Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture (The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series)

Animal Studies Bibliography

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The obvious goal is to intensify and increase animal production, whilst welfare is placed second in relation to financial gain. A representative from the group ponders: Free trade is repeatedly offered as a viable option, although it is precisely endless competition that drives rewards and therefore pushes welfare conditions down. Unfortunately, this laissez- faire attitude has a near monopoly within animal industries, and wel- fare is often seen as an unnecessary restriction. Hence, regrettably, the World Trade Organization does not allow animal welfare to be used as a AQ9 reason for trade restrictions Bayel Here are a few examples that illustrate the type of treatment to which welfare laws give their blessing.

Of these, 60 per cent are kept in gestation stalls and farrowing crates, where the animals cannot turn around, and where even getting up and lying down are difficult; this means that the animals spend the majority of their lives in cages which they struggle to physically fit into. Similarly, veal calves are routinely kept in tiny, barren cages, where turning is impossible Mench ; see also Appleby ; Rollin In fact, the law has been criticized by animal welfare campaign- ers for remaining a superficial publicity stunt, as the cages still remain minuscule, and even the enrichment provided in them is minimal: The EU has also banned gestation stalls starting from the year , but a loophole allows the stalls to be used during the first four weeks of pregnancy; moreover, farrowing crates will still remain legal, which means that pigs can be kept in cages that prevent free movement during the time that they are nursing piglets.

The reality of animal existence within animal agriculture is, with the blessing of the law, often all but well-faring. Most commonly, the squealing piglet is forced to stay still as the skin of the animal is sliced with a knife, and testicles are pulled out until they snap loose. The same happens to lambs, who may have both their tails and testicles cut off without any analgesic. The price of such mutilation is high for individual animals.

Piglets will show signs of pain for up to a week afterwards including trembling, lethargy, vomiting, and leg shak- ing. In lambs, the stress hormone levels take a huge leap as a result of mutilation, and the animals show signs of significant pain by standing still or otherwise behaving abnormally for four hours or more, seemingly unaware of their surroundings. Dairy calves who are dehorned show signs of pain for six or more hours afterwards Turner Birds, too, are mutilated without the use of analgesics, as their beaks are trimmed, and at times inside toes are also cut, in order to prevent damage from the type of fighting that almost always occurs when abnormally large numbers of individuals are crammed into the same small confinement.

After debeaking, the animals will experience acute pain for circa two days, and the chronic pain lasts for up to six weeks Duncan Mutilation is not the only cause for worry. The Practice 35 and a relatively large percentage of them die from these ailments, often without any veterinary care.

American cattle farms have animals or more, broiler farms can have hundreds of thousands of individuals, 20 per cent of milk is pro- duced in farms with over cows, and one-third of pig farmers raise over 10, animals for slaughter per year Mench With these numbers, combined with increasing automation of practices such as milking, there is little chance that farmers will notice illness or injury.

It may also make little financial sense to treat animals that are injured or sick, for the profit gained from an individual animal is often less than the costs of veterinary assistance. Illnesses and injuries result from high density, lack of space, lack of mental stimulation, and physical exhaustion. Typically, the animals also have little or no mental stimulation, which means that the only activity available to them is eating and lying down. It has been argued that both men- tal frustration and physical illnesses are common.

For instance, sows are subject to various gastrointestinal illnesses such as stress-induced ulcer , infections, lameness, heart problems, stress and depression. The sows have nothing to do other than chew the bars of their cages, or rock their heads from one side to the other, time and again. These creatures have serious health problems such as painful stomach ulcers , accentuated by substantial behavioural issues, as they aimlessly suckle on the bars of their cages or sway from side to side European Commission The list of animals who suffer from very restricted confinement is long.

