Why Animal Suffering Matters
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$29.95 (01)Description
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.
Reviews
"Philosophically astute, theologically sensitive, and eminently readable, the Reverend Professor Linzey's innovative thesis is that, far from grounding a secondary moral significance to animals, their (alleged) lakc of reasoning and linguistic capacities to argue for treating them with the care and concern that we extend to our very young. This is required reading for not only those interested in the plight of animals, but also for all who reflect upon how a moral life should be lived." --Mark H. Bernstein, Joyce and Edward E. Brewer Chair of Applied Ethics at Purdue University
"Andrew Linzey is virtually synonymous with the discipline of animal theology: a discipline that he has legitimate claim to have single-handedly invented. Therefore, we can safely say that a dearth of originality has never been among Linzey's faults. This book, I believe, ranks as one of his finest works--perhaps even the finest. It is original, engaging, and impressive, and comprises a skillful interweaving of theological and ethical argument, systematic analysis, and (mercilessly destructive) criticism of hugely significant public documents on hunting with dogs, fur farming, and commercial sealing, underwritten by a form of Chomskyan social criticism." --Mark Rowlands, Professor of Philosophy, University of Miami
About the Author(s)
Andrew Linzey is Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and a Member of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. He is the author of Animal Theology, Creatures of the Same God and Animal Rites: Liturgies of Animal Care .
