Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethinc for the Treatment of Animals

by Josephine Donovan

Book Overview

Contains eight contributions which extend feminist ethic-of-care theory to the issue of animal well-being. As a group, the essays aim to suggest ways that theorists can move beyond the notion of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826408362
• ISBN13: 9780826408365
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Continuum
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A Long-Awaited Animal Ethic - Contextual and Realistic

In Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals, editors Josephine Donovan and Carol J. Adams bring together seven articles on ecofeminism, an ethic of care, and animal liberation from a variety of perspectives. As a whole, the collection seeks to apply a feminist ethic to the philosophies of well-known figures such as Tom Regan and Peter Singer. Working through a feminist lens, the anthology attempts to propose an appropriate mode of behavior through exploration of contextual relationships between humans and non-human animals. Animal liberation is discussed in reference to the current dominating theories and to a new proposed ethic of care. Feminist critiques of philosophers such as Regan and Singer suggest that although these men condemn Cartesian scientific practices for their lack of consideration of the worth of moral beings, they in fact use these Cartesian objectivist modes of reasoning to suppress emotional knowledge with hierarchical systems of natural rights or utilitarianism, respectively (p 45). The persistence of these mainstream philosophers in denying their appeal to emotion when analyzing the case for animal rights shows their biased masculinist perspective that does not take into account the very real epistemology of emotion and sympathy. It is this sympathy, feminists like Josephine Donovan claim, that ultimately has driven vegetarians and animal rights activists to their defining behaviors. Since one does not oppose cruelty to animals on logistical claims of fairness (as in, ?I oppose the systematic slaughtering of animals because such treatment of humans is not tolerated!?), but out of very real emotional sympathy for the animals, an ethic of care must be accepted in the animal rights movement and not dismissed as weak or irrational. Both Regan and Singer argue in favor of a justice approach, claiming that a caring ethic is not enough to sustain the animal liberation movement. Feminists declare that these claims are based on the philosophers? low estimations of the human capacity to sympathize. However, author Brian Luke proves these estimates inaccurate by revealing the extensive mechanisms employed to undermine sympathetic opposition to animal exploitation such as rationales of divine permission, ?cover stories? like human need of animal medical research and food, denying the harms caused to the animals and shielding the public from them, etc. (p 81). These attempts at guiding the public away from sympathy for animals show how powerful emotion is in dictating one?s actions. An ethic based on sympathy is determined by Josephine Donovan to be appropriate and useful as it is a ?complex intellectual as well as emotional exercise? that pushes one toward animal liberation out of compassion for the animal and its well-being in exploitative circumstances (p 149).Feminist ethics redefine rights and cross-species identity to be relational, contextual, and mutually accommodating, affording no