This volume traces the history of animals in philosophy, from antiquity down to contemporary times. Negative attitudes towards animals, as found in Aristotle and Descartes, turn out to be more nuanced than usually supposed, while remarkable discussions of animal welfare appear in late antiquity, India, the Islamic world, and Kant.

Contributors Introduction, Peter Adamson Chapter 1. Aristotle on Animals Devin Henry Chapter 2. Reincarnation, Rationality, and Temperance: Platonists on Not Eating Animals G. Fay Edwards Reflection: Listening to Aesop's Animals Jeremy B. Lefkowitz Chapter 3. Illuminating Thought: Animals in Classical Indian Thought Amber D. Carpenter Reflection: The Joy of Fish and Chinese Animal Painting Hou-mei Sung Chapter 4. Human and Animal Nature in the Philosophy of the Islamic World Peter Adamson Reflection: Of Rainbow Snakes and Baffling Buffalos: Reflections on a Central African Mask Allen F. Roberts Chapter 5.Marking the Boundaries: Animals in Medieval Latin Philosophy Juhana Toivanen Reflection: Animal Intelligence: Examples of the Human-Animal Border in Medieval Literature Sabine Obermaier Reflection: Subversive Laughter in Reynard the Fox James Simpson Chapter 6. Animals in the Renaissance: You Eat What you Are Cecilia Muratori Chapter 7. Animal Souls and Beast Machines: Descartes' Mechanical Biology Deborah J. Brown Chapter 8. Kant on Animals Patrick Kain Reflection: The Gaze of the Ape: Gabriel von Max's Affenmalerei and the "Question of All Questions" Cecilia Muratori Chapter 9. The Emergence of the Drive Concept and the Collapse of the Animal/Human Divide Paul Katsafanas Chapter 10. Governing Darwin's World Philip Kitcher Chapter 11. Morgan's Canon: Animal Psychology in the Twentieth Century and Beyond Helen Steward Chapter 12.The Contemporary Debate in Animal Ethics Robert Garner Primary Literature Secondary Literature Index

Each of the twelve chapters of this collection presents a nuanced reading of a historical period or thinker and shows their attitudes towards non-human animals to be well-developed, explicitly argued and informed by up-to-date empirical knowledge...Overall, Animals: A History represents a genuine contribution to debates about animal cognition and animal ethics. This contribution comes not through the introduction of new figures or arguments, but rather through grounding existing figures and arguments in an impressive level of philosophical detail and historical depth. Those who read this book will no longer be satisfied with the lazy caricatures of Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and others which haunt our discourse about animals, but will see them as the worthy interlocutors and historically grounded thinkers that they are.

"Each of the twelve chapters of this collection presents a nuanced reading of a historical period or thinker and shows their attitudes towards non-human animals to be well-developed, explicitly argued and informed by up-to-date empirical knowledge...Overall, Animals: A History represents a genuine contribution to debates about animal cognition and animal ethics. This contribution comes not through the introduction of new figures or arguments, but rather through grounding existing figures and arguments in an impressive level of philosophical detail and historical depth. Those who read this book will no longer be satisfied with the lazy caricatures of Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and others which haunt our discourse about animals, but will see them as the worthy interlocutors and historically grounded thinkers that they are." -- British Journal for the History of Philosophy "Those who have pondered ethical treatment of nonhuman animals, their behavior and cognition, and their supposed inferiority to humans will particularly appreciate this volume ... The contributors are accomplished in their fields, and their prose is accessible ... Highly recommended." -- A. Wirkkala, CHOICE

Selling point: Traces the wide history of philosophical thought regarding animals, from ancient Greece and India to contemporary times Selling point: Includes discussions of the historical roots of the some the most contentious, on-going debates surrounding treatment of animals and animal consciousness Selling point: Includes several Reflection essays which examine the depiction of animals in artwork from China, Africa, and Europe Selling point: Part of the Oxford Philosophical Concepts series - The History of Philosophy's Most Important Ideas

Peter Adamson is Professor of Late Ancient and Arabic Philosophy at the LMU in Munich. He is the editor of another forthcoming volume in the Oxford Philosophical Concepts series, Health: the History of a Concept, and the author of the book series A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, published by Oxford University Press. G. Fay Edwards completed her doctorate in Ancient Philosophy at King's College London in 2013, and took up a position as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis until late 2015. She has published papers on Plato, Porphyry and the Stoics, and is the author of 'How to Escape Indictment for Impiety: Teaching as Punishment in the Euthyphro,' which was published in the Journal of the History of Philosophy.

Selling point: Traces the wide history of philosophical thought regarding animals, from ancient Greece and India to contemporary times Selling point: Includes discussions of the historical roots of the some the most contentious, on-going debates surrounding treatment of animals and animal consciousness Selling point: Includes several Reflection essays which examine the depiction of animals in artwork from China, Africa, and Europe Selling point: Part of the Oxford Philosophical Concepts series - The History of Philosophy's Most Important Ideas