[Philclub] Species bias at the university

[Steve Barney <barnes99@vaxa.cis.uwosh.edu>]

What is the current state of the animal rights debate on this campus?

Here's an excerpt from the world's most influential living philosopher on the 
subject of the treatment of animal issues in today's university philosophy 
classes, and a link to the source:

"Experimenting on animals, and eating their flesh, are perhaps the two major 
forms of speciesism in our society. By comparison, the third and last form of 
speciesism is so minor as to be insignificant, but it is perhaps of some 
special interest to those for whom this article was written. I am referring to 
speciesism in contemporary philosophy.

  "Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking 
through, critically and carefully, what most people take for granted is, I 
believe, the chief task of philosophy, and it is this task that makes 
philosophy a worthwhile activity. Regrettably, philosophy does not always live 
up to its historic role. Philosophers are human beings, and they are subject 
to all the preconceptions of the society to which they belong. Sometimes they 
succeed in breaking free of the prevailing ideology: more often they become 
its most sophisticated defenders. So, in this case, philosophy as practiced in 
the universities today does not challenge anyone's preconceptions about our 
relations with other species. By their writings, those philosophers who tackle 
problems that touch upon the issue reveal that they make the same unquestioned 
assumptions as most other humans, and what they say tends to confirm the 
reader in his or her comfortable speciesist habits.

Read on at:

http://www.petersingerlinks.com/animals.htm


That was published in 1989.



SB

Steve Barney

Richard M. Hare, 1919 - 2002, In Memoriam: <http://www.petersingerlinks.com/Hare/>.

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