Family member or topping? Paradoxes of the human-animal relationship.

“Some we love, some we hate, some we eat” is the title of anthrozoologist Hal Herzog’s famous 2010 work on animal ethics and our paradoxical relationship with animals. In this lecture, we want to look at the dilemmas and paradoxes in our relationship with animals. And thus above all with ourselves, our thinking, our traditions. Do we really still eat animals or have we long since mentally separated these foods from animals? Why does it bother us when a dogmeat festival is celebrated in China while we are turning the steak on the grill? Why do we mourn the giraffe that is fed to lions, while in the next enclosure many goats are fed to tigers? Why do we say “You stupid pig!” even though pigs are highly intelligent?