Teaching Resources

Moral Theory

Contractarianism

• • Carruthers, Peter. Against the Moral Standing of Animals

  • Rowlands, Mark. Contractarianism and Animal Rights

The "Dominant" Approaches

• • Rights Theory

    • Cochrane, Alasdair. From human rights to sentient rights

    • Donaldson, Sue and Kymlicka, Will. Rights" (Critical Terms for Animal Studies)

    • Regan, Tom. The Case for Animal Rights (short paper)

    • Regan, Tom. The Philosophy of Animal Rights (pamphlet)

    • Wrenn, Corey. Nonhuman Animal Rights, Alternative Food Systems, and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

  • Consequentialism

    • John, Tyler and Sebo, Jeff. Consequentialism and Nonhuman Animals

    • Killoren, David and Streiffer, Robert. Utilitarianism about animals and the moral significance of use

    • Singer, Peter. All Animals are Equal

Responses & Alternatives to the "Dominant Approaches"

• • Anderson, Elizabeth. Animal Rights and the Value of Nonhuman Life

  • Diamond, Cora. Eating Meat and Eating People

  • Donovan, Josephine. Animal Rights and Feminist Theory

  • Frey, R.G. Animal Rights

  • Oliver, Kelly. Animal Ethics: Toward an Ethics of Responsiveness

  • Oliver, Kelly. What Is Wrong with (Animal) Rights?

  • Warren, Mary Anne. Difficulties with the Strong Animal Rights Position

Virtue Theory

• • Hursthouse, Rosalind. Applying virtue ethics to our treatment of other animals

  • Hursthouse, Rosalind. Virtue ethics and the treatment of animals

  • Rowlands, Mark. Virtue ethics and animals

Animal Minds, Agency, & Moral Status

• Bekoff, Marc and Pierce, Jessica. Wild Justice Redux: What We Know about Social Justice in Animals and Why it Matters

• Bermúdez, José Luis. Thinking Without Words: An Overview for Animal Ethics

• Carron, Paul. Ape imagination? A sentimentalist critique of Frans de Waal’s gradualist theory of human morality

• Carron, Paul. Monkeys, Men, and Moral Responsibility: A Neo-Aristotelian Case for a Qualitative Distinction

• Delon, Nicolas. Moral Status, Final Value, and Extrinsic Properties

• Ebert, Rainer. Are Humans More Equal Than Other Animals? An Evolutionary Argument Against Exclusively Human Dignity

• Gruen, Lori and Andrews, Kristin. Empathy in Other Apes

• Jones, Robert. Science, sentience, and animal welfare

• Lynch, Joe. Is Animal Pain Conscious?

• Monsó , Susana (with J. Benz-Schwarzburg & A. Bremhorst). Animal morality: What it means and why it matters

• Regan, Tom. Frey on Why Animals Cannot Have Simple Desires

• Rollin, Bernard. Animal Mind: Science, Philosophy, and Ethics

• Sebo, Jeff. Agency and Moral Status

• Sebo, Jeff. The Moral Problem of Other Minds

Applied Topics

Abortion and Animals

• Abbate, C.E. Adventures in Moral Consistency: How to Develop an Abortion Ethic through an Animal Rights Framework

• Jenni, Kathi. Dilemmas in Social Philosophy: Abortion and Animal Rights

• Kao, Grace. Consistency in Ecofeminist Ethics: Contextual Moral Vegetarianism and Abortion

Animal Research

• • Against Animal Research

    • Engel, Mylan. The Commonsense Case against Animal Experimentation

    • Francione, Gary. The Use of Nonhuman Animals in Biomedical Research: Necessity and Justification

    • Nobis, Nathan. A Rational Defense of Animal Experimentation

    • Regan, Tom. Animal Rights Advocacy and Modern Medicine: The Charge of Hypocrisy

    • Regan, Tom. Empty Cages: Animal Rights and Vivisection

    • Tuvel, Rebecca. Against the Use of Knowledge Gained from Animal Experimentation

