Friday, December 17, 2010

More Books

Some additions to our book list.  As always, books both are included from across the spectrum of the animal liberation debate.  Books on animal liberation theology are included along with secular works.

On Their Own Terms: Bringing Animal Rights Philosophy Down to Earth
by Lee Hall
Sensing the need for fresh ideas in advocacy, and the importance of making animal-rights theory relevant in a time of biotechnology, rapid extinctions and climate change, On Their Own Terms: Bringing Animal-Rights Philosophy Down to Earth challenges us to think of ourselves and other conscious beings in new ways. This book takes the creative and necessary step of calling for a merging of ecological awareness and animal advocacy. It asks us to imagine and appreciate the dignity of free communities of animals thriving in their habitats.


As a society shifts to respect animals on their terms, its judges and lawmakers will stop regarding the environment as props and scenery on the stage of humanity s drama. They will begin to take the interests of all its living inhabitants seriously. This work explains why the shift is within humanity s reach, and how it will come through an animal-advocacy movement that s no longer limited to generating pity for Earth s other beings, or looking for ways to show how cruel we are to them, or taking steps to make their controlled lives less stressful. On Their Own Terms is an invitation to a movement that can ensure the triumph of animals natural freedom and power, and a practical handbook for the advocate who takes up the challenge.



Why Animal Suffering Matters: Philosophy, Theology, and Practical Ethics
by Andrew Linzey

How we treat animals arouses strong emotions. Many people are repulsed by photographs of cruelty to animals and respond passionately to how we make animals suffer for food, commerce, and sport. But is this, as some argue, a purely emotional issue? Are there really no rational grounds for opposing our current treatment of animals?

In Why Animal Suffering Matters , Andrew Linzey argues that when analyzed impartially the rational case for extending moral solicitude to all sentient beings is much stronger than many suppose. Indeed, Linzey shows that many of the justifications for inflicting animal suffering in fact provide grounds for protecting them. Because animals, the argument goes, lack reason or souls or language, harming them is not an offense. Linzey suggests that just the opposite is true, that the inability of animals to give or withhold consent, their inability to represent their interests, their moral innocence, and their relative defenselessness all compel us not to harm them.

Andrew Linzey further shows that the arguments in favor of three controversial practices--hunting with dogs, fur farming, and commercial sealing--cannot withstand rational critique. He considers the economic, legal, and political issues surrounding each of these practices, appealing not to our emotions but to our reason, and shows that they are rationally unsupportable and morally repugnant.

In this superbly argued and deeply engaging book, Linzey pioneers a new theory about why animal suffering matters, maintaining that sentient animals, like infants and young children, should be accorded a special moral status.

Animal Ethics in Context
by Clare Palmer

It is widely agreed that because animals feel pain we should not make them suffer gratuitously. Some ethical theories go even further: because of the capacities that they possess, animals have the right not to be harmed or killed. These views concern what not to do to animals, but we also face questions about when we should, and should not, assist animals that are hungry or distressed. Should we feed a starving stray kitten? And if so, does this commit us, if we are to be consistent, to feeding wild animals during a hard winter?

In this controversial book, Clare Palmer advances a theory that claims, with respect to assisting animals, that what is owed to one is not necessarily owed to all, even if animals share similar psychological capacities. Context, history, and relation can be critical ethical factors. If animals live independently in the wild, their fate is not any of our moral business. Yet if humans create dependent animals, or destroy their habitats, we may have a responsibility to assist them. Such arguments are familiar in human cases-we think that parents have special obligations to their children, for example, or that some groups owe reparations to others. Palmer develops such relational concerns in the context of wild animals, domesticated animals, and urban scavengers, arguing that different contexts can create different moral relationships.


Creatures of the Same God: Explorations in Animal Theology
by Andrew Linzey

"I don't know why you're spending all your time on this. They re only animals for heaven's sake! That was the reaction of one of Andrew Linzey's fellow students at King s College, London, when he was studying theology in the 1970s. Since then, the now Rev. Dr. Andrew Linzey has been arguing that animals aren't only anything, but rather that they matter to God, and should do so to us.

In this collection of essays, Linzey counters with his customary wit, erudition, and insight, some contemporary (and perhaps surprising) challenges to animal rights from ecotheologians, the Church, and politicians. He contends that far from the sometimes shallow judgments of those who think animals unworthy of theological consideration, the Christian tradition has a wellspring of sources and resources available to taking animals seriously. Instead of being marginal to the Christian experience, Linzey concludes, animals can take their rightful place alongside human beings as creatures of the same God.

Animals and Christianity: A Book of Readings 
Edited by Andrew Linzey and Tom Regan
Hoping to revive an earlier interest in animal protection efforts on the part of the church, the editors have collected writings by numerous Christian leadersAquinas, Calvin, C.S. Lewis, Albert Schweitzer, John Wesley, Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, and morethat span a range of attitudes on subjects like the problem of animal pain and the question of animal redemption. Some pieces affirm human dominance (the Calvinist view), but more endorse Victor Hugo's "great ethic" that calls for deeper respect for creaturely life. Unusual and intriguing. EC

A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics
Edited by Paul Waldau and Kimberley Patton
A Communion of Subjects is the first comparative and interdisciplinary study of the conceptualization of animals in world religions. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including Thomas Berry (cultural history), Wendy Doniger (study of myth), Elizabeth Lawrence (veterinary medicine, ritual studies), Marc Bekoff (cognitive ethology), Marc Hauser (behavioral science), Steven Wise (animals and law), Peter Singer (animals and ethics), and Jane Goodall (primatology) consider how major religious traditions have incorporated animals into their belief systems, myths, rituals, and art. Their findings offer profound insights into humans' relationships with animals and a deeper understanding of the social and ecological web in which we all live.

Contributors examine Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism, Confucianism, African religions, traditions from ancient Egypt and early China, and Native American, indigenous Tibetan, and Australian Aboriginal traditions, among others. They explore issues such as animal consciousness, suffering, sacrifice, and stewardship in innovative methodological ways. They also address contemporary challenges relating to law, biotechnology, social justice, and the environment. By grappling with the nature and ideological features of various religious views, the contributors cast religious teachings and practices in a new light. They reveal how we either intentionally or inadvertently marginalize "others," whether they are human or otherwise, reflecting on the ways in which we assign value to living beings.

Though it is an ancient concern, the topic of "Religion and Animals" has yet to be systematically studied by modern scholars. This groundbreaking collection takes the first steps toward a meaningful analysis.

Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents: The Moral Status of Animals in the History of Western Philosophy
by Gary Steiner

Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents is the first-ever comprehensive examination of views of animals in the history of Western philosophy, from Homeric Greece to the twentieth century.

In recent decades, increased interest in this area has been accompanied by scholars’ willingness to conceive of animal experience in terms of human mental capacities: consciousness, self-awareness, intention, deliberation, and in some instances, at least limited moral agency.  This conception has been facilitated by a shift from behavioral to cognitive ethology (the science of animal behavior), and by attempts to affirm the essential similarities between the psychophysical makeup of human beings and animals.

Gary Steiner sketches the terms of the current debates about animals and relates these to their historical antecedents, focusing on both the dominant anthropocentric voices and those recurring voices that instead assert a fundamental kinship relation between human beings and animals.  He concludes with a discussion of the problem of balancing the need to recognize a human indebtedness to animals and the natural world with the need to preserve a sense of the uniqueness and dignity of the human individual.


Animals and the Moral Community: Mental Life, Moral Status, and Kinship
by Gary Steiner
Gary Steiner argues that ethologists and philosophers in the analytic and continental traditions have largely failed to advance an adequate explanation of animal behavior. Critically engaging the positions of Marc Hauser, Daniel Dennett, Donald Davidson, John Searle, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, among others, Steiner shows how the Western philosophical tradition has forced animals into human experiential categories in order to make sense of their cognitive abilities and moral status and how desperately we need a new approach to animal rights.

