For an historical survey of important Western thinkers who articulated ethical objections to meat eating, see: Howard Williams, The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh Eating (F Pitman 1883), available at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55785/55785-h/55785-h.htm
For discussion of animal rights and ethics within the Buddhist traditions, see: Paul Waldau, ‘Buddhism and Animal Rights’ in Daniel Cozort and James Mark Shields (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics (Oxford University Press 2018), available at https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28081/chapter/212146115 and (Chapter 5) The Spirit of Kindness to Animals in Nyugen Thi Kieu Diem, ‘The Role of Animals in Indian Buddhism with Special Reference to the Jatakas’ (Doctor of Philosophy, University of Delhi 2012), available at https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/10603/6464
For approaches to animal ethics drawing on Mi’kmaq thought, see: Margaret Robinson, ‘Animal Personhood in Mi’kmaq Perspective’ (2014) 4(4) Societies 672, available at https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/4/4/672 and Margaret Robinson, ‘Is the Moose Still My Brother If We Don’t Eat Him?’ in Jodey Castricano and Rasmus R Simonsen (eds), Critical perspectives on veganism (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33419-6_12
For a discussion of animals’ ethical standing and rights drawing on a range of Asian worldviews, see: Christopher Key Chapple, ‘Nonhuman Animals and the Question of Rights from an Asian Perspective’, James McRae, 'Cutting the cat in one: Zen Master Dōgen on the moral status of nonhuman animals' in Neil Dalal (ed),Asian Perspectives on Animal Ethics: Rethinking the Nonhuman (Routledge 2014), available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315796246-16/nonhuman-animals-question-rights-asian-perspective-christopher-key-chapple and (Chapter 5) Animal Ethics and Religion Debate in Debanjali Mukherjee, ‘Moral Status of Animals: Debates and Dimensions’ (Doctor of Philosophy, University of North Bengal 2018), available at https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/10603/266706
For Jewish perspectives on animal ethics, see: Joshua Cahan, ‘Tza-Ar Ba-Alei Hayim in the Marketplace of Values’ (2014) 65 Conservative Judaism 30, available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/557461, Aaron S Gross, ‘Jewish Animal Ethics’ in Elliot N Dorff and Jonathan K Crane (eds), The Oxford handbook of Jewish ethics and morality (Oxford University Press 2013), available at https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199736065.013.0027, Y Michael Barilan, ‘The Vision of Vegetarianism and Peace: Rabbi Kook on the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (2004) 17 History of the Human Sciences 69, available at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0952695104048073 and Rabbi Dov Linzer, Animal Suffering and the Rhetoric of Values and Halakhah, Rabbi Aaron Potek, The Case for Limiting Meat Consumption to Shabbat, Holidays, and Celebrations in Shmuly Yanklowitz (ed), Kashrut and Jewish Food Ethics (Academic Studies Press 2019, available at https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781618119056/html
For an analysis of animal rights considering both Jewish and Islamic law, see: Samier Saeed, ‘Squashing the Beef: Why American Animal Rights Advocates Should Start Liking Jewish and Islamic Law’ (2022) 47(2) Columbia Journal of Environmental Law 521, available at https://doi.org/10.52214/cjel.v47i2.9871
For a discussion of North and South American Indigenous (or Amerindian) perspectives on animal rights, see: Markus Fraundorfer, ‘The Rediscovery of Indigenous Thought in the Modern- Legal System: The Case of the Great Apes’ (2018) 9 Global Policy 17, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12517
For a discussion of Māori approaches to animal ethics, see: Jordan Woodhouse and others, ‘Conceptualizing Indigenous Human–Animal Relationships in Aotearoa New Zealand: An Ethical Perspective’ (2021) 11 Animals 2899, available at https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/11/10/2899
For discussions of animal rights from the perspective of virtue ethics, see: Mark Rowlands, ‘Virtue Ethics and Animals’, Animal Rights: Moral Theory and Practice (2nd ed, Palgrave Macmillan 2009), available at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230245112_5 and Rosalind Hursthouse, ‘Virtue Ethics and the Treatment of Animals’ in Tom L Beauchamp and RG Frey (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics (Oxford University Press 2012), available at https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/38546/chapter/333822144
For a non-contractualist argument that Kantian ethics require humans to care for the welfare of animals as its own end, despite animals not being owed direct duties, see: Arthur Ripstein and Sergio Tenenbaum, ‘Directionality and Virtuous Ends’ in John J Callanan and Lucy Allais (eds), Kant and Animals (Oxford University Press 2020), available at https://academic.oup.com/book/37423/chapter/331510163
For an elaboration on the modern tradition of antispeciesist ethics within Italian philosophy, see: Leonardo Caffo, ‘Speciesism and the Ideology of Domination in the Italian Philosophical Tradition’ in Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics (1st ed. 2018, Palgrave Macmillan UK: Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan 2018), available at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-36671-9_7
For an exposition on the principle of equal consideration in utilitarian ethics, see: Marco EL Guidi, ‘“Everybody to Count for One, Nobody for More than One” The Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests from Bentham to Pigou’ (2008) 4 La Revue d’études benthamiennes, available at https://journals.openedition.org/etudes-benthamiennes/182
