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Title:
Animals : a history / edited Peter Adamson and G. Fay Edwards.
Author:
Adamson, Peter, 1972- editor.

Edwards, G. Fay, editor.
Publication Information:
New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2018]

©2018
Call Number:
B105.A55 A74 2018
Abstract:
This volume traces the history of animals in philosophy, from antiquity down to contemporary times. Negative attitudes towards animals, as found in Aristotle and Descartes, turn out to be more nuanced than usually supposed, while remarkable discussions of animal welfare appear in late antiquity, India, the Islamic world, and Kant.

"Philosophical controversy over non-human animals extends further back than many realize -- before Utilitarianism and Darwinism to the very genesis of philosophy. This volume examines the richness and complexity of that long history. Twelve essays trace the significance of animals from Greek and Indian antiquity through the Islamic and Latin medieval traditions, to Renaissance and early modern thought, ending with contemporary notions about animals. Two main questions emerge throughout the volume: what capacities can be ascribed to animals, and how should we treat them? Notoriously ungenerous attitudes towards animals' mental lives and ethics status, found for instance in Aristotle and Descartes, are shown to have been more nuanced than often supposed, while remarkable defenses of benevolence towards animals are unearthed in late antiquity, India, the Islamic world, and Kant. Other chapters examine cannibalism and vegetarianism in Renaissance thought, and the scientific testing of animals. A series of interdisciplinary reflections sheds further light on human attitudes towards animals, looking at their depiction in visual artworks from China, Africa, and Europe, as well as the rich tradition of animal fables beginning with Aesop." -- Publisher's description
ISBN:
9780199375967

9780199375974
Series:
Oxford philosophical concepts

Oxford philosophical concepts.
Physical Description:
xiv, 454 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : color illustrations ; 22 cm.
Subject Term:
Contents:
Introduction / Peter Adamson -- Aristotle on animals / Devin Henry -- Reincarnation, rationality, and temperance : Platonists on not eating animals / G. Fay Edwards -- Listening to Aesop's animals / Jeremy B. Lefkowitz -- Illuminating thought : animals in classical Indian thought / Amber D. Carpenter -- The joy of fish and Chinese animal painting / Hou-Mei Sung -- Human and animal nature in the philosophy of the Islamic world / Peter Adamson -- Of rainbow snakes and baffling buffalo : on a Central African mask / Allen F. Roberts -- Marking the boundaries : animals in Medieval Latin philosophy / Juhana Toivanen -- Animal intelligence : examples of the human-animal border in Medieval literature / Sabine Obermaier -- Subversive laughter in Reynard the Fox / James Simpson -- Animals in the Renaissance : you eat what you are / Cecilia Muratori -- Animal souls and beast machines : Descartes's mechanical biology / Deborah J. Brown -- Kant on animals / Patrick Kain -- The gaze of the ape : Gabriel von Max's Affenmalerei and the "question of all questions" / Cecilia Muratori -- The emergence of the drive-concept and the collapse of the animal/human divide / Paul Katsafanas -- Governing Darwin's world / Philip Kitcher -- Morgan's canon : animal psychology in the twentieth century and beyond / Helen Steward -- The contemporary debate in animal ethics / Robert Garner.
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