Steiner rejects the traditional assumption that a lack of formal rationality confers an inferior moral status on animals vis-Ã -vis human beings. Instead, he offers an associationist view of animal cognition in which animals grasp and adapt to their environments without employing concepts or intentionality. Steiner challenges the standard assumption of liberal individualism according to which humans have no obligations of justice toward animals. Instead, he advocates a "cosmic holism" that attributes a moral status to animals equivalent to that of people. Arguing for a relationship of justice between humans and nature, Steiner emphasizes our kinship with animals and the fundamental moral obligations entailed by this kinship.

The Moral Lives of Animals
by Dale Peterson
Wild elephants walking along a trail stop and spontaneously try to protect and assist a weak and dying fellow elephant. Laboratory rats, finding other rats caged nearby in distressing circumstances, proceed to rescue them. A chimpanzee in a zoo loses his own life trying to save an unrelated infant who has fallen into a watery moat.

The examples above and many others, argues Dale Peterson, show that our fellow creatures have powerful impulses toward cooperation, generosity, and fairness. Yet it is commonly held that we Homo sapiens are the only animals with a moral sense—that we are somehow above and apart from our fellow creatures.

This rigorous and stimulating book challenges that notion, and it shows the profound connections—the moral continuum—that link humans to many other species. Peterson shows how much animal behavior follows principles embodied in humanity's ancient moral codes, from the Ten Commandments to the New Testament. Understanding the moral lives of animals offers new insight into our own.

Dale Peterson's biography Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and Boston Globe Best Book of 2006. His other publications include Visions of Caliban (with Jane Goodall) and Demonic Males (with Richard Wrangham). Peterson lectures in English at Tufts University.

Beyond Animal Rights: Food, Pets and Ethics (Think Now)
by Tony Milligan
From vegetarianism to scientific experimentation, this book is an ethical exploration of our responsibilities to the animals with whom we share the planet. Issues to do with animal ethics remain at the heart of public debate. In "Beyond Animal Rights", Tony Milligan goes beyond standard discussions of animal ethics to explore the ways in which we personally relate to other creatures through our diet, as pet owners and as beneficiaries of experimentation. The book connects with our duty to act and considers why previous discussions have failed to result in a change in the way that we live our lives. The author asks a crucial question: what sort of people do we have to become if we are to sufficiently improve the ways in which we relate to the non-human? Appealing to both consequences and character, he argues that no improvement will be sufficient if it fails to set humans on a path towards a tolerable and sustainable future. Focussing on our direct relations to the animals we connect with the book offers guidance on all the relevant issues, including veganism and vegetarianism, the organic movement, pet ownership, and animal experimentation. "Think Now" is a new series of books which examines central contemporary social and political issues from a philosophical perspective. These books aim to be accessible, rather than overly technical, bringing philosophical rigour to modern questions which matter the most to us. Provocative yet engaging, the authors take a stand on political and cultural themes of interest to any intelligent reader.

Toward Better Problems: New Perspectives on Abortion, Animal Rights, the Environment, and Justice (Ethics And Action)
by Anthony Weston
In Toward Better Problems, Anthony Weston develops a pragmatic approach to the pressing moral issues of our time. Weston seeks to address practical problems in the spirit of John Dewey: that is, by focusing on specific human concerns and multiple, overlapping values rather than on abstract philosophical principles. Weston showcases his method in sustained discussion of four highly controversial areas: abortion, animal rights, environmentalism, and justice.

Weston takes up uncomfortable issues, such as how we raise food animals; test medicines, cosmetics, and chemicals on animals; and justify speciesism. He engages philosophically the treatment of land and seas as limitless garbage dumps, the creation of radioactive wastes and their disposal, and fundamental problems of social justice. But Weston's aim is not to "solve" such problems as if they were some kind of puzzle. The aim instead is to creatively transform such problematic situations into something more promising and tractable, thereby leaving us with "better problems."

Animals as Biotechnology: Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies (Science in Society Series)
by Richard Twine
In Animals as Biotechnology: Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies sociologist Richard Twine places the questioning of human/animal relations at the heart of sustainability and climate change debates. This book is shaped by the incongruous parallel emergence of two approaches to nonhuman animals. The animal sciences concerned with the efficient and profitable production of animals into meat and dairy products now embrace molecular knowledge as a means to extract new sources of biocapital from farmed animal bodies. However the emergence of animal studies and critical animal studies—mostly in the humanities and social sciences—work to question the dominant instrumental character of our relations with other animals. Twine considers the emergence of these approaches to bring into relief the paradox of a novel biotechnological power to breed new forms of animals at the very time when critical animal studies and threats such as climate change pose serious questions of anthropocentrism and hubris.

This book outlines the way in which the molecular turn in animal breeding now attempts to recuperate the major externalizations of meat/dairy production (most obviously human health, ecology and animal welfare) by capturing sustainability within the genome. Situating new modes of molecular capitalization within a broader economic narrative of the knowledge based bio-economy, Twine highlights the tension between questions of limits and sustainability. This book concludes by considering whether growing counter calls to reduce our consumption of meat/dairy products in the face of climate change threats are in fact complicit with an anthropocentric discourse that would marginalize from its understanding of sustainability a more thorough ethical questioning of normative human/animal relations.

On God and Dogs: A Christian Theology of Compassion for Animals
 by Stephen H. Webb Foreword by Andrew Linzey
Many of us keep pet animals; we rely on them for companionship and unconditional love. For some people their closest relationships may be with their pets. In the wake of the animal rights movement, some ethicists have started to re-examine this relationship, and to question the rights of humans to "own" other sentient beings in this way. In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Stephen Webb brings a Christian perspective to bear on the subject of our responsibility to animals, looked at through the lens of our relations with pets--especially dogs. Webb argues that the emotional bond with companion animals should play a central role in the way we think about animals in general, and--against the more extreme animal liberationists--defends the intermingling of the human and animal worlds. He tries to imagine what it would be like to treat animals as a gift from God, and indeed argues that not only are animals a gift for us, but they give to us; we need to attend to their giving and return their gifts appropriately. Throughout the book he insists that what Christians call grace is present in our relations with animals just as it is with other humans. Grace is the inclusive and expansive power of God's love to create and sustain relationships of real mutuality and reciprocity, and Webb unfolds the implications of the recognition that animals too participate in God's abundant grace. Webb's thesis affirms and persuasively defends many of the things that pet lovers feel instinctively--that their relationships with their companion animals are meaningful and important, and that their pets have value and worth in themselves in the eyes of God. His book will appeal to a broad audience of thoughtful Christians and animal lovers.


