About this Book

The Metaphysics of Apes traces the discovery and interpretation of the human-like great apes and the ape-like earliest ancestors of present-day humans. It shows how, from the days of Linnaeus to recent research, the sacred and taboo-ridden animal-human boundary was time and again challenged and adjusted. The unique dignity of humans is centrally on the minds of taxonomists, ethnologists, primatologists, and archaeologists, guiding their research considerably and a basic presupposition was that humans are not entirely part of nature but rather, transcend nature. This book thus is the first to offer an anthropological analysis of these anthropological disciplines in terms of their own cultural taboos and philosophical preconceptions.