Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction [Paperback]

In the early 1980s I read very deeply in the writings of Mahatma Gandhi and was especially struck by his discussion of reverence for life. These writings had a huge impact on me and made me reconsider a number of aspects of my life. While in the midst of reading his writings I came across Peter Singer's ANIMAL LIBERATION. Right book at the right time. I quickly followed the reading of this with Mary Midgley's ANIMALS AND WHY THEY MATTER and Tom Regan's THE CASE FOR ANIMAL RIGHTS. While I did not buy into the specific arguments of each of these writers, the aggregate influence of Gandhi, Singer, Midgley, and Regan was immense. I made a number of major changes in my life, including limiting the amount of leather I wore, becoming a lacto-ovo vegetarian (I didn't make the shift to veganism), taking care not to buy any products that were tested on animals, and doing what I could to support animals rights causes. I was even a member of PETA before it adopted strategies that I could not condone.

The remarkable thing about writings on Animal Rights in the early 1980s was that you could fairly easily read all of the literature on the subject and I pretty much did. While I have from time to time dipped back into the subject over the past twenty-five years, I have not been able to keep up with all of the literature, and couldn't catch up even if I strove to do so. To say that there has been an explosion in the literature would be an understatement. Where in 1985 there was perhaps 7 or 8 major works in the field, today there are 80 or 90. Even people who are not within the field are writing books on the subject. For instance, Cass Sunstein (who could well be an Obama nominee to the Supreme Court) and Martha Nussbaum have undertaken an anthology by a number of major intellectuals who would not be associated with the subject of Animal Rights.

David DeGrazia's contribution to the Oxford Very Short Introduction series could have taken either of two paths. He could have chosen to survey the thoughts of the major animal rights theorists and the debates that they are engaged in. Or he could have chosen to discuss the major issues. He took the latter approach. There is merit to this, but the fact is that virtually every other book on the subject of Animal Rights takes the same approach. I personally think that DeGrazia would have made a more valuable contribution to the study of Animal Rights if he had instead taken the survey of major thinkers approach, if he had laid out the major figures and their ideas. As it is, the book merely does what countless other books have done. DeGrazia's discussion is a fine one, but it really doesn't distinguish itself from the many other books similar to it.

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