An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory is a 2010 textbook by the British political theorist Alasdair Cochrane. It is the first book in the publisher Palgrave Macmillan’s Animal Ethics Series, edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn. Cochrane’s book examines five schools of political theory and their respective relationships with questions concerning animal rights.
About An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory in brief
An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory is a 2010 textbook by the British political theorist Alasdair Cochrane. It is the first book in the publisher Palgrave Macmillan’s Animal Ethics Series, edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn. Cochrane’s book examines five schools of political theory and their respective relationships with questions concerning animal rights and the political status of animals. He concludes that each tradition has something to offer to these issues, but ultimately presents his own account of interest-based animal rights as preferable to any. An Introduction was reviewed positively in several academic publications, but was criticised for being too uncritical of the concept of justice as it might apply to animals. It was subsequently considered at greater length in his 2012 book Animal Rights Without Liberation, published by Columbia University Press. The book was Cochrane’s first, and the. political theorist Robert Garner acted as an important discussant during the writing process. The final chapter outlines Cochrane his own approach, which he. situates between liberalism and utilitarianism. The ideas of Peter Singer are outlined and Cochrane defends Singer’s account of meat-eating when critics argue that animals do not have interests that are taken into account by the maxim of utility. He establishes the book as a work of normative political theory asking to what extent animals should be included in the domain of justice. States can and do regulate human-animal relationships, whether the animals in question are used in agriculture, as companions, or in some other way. As his focus is on political theory, Cochrane is less concerned with questions about individual moral obligations than he is with institutional arrangements.
He notes that questions about animals have been neglected in political theory. In medieval Christian philosophy there was a consensus that they should be excluded, and in modern philosophy there has been a return to disagreement. In the second chapter Cochrane considers the history of thinking on the relationship between justice and animals. The third considers utilitarianism, according to which the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by the extent it promotes utility. As a whole, classical utilitarianism entails that it is the obligation of political communities to formulate policies which promote pleasure. The fourth chapter considers communitarianism and feminism, and challenges the early assumption that animals are owed nothing by modern society. The fifth and final chapter defends the argument against arguments in defence of speciesism, and against critics who argue that even when animals are eaten, even when they are alive, they are not in a position to be considered as a species, even if they are of value to their owners. The last chapter discusses the role of the state in animal rights, and how it can be used to promote animal welfare and the rights of other species. It has been published in paperback, hardback and eBook formats by PalgraveMacmillan in UK on 13 October 2010 in paperback and hardback formats, and is available in e-book formats as well as in Kindle formats. The series’s general editors are Andrew Linzley and Prisilla N. Cohn. It aims to explore the practical and conceptual challenges posed by animal ethics.
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