Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
A Review Of Dan C. Shahar’S Why It's Ok To Eat Meat And Per Bauhn’S Animal Suffering, Human Rights, And The Virtue Of Justice, Josh Milburn
A Review Of Dan C. Shahar’S Why It's Ok To Eat Meat And Per Bauhn’S Animal Suffering, Human Rights, And The Virtue Of Justice, Josh Milburn
Between the Species
It’s tricky to find decent defences of meat-eating of the kind practiced by most westerners. I was thus intrigued to pick up two short books defending meat-eating. Dan Shahar’s Why It’s Ok to Eat Meat (2022) is in Routledge’s series of short books called Why It's OK: The Ethics and Aesthetics of How We Live. Per Bauhn’s Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice (2023) is from Palgrave Pivot, which publishes books falling somewhere between journal articles and monographs. Shahar’s book is worth reading: it’s well-written, raising interesting questions, and offering a coherent defence of meat. Bauhn’s book …
Bentham And The “Famous Footnote”, Randall Otto
Bentham And The “Famous Footnote”, Randall Otto
Between the Species
It is the contention of this paper that animal liberationists have misconstrued and misused Bentham’s “famous footnote” as an advocacy of species equivalency of interests, as though he were an incipient opponent of what has come to be known as “speciesism.” The context of Bentham’s footnote was of mistreatment of others that are capable of feeling pain. He was advocating in the footnote for laws that would end what he viewed as instances of cruelty toward animals. He was not advocating for vegetarianism or an end to killing animals where they can be of benefit to human beings, where “we …
Interspecies Political Agency In The Total Liberation Movement, Michael P. Allen, Erica Von Essen
Interspecies Political Agency In The Total Liberation Movement, Michael P. Allen, Erica Von Essen
Between the Species
In this paper, we examine the possibility of interspecies political agency at the level of social movements. We ask to what extent animals and humans can be co-participants in one another’s liberation from oppression. To do so, we assess arguments for and against including animals in the ‘total liberation package’, taken as the liberation from oppressive societal structures. These are not pragmatic-political arguments, but conceptual-philosophical arguments that have been put before animal liberationists attempting to ‘piggy-back’ on human liberation movements. In discrediting these philosophical arguments, we argue that animals have capacities for self-liberation that humans can facilitate and that animals, …
Just Meat: Chicken-Pain, Intergenerational Justice, And The American Diet, Stephen Scales
Just Meat: Chicken-Pain, Intergenerational Justice, And The American Diet, Stephen Scales
Between the Species
Peter Singer’s arguments against the morality of the typical American diet focus on the pain of animals, and lead to the conclusion that we must become committed vegans. His approach ignores the impact that different psychological capacities can legitimately have on our moral appraisal of the interests of beings. Although we ought to eat less meat because of the externalized environmental costs that factory farming inflicts upon future people, an ideal diet may contain some environmentally sustainably raised meat. Finally, the perception of ethical puritanism in committed vegans may be an obstacle to achieving the real reductions in animal suffering …
Animal Experimentation As A Form Of Rescue, Alexander Zambrano Mr.
Animal Experimentation As A Form Of Rescue, Alexander Zambrano Mr.
Between the Species
In this paper I explore a new approach to the ethics of animal experimentation by conceiving of it as a form of rescue. The notion of rescue, I suggest, involves some moral agent(s) performing an action or series of actions, whose end is to prevent or alleviate serious harm to another party, harm that otherwise would have occurred or would have continued to occur, had that moral agent not intervened. Animal experiments that are utilized as a means to alleviate human illnesses mirror the structure of rescue cases and this means that we can and should apply principles of rescue …
Egalitarianism And Animals, Oscar Horta
Egalitarianism And Animals, Oscar Horta
Between the Species
The moral consideration of nonhuman animals and the critique of speciesism have been defended by appeal to a variety of ethical theories. One of the main approaches in moral and political philosophy today from which to launch such a defense is egalitarianism, which is the view that we should aim at favoring the worse off by reducing inequality. This paper explains what egalitarianism is and shows the important practical consequences it has for nonhuman animals, both those that are exploited by humans and those in need of aid in the wild. Egalitarianism implies rejecting speciesism, and in practice it prescribes …