Philosophy and Ethics

Interviews with a wide variety of guests on what it means to stay grounded in reality and to have compassion for all sentient beings.

Explores animals' vast capacity for agency, justice, solidarity, humor, and communication across species and posits that the social bonds diverse animals form provide a remarkable model for communitarian justice and cosmopolitan peace, challenging the human. exceptionalism that drives modern moral theory.

Reacting to the treatment of animals and the environment as mutually exclusive objects of concern, sets forth a nature ethic that conceives of nonhuman animals as active subjects who are simultaneously parts of both nature and human society.

Questions, from a critical ecofeminist stance, whether legal personhood is the best means to achieving total interspecies liberation and suggests that animal studies scholars and activists should use ideological rhetorical criticism to investigate the implications of their tactics and strategies, emphasizing a critical vegan rhetoric.

Using concepts from moral and political philosophy, argues that we have a duty to research safe ways of providing large-scale assistance to wild animals, including, potentially, genetic engineering.

Examines the arguments for veganism as a moral imperative and determines that, while there are good reasons for such a move, they are not strong enough to support that conclusion, while nevertheless determining that we have a collective obligation not to farm animals.

A seminal work laying out the case for attributing moral rights to certain animals based on an extension of the Kantian principle that all subjects-of-a life possess inherent value and must be treated as ends in themselves, rather than as means to an end.

A discussion of the prominent philosopher’s “capabilities” approach to moral philosophy, with a focus on political cooperation and the nature of political principles, including an extensive discussion of its applicability to animals. Inherent in the discussion is a rejection of a contractarian approach for the achievement of true social justice when dealing with unequal parties. 

Focuses on the interrelated suffering of oppressed humans and other animals, argues that exploitation of other animals has always gone hand in hand with the oppression of women, people of color, and other oppressed groups and analyzes the ideological forces and the use of state power in enforcing the uses of the oppressed, both human and animal. Suggests that the liberation of either devalued humans or animals ultimately depends on the liberation of the other.

An exploration from the early days of the modern animal movement regarding the treatment of animals in various philosophical traditions, the errors and misjudgments that led to animals being left out of serious discussions regarding ethics, as well as proposals for rectifying this egregious lapse.