Animal philosophy has two main parts.
On the other hand, a broad kind of bioethics must consider interspecies morality--how humans should treat diverse forms of life, and whether any nonhuman animals have their own versions of proto-moral behavior.
On the one hand, “zoontology“ must study animality as such and the nature(s) of human animals in cultural, ecologic, and evolutionary contexts.
Philosophy & Animal Studies “But what is a man? Shall I say a rational animal? Assuredly not; for it would be necessary forthwith to inquire into what is meant by animal, and what by rational, and thus, from a single question, I should insensibly glide into others, and these more difficult than the first.” --Rene Descartes, Meditation II (1641)
Ralph Acampora Most people know that philosophy is a discipline of critical reflection on basic features of life and world.
Animal studies is a field that investigates and critiques the place or roles of animality in (mainly but not only human) patterns of thought and culture. It follows the footsteps of race, gender, and environmental studies. Below I collaborated with my spouse to produce a bestiary (book Where the father of modern philosophy balked, today’s scholars of animal studies take up their inquiries and reflections...
of animals) to examine one thinker’s use of zoological imagery.
My book above roots multi-species morality in bodily phenomena. In another book I edited (right), contributors consider ways to cultivate biophilia (affinity for living beings) that don’t rely on captivity. My own view is that zoos comprise a kind of “wildlife pornography” that perpetuates the very attitude of exploitation that leads to loss of biodiversity. Some of the other articles, essays, and presentations that form my research are attempts to wrestle with bioethical topics such as the issue of vegetarianism (far right). Most defenses of meat-eating use rationalizations and fallacies of speciesism (human chauvinism).