The Jewish-American working class
consists of Jewish Americans who have a working-class socioeconomic
status within the American class structure. American Jews were
predominantly working-class and often working poor
for much of American history, particularly between 1880 and the 1930s.
During this period, Ashkenazi Eastern European Jewish immigrants
constituted the majority of the Jewish-American working class. By the
mid-1950s, the Jewish-American community had become predominantly middle
class. Stereotypes commonly depict American Jews as fundamentally
upwardly mobile and middle class to upper class. Despite the "imagined
norm" that American Jews are "middle-class, white, straight Ashkenazi",
many Jewish Americans are working class and around 15% of American Jews
live in poverty.
History
1700s
In 1784, the Hebrew Benevolent Society was founded by Jews in Charleston, South Carolina
to aid ill Jewish immigrants, expanding their mission in 1824 to the
Jewish poor of the city. The Society helped poor Jews bury their dead,
acquire heating fuel, and buy matzah for Passover.
1800s and 1900s
Historically, German Jews in the United States were more affluent on average than Eastern European Jews. Between 1880 and 1924, prior to the passage of the anti-immigrant and antisemitic Immigration Act of 1924, two and a half million Jews immigrated to the United States. Many settled in New York City, especially on the Lower East Side.
Radical Jewish immigrants, particularly anarchists, socialists and
communists, were active in creating the Jewish American labor movement.
The Jewish labor movement also shaped the lives of working-class Jewish
communities in cities such as Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and
Philadelphia.
In Baltimore
during the late 1800s and early 1900s, class divisions within the
Ashkenazi Jewish community were often correlated with national
background. In comparison to the wealthier and assimilated German Jews
who had immigrated earlier, Russian Jews were largely poor immigrants
who lived in slums with other Russians.
The German-Russian divide among Baltimore's Jewry existed for at least a
century and caused many Russian Jews to initially associate more with
the Russian community than the wider Jewish community. Baltimore's
Russian and Russian-Jewish community was originally centered in
Southeast Baltimore.
By the 1920s, the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles
was a predominantly working-class and lower-middle-class Jewish
community. Jewish immigrants had begun to settle in Boyle Heights around
1900. It was known as the Lower East Side of LA, as many Orthodox
Jewish Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Russia settled in the
neighborhood. The Boyle Heights Jewish community featured "a vibrant, pre-World War II, Yiddish-speaking community, replete with small shops along Brooklyn Avenue, union halls, synagogues and hyperactive politics ... shaped by the enduring influence of the Socialist and Communist parties." Assimilated middle-class Jews, many of whom were Reform, tended to live in another neighborhood that was located west of downtown Los Angeles. Beginning in the 1940s, Mexican Americans began to settle in Boyle Heights, leading to white flight as white working-class Jews began to move outside of the neighborhood.
By 1955, American Jews of Eastern European descent were perceived
as "fundamentally middle class", having attained a similar
socioeconomic status to the German Jews before them. The post-war period
is often regarded as a "golden age" for American Jews, as many
previously working-class Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern European
backgrounds were able to move up the economic ladder into the middle
class.
In the 1970s and 1980s, tens of thousands of working-class Jews,
many of whom were from New York or who were Holocaust survivors, settled
in the South Beach neighborhood of Miami Beach, Florida.
South Beach was known as the "shtetl by the bay" and had a thriving
working-class Yiddish culture. As developers poured money into South
Beach, the neighborhood rapidly gentrified, displacing many of the
elderly and working-class Jews who lived there.
21st-century Jewish working-class
Contemporary poverty is common among Orthodox Jews, particularly within Haredi and Hasidic
communities, as well as among Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants from
the former Soviet Union, Jewish senior citizens, disabled Jews, and
Holocaust survivors.
45% of Hasidic families in New York City live in poverty or
near-poverty. During the 2000s and early 2010s, the poverty rate had
doubled among Jewish New Yorkers. Brooklyn has been called "the capital
of Jewish poverty in North America". Between 1991 and 2011, the numbers
of impoverished Jewish households increased from 70,000 to 130,000.
The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, founded in 1972, provides services to impoverished Jewish New Yorkers. Masbia, a network of kosher soup kitchens, provides food for poor and homeless Jews throughout the city.
By 2007, while poverty still existed among Orthodox Jews in South Florida,
poverty was lesser than it was historically. While South Florida's
Orthodox community were once primarily working-class first generation
immigrants, many Orthodox Jews have become college educated and work
professional jobs, particularly among Centrist and Modern Orthodox Jews.
While upward mobility has been common throughout the Jewish community
of South Florida, Orthodox Jews have had to face obstacles such as the
cost of a Jewish education and the restrictions of being Shomer Shabbat, such as not working during Shabbat.
During the early 2000s and 2010s, the gentrification of Brooklyn greatly affected working-class Hasidim. Working-class Satmar
residents suffered due to increasing rents, overcrowding, and
displacement. Working-class Satmar and Hasidic community activists
created HaVaad leHatsolos Vioyamsburg (Committee to Save Williamsburg),
which objected to the presence of what they called the "artistn" (Yiddish for "artists") - the predominantly white, young, upper-middle class hipsters
and artists living in Williamsburg. The committee recommended
boycotting and shunning the hipster "artistn". Satmar leaders regarded
the hipsters as morally bankrupt and economically disruptive, and
worried that Hasidic youths would relate more to the hipsters than to
working-class African-Americans and Puerto Ricans living in the
neighborhood.
