scholarly journals Levinasian Ethics and Animal Rights

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Crowe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Moral Status Of Animals ◽  
Ethical Significance ◽  
Ambiguous Position ◽  
Cette Question

What can we say, in good faith, about the moral status of animals? This article explores the above question through the prism of Emmanuel Levinas’ theory of ethics. I begin by examining the ambiguous position of non-human animals in Levinas’ writings. I argue that Levinas’ theory is best read as suggesting that nonhumans present claims for recognition as ethical beings, but that these demands have a different character to those presented by humans. I then explore the implications of Levinas’ view of ethics for the structure of moral reasoning. I contend that Levinas’ theory yields a conception of moral reasoning as reflective, good faith engagement with primordial social judgements of ethical significance. In the final part of the article, I suggest that it is both possible and constructive to thematise the ethical claims of non-human animals in the language of rights. Indeed, from a Levinasian perspective, animal rights might properly be viewed as a model for the notion of human rights, since they capture the essential asymmetry of the ethical encounter.Que peut-on dire, de bonne foi, au sujet du statut moral des animaux? Cet article examine cette question à travers le prisme de la théorie d’éthique d’Emmanuel Levinas. J’examine d’abord la position ambiguë des animaux non humains dans les écrits de Levinas. Je soutiens que la meilleure façon d’interpréter la théorie de Levinas, c’est qu’elle suggère qu’il y a des raisons de reconnaître un caractère éthique aux êtres non humains, mais que ces raisons diffèrent de celles relatives aux êtres humains. J’examine ensuite les implications de la façon dont Levinas voit l’éthique pour la structure du raisonnement moral. Je prétends que la théorie de Levinas présente une conception du raisonnement moral comme étant un engagement réflectif, de bonne foi, avec des jugements sociaux primordiaux ayant une portée éthique. Dans la dernière partie de l’article, je suggère qu’il est possible et qu’il est constructif de faire une thématique des prétentions éthiques d’animaux non humains en utilisant le langage des droits. En fait, dans la perspective de Levinas, on peut correctement voir les droits des animaux comme modèle pour la notion des droits de la personne, car ils saisissent l’asymétrie essentielle de la rencontre éthique.

Do Animals Feel Pain?

Philosophy ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 66 (255) ◽  
pp. 25-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Current Interest ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Animal Liberation ◽  
Animal Pain ◽  
Moral Status Of Animals

In an oft-quoted passage fromThe Principles of Morals and Legislation(1789), Jeremy Bentham addresses the issue of our treatment of animals with the following words: ‘the question is not, Can theyreason? nor, can theytalk? but, Can theysuffer?’ The point is well taken, for surely if animals suffer, they are legitimate objects of our moral concern. It is curious therefore, given the current interest in the moral status of animals, that Bentham's question has been assumed to be merely rhetorical. No-one has seriously examined the claim, central to arguments for animal liberation and animal rights, that animals actually feel pain. Peter Singer'sAnimal Liberationis perhaps typical in this regard. His treatment of the issue covers a scant seven pages, after which he summarily announces that ‘there are no good reasons, scientific or philosophical, for denying that animals feel pain’. In this paper I shall suggest that the issue of animal pain is not so easily dispensed with, and that the evidence brought forward to demonstrate that animals feel pain is far from conclusive.

Marxism and the Moral Status of Animals

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted Benton
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Movement Activity ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
Green Politics ◽  
Liberal Capitalism ◽  
Moral Status Of Animals ◽  
The Cost

AbstractPerlo's engagement with the complex and ambiguous relationship between Marxism (and, more broadly, the socialist traditions) and the moral status of animals is very much to be welcomed. This sort of engagement is valuable for three main reasons. First, the more narrowly focused social movement activity—whether committed to animal rights, social justice in the workplace, or advancement for women—is liable to cut itself off from critical insights created in the context of other movements. I became aware of this, particularly during the 1980s in relation to radical green politics, as both deepening and widening the already existing socialist case against neo-liberal capitalism, just as the women's liberation movement had done a decade or more earlier. Second, this sort of analysis is valuable because without it "single-issue" movements run a serious risk of advancing the claims of their own preferred social group at the cost of (usually unknowingly and unintentionally) deepening the oppression or exploitation of other groups. Third, where radical social movements campaign for changes that conflict with the interests of wealthy and powerful interests, and are committed to democratic values, they need to be able to bring public opinion with them. Single-issue movements rarely can do this on their own: Broad-based coalitions are needed. Moreover, the sources of radical thought and the range of justified grievances are now so diverse that the notion of a single, unified political party as the centralized vehicle of change is no longer viable (if it ever was). So, the broadly based coalition has to be diverse and difference-respecting. But can it be this while still maintaining enough unity of purpose and coordination of its actions to be effective?

