Rainer Timme

Rainer Timme studied at the University of Kassel (German philology and philosophy) and received his M.A. in philosophy (2004). He is working as a lecturer in Kassel and began to write his PhD-thesis (Der Vergleich von Menschen und Tieren. Darstellungsmittel und Topos der Philosophie) in 2006.

Two of the main questions of my PhD-thesis concern the relationship of beast and man, treated and represented in philosophy, historically as well as systematically: i) What can we find out about ourselves, when we in-deptly think about the way how we relate beast and man? ii) For what do we use the assumption of the disparity of beast and man in our philosophical discourse? Historically I am tracing relevant places where this comparison has been drawn, with a crucial point of the evolution of leitmotivic comparisons of this sort in Aristotle. All this is to set up a better understanding of the way man and beast are compared nowadays, especially in modern philosophy. Systematicly I am determining the status of remarks from philosophy, anthropology and common sense, e.g.: “In (essential) distinction from other animals, only man possesses reason and is capable of speech.”