During
the late 1800s and early 1900s, most working-class and lower-middle
class Jewish immigrants did not support the Zionist movement, according
to Middle Eastern studies professor Zachary Lockman of New York University. Benjamin Balthaser, associate professor of multiethnic literature at Indiana University South Bend, has claimed that the Zionist movement has a "distinct class character", writing that working-class Jewish communists historically opposed Zionism as a right-wing form of bourgeois nationalism.
Some commentators have claimed that Bernie Sanders,
raised in a working-class Jewish community in Brooklyn, embodies a
political strain that is influenced by the historical legacy of secular
working-class Jewish-American radicalism in New York City and other
urban centers.
Popular culture
Roseanne Barr,
born into a white working-class Jewish family in Salt Lake City, played
a "nominally half-Jewish, working-class wife and mother" in the popular
sitcom series Roseanne. Although some commentators have mistakenly claimed that Jewishness is not mentioned on the Roseanne show, the "half-Jewish" character Roseanne Conner
is depicting as having a Jewish father. The Jewishness of Roseanne Barr
and her character Roseanne Connor has sometimes been overlooked, a fact
that some commentators have claimed is because of public perceptions
that Jewishness is at odds with being part of the white working class,
in part because of antisemitic stereotypes that depict Jews as wealthy
as well as Jewish self-representations of Jews as being middle class.
In The Nanny, Fran Drescher played Fran Fine, a working-class Jewish woman from Flushing, Queens, who is employed by a wealthy British-American family.
In philosophy, Pascal's mugging is a thought experiment demonstrating a problem in expected utility maximization. A rational agent should choose actions whose outcomes, when weighed by their probability, have higher utility.
But some very unlikely outcomes may have very great utilities, and
these utilities can grow faster than the probability diminishes. Hence
the agent should focus more on vastly improbable cases with implausibly
high rewards; this leads first to counter-intuitive choices, and then to
incoherence as the utility of every choice becomes unbounded.
The name refers to Pascal's Wager, but unlike the wager, it does not require infinite rewards. This sidesteps many objections to the Pascal's Wager dilemma that are based on the nature of infinity.
Problem statement
The term "Pascal's mugging" to refer to this problem was originally coined by Eliezer Yudkowsky in the Less Wrong forum. Philosopher Nick Bostrom later elaborated the thought experiment in the form of a fictional dialogue. Subsequently, other authors published their own sequels to the events of this first dialogue, adopting the same literary style.
In Bostrom's description, Blaise Pascal
is accosted by a mugger who has forgotten their weapon. However, the
mugger proposes a deal: the philosopher gives them his wallet, and in
exchange the mugger will return twice the amount of money tomorrow.
Pascal declines, pointing out that it is unlikely the deal will be
honoured. The mugger then continues naming higher rewards, pointing out
that even if it is just one chance in 1000 that they will be honourable,
it would make sense for Pascal to make a deal for a 2000 times return.
Pascal responds that the probability of that high return is even lower
than one in 1000. The mugger argues back that for any low but strictly
greater than 0 probability of being able to pay back a large amount of
money (or pure utility) there exists a finite amount that makes it
rational to take the bet. In one example, the mugger succeeds by
promising Pascal 1,000 quadrillion happy days of life. Convinced by the argument, Pascal gives the mugger the wallet.
In one of Yudkowsky's examples, the mugger succeeds by saying "give me five dollars, or I'll use my magic powers from outside the Matrix to run a Turing machine that simulates and kills people". Here, the number uses Knuth's up-arrow notation; writing the number out in base 10 would require enormously more writing material than there are atoms in the known universe.
The supposed paradox results from two inconsistent views. On the one side, by multiplying an expected utility calculation, assuming loss of five dollars to be valued at , loss of a life to be valued at , and probability that the mugger is telling the truth at , the solution is to give the money if and only if . Assuming that is higher than , so long as is higher than , which is assumed to be true,
it is considered rational to pay the mugger. On the other side of the
argument, paying the mugger is intuitively irrational due to its
exploitability. If the person being mugged agrees to this sequence of
logic, then they can be exploited repeatedly for all of their money,
resulting in a Dutch-book, which is typically considered irrational. Views on which of these arguments is logically correct differ.
Moreover, in many reasonable-seeming decision systems, Pascal's
mugging causes the expected utility of any action to fail to converge,
as an unlimited chain of successively dire scenarios similar to Pascal's
mugging would need to be factored in.
Some of the arguments concerning this paradox affect not only the
expected utility maximization theory, but may also apply to other
theoretical systems, such as consequentialist ethics, for example.
Consequences and remedies
Philosopher Nick Bostrom
argues that Pascal's mugging, like Pascal's wager, suggests that giving
a superintelligent artificial intelligence a flawed decision theory
could be disastrous. Pascal's mugging may also be relevant when considering low-probability, high-stakes events such as existential risk
or charitable interventions with a low probability of success but
extremely high rewards. Common sense seems to suggest that spending
effort on too unlikely scenarios is irrational.
