I stumbled upon Dark Ages: Pet Philosophy in the Times Online today, and thought that the book it reviews, Pets by Erica Fudge, might be of interest to readers of this site.
The Amazon description is as follows:
Why do we live with pets? What are these beings who are kin but not kind? Erica Fudge looks at the answers offered by modern thinkers. Moving from an analysis of the philosophical importance of the Lassie myth to philosophers’ surprisingly similar musings about their cats, she challenges many of our easy assumptions about who, what and why pets are. Meditating on our obsession with domestic animals reveals many of the paradoxes, contradictions, and ambiguities of life and shows that pets are a vital resource for contemporary philosophy. True border-creatures – the anthropologist Edmund Leach called them man-animals – pets both exemplify and challenge the construction of self and other that is so important in modern thought. Without pets we might not be the humans we think we are.
Animal Pets Dogs Cats Birds
Interesting! I want to check that out!