Animals on the Agenda: Questions about Animals for Theology and Ethics
Edited by Andrew Linzey and  Dorothy Yamamoto
This encyclopaedic volume is the most compre hensive collection of original studies on animals and theolo gy ever published. It tackles many apparently simple issues which raise fundamental questions about theology and how it is done. '

Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals
by Jonathan Balcombe, Foreword by J. M. Coetzee
Who knew that chickens and humans find the same faces beautiful? Or that fish choose reliable partners for dangerous predator inspection missions? Referencing such intriguing studies, Balcombe (Pleasurable Kingdom) builds a compelling case for blurring the line between animal and human perception, thereby questioning the prevailing scientific orthodoxy that humans alone possess the ability to reason. Over the years, studies have shown that animals have intelligence (dolphins have been known to teach themselves to delay gratification to get extra treats), emotions (like humans, baboon mothers show elevated levels of glucocorticoids after losing an infant), cunning (gorillas divert the attention of rivals from food, often by grooming); that they can communicate (nuthatches can translate chickadee chirps), can be altruistic (chimps who know how to unlatch a door help those who can't). Yet philosophers have routinely dismissed animals as unthinking, unfeeling beasts—Descartes grouped non-human animals with machines, a line of logic that has been used to justify callous treatment of laboratory animals. Balcombe's brief, marred only slightly by sermonizing, builds to a passionate and persuasive argument for vegetarianism on both humanitarian and environmental grounds. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals
by Hal Herzog
How rational are we in our relationship with animals? A puppy, after all, is "a family member in Kansas, a pariah in Kenya, and lunch in Korea". An animal behaviorist turned one of the world's foremost authorities on human-animal relations, Herzog shows us, in this readable study, how whimsical our attitudes can be. Why do we like some animals but not others? One answer seems to be that babylike features like big eyes bring out our parental and protective urges. (PETA has started a campaign against fishing called "Save the Sea Kittens)." Research has shown that the human brain is wired to think about animals and inanimate objects differently, and Herzog reveals how we can look at the exact same animal very differently given its context--most Americans regard cockfighting as cruel but think nothing of eating chicken, when in reality gamecocks are treated very well when they are not fighting, and most poultry headed for the table lead short, miserable lives and are killed quite painfully. An intelligent and amusing book that invites us to think deeply about how we define--and where we limit--our empathy for animals.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation? (Critical Perspectives on Animals)
by Gary L. Francione and  Robert Garner
Gary L. Francione is a law professor and leading philosopher of animal rights theory. Robert Garner is a political theorist specializing in the philosophy and politics of animal protection. Francione maintains that we have no moral justification for using nonhumans and argues that because animals are property& mdash;or economic commodities& mdash;laws or industry practices requiring "humane" treatment will, as a general matter, fail to provide any meaningful level of protection. Garner favors a version of animal rights that focuses on eliminating animal suffering and adopts a protectionist approach, maintaining that although the traditional animal-welfare ethic is philosophically flawed, it can contribute strategically to the achievement of animal-rights ends. As they spar, Francione and Garner deconstruct the animal protection movement in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and elsewhere, discussing the practices of such organizations as PETA, which joins with McDonald's and other animal users to "improve" the slaughter of animals. They also examine American and European laws and campaigns from both the rights and welfare perspectives, identifying weaknesses and strengths that give shape to future legislation and action.

Porphyry: On abstinence from animal food
Translated from Ancient Greek by Thomas Taylor 
[1823] Porphyry was, like Pythagoras, an advocate of vegetarianism These two philosophers are perhaps the most famous vegetarians of classical antiquity. He wrote the De Abstinentia (On Abstinence) and De Non Necandis ad Epulandum Animantibus (roughly On the Impropriety of Killing Living Beings for Food), advocating against the consumption of animals, and he is cited with approval in vegetarian literature up to the present day. "- Wikipedia 
"The longest work by Porphyry to survive more or less intact is this curious tract advocating that animals should not be killed, not even for food.  The end of the work seems to be lost, but otherwise it is complete and preserves a mass of detail on pagan religious customs and beliefs.  Interestingly it also mentioned the Jewish Essenes....Thomas Taylor, the English Platonist, wrote a very long time ago, and his terminology is somewhat strange but otherwise his English has not dated."- Early Church Fathers - Additional Texts -  Available free online:
PDF (includes other works): http://www.ivu.org/history/greece_rome/Select_Works_of_Porphyry.pdf
Text: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/index.htm#Porphyry_Abstinence

Porphyry: On Abstinence from Killing Animals (Ancient Commentators on Aristotle)
by Porphyry Translated by Gillian Clark 

Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat (Contemporary Issues (Prometheus) [Paperback]
Edited by Steve F. Sapontzis 
 Do animals really suffer in the production of meat? Does the pleasure of eating animal flesh outweigh any pain that might be involved for the animal? Is a vegetarian diet innately healthier than a diet that contains animal products? Do religious traditions teach that humans have a God-given right to sacrifice animals for our benefit or that we have a special responsibility to care for God's creations? For anyone who has ever wondered about the ethics of killing animals for food, this is the definitive collection of essays on the issue. Written by internationally recognized scholars on both sides of the debate, the provocative articles included in FOOD FOR THOUGHT will provide both vegetarians and meat eaters with a thorough grounding in all aspects of this controversial topic.

After an introduction to the nature of the debate by editor Steve F. Sapontzis, seven sections examine the finer points of the subject. The first section reviews the history of vegetarianism. The discussion in the second section highlights the health issues and what anthropology has to tell us about human diet. Section three includes classic cases for and against vegetarianism and new essays rebutting these classic arguments. The fourth section examines religious teachings about eating animals drawn from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as Native American and Eastern traditions. Finally, in the last three sections, the authors debate the ethics of eating meat in connection with feminism, environmentalism, and multiculturalism.

The contributors to this insightful volume include Carol J. Adams, Neal Barnard, John Berkman, Stephen R. L. Clark, Carl Cohen, Randall Collura, Gary L. Comstock, Deane Curtin, Daniel Dombrowski, Johanna T. Dwyer, Jennifer Everett, Fredrick Ferre, Richard Foltz, R.G. Frey, James Gaffney, Kathryn Paxton George, Lori Gruen, Bart Gruzalski, Ned Hettinger, Roberta Kalechofsky, Marti Kheel, Kristine Kieswer, Andrew Linzey, Franklin M. Loew, Evelyn Pluhar, Val Plumwood, Rod Preece, James Rachels, Tom Regan, Roger Scruton, and Peter Singer.

Containing virtually a Who's Who of philosophers, social critics, environmentalists, feminists, and religious scholars who have participated in the vegetarianism debate over the past quarter century, this accessible collection provides the latest thinking on a subject that has provoked intense reaction among individuals and interest groups alike.

Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement
Gary L. Francione
Temple University Press, 1996
Are “animal welfare” supporters indistinguishable from the animal exploiters they oppose? Do reformist measures reaffirm the underlying principles that make animal exploitation possible in the first place? In this provocative book, Gary L. Francione argues that the modern animal rights movement has become indistinguishable from a century-old concern with the welfare of animals that in no way prevents them from being exploited.

Francione maintains that advocating humane treatment of animals retains a sense of them as instrumental to human ends. When they are considered dispensable property, he says, they are left fundamentally without “rights.” Until the seventies, Francione claims, this was the paradigm within which the Animal Rights Movement operated, as demonstrated by laws such as the Federal Humane Slaughter Act of 1958.

In this wide-ranging book, Francione takes the reader through the philosophical and intellectual debates surrounding animal welfare to make clear the difference between animal rights and animal welfare. Through case studies such as campaigns against animal shelters, animal laboratories, and the wearing of fur, Francione demonstrates the selectiveness and confusion inherent in reformist programs that target fur, for example, but leave wool and leather alone.

The solution to this dilemma, Francione argues, is not in a liberal position that espouses the humane treatment of animals, but in a more radical acceptance of the fundamental inalienability of animal rights.

Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?
Gary L. Francione
Temple University Press, 2000
Two-thirds of Americans polled by the Associated Press agree with the following statement: "An animal’s right to live free of suffering should be just as important as a person’s right to live free of suffering." More than 50 percent of Americans believe that it is wrong to kill animals to make fur coats or to hunt them for sport. But these same Americans eat hamburgers, take their children to circuses and rodeos, and use products developed with animal testing. How do we justify our inconsistency?

In this easy-to-read introduction, animal rights advocate Gary Francione looks at our conventional moral thinking about animals. Using examples, analogies, and thought-experiments, he reveals the dramatic inconsistency between what we say we believe about animals and how we actually treat them.

Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? provides a guidebook to examining our social and personal ethical beliefs. It takes us through concepts of property and equal consideration to arrive at the basic contention of animal rights: that everyone—human and non-human—has the right not to be treated as a means to an end. Along the way, it illuminates concepts and theories that all of us use but few of us understand—the nature of “rights” and “interests,” for example, and the theories of Locke, Descartes, and Bentham.