One advocated remedy might be to only use bounded utility functions: rewards cannot be arbitrarily large. Another approach is to use Bayesian reasoning to (qualitatively) judge the quality of evidence and probability estimates rather than naively calculate expectations.
Other approaches are to penalize the prior probability of hypotheses
that argue that we are in a surprisingly unique position to affect large
numbers of other people who cannot symmetrically affect us, reject providing the probability of a payout first, or abandon quantitative decision procedures in the presence of extremely large risks.
Medieval philosophy is the philosophy that existed through the Middle Ages, the period roughly extending from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century until after the Renaissance in the 13th and 14th centuries. Medieval philosophy, understood as a project of independent philosophical inquiry, began in Baghdad, in the middle of the 8th century, and in France, in the itinerant court of Charlemagne, in the last quarter of the 8th century.It is defined partly by the process of rediscovering the ancient culture developed in Greece and Rome during the Classical period, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate sacred doctrine with secular
learning. This is one of the defining characteristics in this time
period. Understanding God was the focal point of study of the
philosophers at that time, Muslim and Christian alike.
The high medieval Scholastic period was disparagingly treated by the Renaissance humanists, who saw it as a barbaric "middle period" between the Classical age of Greek and Roman culture, and the rebirth or renaissance of Classical culture. Modern historians consider the medieval era to be one of philosophical development, heavily influenced by Christian theology. One of the most notable thinkers of the era, Thomas of Aquinas, never considered himself a philosopher, and criticized philosophers for always "falling short of the true and proper wisdom".
Medieval philosophy places heavy emphasis on the theological. With the possible exceptions of Avicenna and Averroes, medieval thinkers did not consider themselves philosophers at all: for them, the philosophers were the ancient pagan writers such as Plato and Aristotle.
However, their theology used the methods and logical techniques of the
ancient philosophers to address difficult theological questions and
points of doctrine. Thomas Aquinas, following Peter Damian, argued that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology (philosophiaancilla theologiae).
Despite this view of philosophy as the servant of theology, this did
not prevent the medievals from developing original and innovative
philosophies against the backdrop of their theological projects. For
instance, such thinkers as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas of Aquinas made monumental breakthroughs in the philosophy of temporality and metaphysics, respectively.
The principles that underlie all the medieval philosophers' work are:
The use of logic, dialectic, and analysis to discover the truth, known as ratio;
Respect for the insights of ancient philosophers, in particular Aristotle, and deference to their authority (auctoritas);
The obligation to co-ordinate the insights of philosophy with theological teaching and revelation (concordia).
One of the most heavily debated things of the period was that of faith versus reason. Avicenna and Averroes both leaned more on the side of reason. Augustine stated that he would never allow his philosophical investigations to go beyond the authority of God.Anselm
attempted to defend against what he saw as partly an assault on faith,
with an approach allowing for both faith and reason. The Augustinian
solution to the faith/reason problem is to first believe, and then
subsequently seek to understand (fides quaerens intellectum). This was the mantra of Christian thinkers, most especially the scholastic philosophers (Albert the Great, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas).
The boundaries of the early medieval period are a matter of controversy. It is generally agreed that it begins with Augustine
(354–430) who strictly belongs to the classical period, and ends with
the lasting revival of learning in the late eleventh century, at the
beginning of the high medieval period.
After the collapse of the Roman empire, Western Europe lapsed into the so-called Dark Ages. Monasteries were among the limited number of focal points of formal academic learning, which might be presumed to be a result of a rule of St Benedict's in 525, which required monks to read the Bible daily, and his suggestion that at the beginning of Lent, a book be given to each monk. In later periods, monks were used for training administrators and churchmen.
Early Christian thought, in particular in the patristic
period, tends to be intuitional and mystical, and is less reliant on
reason and logical argument. It also places more emphasis on the
sometimes-mystical doctrines of Plato, and less upon the systematic
thinking of Aristotle. Much of the work of Aristotle was unknown in the West in this period. Scholars relied on translations by Boethius into Latin of Aristotle's Categories, the logical work On Interpretation, and his Latin translation of Porphyry's Isagoge, a commentary on Aristotle's Categories.
Two Roman philosophers had a great influence on the development of medieval philosophy: Augustine and Boethius. Augustine is regarded as the greatest of the Church Fathers.
He is primarily a theologian and a devotional writer, but much of his
writing is philosophical. His thoughts revolve around on truth, God, the human soul, nature of sin,
and salvation. For over a thousand years, there was hardly a Latin work
of theology or philosophy that did not quote his writing, or invoke his
authority. Some of his writing had an influence on the development of early modern philosophy, such as that of Descartes; Augustine stated that if I err therefore I exist (Si fallor, sum), which is identical to the cogito of Descartes. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
(480 c.–524) was a Christian philosopher born in Rome to an ancient and
influential family. He became consul in 510 in the kingdom of the Ostrogoths. His influence on the early medieval period was also marked (so much so that it is sometimes called the Boethian period). He intended to translate all the works of Aristotle and Plato from the original Greek into Latin, and translated many of Aristotle's logical works, such as On Interpretation, and the Categories. He wrote commentaries on these works, and on the Isagoge by Porphyry (a commentary on the Categories). This introduced the problem of universals to the medieval world.
