Download or read book Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents written by Gary Steiner and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010-08-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents is the first-ever comprehensive examination of views of animals in the history of Western philosophy, from Homeric Greece to the twentieth century. In recent decades, increased interest in this area has been accompanied by scholars' willingness to conceive of animal experience in terms of human mental capacities: consciousness, self-awareness, intention, deliberation, and in some instances, at least limited moral agency. This conception has been facilitated by a shift from behavioral to cognitive ethology (the science of animal behavior), and by attempts to affirm the essential similarities between the psychophysical makeup of human beings and animals. Gary Steiner sketches the terms of the current debates about animals and relates these to their historical antecedents, focusing on both the dominant anthropocentric voices and those recurring voices that instead assert a fundamental kinship relation between human beings and animals. He concludes with a discussion of the problem of balancing the need to recognize a human indebtedness to animals and the natural world with the need to preserve a sense of the uniqueness and dignity of the human individual.
Download or read book Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents written by Gary Steiner and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: [This book] is the ... examination of views on animals in the history of Western philosophy, from pre-Socratics to the postmoderns. As [the author] points out, anthropocentrism has been the historically dominant view, based in part on a theocentric view which places the moral status of humans in a position superior to that of animals and inferior to that of a supreme being (or beings). Humans have seen themselves as unique in their capacity to achieve the status of "lords of nature"; they have therefore used animals as instruments to serve their needs. But [the author] also wants to show that throughout history there has been a smaller, less visible contingent of heterodox thinkers who have argued for the rights and status of animals. Their dissatisfaction with self-asserted human superiority and the resulting injustices that have been done to animals forms the basis of [the author's] reexamination of Western philosophy.-Dust jacket.
Download or read book Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents written by Gary Steiner and published by . This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents" is the first-ever comprehensive examination of views of animals in the history of Western philosophy, from Homeric Greece to the twentieth century. In recent decades, increased interest in this area has been accompanied by scholars willingness to conceive of animal experience in terms of human mental capacities: consciousness, self-awareness, intention, deliberation, and in some instances, at least limited moral agency. This conception has been facilitated by a shift from behavioral to cognitive ethology (the science of animal behavior), and by attempts to affirm the essential similarities between the psychophysical makeup of human beings and animals. Gary Steiner sketches the terms of the current debates about animals and relates these to their historical antecedents, focusing on both the dominant anthropocentric voices and those recurring voices that instead assert a fundamental kinship relation between human beings and animals. He concludes with a discussion of the problem of balancing the need to recognize a human indebtedness to animals and the natural world with the need to preserve a sense of the uniqueness and dignity of the human individual. "
Download or read book Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism written by Gary Steiner and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism, Gary Steiner illuminates postmodernism's inability to produce viable ethical and political principles. Ethics requires notions of self, agency, and value that are not available to postmodernists. Thus, much of what is published under the rubric of postmodernist theory lacks a proper basis for a systematic engagement with ethics. Steiner demonstrates this through a provocative critique of postmodernist approaches to the moral status of animals, set against the background of a broader indictment of postmodernism's failure to establish clear principles for action. He revisits the ideas of Derrida, Foucault, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, together with recent work by their American interpreters, and shows that the basic terms of postmodern thought are incompatible with definitive claims about the moral status of animals—as well as humans. Steiner also identifies the failures of liberal humanist thought in regards to this same moral dilemma, and he encourages a rethinking of humanist ideas in a way that avoids the anthropocentric limitations of traditional humanist thought. Drawing on the achievements of the Stoics and Kant, he builds on his earlier ideas of cosmic holism and non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism to arrive at a more concrete foundation for animal rights.
