Abstract
In his chapter, Gary Steiner notes how traditional arguments about the moral status of nonhuman animals have exhibited a strongly anthropocentric tendency that is evident in philosophical discussions of personhood, rights, and the question of specific duties toward nonhuman animals. Steiner thus aims to highlight anthropocentric prejudice in the arguments of thinkers such as the Stoics, Bentham, Kant, Peter Singer, and John Rawls, and to show how an adequate acknowledgment of the moral status of nonhuman animals requires an affirmation of nonanimal personhood and rights, as well as a specification of clear duties on the part of human beings toward nonhuman animals.
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Notes
- 1.
Kant hints strongly at this conclusion in Kant, 2001, p.180.
- 2.
Alasdair Cochrane offers such a view in Animal Rights without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
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Steiner, G. (2017). Animal Rights and the Distorting Power of Anthropocentric Prejudice. In: Woodhall, A., Garmendia da Trindade, G. (eds) Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_8
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