The first significant renewal of learning in the West came when Charlemagne, advised by Candidus, Peter of Pisa and Alcuin of York,
attracted the scholars of England and Ireland, and by imperial decree
in 787 AD established schools in every abbey in his empire. These
schools, from which the name Scholasticism is derived, became centres of medieval learning.
Johannes Scotus Eriugena (c. 815 – 877), successor of Alcuin of York as head of the Palace School, was an Irishtheologian and Neoplatonicphilosopher. He is notable for having translated and made commentaries upon the work of Pseudo-Dionysius, initially thought to be from the apostolic age.
Around this period several doctrinal controversies emerged, such as
the question of whether God had predestined some for salvation and some
for damnation. Eriugena was called in to settle this dispute. At the
same time, Paschasius Radbertus raised an important question about the real presence of Christ at the Eucharist. Is the host
the same as Christ's historical body? How can it be present at many
places and many times? Radbertus argued that Christ's real body is
present, veiled by the appearance of bread and wine, and is present at
all places and all times, by means of God's incomprehensible power.
This period also witnessed a revival of scholarship. At Fleury, Theodulphus, bishop of Orléans, established a school for young noblemen recommended there by Charlemagne. By the mid-ninth century, its library was one of the most comprehensive ever assembled in the West, and scholars such as Lupus of Ferrières (d. 862) traveled there to consult its texts. Later, under St. Abbo of Fleury (abbot 988–1004), head of the reformed abbey school, Fleury enjoyed a second golden age.
Remigius of Auxerre, at the beginning of the tenth century, produced glosses or commentaries on the classical texts of Donatus, Priscian, Boethius, and Martianus Capella.
The Carolingian period was followed by a small dark age that was
followed by a lasting revival of learning in the eleventh century, which
owed much to the rediscovery of Greek thought from Arabic translations and Muslim contributions such as Avicenna's On the soul.
High Middle Ages
The
period from the middle of the eleventh century to the middle of the
fourteenth century is known as the 'High medieval' or 'scholastic'
period. It is generally agreed to begin with Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) an Italianphilosopher, theologian, and church official who is famous as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God.
Plato, Seneca, and Aristotle from Devotional and Philosophical Writings, c. 1330
The 13th and early 14th centuries are generally regarded as the high period of scholasticism.
The early 13th century witnessed the culmination of the recovery of
Greek philosophy. Schools of translation grew up in Italy and Sicily,
and eventually in the rest of Europe. Scholars such as Adelard of Bath
travelled to Sicily and the Arab world, translating works on astronomy
and mathematics, including the first complete translation of Euclid's
Elements. Powerful Norman kings gathered men of knowledge from Italy and other areas into their courts as a sign of their prestige. William of Moerbeke's
translations and editions of Greek philosophical texts in the middle
half of the thirteenth century helped in forming a clearer picture of
Greek philosophy, and in particular of Aristotle, than was given by the
Arabic versions they had previously relied on, which had distorted or
obscured the relation between Platonic and Aristotelian systems of
philosophy. Moerbeke's work formed the basis of the major commentaries that followed.
The universities
developed in the large cities of Europe during this period, and rival
clerical orders within the Church began to battle for political and
intellectual control over these centers of educational life. The two
main orders founded in this period were the Franciscans and the Dominicans. The Franciscans were founded by Francis of Assisi in 1209. Their leader in the middle of the century was Bonaventure, a traditionalist who defended the theology of Augustine and the philosophy of Plato, incorporating only a little of Aristotle in with the more neoplatonist elements.
Following Anselm, Bonaventure supposed that reason can discover truth
only when philosophy is illuminated by religious faith. Other important
Franciscan writers were Duns Scotus, Peter Auriol, and William of Ockham.
By contrast, the Dominican order, founded by St Dominic
in 1215 placed more emphasis on the use of reason and made extensive
use of the new Aristotelian sources derived from the East, and Moorish
Spain. The great representatives of Dominican thinking in this period
were Albertus Magnus and (especially) Thomas Aquinas,
whose artful synthesis of Greek rationalism and Christian doctrine
eventually came to define Catholic philosophy. Aquinas placed more
emphasis on reason and argumentation, and was one of the first to use
the new translation of Aristotle's metaphysical and epistemological
writing. This was a significant departure from the Neoplatonic
and Augustinian thinking that had dominated much of early
Scholasticism. Aquinas showed how it was possible to incorporate much
of the philosophy of Aristotle without falling into the "errors" of the
Commentator Averroes, though Averroes was influential in the development of Aquinas' philosophy, particularly on metaphysics.
At the start of the 20th century, historian and philosopher Martin Grabmann
was the first scholar to work out the outlines of the ongoing
development of thought in scholasticism and to see in Thomas Aquinas a
response and development of thought rather than a single, coherently
emerged and organic whole. Although Grabmann's works in German are
numerous, only Thomas Aquinas (1928) is available in English.
However, Grabmann's thought was instrumental in the whole modern
understanding of scholasticism and the pivotal role of Aquinas.
