Animal Liberation (book)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Animal Liberation
Cover of the first edition
AuthorPeter Singer
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectAnimal rights
PublisherHarperCollins
Publication date
  • 1975 (first edition)
  • 1990 (second edition)
  • 2002 (third edition)
  • 2009 (fourth edition)
  • 2015 (40th anniversary edition)
  • 2023 (revised edition)
Media typePrint (
ISBN
978-0-06-171130-5 (2009 edition)

Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals is a 1975 book by Australian philosopher

animal liberation movement to be the founding philosophical statement of its ideas. Singer himself rejected the use of the theoretical framework of rights when it comes to human and nonhuman animals. Following Jeremy Bentham, Singer argued that the interests of animals should be considered because of their ability to experience suffering and that the idea of rights was not necessary in order to consider them. He popularized the term "speciesism" in the book, which had been coined by Richard D. Ryder to describe the exploitative treatment of animals.[1]

A revised edition titled Animal Liberation Now was released on 23 May 2023.[2]

Summary

Singer allows that animal rights are not the same as human rights, writing in Animal Liberation that "there are obviously important differences between humans and other animals, and these differences must give rise to some differences in the rights that each have."[3]

In Animal Liberation, Singer argues against what he calls

vegan diet. He also condemns vivisection except where the benefit (in terms of improved medical treatment, etc.) outweighs the harm done to the animals used.[5]

Reception

Activist Ingrid Newkirk wrote of Animal Liberation, "It forever changed the conversation about our treatment of animals. It made people—myself included—change what we ate, what we wore, and how we perceived animals."[6] Other activists who claim that their attitudes to animals changed after reading the book include Peter Tatchell[7] and Matt Ball.[8]

Singer has expressed regret that the book did not have more impact. In September 1999, he was quoted by Michael Specter in The New Yorker on the book's impact:

It's had effects around the margins, of course, but they have mostly been minor. When I wrote it, I really thought the book would change the world. I know it sounds a little grand now, but at the time the sixties still existed for us. It looked as if real changes were possible, and I let myself believe that this would be one of them. All you have to do is walk around the corner to McDonald's to see how successful I have been.[9]

The book has also received a wide range of philosophical challenges to his formulation of animal rights. In a lengthy debate in Slate, published in 2001, Richard Posner wrote, among other things, that Singer failed to see the "radicalism of the ethical vision that powers [his] view on animals, an ethical vision that finds greater value in a healthy pig than in a profoundly intellectually challenged child, that commands inflicting a lesser pain on a human being to avert a greater pain to a dog, and that, provided only that a chimpanzee has 1 percent of the mental ability of a normal human being, would require the sacrifice of the human being to save 101 chimpanzees." Singer replied to and rejected this claim, engaging in a lengthy debate with Posner.[10]

In addition, Martha Nussbaum has argued that the capability approach provides a more adequate foundation of justice than Utilitarianism can supply. Utilitarianism, Nussbaum argues, ignores adaptive preferences, elides the separateness of distinct persons, misidentifies valuable human/non-human emotions such as grief, and calculates according to "sum-rankings" rather than inviolable protection of intrinsic entitlements.[11]

The moral philosopher Roger Scruton criticised Singer's works, including Animal Liberation, saying that they "contain little or no philosophical argument. They derive their radical moral conclusions from a vacuous utilitarianism that counts the pain and pleasure of all living things as equally significant and that ignores just about everything that has been said in our philosophical tradition about the real distinction between persons and animals."[12]

Personal background

In an essay entitled "Animal Liberation: A Personal View", Singer describes the personal background that led to his adoption of the views he sets out in Animal Liberation. He writes of how he arrived in Oxford in October 1969, and in 1970 had lunch with a fellow graduate student, Richard Keshen, who avoided meat. This led Singer to inquire as to why and then to read

animal suffering seriously as a philosophical issue.[13]

Animal Liberation Now

A revised edition, titled Animal Liberation Now: The Definitive Classic Renewed, was released on 23 May 2023. It features a new foreword by Yuval Noah Harari and two-thirds of the book consists of entirely new material and it also documents changes in animal welfare since the book's original publication, along with other developments, such as the impact of meat consumption on climate and on the risk of spreading dangerous new viruses.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ Peter Singer, "A Utilitarian Defense of Animal Liberation," in Environmental Ethics, ed. Louis Pojman (Stamford, CT: Wadsworth, 2001), 35."
  2. ^ a b "Animal Liberation Now". HarperCollins. Retrieved 17 May 2023.
  3. ^ Op. cit., p. 2.
  4. ^ Singer, Peter. "On Humans and Animals". IAI TV. Retrieved 11 December 2013.
  5. The Sunday Times
    , November 26, 2006.
  6. ^ "What Is Animal Liberation? Philosopher Peter Singer's Groundbreaking Work Turns 40 | A Message From PETA's President | All About PETA | About". PETA. 14 April 2015. Retrieved 26 July 2015.
  7. ^ Tatchell, Peter (29 January 2009). "The book that changed my life - Animal Liberation". The New Statesman. UK. Archived from the original on 26 August 2017. Retrieved 23 December 2016.
  8. ^ Back cover of the October 2015 Vintage edition of Animal Liberation. “Few books can honestly be said to have launched a major social movement. Animal Liberation is one. Peter Singer’s work has changed millions and millions of lives, including mine. Much more importantly, though, Professor Singer’s book helped define and build the movement that is fundamentally shifting the way humans relate to our fellow animals and that will eventually end the barbaric treatment of billions of sentient individuals.” —Matt Ball, author of The Accidental Activist and senior adviser for VegFund.
  9. ^ Michael Specter, "The Dangerous Philosopher", The New Yorker, 6 September 1999
  10. ^ "Animal Rights: Debate between Peter Singer and Richard Posner (collection of letters)". Utilitarian. June 2001. Archived from the original on 9 May 2015. Links to individual letters of the debate on the Slate website: First letter; Singer to Posner, June 12, 2001: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/06/animal-rights-2.html; second letter, Posner to Singer, June 12, 2001: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/06/animal-rights-3.html; third letter, Singer to Posner, June 13, 2001: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/06/animal-rights-4.html; fourth letter, Posner to Singer, June 13, 2001: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/06/animal-rights-5.htm; fifth letter, Singer to Posner, June 13, 2001: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/06/animal-rights-6.html; sixth letter, Posner to Singer, June 14, 2001: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/06/animal-rights-7.html; seventh letter, Singer to Posner June 14, 2001: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/06/animal-rights-8.html; eighth letter, Posner to Singer, June 14, 2001: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/06/animal-rights-9.html
  11. ^ Nussbaum, Martha and Cass Sunstein, eds. Animal Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 299–320.
  12. ^ Scruton, Roger. "Animal Rights" Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, City Journal, summer 2000.
    • Scruton (1998).
  13. .