    • Zambrano, Alexander. Animal Experimentation as a Form of Rescue

  • In Defense of Animal Research

    • Ringach, Dario. The Use of Nonhuman Animals Animals in Biomedical Research

• Companion Animal Ethics

  • Abbate, C.E. A Defense of Free-Roaming Cats from a Hedonist Account of Feline Well-being

  • DeGrazia, David. The Ethics of Confining Animals: From Farms to Zoos to Human Homes

  • Haramia, Chelsea. Why We Should Stop Creating Pets with Lives Worth Living

  • Kendrick, Heather. Autonomy, Slavery, and Companion Animals

  • Meijer, Eva. The Good Life, the Good Death: Companion Animals and Euthanasia

  • Milburn, Josh. Not Only Humans Eat Meat: Companions, Sentience, and Vegan Politics

  • Rollin, Bernard. Reasonable Partiality and Animal Ethics

  • Sparrow, Robert. The March of the Robot Dogs

  • Toit, Jessica. Is Having Pets Morally Permissible?

• Eating Animals (Esp. Factory Farming)

  • Against Meat Eating

    • Abbate, C.E. Veganism, (Almost) Harm-Free Animal Flesh, and Nonmaleficence: Navigating dietary ethics in an unjust world

    • Bramble, Ben. The Case Against Meat

    • Engel, Mylan. The Commonsense Case for Ethical Vegetarianism

    • Engel, Mylan. The Immorality of Eating Meat

    • Gruen, Lori and Jones, Robert. Veganism as an Aspiration

    • Holdier, A.G. The Pig’s Squeak: Towards a Renewed Aesthetic Argument for Veganism

    • Hooley, Dan and Nobis, Nathan. A Moral Argument for Veganism

    • Huemer, Michael. Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism

    • Ilea, Ramona. Intensive livestock farming: Global trends, increased environmental concerns, and ethical solutions

    • Kemmerer, Lisa. Ethics and Eating Fishes

    • Lowe, Dan. Common Arguments for the Moral Acceptability of Eating Meat: A Discussion for Students

    • Norcross, Alastair. Puppies, Pigs, and Marginal Cases

      • Responses to Norcross

        • Abbate, C.E. Meat Eating and Moral Responsibility: Exploring the Moral Distinctions between Meat Eaters and Puppy Torturers

        • Harris, John and Richard Galvin. Pass the Cocoamone, Please’: Causal Impotence, Opportunistic Vegetarianism and Act-Utilitarianism

        • Hudson, Hud. Collective responsibility and moral vegetarianism

        • Nobis, Nathan. Vegetarianism and virtue: Does consequentialism demand too little?

    • Pluhar, Evelyn. Who can be morally obligated to be a vegetarian?

    • Simmons, Aaron. Animals, Freedom, and the Ethics of Veganism

    • Stănescu, Vasile. "Green" Eggs and Ham? The Myth of Sustainable Meat and the Danger of the Local

    • Tuminello, Joey. Industrial Animal Agriculture: An Environmental Justice Perspective

  • In Defense of Meat Eating

    • Kazez, Jean. The Taste Question in Animal Ethics

    • Lomasky, Loren. Is it wrong to eat animals?

  • Alternatives to Factory Farming

    • Disenhancing Animals

      • Rollin, Bernard. Telos, conservation of welfare, and ethical issues in genetic engineering of animals

      • Shriver, Adam. Knocking out pain in livestock: Can technology succeed where morality has stalled?

