Dignity, Pleasures, Vulgarity: Philosophy + Animal Rights

By James Brusseau

While writing a chapter on contemporary animal rights for an ethics book, philosophy professor James Brusseau began asking how the animal studies could reflect back to reveal human truths. Dignity, Pleasures, Vulgarity pursues that question as it ranges from an accessible look at today's philosophy of animal ethics, to an investigat

• Language: English
• Publisher: Overflow
• Release date: Mar 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9780980056716

Book preview

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Dignity, Pleasures, Vulgarity

Philosophy + Animal Rights

James Brusseau

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Copyright: © 2016 Overflow Publishing, James Brusseau

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or the author.

Published in the United States of America by Overflow.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016918229

ISBN: 978-0-9800567-0-9 (Paper)

ISBN: 978-0-9800567-1-6 (eBook)

ISBN: 978-0-9800567-2-3 (Audio Book)

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To Rocio, Santiago, and Emilia

Table of Contents

1

What are Dignity and Pleasure?

What is Dignity?

Pleasures in Pamplona

Dignity or Pleasure?

2

Dignity and Animal Rights

Which Animals Have Dignity, and Therefore Rights?

Supporting Dignity: The Human/Animal Bind

Another Version of the Human/Animal Bind

Dignity and Those Animals Closest to Us

3

Pleasure and Animal Rights

The Pleasure and Pain Approach to Ethics

The Pleasure and Pain Approach to Animal Ethics

Pleasure and the Bullfight

Pleasure and Those Animals Closest to Us

4

Vulgarity

Two Kinds of Vulgarity

Vulgarity, the Bullfight, Animal Rights

Citations

Image Credits

About the Author

Back Cover

Dignity, Pleasures, Vulgarity

Philosophy + Animal Rights

1

What are Dignity and Pleasure?

A dedicated couple entangled in the nook of a medieval building, their hips and shoulders pressed against a towering door where decades—maybe centuries—of Spanish sun have split the wood like long fingernail scratchings. Behind them, wedged into the recessed door’s other corner, another pair struggled. The 3 a.m. air reeked of piss and the vomit of the region’s acidic wine.

Here is the question: Do animals have rights? And the answers for all animals, nonhuman and human, will emerge from that cramped scene.

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Ethics is about lived experiences in pungent doorways, but it’s also a field of theoretical philosophy. To begin talking about rights on that level, there are two approaches: one aligns with the ideal of dignity; the other follows the concept of pleasure.

For those taking the dignity route, this is the reasoning:

•  There exists something ineffable called dignity.

•  Being dignified is the height of existence.

•  Any creature possessing dignity merits ethical protection: the dignified are intrinsically respectable and may not be exploited by others.

If that’s the logic, these are the questions: How can dignity be conceived? Which creatures have it? What specific protections do they merit?

For those taking the pleasure route, this is the reasoning:

•  Pleasure and suffering are palpable and real.

•  Maximizing pleasure while diminishing pain is existence’s highest aim.

•  Any creature capable of feeling will naturally join the ethical world, where we’re all charged to create pleasure and eradicate suffering.

If that’s the logic, these are the questions: How does true pleasure feel? Which creatures sense it? How can it be produced, and how can pain be diminished?

To find answers, we’ll investigate in this first chapter what dignity and pleasure mean for the human animals that invented them. In the second and third chapters we’ll advance to the core concern, the dilemmas of animal ethics as they exist on the level of philosophy. Finally, the fourth chapter on vulgarity explores what we