The Metaphysics of Apes: Negotiating the Animal-Human Boundary - Softcover

Corbey, Raymond H. A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521545331 ISBN 13: 9780521545334

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2005

Synopsis

Tracing the interpretation of the human-like great apes and ape-like earliest ancestors of present-day humans, this study demonstrates how from the days of Linnaeus to the present, the sacred and taboo-ridden animal-human boundary was constantly tested. The unique dignity of humans, a central value in the West, was, and to some extent still is, on the minds of taxonomists, ethnologists, primatologists, and archaeologists. This book thus offers an anthropological analysis of the burgeoning anthropological disciplines in terms of their own cultural taboos and philosophical preconceptions.

About this title

About the Author

Raymond Corbey is Professor of Epistemology and Anthropology at Leiden University and Lecturer in philosophy at Tilburg University, both in the Netherlands. He has published extensively on the history of philosophical, scientific, and colloquial views of humans, animals, evolution, culture and cultural others, as well as on the history and epistemology of anthropology and the formation of ethnographic museums and collections. He is co-director of the research program Thoughtful Hunters? Neanderthal Behavioural and Cognitive Socioecology. He is the co-editor with Wil Roebroeks of Studying Human Animals: Disciplinary History and Epistemology (2001).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521545331
• ISBN 13: 9780521545334
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 238