Topics
All the
main branches of philosophy today were once a part of Medieval
philosophy. Medieval philosophy also included most of the areas
originally established by the pagan philosophers of antiquity, in
particular Aristotle. However, the discipline now called Philosophy of religion
was, it is presumed, a unique development of the Medieval era, and many
of the problems that define the subject first took shape in the Middle
Ages, in forms that are still recognisable today.
Theology
Medieval philosophy is characteristically theological. Subjects discussed in this period include:
The problem of the compatibility of the divine attributes: How
are the attributes traditionally ascribed to the Supreme Being, such as
unlimited power, knowledge of all things, infinite goodness, existence
outside time, immateriality, and so on, logically consistent with one
another?
The problem of evil:
The classical philosophers had speculated on the nature of evil, but
the problem of how an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God could create
a system of things in which evil exists first arose in the medieval
period.
The problem of free will:
A similar problem was to explain how 'divine foreknowledge' – God's
knowledge of what will happen in the future – is compatible with our
belief in our own free will.
Questions regarding the immortality of the intellect, the unity or
non-unity between the soul and the intellect, and the consequent
intellectual basis for believing in the immortality of the soul.
The question of whether there can be substances which are non-material, for example, angels.
Metaphysics
Book 7 of the Metaphysics: Ens dicitur multipliciter – the word 'being' is predicated in many ways
After the 'rediscovery' of Aristotle's Metaphysics in the mid-twelfth century, many scholastics wrote commentaries on this work (in particular Aquinas and Scotus). The problem of universals was one of the main problems engaged during that period. Other subjects included:
Hylomorphism
– development of the Aristotelian doctrine that individual things are a
compound of material and form (the statue is a compound of granite, and
the form sculpted into it)
Causality – Discussion of causality consisted mostly of commentaries on Aristotle, mainly the Physics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption.
The approach to this subject area was uniquely medieval, the rational
investigation of the universe being viewed as a way of approaching God.
Duns Scotus' proof of the existence of God is based on the notion of
causality.
Individuation.
The problem of individuation is to explain how we individuate or
numerically distinguish the members of any kind for which it is given.
The problem arose when it was required to explain how individual angels
of the same species differ from one another. Angels are immaterial,
and their numerical difference cannot be explained by the different
matter they are made of. The main contributors to this discussion were Aquinas and Scotus.
Natural philosophy
In natural philosophy and the philosophy of science,
medieval philosophers were mainly influenced by Aristotle. However,
from the fourteenth century onward, the increasing use of mathematical
reasoning in natural philosophy prepared the way for the rise of science
in the early modern
period. The more mathematical reasoning techniques of William
Heytesbury and William of Ockham are indicative of this trend. Other
contributors to natural philosophy are Albert of Saxony, John Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt. See also the article on the Continuity thesis,
the hypothesis that there was no radical discontinuity between the
intellectual development of the Middle Ages and the developments in the
Renaissance and early modern period.
Medieval philosophy of mind is based on Aristotle's De Anima,
another work discovered in the Latin West in the twelfth century. It
was regarded as a branch of the philosophy of nature. Some of the topics
discussed in this area include:
Divine illumination – The doctrine of Divine illumination was an alternative to naturalism.
It holds that humans need a special assistance from God in their
ordinary thinking. The doctrine is most closely associated with Augustine and his scholastic followers. It reappeared in a different form in the early modern era.
theories of demonstration
mental representation – The idea that mental states have 'intentionality'; i.e., despite being a state of the mind, they are able to represent things outside the mind
is intrinsic to the modern philosophy of mind. It has its origins in
medieval philosophy. (The word 'intentionality' was revived by Franz Brentano, who was intending to reflect medieval usage).
Ockham is well known for his theory that language signifies mental
states primarily by convention, real things secondarily, whereas the
corresponding mental states signify real things of themselves and
necessarily.
Abu Nasr al-Farabi
is well known in the world of medieval Islamic philosophy and ethics
for his distinct approach to writing. Deviating from the traditional
path of philosophical documentation, al-Farabi wrote in a simplistic
manner. There is little immediate intricacy to be observed in his work.
In addition to this, al-Farabi wrote in a narrative style. As opposed to
listing theories, he told a story with subtle and implicit themes of
original ethical concepts.
Contributions:
In his narrative pieces, al-Farabi discussed ethical and
philosophical theories with reference to politics, leadership, morals,
faith, and civics. Notable works of his include The Attainment of
Happiness, in which al-Farabi reasons that conceptions of political
science and religion must be built on a foundational understanding of
the universe. He advocates that one must first construct notions in
relation to universal matters to form just opinions in regard to
political philosophy and religion. These two subjects are significant
focal points in his work. Much of his writing is deliberated on his
perceived conceptions of the juxtaposition and interaction of the
aforementioned topics such as his claim that both political and
religious figures rest in the same classification as adjacent to a
fundamental comprehension of the universe.
In this 19th-century piece by Edward Burne-Jones, the human woman Psyche receives affection from the hybrid deity Pan.
A human–animal hybrid and animal–human hybrid is an organism that incorporates elements from both humans and non-human animals. Technically, in a human–animal hybrid,
each cell has both human and non-human genetic material. It is in
contrast to an individual where some cells are human and some are
derived from a different organism, called a human-animal chimera.