Filled with fascinating information and cogent arguments, this is a book that you may love or hate, but that will never fail to inform, enlighten, and educate.

Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation
Gary L. Francione
Columbia University Press, 2008
A prominent and respected philosopher of animal rights law and ethical theory, Gary L. Francione is known for his criticism of animal welfare laws and regulations, his abolitionist theory of animal rights, and his promotion of veganism and nonviolence as the baseline principles of the abolitionist movement. In this collection, Francione advances the most radical theory of animal rights argued to date. Unlike Peter Singer, Francione maintains that we cannot morally justify using animals under any circumstances, and unlike Tom Regan, Francione’s theory applies to all sentient beings, and not only to those who have more sophisticated cognitive abilities.

Francione introduces the volume with an essay that explains our historical and contemporary attitudes about animals by distinguishing the issue of animal use from that of animal treatment. He then presents a theory of animal rights, which focuses on the need to accord all sentient nonhumans the right not to be treated as our property. Our recognition of such a right would require that we stop bringing domesticated animals into existence for human use. He takes a hard look at our “moral schizophrenia” toward animals and our ability to regard some creatures as beloved companions and others as food and clothing. Subsequent essays explore recent changes in animal welfare and the sad fact that these advances have not only failed to bring us closer to the abolition of animal exploitation, but have made the public feel more comfortable about supposedly more “humane” animal treatment. In two essays, Francione explores the importance of sentience as the necessary and sufficient condition for the moral significance of animals and explains how the status of animals as economic commodities prevents the equal consideration of their interests. He also discusses the issue of using animals in experiments, arguing that the empirical necessity of animal use is at best suspect and that animal use cannot, in any event, be morally justified. After a chapter addressing ecofeminism and its ethic of care, Francione concludes by challenging the rationale of Tom Regan’s position that death imposes a greater harm on humans than nonhumans.

This collection of essays demonstrates why Francione’s abolitionist theory is widely regarded as the most exciting innovation in modern animal ethics.

The Philosophy of Vegetarianism
Daniel A. Dombrowski
Every vegetarian society should have one of these in theirlibrary. If you thought vegetarianism started with PeterSinger or even Henry Salt, think again. The ancient Greeks have already said it all: the health argument, the ethics argument, the religious argument, they're all there. If you're a vegetarian and you really want to know why, this is where you start, not Animal Liberation or Animal Rights. Instead, take Dombrowski's advice and look up Porphyry's On Abstinence!

Critical Theory and Animal Liberation (Nature' Meaning)
John Sanbonmatsu
Critical Theory and Animal Liberation is the first collection to look at the human relationship with animals from the critical or _left_ tradition in political and social thought. Breaking with past treatments that have framed the problem as one of _animal rights,_ the authors instead depict the exploitation and killing of other animals as a political question of the first order. The contributions in this volume thus highlight connections between our everyday treatment of animals and other forms of oppression, violence, and domination. Animal domination, the authors suggest, is fundamental to other systems of power, including capitalism and patriarchy. Contributors include well-known writers in the field, such as Carol Adams, author of Living Among the Meat Eaters, and established scholars writing on animals for the first time, such as Carl Boggs and Eduardo Mendieta. The authors draw on critical theory to, among other things, apply Freud's theory of repression to our relationship to the animal, debunk the new _Locavore_ movement, and expose the sexism of the mainstream animal defense movement.

Weighing Animal Lives: A Critical Assessment of Justification & Prioritization in Animal-rights Theories (Uppsala Studies in Social Ethics)
by Fredrik Karlsson
The project underlying this dissertation aims at analyzing three pro-animal-rights theories, evaluating the theories, and outlining an alternative theoretical account of animal rights. The analytical categories are justification and function of animal rights, the definition of the right holder, and the resolution approach to rights conflict. The categories are applied to a naturalist, a theocentric, and a contractarian approach to defend animal rights. The evaluation is substantiated by the assumption that rights are meant to protect less powerful beings against more powerful aggressors. The constructive segment is an investigation into what extent identified disadvantages of the theories can be avoided by outlining a new model for animal rights.

The analyses and evaluation suggest that all three theories are at risk of contradicting the proper function of rights-based theories. Tom Regan’s naturalist account of animal rights includes a logical possibility to sacrifice less capable beings for the sake of more capable beings. Andrew Linzey’s theocentric case for animal rights may sometimes mean that vulnerable human persons should be sacrificed for more powerful non-human beings. Mark Rowlands’ outlined contractarian model, further reconstructed in this work, fails to provide a way to resolve rights conflicts, making the function of rights inapplicable to conflicts.

In conclusion, it is suggested that defining the right holder as a self-preservative being can be supported by, at least, the contractarian rationale. That would also conform to the proper function of rights-based theories. It is also suggested that this means that rights conflicts should be resolved by a voluntary sacrifice of the most powerful being. Practical circumstances should be created where such voluntarity is both genuine and rationally possible.

Animal Liberation, Environmental Ethics, and Domestication (Dakhleh Oasis Project) [Hardcover]
Clare Palmer

Applied Animal Ethics
by Leland S. Shapiro
This comprehensive textbook covers the ethical issues involved in using animals for research, food production, sports, and as companions. Although theoretical aspects of animal ethics are presented, the focus of the book is the application of ethics to real-life situations. A balanced presentation of animal rights and animal welfare viewpoints is provided. Review and discussion questions help students develop their critical-thinking skills. Case studies provide the opportunity to consider real-world ethical issues and how they can be resolved.


In Nature's Interests?: Interests, Animal Rights, and Environmental Ethics [Kindle Edition]
by Gary E. Varner
This book offers a powerful response to what Varner calls the "two dogmas of environmental ethics"--the assumptions that animal rights philosophies and anthropocentric views are each antithetical to sound environmental policy. Allowing that every living organism has interests which ought, other things being equal, to be protected, Varner contends that some interests take priority over others. He defends both a sentientist principle giving priority to the lives of organisms with conscious desires and an anthropocentric principle giving priority to certain very inclusive interests which only humans have. He then shows that these principles not only comport with but provide significant support for environmental goals.

Putting the Horse before Descartes: My Life's Work on Behalf of Animals (Animals and Ethics) [Hardcover]
Bernard Rollin
When philosopher Bernard Rollin was six years old, he visited an animal shelter and was told about unwanted dogs being put to sleep. The event shaped his moral outlook and initiated his concern for how animals were treated. In his irreverent memoir, Putting the Horse before Descartes, Rollin provides an account of how he came to educate himself and others about the ethical treatment of animals and work toward improvements in animal welfare. Rollin describes, in witty, often disarming detail, how he became an outspoken critic of how animals were being treated in veterinary and medical schools as well as in research labs. Putting the Horse before Descartes showcases the passionate animal advocate at his best. He recalls teaching veterinary students about ethical issues. He also recalls face-offs with ranchers and cowboys about branding methods and roping competitions in rodeos. In addition, he describes his work to legally mandate more humane conditions for agricultural and laboratory animals. As public concern about animal welfare and the safety of the food supply heighten, Rollin carries on this work all over the worldoin classrooms, lecture halls and legislatures, meetings of agricultural associations and industrial settings, as well as in print. Putting the Horse before Descartes, ultimately, is more than a memoir. Rollin offers a wide-ranging discussion of ethical issues in many settings and he testifies to the myriad ways that people of good conscience accept their ethical responsibility in regard to animals.

