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Added by: Björn FreterPublisher’s Note:
Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows offers an absorbing look at what social psychologist Melanie Joy calls carnism, the belief system that conditions us to eat certain animals when we would never dream of eating others. Carnism causes extensive animal suffering and global injustice, and it drives us to act against our own interests and the interests of others without fully realizing what we are doing. Becoming aware of what carnism is and how it functions is vital to personal empowerment and social transformation, as it enables us to make our food choices more freely—because without awareness, there is no free choice.Carpenter, Amber. Amber Carpenter on Animals in Indian Philosophy [Podcast]2018, History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps [Blog]-
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Added by: Björn FreterAbstract:
An interview with Amber Carpenter about the status of nonhuman animals in ancient Indian philosophy and literature.Comment (from this Blueprint): An interview about the status of nonhuman animals in ancient Indian philosophy and literature; a very good complement to her paper.
Carpenter, Amber. Illuminating Community – Animals in Classical Indian Thought2018, In Peter Adamson and G. Fay Edwards (eds) Animals: A History. Oxford University Press-
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Added by: Björn FreterAbstract:
This chapter presents a discussion of the rich tradition of reflection on animals in ancient Indian philosophy, which deals with but is not restricted to the topic of reincarnation. At the center of the piece is the continuity that Indians saw between human and nonhuman animals and the consequences of this outlook for the widespread idea of nonviolence. Consideration is also given to the philosophical interest of fables centrally featuring animals, for example the Pañcatantra. In general it is suggested that ancient Indian authors did not, unlike European counterparts, focus on the question of what makes humans unique in contrast to all other animals, but rather on the ethical and metaphysical interconnections between humans and various kinds of animals.Comment (from this Blueprint): An overview of the role of non-human animals in Indian Thought pointing out that there is not much evidence of that presumption of a fundamental difference between human and nonhuman forms of life that allows us in English to use the word “animal” simply to mean “nonhuman animal.” The concept of the animal is thus not best suited to explore the nature of the human by contrast. Instead we more often find a background presumption of a common condition: whatever lives seeks to sustain its life, wants pleasure and not pain, wants its desires and aims satisfied rather than thwarted.
Odour, Reginald M.J.. African Philosophy, and Non-human Animals [Interview]2012, Rainer Ebert [Blog]-
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Added by: Björn FreterAbstract:
University of Nairobi’s Reginald M. J. Oduor talks to Anteneh Roba and Rainer Ebert.Comment (from this Blueprint): A general introduction into African philosophy and ethics with a focus on the role of non-human animal life in African philosophy, explaining that in in indigenous African thought, humans are not understood as animals, but as a class of their own superior to the class of animals.
Dōgen. Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253)2011, In James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis and John C. Maraldo (eds.) Japanese Philosophy. A Sourcebook. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, pp. 141-162-
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Added by: Björn FreterAbstract:
In Japanese religious history, Dōgen (1200–1253) is revered as the founder of the Japanese school of Sōtō Zen Buddhism. Tradition says he was born of an aristocratic family, orphaned, and at the age of twelve joined the Tendai Buddhist monastic community on Mt Hiei in northeastern Kyoto. In search of an ideal teacher, he soon wandered off from the central community on the mountain and ended up in a small temple in eastern Kyoto, Kennin-ji.Comment (from this Blueprint): Excerpts from Shōbōgenzō (Repository of the Eye for the Truth), the major philosophical work of Dōgen (1200–1253), founder of the Japanese school of Sōtō Zen Buddhism allowing to deepen his philosophical understanding of nature.
Huang, Pei-hua. Moral Enhancement, Self-Governance, and Resistance2018, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine, 43(5):547-567-
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Added by: Sara Peppe, Contributed by: Pei-hua HuangAbstract:
John Harris recently argued that the moral bioenhancement proposed by Persson and Savulescu can damage moral agency by depriving recipients of their freedom to fall (freedom to make wrongful choices) and therefore should not be pursued. The link Harris makes between moral agency and the freedom to fall, however, implies that all forms of moral enhancement that aim to make the enhancement recipients less likely to “fall,” including moral education, are detrimental to moral agency. In this article, I present a new moral agency–based critique against the moral bioenhancement program envisaged by Persson and Savulescu. I argue that the irresistible influences exerted by the bioenhancement program harm our capabilities for conducting accurate self-reflection and forming decisions that truly express our will, subsequently undermining our moral agency.Comment: This paper can be assigned as a further reading when teaching the moral enhancement debate. It provides students with a less explored perspective on moral agency in the debate (i.e. the feminist approach to autonomy and Confucianism). Students might find the discussion on the Confucian conception of moral saints in this paper especially interesting when contrasting the conception to the more western ones.