Examples of human–animal hybrids mainly include humanized mice that have been genetically modified by xenotransplantation of human genes. Humanized mice are commonly used as small animal models in biological and medical research for human therapeutics.
Human-animal hybrids are the subject of legal, moral, and technological debate in the context of recent advances in genetic engineering.
Defined by the magazine H+
as "genetic alterations that are blendings [sic] of animal and human
forms", such hybrids may be referred by other names occasionally such as
"para-humans". They may additionally may be called "humanized animals". Technically speaking, they are also related to "cybrids" (cytoplasmic hybrids), with "cybrid" cells featuring foreign human nuclei inside of them being a topic of interest. Possibly, a real-world human-animal hybrid may be an entity formed from either a human egg fertilized by a nonhuman sperm or a nonhuman egg fertilized by a human sperm.
Artificially created human-animal hybrids include humanized mice that have been xenotransplanted with human gene products, so as to be utilized for gaining relevant insights in the in vivo context for understanding of human-specific physiology and pathologies.
Humanized mice are commonly used as small animal models in biological
and medical research for human therapeutics including infectious
diseases and cancer. For example, genetically modified mice may be born with human leukocyte antigen genes in order to provide a more realistic environment when introducing human white blood cells into them in order to study immune system responses.
Advances in genetic engineering have generally caused a large number of debates and discussions in the fields related to bioethics,
including research relating to the creation of human-animal hybrids.
Although the two topics are not strictly related, the debates involving
the creation of human-animal hybrids have paralleled that of the debates
around the stem-cell research controversy.
The question of what line exists between a "human" being and a
"non-human" being has been a difficult one for many researchers to
answer. While animals having one percent or less of their cells
originally coming from humans may clearly appear to be in the same boat
as other animals, no consensus exists on how to think about beings in a
genetic middle ground that have something like an even mix. "I don't
think anyone knows in terms of crude percentages how to differentiate
between humans and nonhumans," U.S. patent office official John Doll has stated.
Critics of increased government restrictions include scientists such as
Dr. Douglas Kniss, head of the Laboratory of Perinatal Research at Ohio State University,
who has remarked that formal laws aren't the best option since the
"notion of animal-human hybrids is very complex." He's also argued that
their creation is inherent "not the kind of thing we support" in his
kind of research since scientists should "want to respect human life".
In contrast, notable socio-economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin
has expressed opposition to research that creates beings crossing
species boundaries, arguing that it interferes with the fundamental
'right to exist' possessed by each animal species. "One doesn't have to
be religious or into animal rights to think this doesn't make sense," he
has argued when expressing support for anti-chimera and anti-hybrid
legislation. As well, William Cheshire, associate professor of neurology
at the Mayo Clinic's
Florida branch, has called the issue "unexplored biologic territory"
and advocated for a "moral threshold of human neural development" to
restrict the destroying a human embryo to obtain cell material and/or
the creation of an organism that's partly human and partly animal." He
has said, "We must be cautious not to violate the integrity of humanity
or of animal life over which we have a stewardship responsibility".
Legality
While laws against the creation of hybrid beings have been proposed in U.S. states and in the U.S. Congress,
several scientists have argued that legal barriers might go too far and
prohibit medically beneficial studies into human modification.
In terms of scientific ethics,
restrictions on the creation of human–animal hybrids have proved a
controversial matter in multiple countries. While the state of Arizona banned the practice altogether in 2010, a proposal on the subject that sparked some interest in the United States Senate
from 2011 to 2012 ended up going nowhere. Although the two concepts are
not strictly related, discussions of experimentation into blended human
and animal creatures has paralleled the discussions around embryonic stem-cell research (the 'stem cell controversy'). The creation of genetically modified organisms
for a multitude of purposes has taken place in the modern world for
decades, examples being specifically designed foodstuffs made to have
features such as higher crop yields through better disease resistance.
President George W. Bush brought up the topic in his 2006 State of the Union Address,
in which he called for the prohibition of "human cloning in all its
forms", "creating or implanting embryos for experiments", "creating human-animal hybrids",
and also "buying, selling, or patenting human embryos". He argued, "A
hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut
ethical corners and that recognize the matchless value of every life."
He also stated that humanity "should never be discarded, devalued or put
up for sale."
A 2005 appropriations bill passed by the U.S. Congress and signed
into law by President Bush contained specific wording forbidding any
patents on humans or human embryos. In terms of outright bans on hybrid research in the first place, a measure came up in the 110th Congress entitled the Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act of 2008. Congressman Chris Smith (R, NJ-4)
introduced it on April 24, 2008. The text of the proposed act stated
that "human dignity and the integrity of the human species are
compromised" if such hybrids exist and set up the punishment of
imprisonment for up to ten years as well as a fine of over one million
dollars. Though attracting support from many co-sponsors such as then RepresentativesMary Fallin, Duncan Hunter, Joseph R. Pitts, and Rick Renzi among others, the Act failed to get through Congress.
A related proposal had come up in the U.S. Senate the prior year, the Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act of 2007, and it also had failed. That effort was proposed by then-Senator Sam Brownback (R, KS)
on November 15, 2007. Featuring the same language as the later measure
in the House, its bipartisan group of cosponsors included then Senators Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, and Mary Landrieu.
