'Is Pauline niet net het zelfde als de poes?': Het kind en de bezielde soortenrijkdom van De Perponchers Onderwijs voor kinderen

Abstract

This article argues that Willem de Perponcher’s Education for Children (1782) adopts an anthropocentric perspective that, paradoxically, creates room for recognizing the animal in its own right. By reading the text through an animal-centered lens, it reveals how the child’s journey of empirical learning produces an ambivalent image of the animal. This ambiguity sheds a new light on the work’s strong emphasis on the intellectual development of the aristocratic child. As the child learns—by observing, thinking, debating, and reflecting—a space emerges in which animality is valued, drawing child and animal closer together. However, this same cognitive process ultimately re-establishes distance: the child, by exercising his reasoning skills, reaffirms his divinely ordained superiority over the animal. The text therefore both questions and reinforces the human-animal hierarchy.