Philosophy and Culture and the significant ammonia levels that it causes Mench ; see also Julian Fur farms are perhaps the most notorious example of what severe confinement can do to animals. In Finland, one of the biggest fur producers in the world, brought in new legislation concerning the treatment of fur animals. Even this new legislation, meant to be an improvement on welfare, only affords 0. A fully grown fox is offered 0. These cages are stacked next to each other in endless rows, and individual farms typi- cally house thousands of animals. When considering that these animals are de facto wild creatures, who in the wild would maintain territories ranging up to tens of square kilometres, and whose days in the wild are depending on species filled with swimming, building nests, climbing trees, hunting, and maintaining social relations, the minuscule meas- urements become incomprehensible.

It is not surprising that severe behavioural problems are common in fur farms. Animals exhibit stere- otypical behaviours, jumping from side to side, swaying their heads and upper bodies time and again, pacing around in endless circles, chewing on their own bodies and those of others, and even mutilating them- selves by, for instance, chewing off their own tails or legs , or killing their own cubs. Foxes are particularly prone to feel great fear and anxi- ety, and will huddle in the corners of their cages in unusual positions, as if ready to bounce out.

For minks, who are naturally solitary crea- tures, it may be unbearable to be surrounded by the smells and sounds of thousands of other individuals; for sociable foxes, it may be equally unbearable to be unable to create social networks Broom and Nimon AQ10 ; ; European Commission AQ11 Besides mutilation and lack of space, animals are faced with further problems.

Intensification of agricultural production has meant that the physiologies of animals are put under a huge strain. As a result of poli- cies on breeding, feeding and lack of space, animals are made to grow faster and bigger, and to produce more. Animals are heavier than ever before — in just 20 years, the carcass weight of cattle and pigs has risen by 23 and 17 per cent respectively, while broilers weigh 2. The sheer speed of physical development, the large body mass, and the constant production of milk and eggs can cause serious health problems: The Practice 37 more.

Hens, broiler birds and turkeys frequently become lame. The worrying fact is that these symptoms clearly indicate pain Mench Lameness has also further consequences for the animals, as lame birds will struggle to reach food and water, which again may mean that they slowly starve to death. They also lie down more, which causes addi- tional problems: This problem is very common, and in fact over 80 per cent of chicken carcasses sold in UK supermarkets have skin sores.

At times, the birds just cannot cope with all the physiological and environmental strain that they are put under, and suddenly die for unknown reasons. Animals also produce more milk and eggs than ever before, with dire consequences. The situation is made worse by the restricted environment in which the animals are forced to live; almost complete lack of exercise leaves bones weak and fragile. The severity of the situation should not be overlooked. In short, the bodies of hens are so overused that their bones quite simply snap, often with dis- astrous consequences for the individual animal.

In addition, other ill- nesses are looming. As a result of continuous straining, hens commonly suffer from uterine prolapse, which means that their uterus is pushed out of their body. Moreover, hens are susceptible to simple exhaustion, as their bodies give in under the huge pressure of constant egg-laying. Philosophy and Culture The exhaustion of these animals is so severe that it frequently leads to death, and so common that it has its own name: It is estimated that almost ten per cent of hens die during their time on the farm Webster Cows commonly suffer from a painful condition called mastitis udder infection , which is linked to increased milk yield and industrial farming practices.

Large udders can cause considerable unease for cows, and the animals often struggle to find comfortable positions, which again may force them to walk awkwardly, in turn advancing bone and joint problems. Lameness is the most typical problem for dairy cows and in the USA affects up to 35 per cent of the herd Stokka et al. The affected animals struggle to walk, and tend to have chronic pain in their joints. Cows are often also tethered by their necks and forced to lie down on hard surfaces, which again increases the incidence of udder infection and lameness.

Sheer physical exhaustion is perhaps the most palpable problem amongst dairy cows. The intense level of pro- duction takes its toll: Cows use so many of their own nutrients in pro- ducing milk that their organs begin to deteriorate and the fat content of their bodies finally sinks below healthy limits. Therefore, cows are used so extensively that they literally become physical wrecks: One can only suspect what their minds are going through in their monotonous environments, in which their calves are continu- ously taken away from them, and in which their only role is that of production units.