A Typology of Moral Progress

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Premarital Sex ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Point

This chapter identifies a number of developments that are candidates for moral progress: abolition of the Atlantic chattel slavery, improvements in civil rights for minorities, equal rights for women, better treatment of (some) non-human animals, and abolition of the cruellest punishments in most parts of the world. This bottom-up approach is then used to construct a typology of moral progress, including improvements in moral reasoning, recognition of the moral standing or equal basic moral status of beings formerly thought to lack them, improvements in understandings of the domain of justice, the recognition that some behaviors formerly thought to be morally impermissible (such as premarital sex, masturbation, lending money at interest, and refusal to die “for king and country”) can be morally permissible, and improvements in understandings of morality itself. Finally, a distinction is made between improvements from a moral point of view and moral progress in the fullest sense.

scholarly journals The Law Challenged and the Critique of Identity with Emmanuel Levinas

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Petrilli
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Object Relation ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Orientation ◽  
New Humanism ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject

AbstractIdentity as traditionally conceived in mainstream Western thought is focused on theory, representation, knowledge, subjectivity and is centrally important in the works of Emmanuel Levinas. His critique of Western culture and corresponding notion of identity at its foundations typically raises the question of the other. Alterity in Levinas indicates existence of something on its own account, in itself independently of the subject’s will or consciousness. The objectivity of alterity tells of the impossible evasion of signs from their destiny, which is the other. The implications involved in reading the signs of the other have contributed to reorienting semiotics in the direction of semioethics. In Levinas, the I-other relation is not reducible to abstract cognitive terms, to intellectual synthesis, to the subject-object relation, but rather tells of involvement among singularities whose distinctive feature is alterity, absolute alterity. Humanism of the other is a pivotal concept in Levinas overturning the sense of Western reason. It asserts human duties over human rights. Humanism of alterity privileges encounter with the other, responsibility for the other, over tendencies of the centripetal and egocentric orders that instead exclude the other. Responsibility allows for neither rest nor peace. The “properly human” is given in the capacity for absolute otherness, unlimited responsibility, dialogical intercorporeity among differences non-indifferent to each other, it tells of the condition of vulnerability before the other, exposition to the other. The State and its laws limit responsibility for the other. Levinas signals an essential contradiction between the primordial ethical orientation and the legal order. Justice involves comparing incomparables, comparison among singularities outside identity. Consequently, justice places limitations on responsibility, on unlimited responsibility which at the same time it presupposes as its very condition of possibility. The present essay is structured around the following themes: (1) Premiss; (2) Justice, uniqueness, and love; (3) Sign and language; (4) Dialogue and alterity; (5) Semiotic materiality; (6) Globalization and the trap of identity; (7) Human rights and rights of the other: for a new humanism; (8) Ethics; (9) The World; (10) Outside the subject; (11) Responsibility and Substitution; (12) The face; (13) Fear of the other; (14) Alterity and justice; (15) Justice and proximity; (16) Literary writing; (17) Unjust justice; (18) Caring for the other.

The Moral Status of Animals.

1978 ◽  
Vol 28 (111) ◽  
pp. 177
Author(s):  
Mary Midgley ◽  
Stephen R. L. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Status Of Animals

Identifying and Assessing the Implementation of Human Rights Decisions

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-148
Author(s):  
Alice Donald ◽  
Debra Long ◽  
Anne-Katrin Speck
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
European Regions ◽  
The Status ◽  
Public Record

Abstract Assessing the extent to which states have implemented the decisions of supranational human rights bodies is a challenging task. It requires supranational bodies—be they judicial, quasi-judicial or political—to create an evidence-based public record of the status quo of implementation at any point in time and determine whether the measures taken do, in fact, satisfy the requirements of the decision. This, in turn, relies upon states engaging in good faith, victims having a voice, and civil society organizations seizing the opportunity to influence the follow-up process. Using empirical data from interviews in selected states in the African, Inter-American and European regions, and within regional and United Nations bodies, this article argues that in no human rights ‘system’ are all these expectations met, in part because follow-up work is inadequately resourced. It argues that supranational bodies should proactively seek out diverse sources of information and adopt more transparent and responsive working methods so as to enable ‘real time’ participation by all interested parties. The article concludes with recommendations for supranational bodies, and state and non-state actors.

scholarly journals Animal Rights: A Philosophical Evaluation

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (Issue 4) ◽  
pp. 119-124
Author(s):  
Innocent Sanga
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
General Overview ◽  
Christian Perspective

Animal right is one of the most controversial issues in the contemporary world. A number of scholars have been discussing on whether the animals have rights like human beings or not. Through this debate, their opinions can be put into three groups; those who deny animal moral status, those who give some moral considerations to animals but deny them a fuller moral status, and those who extend rights to animals. This paper then gives a general overview on ‘Do Animals have Rights?’ It gives the meaning of the term “right” and explains whether the term right applies to animals too. It also portrays a drama whereby animals complain against sufferings imposed on them by human beings and a response given by a human being. It is also followed by philosophical debate on animal rights: pro and cons arguments. The Christian perspective is not left out. Finally, the paper ends with critical evaluations and conclusion. In evaluation of the debate on animal rights, the study found that, animals deserve to be treated well based on the argument that they have rights as animals. The main recommendation is that human beings should change their perception concerning animals by respecting animal.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document