Given my earlier post expressing my disappointment in Steven Pinker’s new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, I was intrigued to read Peter’s review in The New York Times.

I’m not surprised Peter liked the book because Steven credits him as a major influence; however, I was surprised to read him say Steven has a

command of so much research, spread across so many different fields, is a masterly achievement.

Mmmmmmmmm….that may well be true but, sadly, it wasn’t true enough with respect to his research on Hitler and vegetarianism and the Third Reich and animal rights.

I would have liked to have seen Peter pick up Steven on this inaccuracy — even more so because he has written about his family’s escape from Nazi Germany and his grandparents death in concentration camps (See Pushing Time Away: My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna).

The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

Whether you agree or not with the premise made in Steven Pinker’s new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, it cannot but help to provoke a great deal of interest in anyone who thinks and cares deeply about the human condition. The significant amount of media attention given to the book suggests that we humans, as a species, have a strong need to understand (or wish to believe) that we, as a species, are making progress as moral beings.

Pinker thinks so. I would like to think so, too. But I am not so sure. He begins with this assertion in the Preface,

This book is about what may be the most important thing that has ever happened in human history. Believe it or not — and I know that most people do not — violence has declined over long stretches of time, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species’ existence.

With already too many people following me around (read: books) like a phantom of the library, I am far from being in the position of reading, cover to cover, Pinker’s 700 plus page book. Nevertheless, I could not resist.

Since its arrival, I periodical find myself, when I have the spare time, to not read it from cover to cover but to dip into and out of it as the moment takes me. Of course, I would like to read it from the beginning to the end. That is not likely for the time being. Further, it is a book that I think I should study as there is a lot of material in it of interest and relevance to my own research and writing. I must, therefore, make the time for it.

All this preamble is my way to lead you into the dilemma I now found myself with the book.

I have read something in it that I know is not true. Pinker states otherwise. In fact, it is such a blunder that I can not believe he has made it. Further, it is a significant, pivotal point in his argument about our moral evolution. He writes in the chapter entitled ‘The Rights Revolutions’ in the subsection called ‘Animal Rights and the Decline of Cruelty to Animals’ the following:

But any intuition that vegetarianism and humanitarianism go together was shattered in the 20th-century by the treatment of animals under Nazism. Hitler and many of his henchmen were vegetarians, not so much out of compassion for animals as from an obsession with purity, a pagan desire to reconnect to the soil, and a reaction to the anthropocentrism and meat rituals of Judaism. In an unsurpassed display of the human capacity for moral compartmentalization, the Nazis, despite their unspeakable experiments on living humans, instituted the strongest laws for the protection of animals in research that Europe had ever seen. Their laws also mandated humane treatment of animals in farms, movie sets, and restaurants, where fish had to be anesthetized and lobsters killed swiftly before they were cooked. Ever since that bizarre chapter in the history of animal rights, advocates of vegetarianism have had to retire one of their oldest arguments: that eating meat makes people aggressive, and abstaining from it makes them peaceful. (462)

Now, it is possible that buried elsewhere in the 700 pages Pinker refutes the claim that Hitler et al were vegetarians and the Third Reich were the forerunners of the contemporary animal rights movement. I just have not come across … yet.

Having got this benefit of the doubt out of the way, I am left with asking: How can someone as smart as Pinker get it so wrong?

Hitler was no more a vegetarian than the Third Reich gave birth to the contemporary animal rights movement. This nonsense is usually written by those who oppose animal rights and have a financial vested interest in the commercial exploitation of animals. But a world-renowned psychologist and author studying the behavioural and moral development of our own species?

Nevertheless, I will continue to read the book. But all the pleasure, excitement and the anticipation of discovering new things and ideas, well, they are long gone. Which is such a shame.

Mediating Climate Change by Julie Doyle

Attending last evening’s launch of two new Animal Studies books at the University of Brighton, I was reminded, once again, of the generational shift currently underway in which young people who had grown up in a climate of increased public awareness of animal rights and environmental advocacy are now ascending into positions of authority in society.