Download or read book Animals and the Moral Community written by Gary Steiner and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gary Steiner argues that ethologists and philosophers in the analytic and continental traditions have largely failed to advance an adequate explanation of animal behavior. Critically engaging the positions of Marc Hauser, Daniel Dennett, Donald Davidson, John Searle, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, among others, Steiner shows how the Western philosophical tradition has forced animals into human experiential categories in order to make sense of their cognitive abilities and moral status and how desperately we need a new approach to animal rights. Steiner rejects the traditional assumption that a lack of formal rationality confers an inferior moral status on animals vis-à-vis human beings. Instead, he offers an associationist view of animal cognition in which animals grasp and adapt to their environments without employing concepts or intentionality. Steiner challenges the standard assumption of liberal individualism according to which humans have no obligations of justice toward animals. Instead, he advocates a "cosmic holism" that attributes a moral status to animals equivalent to that of people. Arguing for a relationship of justice between humans and nature, Steiner emphasizes our kinship with animals and the fundamental moral obligations entailed by this kinship.
Download or read book Non Human Nature in World Politics written by Joana Castro Pereira and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-26 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the interconnections between world politics and non-human nature to overcome the anthropocentric boundaries that characterize the field of international relations. By gathering contributions from various perspectives, ranging from post-humanism and ecological modernization, to new materialism and post-colonialism, it conceptualizes the embeddedness of world politics in non-human nature, and proposes a reorientation of political practice to better address the challenges posed by climate change and the deterioration of the Earth’s ecosystems. The book is divided into two main parts, the first of which addresses new ways of theoretically conceiving the relationship between non-human nature and world politics. In turn, the second presents empirical investigations into specific case studies, including studies on state actors and international organizations and bodies. Given its scope and the new perspectives it shares, this edited volume represents a uniquely valuable contribution to the field.
Download or read book Eat This Book written by Dominique Lestel and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If we want to improve the treatment of animals, Dominique Lestel argues, we must acknowledge our evolutionary impulse to eat them and we must expand our worldview to see how others consume meat ethically and sustainably. The position of vegans and vegetarians is unrealistic and exclusionary. Eat This Book calls at once for a renewed and vigorous defense of animal rights and a more open approach to meat eating that turns us into responsible carnivores. Lestel skillfully synthesizes Western philosophical views on the moral status of animals and holistic cosmologies that recognize human-animal reciprocity. He shows that the carnivore's position is more coherently ethical than vegetarianism, which isolates humans from the world by treating cruelty, violence, and conflicting interests as phenomena outside of life. Describing how meat eaters assume completely—which is to say, metabolically—their animal status, Lestel opens our eyes to the vital relation between carnivores and animals and carnivores' genuine appreciation of animals' life-sustaining flesh. He vehemently condemns factory farming and the terrible footprint of industrial meat eating. His goal is to recreate a kinship between humans and animals that reminds us of what it means to be tied to the world.
Download or read book Facing Nature written by William Edelglass and published by Duquesne. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Argues that themes at the heart of Levinas' work--the significance of the ethical, responsibility, alterity, the vulnerability of the body, bearing witness, and politics--are important for thinking about contemporary environmental questions"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Ecological Literature and the Critique of Anthropocentrism written by Bryan L. Moore and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an analysis of literary texts that question, critique, or subvert anthropocentrism, the notion that the universe and everything in it exists for humans. Bryan Moore examines ancient Greek and Roman texts; medieval to twentieth-century European texts; eighteenth-century French philosophy; early to contemporary American texts and poetry; and science fiction to demonstrate a historical basis for the questioning of anthropocentrism and contemplation of responsible environmental stewardship in the twenty-first century and beyond. Ecological Literature and the Critique of Anthropocentrism is essential reading for ecocritics and ecofeminists. It will also be useful for researchers interested in the relationship between science and literature, environmental philosophy, and literature in general.
Download or read book Chinese Ecocinema written by Sheldon H. Lu and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology is a book-length study of China's ecosystem through the lens of cinema. Proposing 'ecocinema' as a new critical framework, the volume collectively investigates a wide range of urgent topics in today's world.
