Pragmatism is used to explore human beings' relationships with horses, dogs, and cats. This results in some surprising conclusions such as respectful relations may require humans to continue in some interactions that include training and work. While most animal rights advocates call for the abolition of all such use, a pragmatist needs to respect the history of these beings and find ways for them to express themselves.
This book explores how the ancient relationship between man and nature has been broken in the modern consumer age, with the animals that used to be at the centre of our existence now marginalized and reduced to spectacle.
The essays in this collection were first delivered as presentations at the Sixteenth Annual ACMRS Conference on 'Humanity and the Natural World in the Middle Ages and Renaissance' in February, 2010, at Arizona State University.
Roberts provides a general account of the theoretical division between humans and animals begun largely in the work of Aristotle and continued in that of Descartes and Kant.
This study pursues the investigation Fontenay began in her magnum opus, 'The Silence of the Beasts: Philosophy Confronts Animality' with a series of essays of somewhat more topical reach.