Between the Species 

About: Between the Species is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Animal rights & Animal ethics. It has an ISSN identifier of 1945-8487. It is also open access. Over the lifetime, 305 publications have been published receiving 1380 citations.

For God So Loved the World

Abstract: The time is sometime in the afternoon. The place is the Abbey of Josaphat, near Chartres. Within this Abbey a trial is taking place. It is a criminal prosecution before the Bailiff of the Abbey. The defendant is charged with having killed an infant. The verdict is announced. The defendant is found guilty. The sentence of the ecclesiastical court is tha~ the defendant should be hanged. Mercifully, unlike other defendants, the fate is only death and not torture or mangulation. And the defendant was hanged by its neck at a public hanging that day in the market square. The defendant, however, was not a human being, but a pig. What is the point of recounting this grisly, surely altogether extraordinary episode from the 15th century, you may ask? The answer is this: grisly it certainly was, extraordinary it certainly was not. From the 9th to the 19th century we have over 200 written accounts of the criminal prosecution and capital punishment of animals. great and terrible suffering. And the important thing to appreciate is that these trials were mainly or wholly religious in character. They drew their inspiration from Christian doctrine, based on a silly biblical fundamentalism-a fundamentalism I'm distressed to say is still with us in some quarters of the Church today. In particular it was St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae Between the Species 12 who held that some animals were satellites of Satan: \"instigated by the powers of hell and proper to be cursed?\" St. Thomas added:-\"the anathema then is not to be pronounced against the animals as such, but should be hurled inferentially at the devil who makes use of irrational creatures to our detriment.\" Armed with this awful dictum (however originally qualified by St. Thomas) Christians have spent more than 10 centuries anathematizing, cursing and reviling the animal world. The echoes of this violence are found. today in our very language. The word 'animal' is a term of abuse not to mention 'brute,' 'beast' or 'bestial.' Ho~ we have libelled the animal world. For myself I cannot but be bemused by the reference in the marriage service of the Book .Q[ Common Prayer to ''brute beasts which hath no understanding.\" Who are these brute beasts? Most higher mammals seem to know more about lifelong monogamy than many human beings. This low, negative, even hating, attitude towards animals, regarding them as a source of evil …

Justice, Caring, and Animal Liberation

Abstract: Carol Gilligan bas described justice and caring as two distinct moral frameworks or orientations to ethical concerns. (Gilligan 1982) The justice framework is characterized by abstraction, the application of general rules ofconduct, an emphasis on restraining aggression, and a concern for consistency and the fair resolution of conflicting claims and interests. The caring framework, on the other hand, is characterized by its focus on the concrete and particular, its emphasis on the maintenance and extension of connection, and by its concern for responsiveness and the satisfaction of needs. Animal liberation is often framed as a justice issue, though, I will suggest, it may more appropriately be understood in terms of caring. By "animal liberation" I mean opposition to institutions of animal exploitation such as vivisection, hunting, and animal farming. Two prominent philosophical defenders of animal liberation are Tom Regan and Peter Singer. Both work exclusively within the justice framework, presenting animal liberation as a matter of consistency and fair treatment, rather than in terms of responsiveness and the satisfaction of needs. We can start to see how the justice approach is ill-suited for animal liberation by considering the arguments of Regan and Singer. Regan attempts to move the reader from a commit­ ment to the respectful treatment of humans to a like commitment to the respectful treatment of normal adult mammals. (Regan 1983) Regan points out that we do not in general think it justifiable to harm one human to benefit others-we would object, for example, to killing a healthy man against hjs will in order to use his organs to save three sick people. We do, however, think it appropriate to harm one animal to benefit other animals, human or otherwise; at least this is the way that vivisection, hunting, and animal farming are usually justified. Regan argues that we are being inconsistent in treating humans and other mammals differently in this respect. The notion of inconsistency here is not self­ contradiction but contradiction with the formal principle of justice, according to which like individuals should be treated alike. Now we protect humans against being vivisected, fanned, or hunted, presumably because such treatment would harm them through the infliction of pain and death. But Regan has shown in the first three chapters of his book that pain and death are also harms to normal adult mammals. So these animals are just as deserving of protection from vivisection, farming, and hunting as are humans. Because both humans and other mammals are harmed by pain and death. the two groups are relevantly similar, and we are inconsistent to treat them so differently.