“Descartes never saw an ape”. Classes in anthropogenesis, or the difference between human and animal.

general courses

Linnaeus: Cartesius certe non vidit simiasi (“Descartes certainly never saw an ape”). Linnaeus, author of contemporary scientific taxonomy, liked apes and monkeys. He probably saw them in Amsterdam, a city famous for its exotic animal trade at the time. Upon returning to Sweden, as the first physician at the royal court, he founded a small zoological garden in Uppsala where he gathered many ape and monkey species. They say that Linnaeus had a special fondness for a vervet monkey called Diana. Theologians claimed that monkeys, like other bruta, differed from humans in not having souls. Linnaeus disagreed with the theologians, and also with Descartes when he claimed animals were just automata mechanica. On the margins of Systema naturae he wrote the following note: Cartesius certe non vidit simiasi (“Descartes certainly never saw an ape”).

In his treatise Menniskans cousiner (Man’s Cousins) Linnaeus explained just how hard it was to determine a sensible difference between apes and people even though he knew that from a moral and religious viewpoint it was very easy to tell a human from a beast: “Man is an animal that the creator has decided to endow with extraordinary intelligence and to recognize him as the chosen one, reserving a nobler existence for him. God even sent his only Son to earth for man’s salvation”. But that is another matter: “In my laboratory I have to behave like a shoemaker at his last, treating man and his body like a naturalist who cannot distinguish him from the apes otherwise than by the fact that the apes have intervals between the canines and the other teeth” (Carl von Linné, Menniskans Cousiner, ed. Telemak Fredbär, Uppsala 1955, Ekenäs, s. Carl von Linné, Systema naturae, sive, Regna tria naturae systematice & species, Haak 1735, Lugduni Baravorum, p. 4). In Systema naturae Linnaeus placed Homo among living beings called Anthropomorpha, and from the tenth edition of 1758 - among the Primates. Homo was there with Simia, Lemur and Vespertilioi (the bat).

Linnaeus’ classification caused an uproar but - as Giorgio Agamben points out - similar ideas had long been in the air. Back in 1693, John Ray defined the four-legged animals from the Anthropomorpha group as “resembling people”. In the 17th and 18th centuries the boundaries of humanity were much more fluid than in the 19th century. Until the 18th century, speech was not considered solely a human thing, because many scientists thought birds could talk, too. John Locke told a story about the Prince of Nassau’s parrot which could hold a conversation and reply to questions “like a rational being”. In physical terms, distinguishing humans from other animals was also a problem, and in addition 18th-century scientists thought that animal-anthropoid and human-animoid beings existed in nature. For example, the serious and respected Peter Artedi wrote Ichthyologie (1738) in which next to seals and sea wolves, he mentioned mermaids. Linnaeus did a similar thing: his Pan Europaeus lists a mermaid, which Danish anatomist Caspar Bartholin called Homo marinus, among humans and apes.

The first description of an orangutan was written in 1641 by the physician Nicolas Turp, who highlighted the human aspects of the creature called Homo silvestris (the Latin name corresponds exactly to the Malayan name of this ape: orang-utan). In 1699 Edward Tyson published his treatise Orang-outang, sive Homo silvestris or the anatomy of a Pygmie in which, based on comparative anatomy studies, he finally described the difference between human and ape, or rather, he found an intermediate creature, the Pygmy, who differed anatomically by 48 characteristics from humans and by 34 from apes and monkeys. The Pygmy is an “intermediate animal” between ape and human. The difference between Pygmies and humans is like the difference between humans and angels. Tyson wrote the following dedication on the copy of his work offered to Lord Falconer: “The animal of which I have given the anatomy coming nearest to mankind; seems the nexus of the animal and the rational, as Your Lordship, and those of your high rank and order for knowledge and wisdom, approaching nearest to that kind of beings which is next above us”. It is worth quoting the full title of Tyson’s treatise to see how close and dangerous were humans’ relations not only with real animals but also those from the fantasy world: Orang-Outang, sive Homo silvestris, or the Anatomy of a Pygmie compared with a Monkey, an Ape and a Man, to which is added a Philological Essay concerning the Cynocephali, the Satyrs and Sphinges of the Ancients, where it will appear that they are either Apes or Monkeys and not Men, as formerly pretended.

According to Agamben, Linnaeus’ genius was not that he placed humans among the primates but that he ironically did not add any specific identifying characteristic to the word Homo. It was not until the tenth edition that next to Homo Linnaeus placed the word sapiens. The irony is that in Linnaeus’ taxonomy, humans are the only creatures distinguished not by given characteristics but by possible ones. Homo has no characteristics setting him apart fundamentally and clearly from other animals, but is a kind of challenge to himself to begin distinguishing himself from animals, in accordance with the old saying: nosce te ipsum. The Introitus that opens the Systema leaves no doubt: humans have no special identity, they differ from other animals in their ability to recognize themselves. But this classification of humans among other creatures, not by a specific quality but by means of “self-knowledge” which is possible to obtain though not obvious or certain, means that he will be a human who recognizes himself as human; humans are animals that have to recognize themselves as human to be human. Linnaeus wrote that upon birth nature throws man “bare on the bare ground” as a baby, unable to know, walk, or feed itself, unless it is taught these skills: Nudus in nuda terra [...] cui scire nihil sine doctrina; non fari, non ingredi, non vesci, non aliud naturae sponte. Humans become humans only if they raise themselves: o quam contempta res st homo; nisi supra humana se erexerit (p. 6).

