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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Nature Of Persons And Our Ethical Relations With Nonhuman Animals, Jeremy Barris
The Nature Of Persons And Our Ethical Relations With Nonhuman Animals, Jeremy Barris
Humanities Faculty Research
If we accept that at least some kinds of nonhuman animals are persons, a variety of paradoxes emerge in our ethical relations with them, involving apparently unavoidable disrespect of their personhood. We aim to show that these paradoxes are legitimate but can be illuminatingly resolved in the light of an adequate understanding of the nature of persons. Drawing on recent Western, Daoist, and Zen Buddhist thought, we argue that personhood is already paradoxical in the same way as these aspects of our ethical relations with nonhuman animals, and in fact is the source of their paradoxical character. In both contexts, …
Mutual Rescue: Disabled Animals And Their Caretakers, Lynda Birke, Lori Gruen
Mutual Rescue: Disabled Animals And Their Caretakers, Lynda Birke, Lori Gruen
Animal Studies Journal
In this paper, we explore how caretakers experience living with disabled companion animals. Drawing on interviews, as well as narratives on websites and other support groups, we examine ways in which caretakers describe the lives of animals they live with, and their various disabilties. The animals were mostly dogs, plus a few cats, with a range of physical disabilities; almost all had been rehomed, often from places specializing in homing disabled animals.
Three themes emerged from analysis of these texts: first, respondents drew heavily on the common narrative of disabled individuals as heroes, often noted in disability rights literature – …