. The model of humanity becomes reduced to the conscious capitalist individual, extracting greater relative surplus value by marketing a commodity.
We need to reframe the concept of consciousness as not peculiarly human but as the focus of attention. The non-conscious is not some mysterious other realm of an individual psyche but is the basic fabric of engaged interaction by someone within a *social* network.
Chris Burford
London