An Intellectual History of Cannibalism

Download or read book An Intellectual History of Cannibalism written by Cătălin Avramescu and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cannibal - perhaps the ultimate symbol of savagery and degradation - has haunted the Western imagination since before the Age of Discovery, when Europeans first encountered genuine cannibals and related horrible stories of shipwrecked travelers eating each other. An Intellectual History of Cannibalism is the first book to systematically examine the role of the cannibal in the arguments of philosophers, from the classical period to modern disputes about such wide-ranging issues as vegetarianism and the right to private property.