Different Beasts: Humans and Animals in Spinoza and the Zhuangzi

Different Beasts studies conceptions of human and animal identity as articulated in the ancient Chinese text known as the Zhuangzi and in the works of the seventeenth-century European philosopher Benedict de Spinoza.By examining how, in these very different philosophies, notions of humanness and animality intersect with ideas about human unity and solidarity, social order, and social difference categories (such as gender, descent, and ability), Different Beasts opens new paths for understanding Spinoza and the Zhuangzi while also developing methodological insights into the practice of cross-cultural comparative philosophy.Different Beasts critically engages with a long tradition of reading Spinoza together with Asian "wisdom literatures" and especially with canonical Chinese texts.Interpretations of these works, which are outside the mainstream philosophical canon (defined from a certain Euro-American perspective), often see them as premised on a harmonious view of the world, free of t