Ethics and Animals: An Introduction (Cambridge Applied Ethics) [Paperback]
by Lori Gruen
In this fresh and comprehensive introduction to animal ethics, Lori Gruen weaves together poignant and provocative case studies with discussions of ethical theory, urging readers to engage critically and empathetically reflect on our treatment of other animals. In clear and accessible language, Gruen provides a survey of the issues central to human-animal relations and a reasoned new perspective on current key debates in the field. She analyses and explains a range of theoretical positions and poses challenging questions that directly encourage readers to hone their ethical reasoning skills and to develop a defensible position about their own practices. Her book will be an invaluable resource for students in a wide range of disciplines including ethics, environmental studies, veterinary science, women's studies, and the emerging field of animal studies and is an engaging account of the subject for general readers with no prior background in philosophy.

New Essays in Applied Ethics: Animal Rights, Personhood, and the Ethics of Killing
Edited by Hon-Lam Li and Anthony Yeung
This collection of new essays aims to address some of the most perplexing issues arising from death and dying, as well as the moral status of persons and animals. Leading scholars, including Peter Singer and Gerald Dworkin, investigate diverse topics such as animal rights, vegetarianism, lethal injection, abortion and euthanasia.

Animals as Biotechnology: Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies (Science in Society Series)
by Richard Twine
In Animals as Biotechnology: Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies sociologist Richard Twine places the questioning of human/animal relations at the heart of sustainability and climate change debates. This book is shaped by the incongruous parallel emergence of two approaches to nonhuman animals. The animal sciences concerned with the efficient and profitable production of animals into meat and dairy products now embrace molecular knowledge as a means to extract new sources of biocapital from farmed animal bodies. However the emergence of animal studies and critical animal studies—mostly in the humanities and social sciences—work to question the dominant instrumental character of our relations with other animals. Twine considers the emergence of these approaches to bring into relief the paradox of a novel biotechnological power to breed new forms of animals at the very time when critical animal studies and threats such as climate change pose serious questions of anthropocentrism and hubris.

This book outlines the way in which the molecular turn in animal breeding now attempts to recuperate the major externalizations of meat/dairy production (most obviously human health, ecology and animal welfare) by capturing sustainability within the genome. Situating new modes of molecular capitalization within a broader economic narrative of the knowledge based bio-economy, Twine highlights the tension between questions of limits and sustainability. This book concludes by considering whether growing counter calls to reduce our consumption of meat/dairy products in the face of climate change threats are in fact complicit with an anthropocentric discourse that would marginalize from its understanding of sustainability a more thorough ethical questioning of normative human/animal relations.

Ethics of Animal Use
by Peter Sandøe and Stine B. Christiansen
An interesting and accessible introduction to ethical issues raised by various forms of human use of animals. This textbook avoids moral lecturing and presents a range of ethical viewpoints without defending or applying any specific stance. Readers are encouraged and provoked to reflect for themselves, and to sharpen their own points of view regarding the ethical limits on our use of animals. They will also gain further understanding of the views held by other people.

Early chapters of this interdisciplinary book cover changes over time in our view of animals, the principles of animal ethics, and different views of what counts as a good animal life. Later chapters apply the conceptual tools to specific issues including: food animal production, advanced veterinary treatment of pets, control of infectious diseases, wildlife management, as well as the use of animals in research.

Specifically designed for students of veterinary medicine, animal science, welfare and behaviour, and veterinary nursing. Also of interest to those wanting to combine an up-to-date, science-based account of animal issues with clear-headed moral reflection.

"The book covers an impressive range of topics with accuracy and fairness. Despite its ambitious scope, the authors have achieved remarkable unity in the book, and have produced a book that is easy and pleasant to read. Their work will surely provide a major tool for rationalizing the debate about the ethics of animal use, and I commend them for their invaluable contribution." From the Foreword by Professor Bernard Rollin, Colorado State University.

An Odyssey with Animals: A Veterinarian's Reflections on the Animal Rights & Welfare Debate
by Adrian R. Morrison
The relationship between animals and humans is more complex today than ever before. In addition to the animals that have served as household pets, and the farm animals that have provided labor and food, countless monkeys, rabbits, rats, and cats have enabled modern scientists to treat and cure humanity's most devastating illnesses. This aspect of animal-human interaction has engendered a bitter enmity between animal rights activists and the biomedical researchers whose work depends on the use (and oftentimes the killing) of laboratory animals.

In An Odyssey with Animals, veterinarian and sleep researcher Adrian Morrison argues that humane animal use in biomedical research is an indispensable tool of medical science, and that efforts to halt such use constitute a grave threat to human health and wellbeing. The target of repeated acts of intimidation by anonymous animal rights activists because of his own research, Morrison is himself an animal advocate, and this volume is the culmination of his years spent negotiating the treacherous divide between a legitimate concern for animals and the importance of biomedical research. Drawing on the disciplines of philosophy, history, biology, and animal behavior, Morrison crafts a multi-faceted argument in favor of using animals humanely in research, the center of which is his staunch belief that human interests must be the primary concern of science and society. Along the way, Morrison delves into other human uses of animals in domains such as agriculture, hunting, and education, examining each use along with its philosophical, moral, and ecological implications. The result is a thought-provoking, intelligent and fair-minded discussion of a charged subject-- of the past and present of animals' relationships with humans, and how and why we should be able to use them as we do.

Animal Rights: What Everyone Needs to Know
by Paul Waldau
In this compelling volume in the What Everyone Needs to Know series, Paul Waldau expertly navigates the many heated debates surrounding the complex and controversial animal rights movement.
Organized around a series of probing questions, this timely resource offers the most complete, even-handed survey of the animal rights movement available. The book covers the full spectrum of issues, beginning with a clear, highly instructive definition of animal rights. Waldau looks at the different concerns surrounding companion animals, wild animals, research animals, work animals, and animals used for food, provides a no-nonsense assessment of the treatment of animals, and addresses the philosophical and legal arguments that form the basis of animal rights. Along the way, readers will gain insight into the history of animal protection-as well as the political and social realities facing animals today-and become familiar with a range of hot-button topics, from animal cognition and autonomy, to attempts to balance animal cruelty versus utility. Chronicled here are many key figures and organizations responsible for moving the animal rights movement forward, as well as legislation and public policy that have been carried out around the world in the name of animal rights and animal protection. The final chapter of this indispensable volume looks ahead to the future of animal rights, and delivers an animal protection mandate for citizens, scientists, governments, and other stakeholders.
With its multidisciplinary, non-ideological focus and all-inclusive coverage, Animal Rights represents the definitive survey of the animal rights movement-one that will engage every reader and student of animal rights, animal law, and environmental ethics.

A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement
by Wesley J. Smith
Over the past thirty years, as Wesley J. Smith details in his latest book, the concept of animal rights has been seeping into the very bone marrow of Western culture. One reason for this development is that the term “animal rights” is so often used very loosely, to mean simply being nicer to animals. But although animal rights groups do sometimes focus their activism on promoting animal welfare, the larger movement they represent is actually advancing a radical belief system.

For some activists, the animal rights ideology amounts to a quasi religion, one whose central doctrine declares a moral equivalency between the value of animal lives and the value of human lives. Animal rights ideologues embrace their beliefs with a fervor that is remarkably intense and sustained, to the point that many dedicate their entire lives to “speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves.” Some believe their cause to be so righteous that it entitles them to cross the line from legitimate advocacy to vandalism and harassment, or even terrorism against medical researchers, the fur and food industries, and others they accuse of abusing animals.

All people who love animals and recognize their intrinsic worth can agree with Wesley J. Smith that human beings owe animals respect, kindness, and humane care. But Smith argues eloquently that our obligation to humanity matters more, and that granting “rights” to animals would inevitably diminish human dignity.

In making this case with reason and passion, A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy strikes a major blow against a radically antihuman dogma.


