A New Basis for Animal Ethics: Telos and Common Sense

by Bernard E. Rollin

This book, the culmination of forty years of theorizing about the moral status of animals, explicates and justifies society’s moral obligation to animals in terms of the commonsense metaphysics and ethics of Aristotle’s concept of telos. Rollin uses this concept to assert that humans have a responsibility to treat animals ethically. Aristotle used the concept, from the Greek word for "end" or "purpose," as the core explanatory concept for the world we live in. We understand what an animal is by what it does . This is the nature of an animal, and helps us understand our obligations to animals.

216 pages, Hardcover

Published September 27, 2016

About the author

Professor Bernard E. Rollin is University Distinguished Professor, Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Professor of Animal Sciences and University Bioethicist at Colorado State University. His scholarly interests include both traditional philosophy and applied philosophy and much of his research is focused on animal welfare. He has been a valued member of the Voiceless Scientific Expert Advisory Council since 2009.

Bernard has a Bachelor’s Degree from the City College of New York and a PhD from Columbia. He is the author of over 400 papers and fourteen books including Science and Ethics and Animal Rights and Human Morality which won an Outstanding Book of the Year Award from the American Association of University Libraries. He has consulted for the US Department of Agriculture and for a number of multinational corporations including United Airlines, PETCO, DuPont and the US Soybean Association on a variety of agricultural and animal welfare issues. He served on the Pew National Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (PCIFAP) and on the Institute for Laboratory Animal Resources (ILAR) Council of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2008, he mediated a historic agreement between the Humane Society of the U.S. and Colorado agriculture resulting in legislation advancing the welfare of farm animals.

Rollin was named to the Distinguished Faculty Gallery by the College of Veterinary Medicine at CSU in 1992. He has twice been awarded the Brownlee Award for outstanding achievement in Animal Welfare Science by the Animal Welfare Foundation of Canada and is a recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Colorado Veterinary Medical Association. In 2005, he was awarded the Henry Spira Award in Animal Welfare by Johns Hopkins University Centre for Alternatives to Animal Testing and received the Humane Award from the American Veterinary Medical Association in 2007.

He recently contributed to the documentary film The Superior Human? which challenges the Cartesian duality which hierarchically divides humans from other animals.

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is heavy on academic language (Latin phrases and multi-syllabic words that I haven't heard since grad school) and seems a bit pretentious at times, but stick with it - it's a fascinating read, and the author is passionate and well informed about his subject.

If you are a proponent of animal welfare and animal ethics, you owe it to yourself to read this book.