In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals
Winner of the Critical Animal Studies Book Award
lisa kemmerer
ISBN: 978-9004147256
Publisher: Brill, 2006
Overview
In Search of Consistency works across the disciplines of moral philosophy, environmental ethics, and theology. Author Dr. Lisa Kemmerer presents, explores, analyzes, and critically examines four key thinkers in animal ethics— Tom Regan (rights theory), Peter Singer (utilitarian), Paul Taylor (environmental ethics), and Andrew Linzey (theology). In Search of Consistency also presents a new approach to ethics—the Minimize Harm Maxim. Kemmerer’s maxim exposes, through real and hypothetical scenarios, common and well-accepted behaviors as patently irrational and raises questions few authors deign to entertain, bursting wide the bubble that has long protected conventional Greco-diaspora ways of valuing life and facing death.
Throughout the book, Kemmerer reminds readers that ethics carry an expectation of action, that ethics are intended to guide how we live, that ethics are nothing if they are not put to action. This first publication of Dr. Kemmerer provides the first glimpse of core elements that have made her work popular in classrooms and activist circles internationally, catapulting her innovative ideas into a rich career of research, writing, teaching, and public speaking.
Book Quotes
“For the human animal, choosing a diet is an ethical matter.
- In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals
“Advocates of “tradition” sometimes argue that minorities or individuals who do not wish to be dependent on outsiders for sustenance ought to be able to maintain their independence and autonomy by hunting, which can prevent such people from becoming reliant on distant or outside help. Yet most of these same hunters are contented to be dependent on imported weapons, ammunition, sugar, and coffee.”
- In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals
“For a mother to destroy an entire city, or even a vagabond who shows up at her door, to save her ailing child is not only immoral but illegal. In the West, morality and law protect innocent life against those who would exploit others [for experimentation] to protect themselves or their loved ones. Ethics offer an ideal, not a defense of our most selfish tendencies.”
- In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals
“Vegetarians need to know that they cause tremendous harm to anymals by eating omelets or macaroni and cheese. It is not enough to remove the bacon from the omelet, the ham from the macaroni and cheese—at least not if one cares about chickens and cattle. Neither is it adequate to buy “free-range” or “humane” products.
- In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals