Dignity is such an obvious concept to apply to animals, yet for a long
time human dignity was defined by stressing how unlike other species we are.
Our changing relation with nature is reflected in these thoughtful essays,
which instill respect for the intelligence and emotions of other life forms.
~ Frans de Waal, author of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
Animal Dignity is a bold, modern effort to ascribe to non-human beings a
concept that heretofore has eluded them. These forceful essays also awakened
me to the idea when we deny other animals their dignity, we corrupt our own.
~ Jonathan Balcombe, ethologist and author of
What A Fish Knows and SuperFly
How best to think about and do justice to the dignity of animals? As
Challenger's superb collection demonstrates, this task involved not simply
extending traditional notions of dignity to animals but also considering how
the lives and deaths of animals themselves might challenge us to conceive of
dignity in new and unanticipated ways.
Matthew Calarco, Professor of Philosophy, California State University
Melanie Challenger is a writer, researcher and broadcaster on environmental history and philosophy of science, Deputy Co-Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, and a Vice President of the RSPCA, UK. Her books include How to Be Animal: The Case Against Human Exceptionalism.
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