She is the supreme example of an overworked mother. In the wild, cows can live up to 20 years, whereas dairy cows are killed at around four years of age; hens could live up to 12 years, but are killed at around one to two years of age after their bodies can no longer cope with intensive egg production. As soon as the productivity of these ani- mals decreases, they are viewed as useless and sent to slaughter.

The Practice 39 in the USA alone, only to have their corpses viewed as mere garbage or used for dog food. Here, the killing methods can be horrific, and include being shredded to pieces and buried alive in landfills39 some buried hens manage to escape, only to die from exhaustion and hunger in the vicinity of the farm. As seen, hens frequently suffer from weak, frac- tured, and broken bones.

The vibrations, rocking and swaying of the slaughter trucks can be severe, and this causes both further injury and acute pain from the already existing injuries, as broken bone ends rub against each other. Since transportation durations can exceed 24 hours, the situation that these hens face is miserable — in fact, the longer the duration, the more injuries the hens will sustain, and the more of those injured will die during transport.

According to one study, 24 per cent of hens have broken bones after being caught from their cages, 31 per cent have them after entering the slaughterhouse, and 45 per cent of hens have broken bones after being hung from the shackles Gregory and Wilkins The animals, who have given their all and have finally succumbed to exhaustion, are too often treated as though they were sheer trash.

As a result, they are frequently coerced to move in various ways: In , the Humane Society of the United States made public the findings of its undercover investigation into the treatment of downed animals. In the video, employees kick, beat and prod cows that are too weak to walk, push animals around with tractors, and even jab them in the eye with batons; animals unable to move are also left overnight in places like parking lots to face their own lingering deaths on the ensuing contro- versy, see Taylor Philosophy and Culture The offspring of the hens and cows fare no better.

The male calves of dairy herds are considered equally worthless the animals used for meat come from altogether different breeds , and are often killed at birth. To the list we could add breeding animals, such as sows, who are past their peak performance.

It is the suffering of these animals that often remains the most unheard of all. Eggs and dairy have their very real price, too. Breeding animals face their own particular problems. The mothers of the broiler breeds are kept in a condition of constant starvation: In fact, breed- ing birds show high levels of frustration, manifested in stereotypical behaviour, due to their restricted diets: As already pointed out, sows suffer from the same problem, and are often so hungry that they will drink excessive amounts of water in order to feel fuller, and chew on various items, such as the bars of their cages, as though they were food.

Yet hunger is only one of the issues. The death rates for sows are incredibly high: The majority of the deaths take place during farrowing giving birth.

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The risk has significantly increased as produc- tion has intensified, and the death rates rise with the size of the farms the bigger the farm, the higher the percentage of death: Kuratomi and Sukumarannair ; Koketsu and Sasaki In the commercial farms with large numbers of animals, the sad prospect is that sows face lingering deaths, induced by difficulties in labour, without any veteri- nary assistance.

The Practice 41 Maternal relationships, in themselves, are one source of distress. Dairy cows have been shown to become stressed and frustrated when their calves are taken away Sandem and Braastad Even when the calves are relatively mature, the mothers can call for them for days Turner Pigs face similar difficulties. The young animals will do all in their power in order to get back to their mothers: Lethargy is a common ailment, as some piglets seem simply to lose interest in life. As well as these mental symptoms, the piglets frequently suffer from physical diseases such as diarrhoea.

Unsurprisingly, mortality rates are high during the first days of separation Kottferovfl et al.

Mental problems are significant in all fields of animal agriculture, as animals all too easily fall into the spiral of fear, anxiety, frustration, apathy or depression see Wemelsfelder This can itself lead to physical manifestations such as stress-induced stomach ulcers, which pigs and cows commonly suffer from. Medicine is often used to eradi- cate these manifestations.

For instance, piglets separated from their mothers, who frequently fall ill and die due to stress, are pumped full of medicines in order to keep them alive the most famous example of this overmedication is, of course, the routine use of antibiotics. The time of slaughter is often the most difficult: When sent for slaughter, birds such as broiler chickens and turkeys are pulled and dragged by their feet, and shoved into crates with great haste up to thousands per hour. Philosophy and Culture injuries and even death. Transport can be take a very long time, during which the birds have no access to food or water and remain exposed to overly hot and cold temperatures; this, again, increases mortality as birds die of physical ailments or simply stress.

