Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents : The Moral Status of Animals in the History of Western Philosophy

__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.

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.

[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