Interspecies Ethics

Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-0-231-16777-2
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 232 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 221 mm x 153 mm, Gewicht: 310 g

Reihe: Critical Perspectives on Animals: Theory, Culture, Science, and Law

Interspecies Ethics explores animals' vast capacity for agency, justice, solidarity, humor, and communication across species. 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. Situating biosocial ethics firmly within coevolutionary processes, this volume has profound implications for work in social and political thought, contemporary pragmatism, Africana thought, and continental philosophy.

Interspecies Ethics develops a communitarian model for multispecies ethics, rebalancing the overemphasis on competition in the original Darwinian paradigm by drawing out and stressing the cooperationist aspects of evolutionary theory through mutual aid. The book's ethical vision offers an alternative to utilitarian, deontological, and virtue ethics, building its argument through rich anecdotes and clear explanations of recent scientific discoveries regarding animals and their agency. Geared toward a general as well as a philosophical audience, the text illuminates a variety of theories and contrasting approaches, tracing the contours of a postmoral ethics.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Willett, Cynthia

Fachgebiete

• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Bioethik, Tierethik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Angewandte Ethik & Soziale Verantwortung Bioethik, Tierethik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: New Ideals of Belonging and Africana Origins of Interspecies Living1. Can the Animal Subaltern Laugh? Neoliberal Inversions, Cross-Species Solidarities, and Other Challenges to Human Exceptionalism, with Julie Willett2. Paleolithic Ethics: Ethics' Evolution from Play, the Interspecies Community Selection Hypothesis, and Anarchic Communitarianism3. Affect Attunement: Discourse Ethics Across Species4. Water and Wing Give Wonder: Meditations on Cosmopolitan Peace5. Reflections: A Model and a Vision of Ethical LifeCoda; or, The Song of the Dog-Man: Mourning in J. M. Coetzee's DisgraceAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

Leseproben

Read an excerpt from the final chapter, "Coda; or the Song of the Dog-Man":

Über Autor(innen)

Cynthia Willett is a professor of philosophy at Emory University. Her books include Irony in the Age of Empire: Comic Perspectives on Freedom and Democracy; The Soul of Justice: Racial Hubris and Social Bonds; and Maternal Ethics and Other Slave Moralities. She has also edited the anthology Theorizing Multiculturalism and is a coeditor for the Symposia on Race, Gender, and Philosophy.