For a debate about the relevance of moral status and equal consideration of interests, see: David DeGrazia, ‘The Distinction Between Equality in Moral Status and Deserving Equal Consideration’ (1991) 7 Between the Species 73, available at https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol7/iss2/4/, David DeGrazia, ‘Equal Consideration and Unequal Moral Status’ (1993) 31 The Southern Journal of Philosophy 17, available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2041-6962.1993.tb00667.x, and John Rossi, ‘Is Equal Moral Consideration Really Compatible with Unequal Moral Status?’ (2010) 20 Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 251, available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/400478
For an engagement with methodological issues and assumptions underlying debates about speciesism, see: Jeroen Hopster, ‘The Speciesism Debate: Intuition, Method, and Empirical Advances’ (2019) 9 Animals 1, available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6940905/
For a back and forth written exchange between Peter Singer and Richard Posner that engages with the controversies in Singer’s position, including the relevance of intuition vs rational arguments in animal ethics, see Peter Singer and Richard A Posner, ‘Animal Rights Debate: Peter Singer vs Richard Posner’, available at https://famous-trials.com/animalrights/2601-animal-rights-debate-peter-singer-vs-richard-posner#:~:text=55%20PM%20PT-,Dear%20Judge%20Posner%2C,food%20or%20other%20human%20purposes.>/. For a later and more in-depth re-engagement between Singer and Posner, see Richard A Posner, Animal Rights: Legal, Philosophical, and Pragmatic Perspectives and Peter Singer, Ethics beyond Species and beyond Instincts: A Response to Richard Posner in Cass R Sunstein and Martha Craven Nussbaum (eds), Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (Oxford University Press 2006), available at https://academic.oup.com/book/32547
For literature on the supposed replaceability of individual animals within utilitarian animal ethics, see: Tatjana Višak, Do Utilitarians Need to Accept the Replaceability Argument? and Shelly Kagan, Singer on Killing Animals, in Tatjana Višak and Robert Garner (eds), The Ethics of Killing Animals (Oxford University Press 2016), available at https://academic.oup.com/book/6231
For an argument that animal liberation and speciesism are compatible, see: Introduction, Is Speciesism Opposed to Liberationism?, Why Animals Matter, Tzachi Zamir, Ethics and the Beast: A Speciesist Argument for Animal Liberation (Princeton University Press 2007), available at https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400828135
Tom Regan’s Deontological Approach
For a critique of Regan’s approach which argues that animals’ rights should be weaker than those of humans, see: Mary Anne Warren, ‘Difficulties with the Strong Animal Rights Position’ (1986) 2 Between the Species 163, available at https://doi.org/10.15368/bts.1986v2n4.2
For a critical appraisal of standard critiques of utilitarian ethics and how utilitarianism compares with deontological rights theories, see: HLA Hart, ‘Between Utility and Rights’ (1979) 79 Columbia Law Review 828, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/1121909#metadata_info_tab_contents
For a detailed, critical exposition and defence of Regan’s rights approach, see: Lisa Kemmerer, ‘Tom Regan: The Rights View’, In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals (Brill 2006), available at https://brill.com/view/book/9789047408406/B9789047408406_s006.xml
For an argument that Regan’s approach is a form of natural rights philosophy, see: Mark Rowlands, ‘Tom Regan: Animal Rights as Natural Rights’, Animal Rights: Moral Theory and Practice (2nd ed, Palgrave Macmillan 2009), available at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230245112_4
For background on the issue of intuitions in moral theories, see: William H Shaw, ‘Intuition and Moral Philosophy’ (1980) 17 American Philosophical Quarterly 127, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/20013855
For an argument that challenges the value of intuitions about the moral status of animals held by meat-eaters, drawing on cognitive science, see: Simon Christopher Timm, ‘Moral Intuition or Moral Disengagement? Cognitive Science Weighs in on the Animal Ethics Debate’ (2016) 9 Neuroethics 225, available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-016-9271-x
Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach
For critiques by Nussbaum of alternative approaches, and defences of her capabilities approach, see: Martha C Nussbaum, ‘Working with and for Animals: Getting the Theoretical Framework Right’ (2018) 19 Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 2, available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19452829.2017.1418963 and Martha C Nussbaum, ‘The Capabilities Approach and Animal Entitlements’ in Tom L Beauchamp and RG Frey (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics (Oxford University Press 2012), available at https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/38546/chapter/333822908
For an argument that Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach—contrary to Nussbaum’s own view—does not permit the killing of animals for food, see: Anders Schinkel, ‘Martha Nussbaum on Animal Rights’ (2008) 13 Ethics & the Environment 41, available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/239381
For a discussion of the political turn in animal ethics, see: Will Kymlicka, ‘Review of Robert Garner and Siobhan O’Sullivan (eds), The Political Turn in Animal Ethics (Rowman and Littlefield2016)’ (2017) 6 Animal Studies Journal 175, available at https://ro.uow.edu.au/asj/vol6/iss1/10/
