Why Animal Suffering Matters: Philosophy, Theology, and Practical Ethics

In Why Animal Suffering Matters, Andrew Linzey argues that when analyzed impartially the rational case for extending moral solicitude to all sentient beings is much stronger than many suppose. Indeed, Linzey shows that many of the justifications for inflicting animal suffering in fact provide grounds for protecting them. Because animals, the argument goes, lack reason or souls or language, harming them is not an offense. Linzey suggests that just the opposite is true, that the inability of animals to give or withhold consent, their inability to represent their interests, their moral innocence, and their relative defenselessness all compel us not to harm them.

Andrew Linzey further shows that the arguments in favor of three controversial practices--hunting with dogs, fur farming, and commercial sealing--cannot withstand rational critique. He considers the economic, legal, and political issues surrounding each of these practices, appealing not to our emotions but to our reason, and shows that they are rationally unsupportable and morally repugnant.

In this superbly argued and deeply engaging book, Linzey pioneers a new theory about why animal suffering matters, maintaining that sentient animals, like infants and young children, should be accorded a special moral status.

How we treat animals arouses strong emotions. Many people are repulsed by photographs of cruelty to animals and respond passionately to how we make animals suffer for food, commerce, and sport. But is this, as some argue, a purely emotional issue? Are there really no rational grounds for opposing our current treatment of animals?

In Why Animal Suffering Matters, Andrew Linzey argues that when analyzed impartially the rational case for extending moral solicitude to all sentient beings is much stronger than many suppose. Indeed, Linzey shows that many of the justifications for inflicting animal suffering in fact provide grounds for protecting them. Because animals, the argument goes, lack reason or souls or language, harming them is not an offense. Linzey suggests that just the opposite is true, that the inability of animals to give or withhold consent, their inability to represent their interests, their moral innocence, and their relative defenselessness all compel us not to harm them.

Andrew Linzey further shows that the arguments in favor of three controversial practices—hunting with dogs, fur farming, and commercial sealing—cannot withstand rational critique. He considers the economic, legal, and political issues surrounding each of these practices, appealing not to our emotions but to our reason, and shows that they are rationally unsupportable and morally repugnant.

In this superbly argued and deeply engaging book, Linzey pioneers a new theory about why animal suffering matters, maintaining that sentient animals, like infants and young children, should be accorded a special moral status.

Publishers Weekly

Linzey (Creatures of the Same God), director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, is a soft-spoken hard-liner about animal rights. In this philosophically and theologically dense treatise, cobbled together and revised from essays and presentations prepared between 2002 and 2007, he rationalizes why no animal should ever be killed or even harmed by humans. Linzey dwells at abstruse length on efforts to ban foxhunting in Britain, while other countries are condemned, America included, for "causing suffering for pleasure." A chapter devoted to fur farming slams the practice of raising animals for their pelts, subjecting them "to prolonged suffering for trivial ends, such as fur coats." A chapter devoted to commercial sealing dwells on the clubbing of baby seals. Such animal abuse is a precursor to serial murder and violence to children, the author suggests, before calling for an end to killing animals even for food, given that humans can live healthy lives "without recourse to flesh products." Linzey's proanimal extremism is admirable, but won't suit every reader.(Aug.)

Andrew Linzey is Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and a Member of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. He is the author of Animal Theology, Creatures of the Same God and Animal Rites: Liturgies of Animal Care.