Animal ethics

Lori Gruen

Chapter 5 in Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Animal Law, 2025, pp 17-20 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Animal ethics, like the subfield of philosophical ethics more broadly, has been dominated by two prominent ethical orientations—utilitarianism and rights theory. Utilitarianism focuses on suffering, including the suffering of all in any given context, but animal lives are full of so much more than simply pleasure and pain. Rights views work to encode respect for the lives and dignity of all, but often overgeneralizes across very diverse lives and focus too much on individuals. Another orientation, the ethics of care, which comes out of the feminist philosophical tradition, has also been developed in animal ethics for just as long as these two more prominent philosophical traditions. The ethics of care focuses on relationships of all kinds and the empathy and compassion called for in particular circumstances. The utilitarian perspective, the rights perspective, and the care perspective each have their strengths and their limitations, but all provide a type of guidance that helps us to see other animals as worthy of our ethical attentions, and points us to ways of thinking that can turn that attention into action.

Keywords: Care; Empathy; Ethics; Utilitarianism; Animal rights; Rights theory; Compassion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781803923666
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