I do understand that this Animals and Ethics class is not 'Vegetarian Boosterism Class' but that's where most of my ideas are springing from. That being said the forefront of the animal and environmental rights movement is precisely the place where we interact with animals the most often; our diets.
I've been thinking a lot on the motivations for vegetarianism and I'm trying to discover what the basis might be for making that basic dietary switch. First, it aligns closely, but not precisely, with the great civil rights movements of the last century that have changed European/American cultures over the last half century or so. All these movements where not radical movements for the overthrow of bourgeois society but rather movements to expand the civil protections granted to the liberal middle class to excluded segments of society. In this case it is not productive members of societal being officially oppressed into social stagnation, but rather a group fundamentally in equal by almost anyone's standards. We still want to extend rights because we argue the basis of rights is the capacity to suffer and cognise in itself, not the capacity to be a productive member of society, which is assigned arbitrarily by circumstances of birth and social condition.
The animal rights movement has the capability to produce the next great breakthrough for the fundamental human capacity for sympathy and justness. Despite deeply held doubts I can only hope that our age of reason will produce an end to arbitrary suffering caused by a lack of human empathy. If it succeeds, the animal rights movement is fundamentally a triumph for what is the greatest good possible for all humans.
I've been thinking a lot on the motivations for vegetarianism and I'm trying to discover what the basis might be for making that basic dietary switch. First, it aligns closely, but not precisely, with the great civil rights movements of the last century that have changed European/American cultures over the last half century or so. All these movements where not radical movements for the overthrow of bourgeois society but rather movements to expand the civil protections granted to the liberal middle class to excluded segments of society. In this case it is not productive members of societal being officially oppressed into social stagnation, but rather a group fundamentally in equal by almost anyone's standards. We still want to extend rights because we argue the basis of rights is the capacity to suffer and cognise in itself, not the capacity to be a productive member of society, which is assigned arbitrarily by circumstances of birth and social condition.
The animal rights movement has the capability to produce the next great breakthrough for the fundamental human capacity for sympathy and justness. Despite deeply held doubts I can only hope that our age of reason will produce an end to arbitrary suffering caused by a lack of human empathy. If it succeeds, the animal rights movement is fundamentally a triumph for what is the greatest good possible for all humans.
Hey Brian, I commented on my blog.
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