The reception I attended was to launch Mediating Climate Change by Julie Doyle and Popular Media and Animals by Claire Molloy. I had not met either authors before; however, I had been encouraged to get in touch with Claire because of our shared interests and close proximity. She teaches at the University of Brighton and at its campus in Hastings, where I live; however, she is shortly to leave and start teaching next year at Liverpool Hope University.

Popular Media and Animals by Claire Molloy

I learnt both were vegans and had a history of social justice activism. Julie’s with Greenpeace in Brighton and Claire’s with animal welfare/rights. Their journey from advocacy into academia signifies the generational shift I began this blog with.

Congratulations to both on making this transition and on the publication of their respective titles, which I look forward to reading!

condemns the cruelty and environmental havoc of factory farming and observes that ‘ultimately, we should be aiming to eat vegetarian diets,’ which is all well and good, but he is no longer an inspiration for animal liberation.

What do you think?

This bust of Virginia Woolf stands in the garden at Monks House where her ashes were scattered.

Seventy years ago today Virginia Woolf drowned herself. It would be remiss not to remember a writer who continues to inspire probably more than any other.

Unlike Francione and Garner, whose disagreement is internal to the animal ethics camp, Milligan opens up the discussion to a greater range of inputs, which help nonetheless to locate the debate against a wider background. What Milligan does not offer, unlike Francione and Garner, is a political strategy: he proposes a personal analysis of a number of issues based on a pluralist set of considerations, which however ends up often in an argumentative stalemate or in a sort of situational ethics. Unlike Francione’s and Garner’s, his voice is not that of an activist, but rather that of a philosopher, sometimes too detached and doubt-ridden to be able to offer the simplification that action requires. His book is therefore to be read in the context of a wider discourse. Together with Francione and Garner, Milligan provides some coordinates to orient the reader within the current philosophical and practical debate concerning animal ethics.

Regrettably, The Animal Rights Debate frames the discussion about strategy as an either/or. Either it is animal rights or it is animal protection. Salzani appears to position Milligan’s Beyond Animal Rights as not providing direct insight into this dispute but nevertheless a worthwhile contribution to the overall discussion. I look forward to reading Milligan to form my own opinion.

Salzani, like Mepham, makes an interesting observation about the different approaches taken by Francione and Garner.

Robert Garner begins his chapter on an apparently more restrained tone: he does not want to criticize animal rights per se, and even states that “a great deal of the ethics of animal rights is convincing” (103). However, soon after he adopts a language that is not second to Francione’s in harshness and condemnation: what he opposes is the “abolitionist” version of the animal rights theory, which he characterizes as “fundamentalist,” “inflexible,” and “dogmatic”; like a fundamentalist religion, it is based on “essential truths” and on an “unwillingness to compromise” in order to achieve incremental short-term goals that fall short of the ideal end point; as such, it is irreconcilable to the “political art of the possible” (104). Garner advocates the position Francione called “new welfarism” but that he prefers to label “animal protectionism,” which defends a “politics” of incremental and “feasible” legal reforms aimed at ameliorating the conditions of animals.

I say regrettably The Animal Rights Debate frames the discussion as an either/or because I believe a smart social justice movement for animals is one which matures sufficiently to understand and appreciate the differences between them. These differences can be irreconcilable opposites if we want them to be. They can also be a clever coordinated strategy which utilises the strengths and weaknesses inherent in each. The strategy I advocate is one which balances the utopian vision of animal rights with the pragmatic politics of animal welfare. Many if not all social movements struggle under a tension of fundamentalism and pragmatism. A smart social movement is one which learns how to deploy both simultaneously. I first made this case in my paper, Utopian Visions and Pragmatic Politics: Challenging the Foundations of Speciesism and Misothery, was published in Animal Rights: The Changing Debate edited by Robert Garner (Macmillan, 1996).

