The purpose of this course will be to think critically about ethical issues relevant to nonhuman animals. We will start with an exploration of Western thinking about animals up to the 19th century, and we will see how animals were regarded as things and excluded from the moral and legal communities based on their claimed spiritual or cognitive inferiority.
We will then examine the animal welfare framework that developed in the early 19th century and required that we not subject animals to “unnecessary” suffering and treat them “humanely.” We will see how this framework failed because animals are chattel property and animal welfare became more about the economics, and not the morality, of animal use.
We will explore the primary ethical frameworks that have tried to address the failure or inadequacy of animal welfare laws. These frameworks include the utilitarian and rights approaches, but we will consider other approaches as well. We will discuss the concept of nonhuman personhood.
We will then consider several uses of animals, including the use of animals for food and in biomedical research, and the practice of domestication.
In the final session, we will discuss the relationship between human rights and animal rights. Throughout the class, we will be discussing the tools for building sound philosophical arguments in the context of animal ethics.
No background in law or philosophy is required.
This course is part of the Oxford University Summer School for Adults (OUSSA) programme.