The Dachshund in Philosophy
Sadly, most philosophers do not permit themselves
to be photographed, so the photographic record of the philosopher/dachshund
relationship is quite limited. However, it is common knowledge
that philosophers ancient and modern have often adopted the stoic
dachshund to fuel their philosophical ruminations. Plato,
author of The Republic, developed many of his philosophical
underpinnings watching his dachshunds. "If I cannot
see the bone, does it not still remain where I burried it,"
he asked, wisely considering the world from the perspective
of his beloved dog. But the influence of the dachshund on
western philosophy did not stop with Plato.
Philosopher and early psychotherapist Carl Jung, credited for his powerful revisionist scholarhip of the early work of his peer and teacher, Sigmund Freud, is said to have developed his revolutionary concept of the personality "archetype" from his observations of the simple moods and character traits of his pet dachshunds.
It was through the process of training and disciplining his own dachshunds, that great french philosopher Michel Foucault (who considered himself a historian, rather than a philosopher) developed the underlying theses for his masterwork Discipline & Punish. "The carceral texture of society assures both the real capture of the body and its perpetual observation; it is, by its vey nature, the apparatus of punishment that conforms most completely to the new economy of power and the instrument for the formation of knowledge that this very economy needs," he wrote in 1979.
Foucault was at once influenced by and an influence upon his peers and predecessors Lacan, Derrida, and Julia Kristeva, all dachshund lovers. Kristeva must have been thinking of her beloved dachshunds when she wrote this passage in The Samurai: "Just a little sound to show you I'm taking you with me, that we like being here together under the acacia and the pine, in this whirl of flowers,waves, quartets, migrane and backache. That's how the sensation of time is born. And once given, these perceptible moments join up into minute acts. Though they come outof the void, they join together and bear us up. So it's obvious that time can't exist without love. Time is the love of little things. . . ."
Philosopher, feminist, and dachshund lover Simone de Beauvoir, partner of Jean Paul Sartre, a famous philosopher in his own right, used the interactions of her two dachshunds Yves and Yvette (themselves a romantic couple) as the template for her discussion of relations between the sexes in her highly influential work on gender relations and the subjugation of the feminine, The Second Sex.
Even the incisive, though some might say inscrutable, works of Harvard Professor and social theorist Roberto Mangabeira Unger found their origins in his relationship with his pet dachshunds: "There is no fixed list of types of contingency, necessity, and possibility that is anything more than the incomplete summary of an explanation. Between any two stated conceptions of contingency, a third conception may be found to be required by a change in our explanatory ideas. Even the metaphor of the continuum is too restrictive: no invariant scale exists along which conceptions of contingency can vary." Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task (1987). Reading this passage, one can almost hear Unger's dachshund barking in the background, its own restricted and contingent existence fueling the metaphorical fire of his undeniably powerful intellect.
Although the dachshund has not, historically, been wildly popular in Asia, even Taoist and Confuscian philosophers nonetheless share great affection for the diminutive dachshund: "The supreme dog is like water, . . . It is content with the low places that people disdain. Thus, it is like the Tao. In dwelling, live close to the ground." Lau-tzu, Tao Te Ching (translated by Stephen Mitchell).
Page 3 Dachshunds in Literature
Page 5 Dachshunds in Philosophy
Page 9 Andouille The Ultimate Dachshund Himself!