A localized measure designed to ban the creation of hybrid entities came up in the state of Arizona in 2010. The proposal was signed into law by then GovernorJan Brewer. Its sponsor stated that it was needed to clarify important "ethical boundaries" in research.
For thousands of years, these hybrids have been one of the most common themes in storytelling
about animals throughout the world. The lack of a strong divide between
humanity and animal nature in multiple traditional and ancient cultures
has provided the underlying historical context for the popularity of
tales where humans and animals have mingling relationships, such as in
which one turns into the other or in which some mixed being goes through
a journey. Interspecies friendships
within the animal kingdom, as well as between humans and their pets,
additionally provides an underlying root for the popularity of such
beings.
In various mythologies throughout history, many particularly
famous hybrids have existed, including as a part of Egyptian and Indian
spirituality. The entities have also been characters in fictional media more recently in history such as in H. G. Wells' work The Island of Doctor Moreau, adapted into the popular 1932 filmIsland of Lost Souls.
In legendary terms, the hybrids have played varying roles from that of
trickster and/or villain to serving as divine heroes in very different
contexts, depending on the given culture.
For example, Pan is a deity in Greek mythology
that rules over and symbolizes the untamed wild, being worshiped by
hunters, fishermen, and shepherds in particular. The mischievous yet
cheerful character is a Satyr
who has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat while otherwise
being essentially human in appearance, with stories of his encounters
with different gods, humans, and others being retold for centuries on
after the days of early Greece by groups such as the Delphian Society. Specifically, the human-animal hybrid has appeared in acclaimed works of art by figures such as Francis Bacon. Additional famous mythological hybrids include the Egyptian god of death, named Anubis, and the fox-like Japanese beings that are called Kitsune.
Legendary historical and mythological human-animal hybrids
Beings displaying a mixture of human and animal traits while also
having a similarly blended appearance have played a vast and varied role
in multiple traditions around the world.
Artist and scholar Pietro Gaietto has written that "representations of
human-animal hybrids always have their origins in religion". In
"successive traditions they may change in meaning but they still remain
within spiritual culture", Gaietto has argued, when looking back in an evolution-minded point of view. The beings show up in both Greek and Roman mythology, with various elements of ancient Egyptian society ebbing and flowing into those cultures in particular. Prominent examples in ancient Egyptian religion, featuring some of the earliest such hybrid beings, include the canine-like god of death known as Anubis and the lion-like Sphinx. Other instances of these types of characters include figures within both Chinese and Japanese mythology. The observation of interspecies friendships
within the animal kingdom, as well as the bonds existing between humans
and their pets, have been a source of the appeal in such stories.
A prominent hybrid figure that's internationally known is the mythological Greek
figure of Pan. A deity that rules over and symbolizes the untamed wild,
he helps express the inherent beauty of the natural world as the Greeks
saw things. He specifically received reverence by ancient hunters,
fishermen, shepherds, and other groups with a close connection to
nature. Pan is a Satyr who possesses the hindquarters, legs, and horns
of a goat while otherwise being essentially human in appearance; stories
of his encounters with different gods, humans, and others have been a part of popular culture in several different cultures for many years. The human-animal hybrid has appeared in acclaimed works of art by figures such as Francis Bacon, also being mentioned in poetic pieces such as in John Fletcher's writings.
In Chinese mythology, the figure of Chu Pa-chieh
undergoes a personal journey in which he gives up wickedness for
virtue. After causing a disturbance in heaven from his licentious
actions, he is exiled to Earth. By mistake, he enters the womb of a sow
and ends up being born as a half-man/half-pig entity. With the head and
ears of a pig coupled with a human body, his already animal-like sense
of selfishness from his past life remains. Killing and eating his mother as well as devouring his brothers,
he makes his way to a mountain hideout, spending his days preying on
unwary travelers unlucky enough to cross his path. However, the
exhortations of the kind goddessKuan Yin,
journeying in China, persuade him to seek a nobler path, and his life's
journey and the side of goodness proceeds on such that he even is
ordained a priest by the goddess herself. Remarking on the character's role in the religious novel Journey to the West, where the being first appears, professor Victor H. Mair
has commented that "[p]ig-human hybrids represent descent and the
grotesque, a capitulation to the basest appetites" rather than
"self-improvement".
This image depicts a set of Tanuki statues on the side of a Japanese road.
Several hybrid entities have long played a major role in Japanese
media and in traditional beliefs within the country. For example, a
warrior god known as Amida received worship as a part of Japanese mythology
for many years; he possessed a generally humanoid appearance while
having a canine-like head. However, the god's devotional popularity fell
in about the middle of the 19th century. A Tanuki resembles a raccoon dog, but its shape-shifting talents allow it to turn into humans for the purposes of trickery, such as impersonating Buddhistmonks. The fox-like creatures known as Kitsune also possess similar powers, and stories abound of them tricking human men into marriage by turning into seductive women.
