The Bloody Crossroads

The title of Ceridwen Dovey’s new book is snipped from an essay by Boria Sax: ‘What does it mean to be human? Perhaps only the animals can know.’ Sax is an author and academic with a particular interest in the branch of ethology known as anthrozoology, the aim of which is to study the relationship between humans and animals throughout […]

In the political debates of the 1980s, one common (and very irritating) rhetorical manoeuvre was the Conservative Appeal to Human Nature. More conversation-stopper than debating point, this nifty ideological clincher was ever on the lips of smooth-talking Tories for whom politics was reducible to a question of self-interest aggravated by prejudice. Certainly the shtick wasn’t hard to master. ‘Well, socialism […]