reason vs. love

For a long time, animal studies was largely limited to moral philosophy, which was organized around the debate between Peter Singer’s welfarist tract Animal Liberation and Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights. Peter Singer is often described as an animal rights advocate. He is nothing of the sort. His moral theory is utilitarian and utilitarianism rejects the existence of rights, calling them “nonsense on stilts.” 


More recently, animal studies has begun to extend itself beyond the narrow ethical debate (although I think this debate remains very important), to embrace topics similar to what might be called “cultural studies of animals” or the “sociology or anthropology of animals.” Here we see how humans relate to animals, be they food animals, pets, pests, wildlife, or something else; these relations may be with fictional animals -like Winnie the Pooh- or they may be with individual animals, like Donna Haraway’s dog Cayenne, who she likes to write about. And, of course, people study how these relationships have changed and varied over time and places; thus, a “history of animals.”

There is a curious trend worth pointing out just in passing: the moral philosophers tend not to be particularly fond of animals, even if they argue quite forcefully on the behalf of the interests of animals while the sociologists and anthropologists of animals tend to be rather fond of animals (especially pets), but aren’t too concerned about the morality of using animals. Peter Singer presents a praticularly interesting case. In one of the many prefaces to his Animal Liberation, he recounts a story about going to some women’s house with his wife. The women expresses interest in his work and says that she is quite fond of animals, all the while eating a ham and cheese sandwich. The woman says something to the effect of, “I bet you really like animals,” to Singer, to which he replies, "we were not especially 'interested in' animals. Neither of us had ever been inordinately fond of dogs, cats, or horses in the way that many people are. We didn't 'love' animals." The philosopher most famous for articulating a defense of animals says that he doesn’t particularly ‘love’ animals. (Love is a word that Singer always seems to put in scare quotes--perhaps he doesn’t believe that anyone can love an animal.) Meanwhile, Donna Haraway, one of the most prominent figures in “animal studies,” writes a chapter in her recent book, When Species Meet, from the perspective of a chicken that is "okay with being slaughtered". Haraway, in comparison to Singer, does believe that it is possible for humans to love animals and for the animals to love them back (!).

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