The Philosophy of Animal Rights
by Mylan Engel and Kathie Jenni
In this clear elucidation of the philosophy of animal rights, professors Mylan Engel Jr. and Kathie Jenni explore the fundamental outlines of the debate over our duties and responsibilities toward nonhuman animals. They also examine how the issue of animal rights plays out in a classroom setting and address some of the questions that arise for both students and teachers in presenting and studying this subject. In two course syllabi, Engel and Jenni place animal rights in the context of ethical practice and the environmental movement. The book also contains an extensive bibliography of references and philosophical resources.

The Philosophy of Animal Rights grew out of a chapter published in Teaching the Animal: Human Animal Studies across the Disciplines (Lantern, 2010), and contains an introduction to, and appendices on, Human Animal Studies by Margo DeMello.

The Friends We Keep: Unleashing Christianity's Compassion for Animals
by Laura Hobgood-Oster
Hobgood-Oster, a professor of religion and environmental studies at Southwestern University, examines the role animals have played in the history and development of Christianity in an attempt to return them to a more central role within the faith. Readers familiar with this area of study will find little new, as Hobgood-Oster recounts the work of scholars and theologians who have come before her: Andrew Linzey, Marc Bekoff, and Peter Singer. But rather than detract from the book, this foundation only enhances it, as Hobgood-Oster suffers from none of the academic-speak that plagues some of the deeper works on animals and religion. Indeed, the book's great strength is Hobgood-Oster herself, exhibited in her conversational tone and personal connection to the stories of animals in Christian scripture, as well as her experience in shelters and refuges, about which she writes movingly. A study guide will lead laypeople and church groups into a deeper exploration of the gifts animals can bring to the practice of Christianity, something Hobgood-Oster believes can only enrich the faith. --Publishers Weekly


Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (4th Edition)
by Michael E. Zimmerman, J. Baird Callicott, John Clark, Karen J. Warren, and Irene J. Klaver
Edited by leading experts in contemporary environmental philosophy, this anthology features the best available selections that cover the full range of positions within this rapidly developing field. Divided into four sections that delve into the vast issues of contemporary Eco-philosophy, the Fourth Edition now includes a section on Continental Environmental Philosophy that explores current topics such as the social construction of nature, and eco-phenomenology. Each section is introduced and edited by a leading philosopher in the field. For professionals with a career within the environmental field including law, politics, conservation, geography, and biology.


Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance (Counterpunch)
by Jason Hribal
A Siberian tiger at the San Francisco Zoo leaps a 12-foot high wall and mauls three visitors who had been tormenting her, killing one. A circus elephant tramples and gores a sadistic trainer, who had repeatedly fed her lit cigarettes. A pair of orangutans at the San Diego Zoo steal a crowbar and screwdriver and break-out of their enclosure. An orca at Sea World snatches his trainer into the pool and holds her underwater until she drowns. What's going on here? Are these mere accidents? Simply cases of animals acting on instinct? That's what the zoos and animal theme parks would have you believe. But historian Jason Hribal tells a different story. In the most provocative book on animal rights since Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, Hribal argues persuasively that these escapes and attacks are deliberate, that the animals are acting with intent, that they are asserting their own desires for freedom. Fear of the Animal Planet is a harrowing, and curiously uplifting, chronicle of resistance against the captivity and torture of animals.


Holy Cow: The Hare Krishna Contribution to Vegetarianism and Animal Rights [Paperback]
by Steven J. Rosen
Hinduism scholar Steven Rosen explores the world of the Hare Krishna movement, which has been instrumental in raising awareness of vegetarianism and the plight of animals in the United States. Holy Cow begins by introducing the Hare Krishna movement and of its colorful singing and dancing, its book distribution program, and especially its restaurants, sacred food distribution, and delicious vegetarian cuisine.

Rosen returns to the early days of Indian culture, to a time when daily life was based on Vedic principles and scriptural wisdom, and shows how vegetarianism and animal rights were endorsed by the Vedic texts. Rosen reveals how a tension was created by a concomitant endorsement of animal sacrifices in ancient Indian culture, a tension that led in part to the beginnings of Jainism and Buddhism.

Rosen then examines the rise of Vaishnavism—the worship of the god Vishnu, or Krishna—and how Vaishnavites were sympathetic to vegetarianism and animal rights, showing the link between the contemporary Hare Krishna movement (ISKCON), founded in the 1960s, and the ancient Vaishnavaites and all that they have accomplished in between. Rosen looks at the "Food for Life" program, the restaurants and cookbooks, and the various forms of writing about vegetarianism and animal rights. The book also includes recipes for those who wish to taste Krishna.

In conclusion, Rosen illustrates how deeply Hare Krishna devotees have influenced the contemporary vegetarian movement and its call for ahimsa, or nonviolence, toward all living beings.

Philosophy and Animal Life
by Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, John McDowell, Ian Hacking, and  Cary Wolfe
Philosophy and Animal Life offers a new way of thinking about animal rights, our obligation to animals, and the nature of philosophy itself. Cora Diamond begins with "The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy," in which she accuses analytical philosophy of evading, or deflecting, the responsibility of human beings toward nonhuman animals. Diamond then explores the animal question as it is bound up with the more general problem of philosophical skepticism. Focusing specifically on J. M. Coetzee's The Lives of Animals, she considers the failure of language to capture the vulnerability of humans and animals.

Stanley Cavell responds to Diamond's argument with his own close reading of Coetzee's work, connecting the human-animal relation to further themes of morality and philosophy. John McDowell follows with a critique of both Diamond and Cavell, and Ian Hacking explains why Cora Diamond's essay is so deeply perturbing and, paradoxically for a philosopher, he favors poetry over philosophy as a way of overcoming some of her difficulties. Cary Wolfe's introduction situates these arguments within the broader context of contemporary continental philosophy and theory, particularly Jacques Derrida's work on deconstruction and the question of the animal. Philosophy and Animal Life is a crucial collection for those interested in animal rights, ethics, and the development of philosophical inquiry. It also offers a unique exploration of the role of ethics in Coetzee's fiction.

Animal Rights and Wrongs
by Roger Scruton
A revised and improved edition of a book in continuing demand. Do animals have rights? If not, do we have duties towards them? If so, what duties? These and a myriad of other issues are discussed in this brilliantly argued book, published in association with the leading think-tank Demos. Why are animal-rights groups so keen to protect the rights of badgers and foxes but not of rats mice or even humans? How can we bridge the growing gap between rural producers and urban consumers? Why is raising animals for fur more heinous than raising them for their meat? Are we as human beings driving other species either to extinction or to a state of dependency? This paperback edition is fully updated with new chapters on the livestoick crisis, fishing and BSE and a layman's guide introduction to philosophical concepts, the book presents a radical respponse to the defenders of animal rights and a challenge to those who think that because they are kind to their pets, they are therefore good news for animals.

Animal Rights: Moral Theory and Practice
by Mark Rowlands
In this 2nd edition, the author has substantially revised his book throughout, updating the moral arguments and adding a chapter on animal minds. Importantly, rather than being a polemic on animal rights, this book is also a considered and imaginative evaluation of moral theory as explored through the issue of animal rights.

