The simple dignity of sentient life: Speciesism and human dignity

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 115-126

  Meyer, Michael ^a  

^a SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANIMAL; ANIMAL RIGHTS; ARTICLE; BIOMEDICAL AND BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH; HUMAN; HUMAN RIGHTS; LIFE; MORALITY; PERSONHOOD; PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH; PHILOSOPHY; SPECIES DIFFERENCE;

BIOMEDICAL AND BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH; PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH;

ANIMAL RIGHTS; ANIMALS; HUMAN RIGHTS; HUMANS; LIFE; MORAL OBLIGATIONS; PERSONHOOD; PHILOSOPHY; SPECIES SPECIFICITY;

EID: 23244446210     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0047-2786.00083     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. James Rachels, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (New York: Oxford, 1990), 181
2. see in addition Peter Singer's "All Animals Are Equal", in Animal Rights and Human Obligations, ed. Tom Regan and Peter Singer (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1989), 82-84;
3. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2nd ed. (New York: New York Review, 1990), 238-40.
4. Kant employs the indirect duty view in Lectures on Ethics [1775-80], trans. L. Infield (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1963), 239-41. In later discussions Kant tends to discuss animals only when discussing the animal nature of human beings;
5. see The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue [1797], trans. J. W. Ellington (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1983), 96-97.
6. See Singer, "All Animals Are Equal", 82-84.
7. Rachels calls this view "unqualified speciesism": Created from Animals, 182f.
8. See his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [1785], trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper, 1964), 102-3.
9. On apes in particular see The Great Ape Project: Beyond Human Equality, eds. P. Cavalieri and P. Singer (New York: St. Martins, 1993).
10. see Michael J. Meyer, "Dignity, Death and (Modern) Virtue", American Philosophical Quarterly 32, no. 1(1995):45-55.
11. See Tom Regan, "The Case for Animal Rights" in Regan and Singer, Animal Rights and Human Obligations, 112;
12. and also Singer, "All Animals Are Equal", 80ff.
13. Rachels, Created from Animals, 186.
14. see Michael Slote, From Morality to Virtue (New York: Oxford, 1992), chap. 10, esp. 159-64.
15. See Michael J. Meyer, "Kant's Concept of Dignity and Modern Political Thought", History of European Ideas 8, no. 3(1987):319-332.
16. See Mary Anne Warren, Moral Status (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 3-23.
17. Kenneth Goodpaster, "On Being Morally Considerable", Journal of Philosophy 75(1978):311-12.
18. Mary Ann Warren offers a most interesting multicriterion account of a hierarchy of status in Moral Status, 148-77.
19. Roger Dworkin, Life's Dominion (New York: Knopf, 1993), 70.
20. see Thomas E. Hill Jr., "Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments", in Autonomy and Self-Respect, ed. Thomas E. Hill Jr. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 104-17;
21. and Tim Hayward, "Kant and the Moral Considerability of Non-Rational Beings", in Philosophy and the Natural Environment, ed. Robin Attfield and Andrew Belsey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 129-42.
22. (see John Rawls, Political Liberalism [New York: Columbia University Press, 1993], 21, 244-47) often do not apply to animals or nonsentient nature.