Prepared by Bob Corbett
Below is a working document. As I find materials that seem especially interesting to the topic of our relationship with animals, I will add them to this list. When I have more details about an item on my web site, or know of it on someone else's, then I will add a link to the more detailed account. I solicit materials from any who read this. Please just send me suggested additions. Thanks, Bob Corbett
A new philosophical treatment justifying the Christian view of stewardship but stopping short of animals rights. (Annotation by Andrew Linzey).
One of the first environmental books with detailed discussion of the Genesis saga. (Annotation by Andrew Linzey)
A book of essays which focuses on questions of species, and just how close humans are to the apes, perhaps being actually being apes. Other essays raise questions about the reliability of species classifications, and analyze the biological similarities between the great apes and humans.
An outstanding work containting many insights into the Christian understanding of animals. Religious but lively. (Annotation by Andrew Linzey).
This is a separate bibliography of sources which are older, nearly all are pre-20th century.
He defends speciesism and the use of animals in biomedical research; he attacks both Singer and Regan. He argues that speciesims is not analogous to racism and sexism and that animals have no rights.
Crisp argues that Utilitarianism morally requires us both to abstain from eating the flesh of intensively reared animals and to eat the flesh of certain nonintensively reared animals. He calls this the Compromise Requirement View.
Francis and Norman agree with Singer and others thast it is wrong to cause animals suffering , but they do not think that this requires us to adopt vegetarianism or abandon animal experimentation.
In this important paper, Feinberg analyzes the concept of a right and contends that humans and animals have rights, but rocks and whole species do not. Future generations hae rights, but only contingent on their coming into existence.
Frey argues that animals have neither interests nor moral rights.
The original collection of essays which started the philosphical discussion about animals. (Annotation by Andrew Linzey.)
In the preface Griffin says: "The aim of this book is to rekindle scientific interest in the conscious mental experiences of animals. This subject was a central concern of both biologists and psychologists during the half century following the Darwinian revolution... But animal minds have been largely neglected by scientists since the First World War, primarily because beharioral scientists convinced themselves that there was no way to distinguish automatic and unthinking responses from beharior involving coscious choices on the animal's part." Griffin challenges this standard view.
Gunn argues that the extermination of a rare species is wrong because each species (as well as the ecological whole) has intrinsic value.
Hearne is an animal trainer of horses and dogs. She claims that by giving Animals "language" one gives them choices and more. Bob Corbett's notes on this book.
John Irving's mad-cap first novel. Set in the city of Vienna the books gets its central plot from a plan of one of the characters to set free the bears in the Vienna Zoo at Schonbrunn Palace. Not really a profound piece on our relationship to animals, nonetheless, a worthwhile and very fun read. It should at least give pause to terrorists of the animal liberation movement that their acts may have ramifications they haven't anticipated.
McCloskey attacks Feinberg's analysis of the concept (Feinberg, 1974) of right and presents his own account. According to McCloskey, a rigth is an animals do not have rights.
Narveson argues that the strongest case likely to be made for animal rights is made within Utitarianism. He examines the case of vegetarianism within that tradition and argues that at best the case is ambiguous. He then considers Rawlsian Contracturalism and finds that theory also unable to make a strong case for animal rights. The argument is quite esoteric, but interesting. I was struck by the oddity that given that the negative utility that Utilitarians focus on is the suffering of pain, Narveson emphasizes that if animals are found wanting in utility, then it is perfectly acceptable to kill them as long as one does so painlessly. I was struck by the oddity that it would be wrong to cause a living creature pain, but perfectly acceptable to kill it.
Orlans gives a detailed and informed discussion of the issues raised by animal experimentation.
A defence of animal experimentation by a practicing scientist. (Annotation by Andrew Linzey.)
Rachels defends animals rights.
Without doubt the most impressive philosophical case for animals so far [1987] Lucid, detailed and rigorous. (Annotation by Andrew Linzey.)
His most celebrated work comprising his defence of the 'meta-economic value' of animals. (Annotation by Andrew Linzey.)
One of the important classics of the field. This seminal work of Singer's introduces the disucssion of "speciesism" into contemporary moral philosophy and has been the primary spark for the rise of the animal rights movement.
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