"Those concerned with animal ethics owe a debt of gratitude to Mark Rowlands. He has written what is without doubt the best defense of animal rights from a contractarian position, or perhaps from any position. Rowlands writes in an admirably clear and engaging manner, guaranteed to lure the reader into joining the spirited conversation.' - Susan J. Armstrong, Professor Emerita, Department of Philosophy, Humboldt State University, Arcata, Canada 'Philosophers, in particular, and those interested in animal rights issues, in general, should be grateful for the publication of this book for several reasons. First, familiar defenses of the animal rights position offered by Peter Singer and Tom Regan are examined anew, such that even those who are very familiar with these defenses see them in a new light. Second, the more recent debate in virtue ethics regarding treatment of animals (between Rosalind Hursthouse and Roger Scruton) is treated very insightfully. Third, Rowlands develops his own powerful version of a contractarian account of animal rights based on Rawlsian principles. And fourth, he also treats the animal rights issue in novel terms in light of recent debates in philosophy of mind and in relation to a fantastic thought experiment wherein brilliant aliens start farming and eating human beings because of their intellectual inferiority. This is not a book to be ignored!' - Daniel A. Dombrowski, Professor of Philosophy, Seattle University, USA

Animals Like Us (Practical ethics series)
by Mark Rowlands and Colin McGinn
Foot-and-mouth and mad-cow disease are but two of the results of treating animals as commodities, subject only to commercial constraints and ignoring all natural and moral considerations. Chickens hanging by their necks on conveyor belts, bloated dead sheep with their legs in the air, mutilated dogs waiting to die after undergoing horrendous experiments in the name of science or even just product-testing—these are some of the images that illustrate the indifference of a consumerist society to the suffering of animals. Few are willing to recognize that the packaged, sanitized supermarket meat that materializes on their dinner tables every day is the result of an industrial process involving unimaginable pain and suffering. In this clearly argued book, Mark Rowlands claims that it is simply unjust to harm animals. As conscious, sentient beings, biologically continuous with humans, they have interests that cannot simply be disregarded. Using simple principles of justice, he argues that animals have moral rights, and examines the consequences of this claim in the contexts of vegetarianism, animal experimentation, zoos and hunting, as well as the animal rights activism that has resulted from the recognition by a relatively small group of political activists that animals cannot simply be considered in their relation to humans.

About the Practical Ethics Series: Providing clear analysis of a number of central moral issues and written by experts, the titles in Verso's new Practical Ethics Series will appeal to the student while being lively and topical enough to make them attractive to a wide general public.

Creatures Like Us?
by Lynne Sharpe
As a child brought up among animals, Lynne Sharpe never doubted they were essentially ‘creatures like us’. It came as a shock to learn that others did not agree. Here she exposes the bizarre way in which many philosophers — including even some great and humane ones — have repeatedly talked and written about animals. They have discussed the topic in terms of non-existent abstract ‘animals’, conceived as defective humans, entirely neglecting the experience of people who have wide practical knowledge of companion animals — such as horses and dogs — through working with them. She testifies to the interesting nature of these creatures’ lives, noting that the usual narrow approach to animals carries with it also a distorted notion of human life as essentially cerebral and language-centred.

‘A lively and astute book which does a badly-needed job in clearing out a pile of bad philosophy' -- Mary Midgley

‘Written with superb clarity as all good philosophy should be. Lynne Sharpe powerfully champions animals' -- Richard Ryder

Worship Not The Creature: Animal Rights and the Bible
by J. Y. Jones, Ronald Kirk (Editor), Kimberley Winters Woods (Editor), Desta Garrett (Editor, Illustrator), Aaron Ford (Illustrator), Digicom Designs
Animal Rights and the Bible delivers the most forthright and engaging presentation of the Biblical view of animals in print. J. Y. Jones, long an accomplished physician, scholar, writer, outdoorsman, hunter, and man of God, is uniquely qualified to offer his cutting-edge treatment of this controversial topic. Don't let the down-to-earth, diverting and friendly style fool you. Just as Americas wise Founding Fathers discovered latent tyranny in a penny tea tax, Dr. Jones powerfully exposes the radical political agenda of the contemporary animal rights movement. With careful argument, he reveals the animal rights movement as a potentially significant menace to liberty and even to Christianity itself. Adding Dr. Joness able apologetic for the Christian faith in reasoned and transparently personal terms, one should prepare for a rich, compelling, and enjoyable read.

The Moral Status of Animals
by Stephen R.L. Clark
In recent years, the efforts of philosophers, scientists and activists to raise public awareness of the treatment of animals has laid the foundation for an enormous change in human practice. Animals and Their Moral Standing traces the development of "animal rights." And brings together, for the first time, many of the writings of Stephen R.L. Clark.

". . . stimulating, original, insightful -- a contribution as much to our understanding of ourselves as it is to our understanding of how we should think about animals and how we should treat them." -- Cora Diamond, University of Virginia

"Alongside Mary Midgley, Stephen Clark is our best writer on animals and our proper relationship to them. He writes with enormous erudition, intelligence and controlled passion." -- David E. Cooper, University of Durham

"Anything Stephen Clark writes is gilt-edged--highly credible, invariably original, and always insightful. Among the most articulate of animal advocates, he is a wonderful prose stylist, and a master of the essay." -- Bernard E. Rollin, Colorado State University

"It makes interesting and provocative reading and may well be his best book on animals..." -- R. G. Frey, Bowling Green State University. 


The Political Animal: Biology, Ethics and Politics
by Stephen R L Clark
In The Political Animal Stephen Clark investigates the political nature of the human animal. Based on biological science and traditional ethics, he probes into areas of inquiry that are usually ignored by traditional political theory. He suggests that properly informed political philosophy must take the role of women and children more seriously, and must be prepared to face up to the ethnocentric and domineering tendencies of the human animal.

The Political Animal shows the very great interest that a biological/ethological approach to politics can have. It is an extremely-thought-provoking study, a valuable contribution to political theory.
–Cora Diamond, University of Virginia

Nobody has thought harder than Stephen Clark about what political philosophy would look like if it took animals seriously. He is concerned with two projects: including in our politics the treatment of other animals, and acknowledging the fact that we humans are animals and so may better flourish in a society suitable for the animals that we are. Unlike many across the political spectrum, he is aware that these projects are linked..
–-Seth Crook, Social Theory and Practice

Stephen Clark's book is immensely welcome . . . He gives a fresh and most useful slant to a whole range of apparently familiar topics--anarchism, nationalism, environmentalism, slavery, and above all perhaps the meaning of family. Read him.
–Mary Midgley, author of Beast and Man

Stephen Clark is like a mini-holiday from the mundane and the predictable . . . This book is a delight.
–Bernard E. Rollin, Colorado State University

The Lives of Animals: (The University Center For Human Values Series)
by J. M. Coetzee
The idea of human cruelty to animals so consumes novelist Elizabeth Costello in her later years that she can no longer look another person in the eye: humans, especially meat-eating ones, seem to her to be conspirators in a crime of stupefying magnitude taking place on farms and in slaughterhouses, factories, and laboratories across the world.

Costello's son, a physics professor, admires her literary achievements, but dreads his mother's lecturing on animal rights at the college where he teaches. His colleagues resist her argument that human reason is overrated and that the inability to reason does not diminish the value of life; his wife denounces his mother's vegetarianism as a form of moral superiority.

At the dinner that follows her first lecture, the guests confront Costello with a range of sympathetic and skeptical reactions to issues of animal rights, touching on broad philosophical, anthropological, and religious perspectives. Painfully for her son, Elizabeth Costello seems offensive and flaky, but--dare he admit it?--strangely on target.

Here the internationally renowned writer J. M. Coetzee uses fiction to present a powerfully moving discussion of animal rights in all their complexity. He draws us into Elizabeth Costello's own sense of mortality, her compassion for animals, and her alienation from humans, even from her own family. In his fable, presented as a Tanner Lecture sponsored by the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, Coetzee immerses us in a drama reflecting the real-life situation at hand: a writer delivering a lecture on an emotionally charged issue at a prestigious university. Literature, philosophy, performance, and deep human conviction--Coetzee brings all these elements into play.

As in the story of Elizabeth Costello, the Tanner Lecture is followed by responses treating the reader to a variety of perspectives, delivered by leading thinkers in different fields. Coetzee's text is accompanied by an introduction by political philosopher Amy Gutmann and responsive essays by religion scholar Wendy Doniger, primatologist Barbara Smuts, literary theorist Marjorie Garber, and moral philosopher Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation. Together the lecture-fable and the essays explore the palpable social consequences of uncompromising moral conflict and confrontation.