      • Thomson, Paul. The Opposite of Human Enhancement: Nanotechnology and the Blind Chicken Problem

        • Responses to the "diminishment" approach

          • Henschke, Adam. Making Sense of Animal Disenhancement

          • Schultz-Bergin, Marcus. The Dignity of Diminished Animals: Species Norms and Engineering to Improve Welfare

    • Eating Happy Animals

      • Delon, Nicolas. The Replaceability Argument in the Ethics of Animal Husbandry (an overview of the arguments)

      • McMahan, Jeff. Eating Animals the Nice Way

    • Eating Insects

      • Fischer, Bob. Bugging the Strict Vegan

    • Eating Roadkill

      • Bruckner, Donald. Strict Vegetarianism is Immoral

    • Hunting

      • Demetriou, Dan and Fischer, Bob. Dignitarian Hunting: A Rights Based Defense

    • In Vitro Meat

      • Milburn, Josh. Chewing Over In Vitro Meat: Animal Ethics, Cannibalism and Social Progress

      • Milburn, Josh. Death-Free Dairy? The Ethics of Clean Milk

      • Schaefer, G. Owen and Savulescu, Julian. The Ethics of Producing In Vitro Meat

Entertainment & Sport

• • Circuses

    • Cataldi, Suzanne. Animals and the concept of dignity: Critical reflections on a circus performance

  • Zoos

    • Bennett, Stephen. Are Zoos and Aquariums Justifiable? A Utilitarian Evaluation of Two Prominent Arguments

    • Emmerman, Karen. Moral Arguments Against Zoos.

    • DeGrazia, David. The Ethics of Confining Animals: From Farms to Zoos to Human Homes

    • Jamieson, Dale. Against Zoos

    • Pierce, Jessica and Bekoff, Marc. A Postzoo Future: Why Welfare Fails Animals in Zoos

  • Hunting

    • Kheel, Marti. The Killing Game

    • Oliver, Kelly. Hunting Girls: Patriarchal Fantasy or Feminist Progress?

Feminism and Animals

• • Donovan, Josephine. Attention to Suffering: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals

  • Emmerman, Karen. What’s Love Got to Do with it? An Ecofeminist Approach to Inter- Animal and Intra-Cultural Conflicts of Interest.

  • Gheaus, Anca. The Role of Love in Animal Ethics

  • Paxton George, Kathryn. Should Feminists be Vegetarians?

  • Plumwood, Val. Integrating Ethical Frameworks for Animals, Humans, and Nature: A Critical Feminist Ecosocialist Analysis

  • Wrenn, Cory. Social Movement Prostitution: A Case Study in Nonhuman Animal Rights Activism and Vegan Pimping

  • Wrenn, Corey. Toward a Vegan Feminist Theory of the State

Religion and Animals

• • Christianity

    • John, Tyler. Christian Dominion and Animal Abuse (Op-Ed)

    • Linzey, Andrew. The Bible and Killing for Food

    • Lynch, Joe. Theodicy and Animals

  • Buddhism

    • Fenton, Andrew. A moderate Buddhist animal research ethics

    • Finnigan, Bronwyn. Buddhism and Animal Ethics

  • Jainism

    • Tuminello, Joey. Jainism: Animals and the Ethics of Intervention

• "Wild Animal" Ethics

  • Delon, Nicolas. Animal Agency, Captivity, and Meaning

  • Delon, Nicolas and Purves, Duncan. Wild Animal Suffering is Intractable

  • Donaldson, Sue and Kymlicka, Will. Between Wildness and Domestication: Rethinking Categories and Boundaries in response to Animal Agency

  • Ebert, Rainer and Machan, Tibor. Innocent Threats and the Moral Problem of Carnivorous Animals

  • Faria, Catia (with Eze Paez). It’s Splitsville: Why Animal Ethics and Environmental Ethics Are Incompatible

  • Kasperbauer, T. J. Should We Bring Back the Passenger Pigeon? The Ethics of De-Extinction

  • Martin, Angela. Animal Vulnerability and its Ethical Implications: An Exploration

  • Milburn, Josh. Rabbits, Stoats and the Predator Problem: Why a Strong Animal Rights Position Need Not Call for Human Intervention to Protect Prey from Predators

  • Palmer, Clare. The moral relevance of the distinction between domesticated and wild animals

  • Palmer, Clare. What (If Anything) Do We Owe Wild Animals?

