Animal Liberation Now: The Definitive Classic Renewed

by Peter Singer, Yuval Noah Harari (Introduction)

Overview

THE UPDATED CLASSIC OF THE ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, NOW WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY YUVAL NOAH HARARI Few books maintain their relevance—and have remained continuously in print—nearly fifty years after they were first published. Animal Liberation, one of TIME’s “All-TIME 100 Best Nonfiction Books” is one such book. Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of people to the existence of "speciesism"—our systematic disregard of nonhuman animals—inspiring a worldwide movement to transform our attitudes to animals and eliminate the cruelty we inflict on them. In Animal Liberation Now, Singer exposes the chilling realities of today's "factory farms" and product-testing procedures, destroying the spurious justifications behind them and showing us just how woefully we have been misled. Now, Singer returns to the major arguments and examples and brings us to the current moment. This edition, revised from top to bottom, covers important reforms in the European Union and in various U.S. states, but on the flip side, Singer shows us the impact of the huge expansion of factory farming due to the exploding demand for animal products in China. Further, meat consumption is taking a toll on the environment, and factory farms pose a profound risk for spreading new viruses even worse than COVID-19. Animal Liberation Now includes alternatives to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency, and justice, it is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635768435
Publisher:	Diversion Books
Publication date:	06/12/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	417
Sales rank:	173,368
File size:	926 KB

About the Author

Peter Singer has been called the father (or grandfather?) of the modern animal rights movement, even though he doesn't base his philosophical views on rights, either for humans or for animals. In 2005 Time magazine named Singer one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute ranked him 3rd among Global Thought Leaders for 2013. He is known especially for his work on the ethics of our treatment of animals, for his controversial critique of the sanctity of life doctrine in bioethics, and for his writings on the obligations of the affluent to aid those living in extreme poverty. Singer first became well-known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation in 1975. In 2011, Time included Animal Liberation on its “All-TIME” list of the 100 best nonfiction books published in English. Singer has written, co-authored, edited or co-edited more than fifty books. His works have appeared in more than thirty languages. Peter Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946, and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. After teaching in England, the United States, and Australia, he has, since 1999, been Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. Since 2005 he has combined that position with the position of Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies. In 2012 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the nation’s highest civic honor.
Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and laureate professor at the University of Melbourne’s School of Historical and Philosophical Studies. The most prominent ethicist of our time, he is the author of more than twenty books, including Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, and The Life You Can Save. Singer divides his time between New York City and Melbourne, Australia.

Read an Excerpt

Animal Liberation
The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement

Chapter One

All Animals Are Equal . . .

or why the ethical principle on which human
equality rests requires us to extend equal
consideration to animals too

"Animal Liberation" may sound more like a parody of other liberation movements than a serious objective. The idea of "The Rights of Animals" actually was once used to parody the case for women's rights. When Mary Wollstonecraft, a forerunner of today's feminists, published her Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, her views were widely regarded as absurd, and before long an anonymous publication appeared entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes. The author of this satirical work (now known to have been Thomas Taylor, a distinguished Cambridge philosopher) tried to refute Mary Wollstonecraft's arguments by showing that they could be carried one stage further. If the argument for equality was sound when applied to women, why should it not be applied to dogs, cats, and horses? The reasoning seemed to hold for these "brutes" too; yet to hold that brutes had rights was manifestly absurd. Therefore the reasoning by which this conclusion had been reached must be unsound, and if unsound when applied to brutes, it must also be unsound when applied to women, since the very same arguments had been used in each case.

In order to explain the basis of the case for the equality of animals, it will be helpful to start with an examination of the case for the equality of women. Let us assume that we wish to defend the case for women's rights against the attack by Thomas Taylor.How should we reply?

One way in which we might reply is by saying that the case for equality between men and women cannot validly be extended to nonhuman animals. Women have a right to vote, for instance, because they are just as capable of making rational decisions about the future as men are; dogs, on the other hand, are incapable of understanding the significance of voting, so they cannot have the right to vote. There are many other obvious ways in which men and women resemble each other closely, while humans and animals differ greatly. So, it might be said, men and women are similar beings and should have similar rights, while humans and nonhumans are different and should not have equal rights.

The reasoning behind this reply to Taylor's analogy is correct up to a point, but it does not go far enough. There are obviously important differences between humans and other animals, and these differences must give rise to some differences in the rights that each have. Recognizing this evident fact, however, is no barrier to the case for extending the basic principle of equality to nonhuman animals. The differences that exist between men and women are equally undeniable, and the supporters of Women's Liberation are aware that these differences may give rise to different rights. Many feminists hold that women have the right to an abortion on request. It does not follow that since these same feminists are campaigning for equality between men and women they must support the right of men to have abortions too. Since a man cannot have an abortion, it is meaningless to talk of his right to have one. Since dogs can't vote, it is meaningless to talk of their right to vote. There is no reason why either Women's Liberation or Animal Liberation should get involved in such nonsense. The extension of the basic principle of equality from one group to another does not imply that we must treat both groups in exactly the same way, or grant exactly the same rights to both groups. Whether we should do so will depend on the nature of the members of the two groups. The basic principle of equality does not require equal or identical treatment; it requires equal consideration. Equal consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment and different rights.

