Carol J. Adams, Deane Curtin, Josephine Donovan, Marti Kheel, Brian Luke, Rita C. Manning, and Kenneth Shapiro explore the way ethic-of-care feminism can be applied to hunting, vivisection, and even the activists themselves. This volume creates a new definition of animal advocacy and will interest animal-rights activists-the majority of whom are women-and helps to explain their concern by providing a new theoretical basis for it, based on the insights of Carol Gilligan.
Beyond Animal Welfare is a personal account of the wellness construct and its utility as an animal welfare enhancement. Professor Terry L. Maple discovered wellness as he sought to optimize animal welfare standards and practices in his duel career as an animal welfare scientist and a CEO for two zoos in Atlanta and West Palm Beach, Florida. The book examines the merger of human-centered wellness principles and the advancing quality of life offered to wildlife in human care. Professor Maple reveals that wellness applies to both human beings and animals, communities, and ecosystems. The key to long-term improvements in living standards is wellness-inspired design, a process whereby the animal is encouraged to thrive by creative enhancements to its physical and social environment. The art and science of wellness is identified as the new frontier of animal welfare reform.
From vegetarianism to scientific experimentation, this book is an ethical exploration of our responsibilities To The animals with whom we share the planet.
In Beyond Prejudice, Evelyn B. Pluhar defends the view that any sentient conative being--one capable of caring about what happens to him or herself--is morally significant, a view that supports the moral status and rights of many nonhuman animals. Confronting traditional and contemporary philosophical arguments, she offers in clear and accessible fashion a thorough examination of theories of moral significance while decisively demonstrating the flaws in the arguments of those who would avoid attributing moral rights to nonhumans. Exposing the traditional view--which restricts the moral realm to autonomous, fully fledged "persons"--as having horrific implications for the treatment of many humans, Pluhar goes on to argue positively that sentient individuals of any species are no less morally significant than the most automomous human. Her position provides the ultimate justification that is missing from previous defenses of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In the process of advancing her position, Pluhar discusses the implications of determining moral significance for children and "abnormal" humans as well as its relevance to population policies, the raising of animals for food or product testing, decisions on hunting and euthanasia, and the treatment of companion animals. In addition, the author scrutinizes recent assertions by environmental ethicists that all living things or that natural objects and ecosystems be considered highly morally significant. This powerful book of moral theory challenges all defenders of the moral status quo--which decrees that animals decidedly do not count--to reevaluate their convictions.
Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum bring together an all-star cast of contributors to explore the legal and political issues that underlie the campaign for animal rights and the opposition to it. Addressing ethical questions about ownership, protection against unjustified suffering, and the ability of animals to make their own choices free from human control, the authors offer numerous different perspectives on animal rights and animal welfare. They show that whatever one's ultimate conclusions, the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals is being fundamentally rethought. This book offers a state-of-the-art treatment of that rethinking.
In Beyond Animal Rights, Josephine Donovan and Carol J. Adams introduced feminist "ethic of care" theory into philosophical discussions of the treatment of animals. In this new volume, seven essays from Beyond Animal Rights are joined by nine new articles-most of which were written in response to that book-and a new introduction that situates feminist animal care theory within feminist theory and the larger debate over animal rights. Contributors critique theorists' reliance on natural rights doctrine and utilitarianism, which, they suggest, have a masculine bias. They argue for ethical attentiveness and sympathy in our relationships with animals and propose a link between the continuing subjugation of women and the human domination of nature. Beginning with the earliest articulation of the idea in the mid-1980s and continuing to the theory's most recent revisions, this volume presents the most complete portrait of the evolution of the feminist-care tradition.
Alasdair Cochrane introduces an entirely new theory of animal rights grounded in their interests as sentient beings. He then applies this theory to different and underexplored policy areas, such as genetic engineering, pet-keeping, indigenous hunting, and religious slaughter. In contrast to other proponents of animal rights, Cochrane claims that because most sentient animals are not autonomous agents, they have no intrinsic interest in liberty. As such, he argues that our obligations to animals lie in ending practices that cause their suffering and death and do not require the liberation of animals. Cochrane's "interest-based rights approach" weighs the interests of animals to determine which is sufficient to impose strict duties on humans. In so doing, Cochrane acknowledges that sentient animals have a clear and discernable right not to be made to suffer and not to be killed, but he argues that they do not have a prima facie right to liberty. Because most animals possess no interest in leading freely chosen lives, humans have no moral obligation to liberate them. Moving beyond theory to the practical aspects of applied ethics, this pragmatic volume provides much-needed perspective on the realities and responsibilities of the human-animal relationship.
