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, hunt them, or use them for scientific research? Can animal liberation be squared with the environmental movement? Taylor traces the background of these debates from Aristotle to Darwin and sets out the views of numerous contemporary philosophers—including Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Mary Anne Warren, J. Baird Callicott, and Martha Nussbaum—with ethical theories ranging from utilitarianism to eco-feminism. The new edition also includes provocative quotations from some of the major writers in the field. As the final chapter insists, animal ethics is more than just an “academic” question: it is intimately connected both to our understanding of what it means to be human and to pressing current issues such as food shortages, environmental degradation, and climate change.

Angus Taylor (PhD in Social and Political Thought, York University) teaches philosophy at the University of Victoria. He is the author of Animals and Ethics: An Overview of the Philosophical Debate (Broadview Press, 2009).

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Comments on the Third Edition:

“Angus Taylor’s Animals & Ethics is, quite simply, the finest text on animal ethics available. There is no other text that covers such a broad range of material with such expertise and lucidity. Taylor’s readings of the key works and thinkers in the field are not only reliable but often remarkably insightful. For any professor interested in teaching animal ethics, as well as any general reader who wishes to learn more about the central philosophical debates concerning animals, I recommend Taylor’s book without reservation.” — Matthew Calarco, California State University, Fullerton

“This book is a critically nuanced and meticulous assessment of the philosophical underpinnings of our ethical consideration of non-human animals. The third edition of Angus Taylor’s Animals & Ethics not only provides students and the general public with a cogent introduction to the controversial issue of animal liberation but also serves as an invaluable reference work for students with the impressive inclusion of an extensively updated bibliography comprising data from hundreds of relevant publications on the moral status of animals.” — Jodey Castricano, University of British Columbia, Okanagan

Comments on the First Edition:

“An invaluable reference book.” — Ian Hacking in The New York Review of Books

“Angus Taylor places the reader at the leading edge of all the major contemporary controversies over the human use and exploitation of animals. … Everyone who reads this book will be the better for it.” — Michael Allen Fox, Queen’s University