More than twenty years after its original publication, The Case for Animal Rights is an acknowledged classic of moral philosophy, and its author is recognized as the intellectual leader of the animal rights movement. In a new and fully considered preface, Regan responds to his critics and defends the book's revolutionary position.

Whether considering vegetarianism, women's rights, or the "humanity" of pets, this book goes to the heart of the question of why all animals matter.

What rational justification is there for conceiving of all living things as possessing inherent worth? In _Respect for Nature_, Paul Taylor draws on biology, moral philosophy, and environmental science to defend a biocentric environmental ethic in which all life has value. Without making claims for the moral rights of plants and animals, he offers a reasoned alternative to the prevailing anthropocentric view--that the natural environment and its wildlife are valued only as objects for human use or enjoyment. _Respect for Nature_ (...) provides both a full account of the biological conditions for life--human or otherwise--and a comprehensive view of the complex relationship between human beings and the whole of nature. This classic book remains a valuable resource for philosophers, biologists, and environmentalists alike--along with all those who care about the future of life on Earth. A new foreword by Dale Jamieson looks at how the original 1986 edition of _Respect for Nature_ has shaped the study of environmental ethics, and shows why the work remains relevant to debates today. (shrink)

Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of concerned men and women to the shocking abuse of animals everywhere--inspiring a worldwide movement to eliminate much of the cruel and unnecessary laboratory animal experimentation of years past. In this newly revised and expanded edition, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today's "factory farms" and product-testing procedures--offering sound, humane solutions to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. An important (...) and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency and justice, Animal Liberation is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike.--From publisher description. (shrink)

A philosophical exploration of the nature, scope, and significance of ecofeminist theory and practice. This book presents the key issues, concepts, and arguments which motivate and sustain ecofeminism from a western philosophical perspective.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hypatia 18.2 (2003) 227-229 [Access article in PDF] Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century by Jonathan Glover. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001. Jonathan's Glover's considerable reputation rests on the philosophical inquiry into the nature of human identity and on his critical deployment of consequentialist ethics to address a number of urgent issues regarding the beginning and end of life. In his latest book, Humanity: (...) A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (2001), he brings some of these themes together to try to make sense of the disturbing record of mass brutality and inhumanity that stretches through the last century. The deaths he addresses are those of countless millions of noncombatants, caught up in successive waves of atrocities that vary in their geographical location, scale, and duration, but not in their capacity to overwhelm the moral expectations and moral restraints in which we usually put our trust. Glover spares no feelings in his detailed and relentless charting of both the sociopolitical context of decline into moral chaos and the specificities of each torturous and murderous assault.Drawing on a range of material—from contemporary documentation and eyewitness accounts to the subsequent reflections of historians, politicians, and social theorists—he attempts to find common explanatory threads for a catalogue of killing, rape, and mutilation that is the work not only of those given over to abandoned excess, but of those perpetrators who held fast to rational principles. A series of supposedly exceptional events, such as that at My Lai, is set against the enormities of Hiroshima, Rwanda, Stalinist show trials, the Gulag, and the Cultural Revolution in China, where state interests and state policy are expressly involved. Not surprisingly the atrocities of Nazi Germany, and particularly the holocaust, are given the deepest consideration, but Glover's wide-ranging approach makes clear that little distinguishes mid-century Germans as especially open to moral dereliction. The resolution that it must never happen again has been breached time and again in various places and in various forms.Despite a plethora of endorsements from philosophers such as Peter Singer and Martha Nussbaum, it would appear that Humanity is intended primarily for the lay reader. Certainly at a time when Israelis and Palestinians remain in a murderous face-off, when the world's primary military power, the United States, appears unmoved by "collateral" killing, and when India and Pakistan ratchet up the possibility of nuclear attack, every one of us could benefit from a little more insight into the often unchallenged slide from threat to war to moral atrocity. Glover clearly lays bare the mechanics of such developments, and effectively traces the ways in which each person might feel him or herself morally blameless by failing to grasp the outcomes of discrete individual acts [End Page 227].In his extensive account of Nazi Germany, Glover unravels the effects of distancing, of mindless obedience to authority, of putting efficiency before feeling, and of turning away rather than intervening in obvious wrongs. The hatred felt for the Jews and other less-than-ideal Aryans, and the desire to create by whatever means a purified state are paralleled worldwide by other conflicts, driven by what Glover calls "tribalism," or by a ruthless consequentialism in pursuit of putative social utopias (144). As he remarks of the Pol Pot regime: "As so often with social engineering, those doing the calculations of happiness became so immersed in means ("the Revolution") that they lost their grip on ends" (305). And, one assumes, vice versa. But what does this really tell us that is not already apparent in the description? The drawback of Glover's straightforward approach is that it eschews any deep level of analysis, and relies for insight, for the most part, on our existing moral beliefs and intuitions in the face of an accumulation of horrifying evidence of individual and state brutality. To make, and offer empirical support to, similar points over and over again, albeit with some significant variations, did not enhance my comprehension of the moral enormities, but rather served to reinforce their seeming inevitability.It is... (shrink)

Attempts to find an authentically ecological outlook in Marx’s philosophy of nature are ultimately unsuccessful. Although Marx does at times point the way toward a truly ecological dialectic, he does not himself follow that way. Instead, he proposes a problematic of technological liberation and mastery of nature that preserves many of the dualisms of that tradition of domination with which he ostensibly wishes to break.

Feminism and Ecological Communities presents a bold and passionate rethinking of teh ecofeminist movement. It is one of the first books to acknowledge the importance of postmodern feminist arguments against ecofeminism whilst persuasively preseenting a strong new case for econolocal feminism. Chris J.Cuomo first traces the emergence of ecofeminism from the ecological and feminist movements before clearly discussing the weaknesses of some ecofeminist positions. Exploring the dualisms of nature/culture and masculing/feminine that are the bulwark of many contemporary ecofeminist positions and (...) questioning traditional traditional feminist analyses of gender and caring, Feminism and Ecological Communities asks whether women are essentially closer to nature than men and how we ought to link the oppression of women, people of colour, and other subjugated groups to the degradation of nature. Chris J.Cuomo addresses these key issues by drawing on recent work in feminist ethics as well as teh work of diverse figures such as Aristotle, John Dewey, Donna Haraway adn Maria Lugones. A fascinating feature of the book is the use of the metaphor of the cyborg to highlight the fluidity of the nature/culture distinction and how this can enrich econfeminist ethics and politics. An outstanding new argument for an ecological feminism that links both theory and practice, Feminism and Ecological Communities bravely redraws the ecofeminist map. It will be essential reading for all those interested in gender studies, environmental studies and philosophy. (shrink)