Transcending Disciplinary Silos: The Integrating role of Philosophy in restoring Animal’s Ontic Continuity

Abstract Body

Content Description

Contemporary academic and societal understandings of non-human animals suffer from severe epistemic fragmentation, partitioned into specialized, non-communicating disciplinary silos. This paper critiques how various disciplines study animals "in boxes," enforcing a violent ontic shearing that strips animals of their subjective continuity. Scientific inquiries reduce animals to experimental subjects optimized for human health and productivity. Economically, animals function as commodities that depreciate over time. Legally, animals are categorized as property; animal welfare laws merely regulate the humane maintenance of what is essentially treated as "industrial equipment." Furthermore, linguistic structures anthropocentrically erase animal identity, transforming living beings into consumer goods like "beef" or "pork."

This research proposes that philosophical intervention is essential to retrieve the animal as a singular, irreducible being whose existential continuity precedes disciplinary division. Utilizing phenomenology and deconstruction, this study reintegrates the animal subject. Phenomenological frameworks emphasize the animal's embodied, situated existence, behavioral agency, and relational being-in-the-world (Heidegger, 1995). Concurrently, post-structuralist deconstruction dismantles the homogenized, violent category of "the animal" to expose how language silences diverse non-human existences (Derrida, 2008).

By synthesizing these frameworks, philosophy dissolves the artificial silos between humans and nonhumans, repositioning animals as active co-constitutors of a shared world rather than passive objects. Ultimately, restoring the animal's ontic continuity transforms our understanding of Being itself, reconnecting the animal to its environment, to other beings, and to the ethical world.

Philosophical Issues Addressed

This work directly addresses three interconnected core issues within contemporary philosophy:

• The Problem of Ontological Reductionism: It critiques the Cartesian mechanistic view permeating modern sciences and economics, which reduces sentient, living subjects to predictable, fragmented objects of utility.
• The Epistemic and Linguistic Violence of the Human-Animal Divide: Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s concept of l'animot, the paper addresses how language constructs a false binary between "human" and "animal." It highlights how this homogenization conceals the infinite, plural realities of diverse living species (Derrida, 2008).
• The Convergence of Ontology and Ethics: The paper tackles the ethical implications of animal vulnerability. Through the phenomenological lens of the "animal gaze," the research explores how reciprocal looking reveals the animal as a vulnerable "Who" rather than a "What" (Levinas, 1988; Derrida, 2002). This shifts animal ethics away from mere utilitarian calculations or patronizing welfare regulations, grounding it instead in an ontological obligation that demands direct, relational human responsibility.

References

• Derrida, J. (2002). The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow). Critical Inquiry, 28(2), 369-418.
• Derrida, J. (2008). The Animal That Therefore I Am. Fordham University Press.
• Heidegger, M. (1995). The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. Indiana University Press.
• Levinas, E. (1988). The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights. Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, 151-153.