In a letter to Johann Georg Gmelin, who thought Linnaeus’ work made humans out to have been created in the image of the ape, the great naturalist wrote: “And yet man recognizes himself. … I would ask you and the entire world to show me a generic difference between ape and man that would be consistent with the principles of natural history. I do not know of any” (Johann Georg Gmelin, Reliquiae quae supersunt commercii epistolici cum Carolo Linnaeo, Alberto Hallero, Guilielmo Stellero et al..., ed. Theodor Plieninger, Academia Scientarum Caesarea Petropolitana, Stuttgartiae 1861, p. 55). The notes for a reply to Theodor Klein show just how ironically Linnaeus treated the term Homo sapiens: those who, like Klein, do not recognize themselves in the position that Systema assigns to man should apply the nosce te ipsum principle to themselves.

Homo sapiens is thus neither a substance nor a clearly defined species: a human is more like a machine or kaleidoscope that recognizes humans as humans. This machine is an optical one, as described by Hobbes in Leviathan, forming a system of mirrors in which the human face gains inevitably ape-like qualities in successive reflections. Homo is an “anthropomorphous” animal, an animal resembling man - the term Linnaeus used in Systema up to the tenth edition - which to become human has to recognize itself, identify itself in relation to the non-human.

In Mediaeval iconography an ape often holds a mirror in which the sinner sees himself as the simia dei. In Linnaeus’ ironic machine, whoever refuses to recognize himself as an ape, becomes one.

Giorgio Agamben, Sans rang (Without Rank): Humanism is an anthropological machine driven by irony. This machine reveals that Homo does not have a nature of his own, but remains suspended between a celestial and terrestrial nature, between animal and human, which means he is always less and more than himself. Pico della Mirandola wrote the oration De hominis dignitate. Translating this as “On human dignity” is wrong. The word dignitate here means “place” or “rank”. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola claims that man was created after all other models had been used up: iam plena omnia [scil. archetypa]; omnia summis, mediis infimisque ordinibus fuerat distributa. Man was created from leftovers, from mud, by accident, casually, any old how, he does not have “his own place” – nec nullum peculiare (Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oratio/Discorso. Ed. Saverio Marchignoli, in: Cesare Bori, Pluralità delle vie. Alle origini del Discorso sulla dignità umana di Pico della Mirandola, Milano 2000, Feltrinelli, p. 102). Because there was no proper model left for the creation of man (indiscreatae opus imaginis), man does not even have his own proper face (nec propriam faciem). Man shapes his face or his face is shaped in bestial or divine form, to be like lower or higher things (tui ipsius quasi arbitrarius honorariusque plastes et fictor, in quam malueris tute formam effingas. Poteris in inferiora quae sunt bruta degenerare; poteris in superiora quae sunt divina ex tui animi sententia regenerari). Speaking of the absence of a human face, Pico della Mirandola - says Giorgio Agamben - set in motion the “ironic machine” that Linnaeus used three centuries later when he placed humans among the anthropomorpha, among animals “resembling man”. Homo has neither special essence nor vocation, so he is constitutively non-human, his “nature” and his “face” can be made, sculpted, self-destroyed or overcome (nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina indidit Pater). Inconsistent and unclassifiable, man is worthy of (ironic) admiration. Who would not admire this chameleon? (Qui hunc nostrum chamaeleonta non admiretur?) Renaissance humanists discovered that the essence of humanity consisted in the absence of that essence as something ready-made and given. Man has not been given rank, he has no place of his own that would be determined and guaranteed. Man becomes human when he enters a passage. Linnaeus’ irony manifested itself especially strongly when next to Homo sapiens he placed the mysterious being called Homo ferus (wild man). This creature does not have the skills of the primates: it is tetrapus (walking on all fours), mutus (cannot speak), hirsutus (covered in hair). In the 1758 edition of Systema, Linnaeus wrote that Homo ferus included wild children or wolf-children whose appearance had been recorded without a doubt in the course of less than 15 years. The girl from Overissel in The Netherlands (puella transisalana) was seen in 1717, two boys from the Pyrenees (pueri pyrenaici) were seen in 1719, the girl from Champagne (puella campanica) - in 1731. 18th-century scientists tried passionately to humanize these uncertain and mysterious beings, recognizing them as being very similar to themselves. In Lord Monboldo’s preface to the English translation of Madame Hecquet’s Histoire d'une jeune fille sauvage, trouvée dans le bois à l'âge de dix ans, Paris 1755, s.i e., we read that the scholars knew very well that reason and animal sensation ran into one another in such an inexplicable and intangible way that it was harder to define the boundary between them than it was to mark the line dividing man and animals from plants. The features of the human face seemed unsure and unclear. They appeared and disappeared, replaced by others equally transient.

1.Giorgio Agamben, L’Ouvert. De l’homme et de l’animal, Paris 2002.

2. Giorgio Agamben, Valeria Piazza, L’ombre de l’amour. Le concept d’amour chez Heidegger, Paris 2003.

3. André Pichot, Histoire de la notion de vie, Paris 1993.

4. Karl Kerényi, „Dionizos. Archetyp życia niezniszczalnego”. Przeł. Ireneusz Kania, Kraków 1997.

5. Leszek Kolankiewicz, „Dziady. Teatr święta zmarłych”, Gdańsk 1997.

6. Michel Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France. 1978-1979, Paris 2004.

The ability to think and to understand elementary categories from “human science”.

An essay based on the classes, individual conversations with the students.