Schouten, Gina. Fetuses, Orphans, and a Famous Violinist: On the Ethics and Politics of Abortion2017, Social Theory and Practice 43 (3): 637-665-
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Added by: Sara PeppeAbstract:
In this paper, I urge feminists to re-center fetal moral status in their theorizing about abortion. I argue that fundamental feminist normative commitments are at odds with efforts to de-emphasize fetal moral status: The feminist commitment to ensuring care for dependents supports surprising conclusions with regard to the ethics of abortion, and the feminist commitment to politicizing the personal has surprising conclusions regarding the politics of abortion. But these feminist insights also support the conclusion that, conditional on fetal moral status, care for unwanted fetuses would be a social obligation that only derivatively falls to women who are unwillingly pregnant.
Comment: Best discussed alongside Judith Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" and Liam Murphy's "The Demands of Beneficence." Challenges a widely accepted intuition about the ethics of abortion and can be used to illustrate the vulnerabilities of thought experiments that appeal to intuitions. Demonstrates the useful argumentative move of assuming premise P for the sake of argument (even if you don't endorse P) in order to examine the implications that follow from P.
Oluwole, Sophie. Socrates and Ọ̀rúnmìlà: Two Patron Saints of Classical Philosophy2014, Ark Publishers.-
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Added by: Rebecca BuxtonPublisher’s Note:
Oluwole's teachings and works are generally attributed to the Yoruba school of philosophical thought, which was ingrained in the cultural and religious beliefs (Ifá) of the various regions of Yorubaland. According to Oluwole, this branch of philosophy predates the Western tradition, as the ancient African philosopher Orunmila predates Socrates by her estimate. These two thinkers, representing the values of the African and Western traditions, are two of Oluwole's biggest influences, and she compares the two in her book Socrates and Orunmila.Comment (from this Blueprint): This book compares Socrates to Ọ̀rúnmìlà, an 'Orisha' or an important sprit in Yoruba. Both Socrates and Orunmila undertook their philosophy orally and passed their teachings and thinking onto students. Oluwole therefore challenges the western assumption that African philosophy does not have a long-standing on deep tradition.
Arola, Adam. Native American Philosophy2011, in The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy, William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield (eds.), OUP.-
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Added by: Sonja Dobroski and Quentin PharrAbstract:
This article introduces the central thinkers of contemporary American Indian philosophy by discussing concerns including the nature of experience, meaning, truth, the status of the individual and community, and finally issues concerning sovereignty. The impossibility of carving up the intellectual traditions of contemporary Native scholars in North America into neat and tidy disciplines must be kept in mind. The first hallmark of American Indian philosophy is the commitment to the belief that all things are related—and this belief is not simply an ontological claim, but rather an intellectual and ethical maxim.Comment:
available in this Blueprint
Galgut, Elisa. A Critique of the Cultural Defense of Animal Cruelty2019, Journal of Animal Ethics 9 (2):184-
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: AnonymousAbstract:
I argue that cultural practices that harm animals are not morally defensible: Tradition cannot justify cruelty. My conclusion applies to all such practices, including ones that are long-standing, firmly entrenched, or held sacred by their practitioners. Following Mary Midgley, I argue that cultural practices are open to moral scrutiny, even from outsiders. Because animals have moral status, they may not be harmed without good reason. I argue that the importance of religious or cultural rituals to adherents does not count as a sufficiently good reason to harm or kill animals, since rituals are inherently symbolic, and cultures are able to adapt and change, making adherence to cruel traditions unnecessary.Comment: This paper can be used in a class on animal ethics / rights. It argues that rituals involving harm or cruelty to animals are not justifiable. The paper can be used in a discussion on animal rights issues and multi-culturalism.
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Joy, Melanie. Why we Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows
2009, Red Wheel
Comment (from this Blueprint): Introduction to Joy's concept of carnism, the invisible but dominant paradigm used to defend meat consumption; argues against carnism, by showing that there is indeed a problem with eating non-human animals, that meat eating is not necessarily to be understood as normal, that carnism prevents the cognitive dissonance (of caring for animals and at the same time consuming them) by re-defining non-human animals as objects.