Cosmopolitanism and Material Ethics 111his feelings through connections with animals speaks volumes: only
by reverting to bonds grounded in basic emotional and corporeal
affiliation is the character able to get in touch with and express his
wounded emotions.
The changes we observe taking place in Lurie therefore present a
sizeable shift from the detached cynicism and self-centeredness we
observe at the beginning of the novel, and toward a more consid-
erate and emotionally open individual. This change is exemplified
by Lurie taking the uncharacteristically earnest step of untying two
tethered sheep he sees suffering outside Petrus’s house. Although he
realizes the animals will be slaughtered in a matter of days, he is
moved by their present suffering and chooses to act out of principle.
Such an act could be viewed as highly radical given that Lurie has
chosen to interfere with the “property” of another in the name of
sympathy. The moment also stimulates perhaps the most substan-
tial ethical speculation the character undertakes in the novel, which
begins when he interrogates the underlying ontological implica-
tions of humankind’s treatment toward animals: “Sheep do not own
themselves, do not own their lives. They exist to be used, every last
ounce of them, their flesh to be eaten, their bones to be crushed and
fed to poultry” (p. 123). Such a denunciation of human treatment
of animals appears to echo a similar lament that Lucy makes earlier
in the novel: “There is no higher life. This is the only life there is.
Which we share with animals [... We should try to] share some of
our human privilege with the beasts” (p. 74). Indeed, both utter-
ances exhibit similar ethical and ontological patterns of thought. In
terms of ethics, both clearly disapprove of handling animals as items
of pecuniary value, to be arbitrarily exploited by human beings.
In terms of ontology, Lucy’s words are quite explicit in their insis-
tence that existence is material only and that there is no “higher life.”
This is an ontological schema that is also mirrored by Lurie, albeit
in far more cryptic and philosophically sophisticated language.
After stating that “every last ounce of [the sheep... ] exists to be
used [by humans],” he then evokes the Cartesian body/soul binary,
which of course (by virtue of their capacity for reason) refers exclu-
sively to human beings, and declares, in typically irreverent fashion:
“Nothing escapes, except perhaps the gall bladder, which no one will