Magpies, Monkeys, and Morals

To what extent can animals be regarded as part of the moral community? To what extent, if at all, do they have moral rights? Are we wrong to eat them or to hunt them? Is the use of animals for scientific research justified? And can the ideas behind animal liberation be squared with those of the environmental movement? This is the first book to provide a thorough and reasonably impartial explication of the arguments put forward on all these issues. It is Taylor’s strong belief that, whatever our own views on these contentious issues may be, we benefit by exploring them more thoroughly, and also by understanding and evaluating the arguments of those who may disagree with us. He traces the background of these debates from Aristotle to Darwin, and he provides fair-minded commentaries on the positions of such influential contemporary philosophers as Peter Singer, Tom Regan, R.G. Frey, and Peter Carruthers.