Europeans used to put animals on trial as if they were human. This talk tries to figure out what that was all about.

1. Pigs on Trial
"The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there."

3. If an ox gore a man or a woman that they
die, then the ox shall be surely stoned, and
his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner
of the ox shall be quit.
Exodus xxi:2
lex talionis:
“If men fight and hit a pregnant woman and her child is born
prematurely, but there is no serious injury, he will surely be
punished in accordance with what the woman’s husband
demands of him, and he will pay what the court decides. But
if there is serious injury, then you will give a life for a life, eye
for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for
burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
Exodus xxi:22-25

4. What is going on?
• They were just irrational
• A money-making scheme
• Vindictive show-trials
• Rational behaviour of people living in a
world that we cannot understand using
modern-day categories.

5. Irrational?
• Evans lists over 200 cases, from 824
(moles) to 1906 (a dog tried as an
accomplice to murder in Switzerland)
• Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany,
Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland,
Turkey, England, Scotland, Canada and
Connecticut
╞ this is no ‘craze’

6. To all whom shall read these letters: Let it be known that in
order to bring to justice a sow that has devoured a little
child, the bailiff has incurred the costs, commissions and
expenses hereinafter declared:
Item, expenses of keeping her in gaol, six sous.
Item, to the master of high works, who came from Paris
to Meullant to perform the said execution by command
and authority of the said bailiff, fifty-four sous.
Item, for a carriage to take her to justice, six sous.
Item, for cords to bind and hale her, two sous eight
deniers.
Item, for a new pair of gloves, two deniers.
Sum total sixty-nine sous eight deniers. Certified true and
correct, and sealed with our seal.
Signed: Simon de Baudemont, lieutenant of the bailiff of
Mantes and Meullant, March 15th, 1403.
A Scam?

7. Vindictive show-trials?
• Serious legal argument employed
• Animals could be acquitted (rats, the she-
ass, the mice, but not the ingers )
• Or even compensated (the weevils)

8. Rational behaviour?
• Protection against demons? (But none
are mentioned in the proceedings)
• Symbolic restoration of cosmic order by
re-defining disorders as crimes? (But this
requires functional false consciousness)
• Enaction of divine order? (More research
required!)
• New formalism in legal argument? (But
this practice lasts for centuries.)

9. Lessons for Philosophy
1. There are few (no?) historically invariant
concepts, problems or questions (E.g.
‘folk psychology’, ‘knowledge’, ‘political
authority’)
2. Antique and/or foreign-language texts
cannot be understood without serious
hermeneutic effort.

10. If a draught animal or any other beast kill a
person, unless it be in a combat authorised and
instituted by the state, the kinsmen of the slain
shall prosecute the said homicide for murder, and
the overseers of the public lands, as many as may
be commissioned by the said kinsmen, shall
adjudicate upon the case and send the offender
beyond the boundaries of the country.
Plato De Legionis IX

11. If a lifeless thing shall deprive a person
of life, provided it may not be a
thunderbolt or other missile hurled by a
god, but an object which the said person
may have run against or by which he
may have been struck and slain... then
the culprit shall be put beyond the
boundaries, in the same manner as if it
were an animal.
(ibid.)

12. Jesus said to some theologians, "Who do
you say that I am?“
They replied, "You are the eschatological
manifestation of the ground of our being,
the kerygma in which we find the ultimate
meaning in our interpersonal
relationships."
And Jesus said, "What?"