For a defence of Donaldson and Kymlicka’s focus on positive duties to animals, which critiques their account of animal self-determination, arguing for a political theory that renders impermissible the domination of non-self-determining entities, see: Michael P Allen and Erica von Essen, ‘The Republican Zoopolis: Towards A New Legitimation Framework for Relational Animal Ethics’ (2016) 21 Ethics & the Environment 61, available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/621894
For an argument that Donaldson and Kymlicka’s theory insufficiently accounts for the difficulty in knowing what animals want and underemphasizes that the politics of human-animal relationships is a sphere of activity solely conducted by humans, see: Thomas Saretzki, ‘Taking Animals Seriously: Interpreting and Institutionalizing Human-Animal Relations in Modern Democracies’ (2015) 40 Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 47, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24583244#metadata_info_tab_contents
For critiques of using political concepts to characterise and evaluate human-animal relationships, and a defence by Donaldson and Kymlicka, see: Bernd Ladwig, ‘Animal Rights – Politicised, but Not Humanised: An Interest-Based Critique of Citizenship for Domesticated Animals’ (2015) 40 Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 32, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24583243, Christopher Hinchcliffe, ‘Animals and the Limits of Citizenship: Zoopolis and the Concept of Citizenship’ (2015) 23 The Journal of Political Philosophy 302, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12057, and Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, ‘Interspecies Politics: Reply to Hinchcliffe and Ladwig’ (2015) 23 The Journal of Political Philosophy 321, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12066
For an argument that individualism and relationality are individually insufficient but jointly sufficient grounds for moral consideration, see: Martin Huth, ‘How to Recognize Animals’ Vulnerability: Questioning the Orthodoxies of Moral Individualism and Relationalism in Animal Ethics’ (2020) 10 Animals 235, available at https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/2/235
Critical Approaches to Animal Rights
For a critique of animal rights approaches based on Derrida’s thought and posthumanism, see: Barnaby E McLaughlin, ‘A Conspiracy of Life: A Posthumanist Critique of Approaches to Animal Rights in the Law’ (2019) 14 University of Massachusetts Law Review 150, available at https://scholarship.law.umassd.edu/umlr/vol14/iss1/3
For an articulation of a feminist-based scepticism of human and animal rights—the latter for reinforcing dualistic thinking that denigrates animals—see: Joanna Bourke, ‘“Are Women Animals?”: The Rise and Rise of (Animal) Rights’ in Danielle Celermajer and Alexandre Lefebvre (eds), The Subject of Human Rights (Stanford University Press 2020), available at https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503613720-005
For further critique of animal rights discourse as being overly rationalistic, drawing on feminist thought, see: Cathryn Bailey, ‘On the Backs of Animals: The Valorization of Reason in Contemporary Animal Ethics’ (2005) 10 Ethics and the Environment 1, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/40339093 and Josephine Donovan, ‘Sympathy and Interspecies Care - Toward a Unified Theory of Eco- and Animal Liberation’ in John Sanbonmatsu (ed), Critical theory and animal liberation (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2011), available at https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442205802/Critical-Theory-and-Animal-Liberation
For critiques of the exclusion of animals within contractarian theories, see: Mark Rowlands, ‘Contractarianism and Animal Rights’, Animal Rights: Moral Theory and Practice (2nd ed, Palgrave Macmillan 2009), available at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230245112_6, Robert Garner, ‘Animals, Politics and Justice: Rawlsian Liberalism and the Plight of Non-Humans’ (2003) 12 Environmental Politics 3, available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09644010412331308164, Robert Elliot, ‘Rawlsian Justice and Non-Human Animals’ (1984) 1 Journal of Applied Philosophy 95, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24353615 and C Tucker and C MacDonald, ‘Beastly Contractarianism? A Contractarian Analysis of the Possibility of Animal Rights’ (2004) 5 Essays in Philosophy 474, available at https://doi.org/10.5840/eip20045220
For a critique of attempts to include animals within Rawlsian theories of justice as inconsistent with Rawls’s theory, see: David Svoldba, ‘Is There a Rawlsian Argument for Animal Rights?’ (2016) 19 Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 973, available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-016-9702-0
Conclusion
For a discussion of methodological concepts and key terminology that is relevant to many of the issues covered in this chapter, see: Lisa Kemmerer, ‘Methods and Terms’, In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals (Brill 2006), available at https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047408406_005
For a critique of the use of “moral status” as a concept in ethics, see: Oscar Horta, ‘Why the Concept of Moral Status Should Be Abandoned’ (2017) 20 Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 899, available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-017-9829-7
For a consideration of how ethical norms in theory and in practice may differ, see: Jeff Sebo, ‘Kantianism for Humans, Utilitarianism for Nonhumans? Yes and No’ [2022] Philosophical Studies, available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01835-0
For an accessible argument about the types of reasoning that inform human-animal ethics, see: Todd May, ‘Moral Individualism, Moral Relationalism, and Obligations to Non-Human Animals’ (2014) 31 Journal of Applied Philosophy 155, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24355952
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