Without attempting a blow-by-blow summary of the exchange, I doubt that I am the only reader to be left with an impression of a discussion characterised by Francione’s somewhat strident approach, to which Garner responded with remarkable amiability. And while Garner was prepared to acknowledge several areas of agreement, Francione’s only reciprocal response was the single word ‘agreed’, in the book’s final sentence, to the proposition that currently animals endure unacceptable levels of suffering. Not even the revelation that Garner was a dietary vegan, in reply to Francione’s ‘personal’ question, elicited any recorded response (p. 257). A discussion where one participant seems unprepared to concede any merit in the opposing perspective, a condition which is perhaps intrinsic to an absolutist, abolitionist stance, hardly provides fertile ground for intellectual enquiry. Yet it might have been anticipated that the fact that both participants reputedly sought to achieve desired changes incrementally would have provided a sound basis for fruitful discussion.

Captain Beefheart. Genius.

1. Practical Ethics by Peter Singer

Read Practical Ethics and put Animal Liberation aside. This is the must-read book by Singer. Discover his understanding of utilitarianism and its application to moral issues, including our relationship with animals. I do not agree with everything but I understood more deeply how to live ethically in this world.

2. The Case for Animal Rights by Tom Regan

First attempts to read it failed. I persevered, making several attempts, focussing on particular chapters. I did not read the chapters sequentially. Then, it all made sense. I discovered Regan’s lucid and engaging writing style. The effort was worth it. I understand what moral rights for animals means.

3. Animals’ Rights by Henry Salt

Published originally in 1892. Revised in 1922. Timeless. Salt writes with quiet severity, demolishing rational and irrational reasons why we treat animals the way they did then and still do today. Plus, he situates animal rights within the progressive agenda of social change, which recognises simultaneously human and animal rights.

4. Nature Ethics by Marti Kheel

Starting with a discussion of four prominent eco-philosophers (Roosevelt, Leopold, Rolston, Fox) and finding them wanting, Kheel goes on to elaborate her theory for ecofeminism, which emphasises empathy and care for individual beings and populations. A thorough and compelling account for eco-holistic thinking, which incorporates animal rights.

5. Interbeing by Thich Nhat Hanh

Hanh is an internationally recognised practitioner of Engaged Buddhism, the intersection of social justice and Buddhist ethics. His fourteen guidelines for Engaged Buddhism, which are equally applicable to the practice of animal advocacy, helped me to become a more effective advocate for animals. They will for you, too.

6. The Animal Ethics Reader edited by Susan J. Armstrong and Richard G. Botzler (second edition)

Of the increasing number of outstanding anthologies published about our relationship with animals, The Animal Ethics Reader stands out as the most comprehensive and thorough. Sections on animal ethics; pain, emotion and consciousness in animals; primates and cetaceans; animal use; religious perspectives; animal law; and animal activism.

7. Animals & Ethics by Angus Taylor (third edition)

Taylor clearly and concisely takes us on a tour of animal ethics. An outstanding achievement becomes even more remarkable as he does not rely upon lengthy quotes from original sources. His ability to describe clearly and concisely different aspects of animal ethics and their relationship to each other is truly informative.

8/9. The Longest Struggle by Norm Phelps and Animal Rights by Hilda Kean

These two histories of social change for animals respectively in the US and UK both excel in recounting the development of social thought and action for animals. The animal rights movement can not understand where it wants to go if it does not know how it got here.

10. The Art of Moral Protest by James M. Jasper

Jasper is a sociologist who studies social movements from a sympathetic perspective. He explores the culture, biography and creativity in social movements, including the animal rights movement. Reading this book gave deepened my understanding of the animal rights movement as a social movement.

The first episode includes the voice of God (should it be Goddess?): Virginia Woolf. Here, you can listen to the entire talk she gave along with other novelists of not as much importance but, nonetheless, fascinating and relevant to understanding the world in which we live.