Hartshorne and the Metaphysics of Animal Rights (S U N Y Series in Philosophy)
by Daniel A. Dombrowski

Not Even a Sparrow Falls: The Philosophy of Stephen R. L. Clark [Hardcover]
by Daniel A. Dombrowski
Since the mid-1970s an amazing philosopher has blazed across the philosophic sky-Stephen R. L. Clark. Author of twelve books (including From Athens to Jerusalem, Aristotle's Man, and Animals and their Moral Standing) as well as dozens of articles, hailed by critics as arresting, profound, amusing, and, paradoxically, irritating, Clark's writing has focused on three seemingly distinct philosophical spheres: philosophy of religion, the moral status of animals, and political philosophy. Dombrowski meticulously and critically assesses a wealth of important ideas and philosophical and theological topics to provide us with a firm grasp of Clark's ideas about God, animals, the environment, and politics.

Animal Rights, Human Rights: Ecology, Economy, and Ideology in the Canadian Arctic
by George Wenzel
The campaign to ban seal hunting in Canada won international headlines and achieved its aims to a large extent. Most observers felt instinctively that the campaigners were "right" but little thought was given to the cataclysmic consequences the ban would have on the way of life and economy of a traditional people, the Inuit of Arctic Canada.

A distinguished anthropologist who has spent over twenty years living and working with the Inuit Community, George Wenzel provides a reasoned, in-depth, coolly written but powerful critique of this received interpretation and shows how the campaigners 'own cultural prejudices and questionable ecological imperatives brought hardship, distress and instability to an ecologically balanced traditional culture.

This book is both a careful academic study and a disturbing comment on how environmental activity may oppress a whole society, which raises serious questions about the motives and methods of the animal rights' movement in a much wider context than the case here studied.

Animal Rights Vs Nature
by Walter E. Howard

Is God a Vegetarian?: Christianity, Vegetarianism, and Animal Rights
by Richard A. Young Foreword by Carol J. Adams
In IS GOD A VEGETARIAN?, a linguist and New Testament scholar attempts to answer the question being asked with greater and greater frequency: "Are Christians morally obligated to be vegetarians?"

Richard Alan Young examines key biblical texts pertaining to dietary customs, vegetarianism, and animal rights, placing the passages in social context. He then provides readers with an in-depth exploration of the ethical dilemmas that Christians face when deciding whether they should be vegetarians. Young also addresses animal testing and experimentation, the fur industry, animal factories, and the effects of meat-eating on human health. Two vegetarian recipes are included at the end of each chapter and an epilogue comprises guidelines for becoming a vegetarian and a recommended reading list. Insightful and challenging, IS GOD A VEGETARIAN? poses provocative questions for vegetarians, Christians, and anyone reflecting upon his personal choices and ethical role in our world today.

About Canada: Animal Rights
by John Sorenson
Casting a critical gaze over the exploitation of animals in agriculture, fashion, and entertainment, this manifesto investigates Canada's antiquated laws for such industries as the fur trade, seal hunting, the Calgary Stampede, puppy mills, horse slaughter, and the virtually unregulated vivisection industry. The book advocates an abolitionist agenda; promotes veganism as a personal and political commitment; shows the economic, environmental, and health costs of animal exploitation; and presents animal rights as a social justice issue.

The Animal Question: Why Nonhuman Animals Deserve Human Rights
by Paola Cavalieri Translated by Catherine Woollard
How much do animals matter--morally? Can we keep considering them as second class beings, to be used merely for our benefit? Or, should we offer them some form of moral egalitarianism? Inserting itself into the passionate debate over animal rights, this fascinating, provocative work by renowned scholar Paola Cavalieri advances a radical proposal: that we extend basic human rights to the nonhuman animals we currently treat as 'things.' Cavalieri first goes back in time, tracing the roots of the debate from the 1970s, then explores not only the ethical but also the scientific viewpoints, examining the debate's precedents in mainstream Western philosophy. She considers the main proposals of reform that recently have been advanced within the framework of today's prevailing ethical perspectives. Are these proposals satisfying? Cavalieri says no, claiming that it is necessary to go beyond the traditional opposition between utilitarianism and Kantianism and focus on the question of fundamental moral protection. In the case of human beings, such protection is granted within the widely shared moral doctrine of universal human rights' theory. Cavalieri argues that if we examine closely this theory, we will discover that its very logic extends to nonhuman animals as beings who are owed basic moral and legal rights and that, as a result, human rights are not human after all.

Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory
by Cary Wolfe
In Animal Rites, Cary Wolfe examines contemporary notions of humanism and ethics by reconstructing a little known but crucial underground tradition of theorizing the animal from Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Lyotard to Lévinas, Derrida, Žižek, Maturana, and Varela. Through detailed readings of how discourses of race, sexuality, colonialism, and animality interact in twentieth-century American culture, Wolfe explores what it means, in theory and critical practice, to take seriously "the question of the animal."

Other Nations: Animals in Modern Literature
Edited by Tom Regan and Andrew Linzey
The world's first anthology designed to employ the power of fiction to illuminate our moral relationship with animals, Other Nations boasts a superb collection of writings from writers of great distinction -- including Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, and Alice Walker. By organizing the literary pieces according to the means by which human beings relate to the animals discussed -- as companions, as sources of food, as objects of sport and entertainment, and as subjects in scientific research -- preeminent scholars Tom Regan and Andrew Linzey enable readers to relate these texts (and these animals) to their own experiences and to the manifold issues now discussed in public forums. While the editors believe the time is ripe for radical change in the way human beings see and treat animals, this collection nonetheless presents various and contrary viewpoints, leaving readers to come to their own moral conclusions.

Zoontologies: The Question Of The Animal
Edited by Cary Wolfe
Those nonhuman beings called animals pose philosophical and ethical questions that go to the root not just of what we think but of who we are. Their presence asks: what happens when the Other can no longer safely be assumed to be human? This collection offers a set of incitements and coordinates for exploring how these issues have been represented in contemporary culture and theory, from Jurassic Park and the "horse whisperer" Monty Roberts, to the work of artists such as Joseph Beuys and William Wegman; from foundational texts on the animal in the works of Heidegger and Freud, to the postmodern rethinking of ethics and animals in figures such as Singer, Deleuze, Lyotard, and Levinas; from the New York Times investigation of a North Carolina slaughterhouse, to the first appearance in any language of Jacques Derrida's recent detailed critique of Lacan's rendering of the human/animal divide.

Contributors: Steve Baker, U of Central Lancashire; Jacques Derrida, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris; Ursula K. Heise, Columbia U; Charlie LeDuff, New York Times; Alphonso Lingis, Pennsylvania State U; Paul Patton, U of Sydney; Judith Roof, Michigan State U; David Wills, SUNY, Albany.


If You Tame Me: Understanding Our Connection With Animals (Animals Culture And Society)
by Leslie Irvine
Nearly everyone who cares about them believes that dogs and cats have a sense of self that renders them unique. Traditional science and philosophy declare such notions about our pets to be irrational and anthropomorphic. Animals, they say, have only the crudest form of thought and no sense of self at all. Leslie Irvine's If You Tame Me challenges these entrenched views by demonstrating that our experience of animals and their behavior tells a different story.

Dogs and cats have been significant elements in human history and valued members of our households for centuries. Why do we regard these companions as having distinct personalities and as being irreplaceable? Irvine looks closely at how people form "connections" with dogs and cats available in adoption shelters and reflects on her own relationships with animals. If You Tame Me makes a persuasive case for the existence of a sense of self in companion animals and calls upon us to reconsider our rights and obligations regarding the non-human creatures in our lives.

No comments:

Post a Comment