  • Pepper, Angie. Adapting to Climate Change: What We Owe to Other Animals

Animal Minds

• • General

    • Animals Like Us : Animal Emotions (Wildlife Documentary: 59 minutes)

    • Animal Odd Couples (One hour, 47 minutes)

    • A Conversation With Koko the Gorilla: Full Documentary (67 minutes)

      • Koko Amazing Talking Gorilla ( Koko recounts death of mother by poachers: 10 minutes)

    • How animals think (Nova Science Now Episode: 53 minutes)

    • How smart are Animals? (NOVA Science Now Episode: 55 minutes)

    • A Lion Called Christian (45 minutes)

      • *Christian the Lion: Reunion (short version, with Celine Dion song: 3 minutes)

    • A Look Inside the Animal Mind (Podcast with Marc Bekoff: 42 minutes)

    • Animal Moms Reunited With Their Babies (4 minutes)

    • Moral behavior in animals (Frans de Waal Ted Talk: 16 minutes)

    • Mysteries of the animal mind (Nature of things Episode: 44 minutes)

    • What animals are thinking and feeling, and why it should matter (Carl Safina Ted Talk: 16 minutes)

  • Farmed Animal Minds

    • The Emotional World of Farm Animals (52 minutes)

    • The Inconvenient Truth About Thinking Chickens (Presentation by Lori Marino: 120 minutes)

    • Maybelle's Story (Cow who was reunited with her baby: 10 minutes)

      • Maybelle's reunion with her baby (2 minutes)

    • Reunion of mother sheep with her two babies (3 minutes)

    • Mother cow's heartbreaking emotional anguish after losing her newborn calf (3 minutes)

    • The Private Lives of Chickens (58 minutes)

    • The Private Lives of Cows (60 minutes)

Animal Rights Theory (Tom Regan)

• "The Case for Animal Rights" (Tom Regan Speech: 8 minutes)

• "An Introduction to Animal Rights" (Tom Regan Lecture: 50 minutes)

Animal Experimentation

• "Ethics and Animal Research" (Nathan Nobis Lecture Series)

• Mother Love: Monkey Maternal Deprivation Experiments (27 minutes)

• Test Subject (Scientists speak out about animal research: 17 minutes)

Eating Animals

• • Health

    • Do animals hold the key to your health? (Aysha Akhtar Ted Talk: 14 minutes)

    • Power Foods for the Brain (Neal Banard Ted Talk- 17 minutes)

  • Factory Farming

    • Factory Farming (Interview with Michael Huemer: 60 minutes)

    • Heartbreaking Footage Shows Baby Cows Stolen from their Mothers (2 minutes)

    • Is it okay to eat meat? Peter Singer tackles the best objections against vegetarianism (22 minutes)

    • Why Hamburgers Should be Illegal (Talk by Ingrid Newkirk: 43 minutes)

  • "Humane" Meat

    • 'Humane Meat' (Mini lecture by Ingrid Newkirk: 11 minutes)

    • Jasmine Harman Explains What the Dairy Industry Does to Baby Cows (Mother cow is separated from her baby: 2 minutes)

    • Selling Eden: Environmentalism and the Myth of "Humane" Meat (Interview/Presentation with Vasile Stanescu: 56 minutes)

    • Exposing the Humane Hoax - Does humane slaughter really exist? (11 minutes)

    • The Humane Myth (3 minutes)

  • In Vitro Meat

    • In Vitro Meat (30 minutes)

    • The End of Animal Farming (Jacy Reese Ted talk: 13 minutes)

    • In vitro meat - the ethics, technology and politics behind it (Erica Petrillo Ted Talk: 16 minutes)

Ecofeminism

• Ecofeminism Now (Introduction to ecofeminism and interviews with Carol Adams, Josephine Donavan, Vandana Shiva and others: 37 minutes)