So there is a different way of replying to Taylor's attempt to parody the case for women's rights, a way that does not deny the obvious differences between human beings and nonhumans but goes more deeply into the question of equality and concludes by finding nothing absurd in the idea that the basic principle of equality applies to so-called brutes. At this point such a conclusion may appear odd; but if we examine more deeply the basis on which our opposition to discrimination on grounds of race or sex ultimately rests, we will see that we would be on shaky ground if we were to demand equality for blacks, women, and other groups of oppressed humans while denying equal consideration to nonhumans. To make this clear we need to see, first, exactly why racism and sexism are wrong. When we say that all human beings, whatever their race, creed, or sex, are equal, what is it that we are asserting? Those who wish to defend hierarchical, inegalitarian societies have often pointed out that by whatever test we choose it simply is not true that all humans are equal. Like it or not we must face the fact that humans come in different shapes and sizes; they come with different moral capacities, different intellectual abilities, different amounts of benevolent feeling and sensitivity to the needs of others, different abilities to communicate effectively, and different capacities to experience pleasure and pain. In short, if the demand for equality were based on the actual equality of all human beings, we would have to stop demanding equality.

Still, one might cling to the view that the demand for equality among human beings is based on the actual equality of the different races and sexes. Although, it may be said, humans differ as individuals, there are no differences between the races and sexes as such. From the mere fact that a person is black or a woman we cannot infer anything about that person's intellectual or moral capacities.

Animal Liberation
The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement. Copyright © by Peter Singer. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Editorial Reviews

I became a vegetarian when I read Animal Liberation back in the 1970s. Then and there I stopped eating meat. If I’d read this revised Animal Liberation Now I’d have become a vegan much sooner.”  — Jane Goodall

"In its first incarnation, Animal Liberation became the indispensable foundational text for the movement whose name it bore. In its new, updated, and wholly rewritten form, Animal Liberation Now provides not only a survey – sober, authoritative, and chilling – of what goes on today in the factory farms and research laboratories of the world, but also a guide, written with the honesty and philosophical depth characteristic of all of Peter Singer’s work, through the complexities of the modern debate on animal rights." — J.M. Coetzee, author of The Lives of Animals and Disgrace

“Peter Singer may be the most moral person on the planet. If his ruthlessly consistent altruism makes the rest of us shuffle our feet in discomfort, or even noisily disrupt his lectures, that’s all the more reason to read this book.”  — Richard Dawkins, Fellow of the Royal Society, author of The Selfish Gene, The God Delusion, and The Ancestor’s Tale

“Animal Liberation Now is a truly revolutionary text to read, treasure and pass along. Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation was a philosophical bombshell when it first appeared in 1975. It forever changed the conversation about our treatment of animals, and this new book will both enrich and sharpen that conversation.” — Ingrid Newkirk, founder and president, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

“Whether you are new to these ideas, or Animal Liberation has already changed your life, Animal Liberation Now is essential in helping us all see our place in today's world and the urgency of ending the exploitation of animals.” — Leah Garcès, CEO, Mercy For Animals

“Singer's great achievement in Animal Liberation was to bring activism together with a powerful philosophical theory founded on the principle of equal consideration of interests.  Animal Liberation Now shows that the book that changed the world a half century ago is even more relevant today.” — Dale Jamieson, Director, Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, New York University

“The first edition of Animal Liberation helped me make a career-changing decision to establish a more egalitarian biology. Singer's updated edition is even more valuable because given what we've learned about animal minds in recent years, it is painfully clear that animals are not disposable, simple-minded, unfeeling objects. We should have got rid of that human-centric arrogance decades ago.” — Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of The Emotional Lives of Animals, and The Animals' Agenda

“Singer’s documentation is unrhetorical and unemotional, his arguments tight and formidable, for he bases his case on neither personal nor religious nor highly abstract philosophical principles, but on moral positions most of us already accept.” — New York Times Book Review

"This book is a must . . . not just for every animal lover but forevery civilized reader." — Cleveland Amory

“A most important book that will change the way many of us look at animals—and, ultimately, at ourselves.” — Chicago Tribune

“This book can’t help but make you think twice about whether or not animals have rights. It is so lucid and smart and thoroughly researched, without a hint of hysteria. I couldn’t put it down.” — Rick Moody, author of The Ice Storm

From the Publisher

"This book is a must . . . not just for every animal lover but forevery civilized reader."

Cleveland Amory

"A most important and responsible work. Everyone ought to read it, and ponder deeply whether we do not need to change our view of the world and our responsibility toward its creatures."

Richard Adams

A most important book that will change the way many of us look at animals—and, ultimately, at ourselves.

Chicago Tribune

Singer’s documentation is unrhetorical and unemotional, his arguments tight and formidable, for he bases his case on neither personal nor religious nor highly abstract philosophical principles, but on moral positions most of us already accept.

New York Times Book Review

A most important book that will change the way many of us look at animals—and, ultimately, at ourselves.

Chicago Tribune

This book can’t help but make you think twice about whether or not animals have rights. It is so lucid and smart and thoroughly researched, without a hint of hysteria. I couldn’t put it down.

Rick Moody