Bringing together new theory and critical perspectives on a broad range of topics in animal ethics, this book examines the implications of recent developments in the various fields that bear upon animal ethics. Showcasing a new generation of thinkers, it exposes some important shortcomings in existing animal rights theory.

Notes on Contributors / Introduction: Questioning the Orthodoxy, John Hadley and Elisa Aaltola/ Part I: Intrinsic Value and Moral Status: Rethinking Sentience/ 1. A Meta-level Problem for Animal Rights Theory, John Hadley / 2. Against Moral Intrinsicalism, Nicolas Delon / 3. Beyond Sentience: Biosemiotics as Foundation for Animal and Environmental Ethics, Morton Tonnesen and Jonathan Beever / 4. Animal Agency: What It Is, What It Isn't, and How It Can be Realized, Zipporah Weisberg / Part II: Epistemology: Knowing and Speaking for Nonhuman Animals / 5. Enchanted Worlds and Animal Others, Wayne Williams / 6. 'The Flesh of My Flesh': Animality, Difference, and 'Radical' Community in Merleau-Ponty's Late Philosophy, Jonathan D. Singer / 7. The Problem of Speaking for Animals, Jason Wyckoff / 8. Doing Away with Rights, Elizabeth Foreman / Part III: Moral Psychology: Emotions and Metaethics / 9. Disgust and the Collection of Bovine Foetal Blood, Robert Fischer / Hume on Animals and the Rest of Nature, Angela Coventry and Avram Hiller / 11.The Politicization of Animal Love, Tony Milligan / 12. The Sentimentalism Revival and Animal Philosophy, Elisa Aaltola / Further Reading / Index

Editors Aaltola and Hadley identify the motivation for this collection of essays as the fact that there is very little innovation in the field of animal ethics; much fits the description of 'moral extensionism,' or the extension of existing moral and political theories across species. The editors present works that examine the metaethical and meta-philosophical issues in animal ethics, thereby asking unaddressed questions. In the book's 12 essays, various contributors focus on the assumptions behind the critique of morally relevant relationships; offer an application of biosemiotics, or living organisms’ use of signs; and utilize Merleau-Ponty’s embodied subjects to discuss intersubjectivity with non-human animals. Authors also examine the epistemological and ethical difficulties regarding speaking for animals, argue there is a shortsightedness in basing animal ethics in rights, and consider the moral role of disgust with animal abuse. Finally, Aaltola ends with a convincing explanation for how and why humans are able to paradoxically love some animals and eat others. . . .Readers will find original additions to the animal ethics discussion. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers and faculty.