• Feminism and Animals Rights (Interview with Ingrid Newkirk: 3 minutes)

Legal Rights

• Chimps Have Feelings to: They Should also have rights (Steve Wise Ted Talk : 13 minutes)

• Christine Korsgaard on Legal Rights for Animals (Audio only: 59 minutes)

• Nonhuman Rights Project Aims to Grant Personhood to Animals (Interview with Steve Wise: 9 minutes)

• Personhood Beyond the Human: Steve Wise on the Legal Case for Rights for Apes (Lecture by Steve Wise: 42 minutes)

• The Struggle of the Nonhuman Rights Project for the Legal Personhood of Nonhuman Animals (Lecture by Steve Wise: 50 minutes)

Speciesism & Equality

• Animal Equality (Interview with Peter Singer: 3 minutes)

• Peter Singer - Non-Human Animal Ethics (20 minutes)

• The Superior Human (74 minutes)

• We are all Noah: Part I (1986 Documentary by Tom Regan; click here for part II: 30 minutes total)

• "What is Speciesism?" (Interview with Richard Ryder: 4 minutes)

• What Will Future Generations Think of Our Treatment of Animals? (Paul Shapiro Ted Talk: 13 minutes)

• Who lives, who dies, and why: ignoring and redecorating nature and specious speciesism ( Marc Bekoff presentation: 36 minutes)

Miscellaneous

• Kant, Autonomy, Animals (Mini Lecture by Andrew Chignell: 7 Minutes)

ENGAGED PHILOSOPHY is a site that gives faculty and students tools to implement activist or service projects in philosophy classes—assignment guidelines, sample projects, and testimonials and data supporting civic engagement results. For animal-specific project ideas, see this page.

One model for a service learning course: Taking Animals Seriously, by Kathie Jenni at the University of Redlands. "A four week long internship at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah that is grounded in study of the history, issues, philosophies, and strategies of the animal welfare movement. One and one half days per week are devoted to class time; the remaining three and one half days each week are devoted to full time work in all aspects of the Sanctuary: cleaning, feeding and watering, socializing with and exercising animals, veterinary care, adoption services, humane education, and community outreach. Students may specialize in one facet of animal care during their final two weeks." Jenni has written about the course in this volume.

Bioethics

• Animal Bioethics - Robert Streiffer 2010

Cognition and Minds

• Animal Cognition - Cameron Buckner

• Animal Minds - Nicolas Delon 2017

• Animals & Science - Kathie Jenni 2014

• Animal Minds - Alex Morgan 2016

• Animal Minds - Matthew Pianalto 2013

• Animal Minds - Jeff Sebo 2019

The Environment

• Animals, the Environment, and World Religion - D. Pinault 2017

• Animals and Climate Change - Jeff Sebo 2019

Introduction to Animal Ethics

• Animal Ethics and the Law- Cheryl Abbate 2020

• Animal Ethics - Mark Causey

• Humans and Other Animals - Kathie Jenni 2020

• Ethics and Animals - Chris Korsgaard 2017

• Animal Ethics - Matthew Pianalto 2012

• Animal Ethics - Matthew T. Riley 2016

• Ethics and Animals - Jeff Sebo 2017

Policy

• Animal Ethics and Policy - Kathie Jenni 2020

Practical Applications

• Animal Ethics and Service - Kathie Jenni 2019

• Effective Animal Advocacy - Jeff Sebo 2018

• Animal Ethics in Theory and Practice: An Animal Studies Seminar - Ike Sharpless

Religion

• Animals and Religion - Laura Hobgood 2015

• Animals, the Environment, and World Religion - D. Pinault 2017

Society and Culture

• Animals in Human Cultures: Interdisciplinary Perspectives - Jody Berland 2015

• Animals in Human Society: Inequality, Conflict, and Social Justice - David N. Pellow 2016

• Animals & Society - Corey Wrenn 2012