Quotation
Last reviewed:
We are not just rather like animals; we are animals.
Mary Midgley · Moral philosophy · Modern · 1978
What does it mean?
We are not just rather like animals. We are animals. Culture, reason, and morality do not sit on top of a beast that is not us. They are part of what this animal does. A rival reading, blank-slate and also a crude biological one, wants a one-storey picture: either the animal is an excuse, or culture is the whole truth and the body is an embarrassment. She argues with both. Being an animal is not an insult in this book and not a permission slip. The short sentence is the familiar form of the thesis.
Did Mary Midgley really say this?
The library’s label is Summary. Summary, not a sentence she published as a motto. The card restates the thesis of Beast and Man. The six-word form may be a mild compression of the argument. It is not a page-faithful extract.
Where it comes from
Beast and Man (1978), the claim as she presses it
Approximate date: 1978.
How to use it
When an explanation in a seminar, or in a pub after a nature documentary, says 'that is just biology' or 'that is just culture', refuse the 'just'. She thinks both reductions are bad philosophy of the same human animal. The refusal is not a compromise. It is the argument of Beast and Man.
A mindset reading
Animals, including us, have repertoires, needs, and forms of life that reason has to understand rather than deny. The sentence is a thesis, not a cute kinship with pets, though she would not sneer at the pets either.
Understand the philosophy
Beast and Man (1978) argues with behaviourism, with a Sartrean denial of human nature, and with crude sociobiology at once. Her later work on science and myth grows from the same refusal of one-storey pictures of the person.
- self
- ethics
- knowledge
FAQ
What does it mean?
We are not just rather like animals. We are animals. Culture, reason, and morality do not sit on top of a beast that is not us. They are part of what this animal does. A rival reading, blank-slate and also a crude biological one, wants a one-storey picture: either the animal is an excuse, or culture is the whole truth and the body is an embarrassment. She argues with both. Being an animal is not an insult in this book and not a permission slip. The short sentence is the familiar form of the thesis.
Did Mary Midgley really say this?
Summary. Summary, not a sentence she published as a motto. The card restates the thesis of Beast and Man. The six-word form may be a mild compression of the argument. It is not a page-faithful extract.
Which work is it in?
Beast and Man (1978), the claim as she presses it Approximate date: 1978.