Download or read book Bestial Oblivion written by Benjamin Bertram and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-24 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although war is a heterogeneous assemblage of the human and nonhuman, it nevertheless builds the illusion of human autonomy and singularity. Focusing on war and ecology, a neglected topic in early modern ecocriticism, Bestial Oblivion: War, Humanism, and Ecology in Early Modern England shows how warfare unsettles ideas of the human, yet ultimately contributes to, and is then perpetuated by, anthropocentrism. Bertram’s study of early modern warfare’s impact on human-animal and human-technology relationships draws upon posthumanist theory, animal studies, and the new materialisms, focusing on responses to the Anglo-Spanish War, the Italian Wars, the Wars of Religion, the colonization of Ireland, and Jacobean “peace.” The monograph examines a wide range of texts—essays, drama, military treatises, paintings, poetry, engravings, war reports, travel narratives—and authors—Erasmus, Machiavelli, Digges, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Coryate, Bacon—to show how an intricate web of perpetual war altered the perception of the physical environment as well as the ideologies and practices establishing what it meant to be human.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics written by Henk ten Have and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-11-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work presents the first comprehensive and systematic treatment of all relevant issues and topics in contemporary global bioethics. Now that bioethics has entered into a novel global phase, a wider set of issues, problems and principles is emerging against the backdrop of globalization and in the context of global relations. This new stage in bioethics is furthermore promoted through the ethical framework presented in the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights adopted in 2005. This Declaration is the first political statement in the field of bioethics that has been adopted unanimously by all Member States of UNESCO. In contrast to other international documents, it formulates a commitment of governments and is part of international law (though not binding as a Convention). It presents a universal framework of ethical principles for the further development of bioethics at a global level. The Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics caters to the need for a comprehensive overview and systematic treatment of all pertinent new topics and issues in the emerging global bioethics debate. It provides descriptions and analysis of a vast range of important new issues from a truly global perspective and with a cross-cultural approach. New issues covered by the Encyclopedia and neglected in more traditional works on bioethics include, but are not limited to, sponsorship of research and education, scientific misconduct and research integrity, exploitation of research participants in resource-poor settings, brain drain and migration of healthcare workers, organ trafficking and transplant tourism, indigenous medicine, biodiversity, commodification of human tissue, benefit sharing, bio industry and food, malnutrition and hunger, human rights and climate change.
Download or read book Oxford Bibliographies written by and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Environmentalism written by J. Michael Martinez and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2013-06-20 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Protecting the natural environment and promoting sustainability have become important objectives, but achieving such goals presents myriad challenges for even the most committed environmentalist. American Environmentalism: Philosophy, History, and Public Policy examines whether competing interests can be reconciled while developing consistent, cohe
Download or read book Civilization and Its Discontents written by Sigmund Freud and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Dover thrift editions).
Download or read book Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism written by Karl Löwith and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism makes available in English Lowith's major writings concerning the origins of cultural breakdown in Europe that paved the way for the Third Reich. Including incisive discussions of Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, a noted legal theorist of the same period who also supported the Third Reich, Heidegger and European Nihilism helps to illuminate the allure of Nazism for scholars committed to revolutionary nihilism. Lowith's landmark essay on European nihilism is also included in its entirety here, along with two never-before-published letters from Heidegger to Lowith. In a work of impressive historical depth, Lowith traces the abandonment of higher European ideals in favor of a fatal flirtation with nihilism. These essays explore the enthronement of man above God, a trend that had begun to appear in European thought by the mid-nineteenth century in the works of Nietzsche and Marx and one that informed the nihilist philosophies of Heidegger and other theorists of the early twentieth century. An introduction by editor Richard Wolin provides lucid commentary, placing the three essays gathered here in a broad historical context, along with suggestions for further reading. This seminal work of intellectual history sheds light on the fascist impulses of nihilism in the first half of the twentieth century, but also offers unique perspective on the intellectual malaise of today.
Download or read book Civilization and Its Discontents written by Sigmund Freud and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2005 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What influences led to the creation of civilization? How did it come to be? What determines its course? In this seminal volume of 20th-century thought, Freud elucidates the contest between aggression, the death drive, and its adversary eros.