"Theriocephaly" (from Greek θηρίον therion 'beast' and κεφαλή kefalí 'head') is the anthropomorphic
condition or quality of having the head of an animal with a body either
mostly or entirely looking human – the term being commonly used to
refer the depiction of deities or otherwise specially able individuals. An entity with such qualities is said to be "theriomorphous". Many of the gods and goddesses worshipped by the ancient Egyptians,
for example, were commonly depicted as being theriocephalic. This
phenomenon partly represented an intermediate step in a longer process
of anthropomorphization of former animal deities. Fe. the goddess Hathor
in her earliest form was depicted as a cow and in her latest
manifestation as a woman with cows ears and sometimes a hairstyle
resembling cows horns. But the form of depiction sometimes depended also
on the aspects of a deity an artist wanted to accentuate (fe. Ba
the aspect of personality of a human soul was depicted as a bird with a
humans head). This can also be seen in the different hieroglyphes that
could be used to write the name of a single deity.
Other notable examples include:
Many prominent pieces of children's literature over the past two centuries have featured humanized animal characters, often as protagonists in the stores. In the opinion of popular educator Lucy Sprague Mitchell,
the appeal of such mythical and fantastic beings comes from how
children desire "direct" language "told in terms of images— visual,
auditory, tactile, muscle images". Another author has remarked that an
"animal costume" provides "a way to emphasize or even exaggerate a
particular characteristic".
The anthropomorphic characters in the seminal works by English writer Beatrix Potter
in particular live an ambiguous situation, having human dress yet
displaying many instinctive animal traits. Writing on the popularity of Peter Rabbit,
a later author commented that in "balancing humanized domesticity
against wild rabbit foraging, Potter subverted parental authority and
its built in hypocrisy" in Potter's child-centered books. Writer Lisa
Fraustino has cited on the subject R.M. Lockley's tongue-in-cheek observation: "Rabbits are so human. Or is it the other way around— humans are so rabbit?"
Writer H. G. Wells created his famous work The Island of Doctor Moreau, featuring a mixture of horror and science fiction elements, to promote the anti-vivisection cause as a part of his long-time advocacy for animal rights.
Wells' story describes a man stuck on an island ruled over by the
titular Dr. Moreau, a morally depraved scientist who has created several
human-animal hybrids referred to as 'Beast Folk' through vivisection
and even by combining parts of other animals for some of the 'Beast
Folk'. The story has been adapted into film several times, with varying
success. The most acclaimed version is the 1932 black-and-white treatment called Island of Lost Souls.
Wells himself wrote that "this story was the response of an imaginative
mind to the reminder that humanity is but animal rough-hewn to a
reasonable shape and in perpetual internal conflict between instinct and
injunction," with the scandals surrounding Oscar Wilde being the impetus for the English writer's treatment of themes such as ethics and psychology. Challenging the Victorian era viewpoints of its time, the 1896 work
presents a complex situation in which enhancing animals into hybrids
involves both terrifying violence and pain as well as appears
essentially futile, given the power of raw instinct. A pessimistic view
towards the ability of human civilization to live by law-abiding, moral standards for long thus follows.
The 1986 horror filmThe Fly features a deformed and monstrous human-animal hybrid, played by actor Jeff Goldblum. His character, scientist Seth Brundle, undergoes a teleportation experiment that goes awry and fuses him at a fundamental genetic level with a common fly
caught besides him. Brundle experiences drastic mutations as a result
that horrify him. Movie critic Gerardo Valero has written that the
famous horror work, "released at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic", "was seen by many as a metaphor for the disease" while also playing on bodily fears about dismemberment and coming apart that human beings inherently share.
The science fiction filmSplice, released 2009, shows scientists mixing together human and animal DNA
in the hopes of advancing medical research at the pharmaceutical
company that they work at. Calamitous results occur when the hybrid
named Dren is born.
The H. P. Lovecraft–inspired movie Dagon, released in 2001, additionally features grotesque hybrid beings. In terms of comic books, examples of fictional human-animal hybrids include the characters in Charles Burns' Black Hole series. In those comics, a set of teenagers in a 1970s era town become afflicted by a bizarre disease; the sexually transmitted affliction mutates them into monstrous forms.
Multiple video games have featured human-animal hybrids as enemies for the protagonist(s) to defeat, including powerful boss characters. For instance, the 2014 survival horror release The Evil Within includes grotesque hybrid beings, looking like the undead,
attacking main character Detective Sebastian Castellanos. With partners
Joseph Oda and Julie Kidman, the protagonist attempts investigate a
multiple homicide at a mental hospital yet discovers a mysterious figure who turns the world around them into a living nightmare, Castellanos having to find the truth about the criminal psychopath.
Heroic character examples of human-animal anthropomorphic characters include the two protagonists of the 2002 movieThe Cat Returns (Japanese title: 猫の恩返し), with the animated film featuring a young girl (named "Haru") being transformed against her will into a feline-human hybrid and fighting a villainous king of the cats with the help of a dashing male cat companion (known as the "Baron") at her side.
With general U.S. popular culture and its various subcultures, the furry fandom consists of individuals interested in a variety of artistic materials, this often featuring "furry art... [that] depicts a human-animal hybrid in everyday life". Specific people involved in creative media will frequently come up with a "fursona"
depicting a version or versions of themselves as a hybrid creature.
This practice functions as an outlet based on "on personal ideas of
self-expression" (self-realization).
The kemonomimi
art style, widely popularized since the latter part of the 20th
century, involves humanoid characters with stylized animal features,
such as this anthropomorphic mouse girl.
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