Animals are often injured during transport, which means that they can be in severe pain for long periods of time. In the EU, every year up to 35 million chickens are dead by the time they reach the slaughterhouse, often because of bro- ken bones and exposure to the elements.

Some birds are still conscious when their throats are cut, or even when they are dipped into tanks of boiling water.

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Other species as well face grim prospects. A UK study concluded that 75 per cent of cattle were bruised during livestock markets, due to being hit and poked with various instruments Turner Pigs are well known to experience great fear and anxiety during transport and slaughter. Lame pigs will face the severest welfare problems, as they are unable to move or cope amidst other animals lameness affects particu- larly sows, but also overly muscular pigs bred for meat. Pigs do not have sweat glands, which renders them very vulnerable to heat; moreover, they are also very susceptible to frostbite.

These highly intelligent ani- mals become easily stressed when packed among strange individuals, and their stress is made worse by being handled by strange people. The stress reaches particularly high levels if the handling is rough; unfor- tunately, aggressive or callous handling is a common problem. Pigs are frequently packed in too tightly, and hence have no space to lie down. Vibrations of the trucks cause sickness in pigs, and many animals will vomit during transportation — these vibrations cause severe distress, and are a significant welfare problem.

Therefore, already tired pigs will often be forced to stand for long periods of time, whilst feeling wary of other animals, feeling fear, feeling nauseous, and feeling excessively hot or cold. As a result, relatively large numbers of animals circa 0. Problems continue at the slaughterhouse. Movements, shadows and excess noise can frighten the animals.

Piglets can be very afraid of their new environment, and therefore unwilling to move. The Practice 43 can be slippery and difficult to move on. At times, new arrivals are showered with cold water, which is distressing in itself.

Stunning can be ineffective, and approximately 9 per cent of stuns lead to welfare problems, as the tongues are not placed properly and the animal is thus caused painful electric shocks, or the animal is not rendered fully unconscious. Bleeding that is, killing techniques can be poor, which means that the pigs may regain consciousness whilst hanging upside down from the slaughter line shackles with a puncture wound in their chest. These animals will desperately try to right themselves, unable to comprehend what is happening to them Grandin Already on farms, animals quickly learn to fear human beings who treat them roughly, which leads to high stress levels and even the enlargement of the adrenal gland which secretes the stress hormone corticosteroid Turner It should be added that, for fish, dying is not any easier.

If placed in ice, it takes up to 15 minutes for a fish to lose consciousness, as it slowly suffocates to death. This means that fish may be completely conscious when their AQ12 gills are cut off. These are just some examples of the tremendous difficulties faced by farmed animals. However, farm animals are not the only creatures to suffer at human hands.

Some unlucky animals — that is, experimentation animals — even have illnesses and injuries deliberately inflicted on them. In Europe alone, tens of millions of rats, rabbits, mice, dogs, mon- keys and other animals are routinely mutilated on the surgery tables in order to break their bones, cause them brain damage, or scoop out their babies. They are injected with cancer cells and then observed for weeks, months or even years as the cancer slowly erodes their bodies.

Philosophy and Culture and fertilizers in order to see what levels are toxic to them: They are also force-fed alco- hol and cocaine just in order to see how severe their addiction is. At times, they are simply killed and opened up so that curious students can scrutinize their anatomy. Often, analgesia is not used, because it is thought to affect the results, and even when it is administered its effec- tiveness is usually not adequately observed or controlled NRC These animals are also industrially reared and housed in monotonous, cramped environments where they have little to do, where they cannot follow their species-specific behaviours, where they are constantly sepa- rated from their mates and their offspring, and where they may have to fear new painful procedures or violent staff.

Although the latter sounds like an easy option, it has been proven to cause animals at times great aversion and distress AQ14 LaFollette and Shanks ; Greek and Greek Genetic engineering causes new welfare problems. It enables scien- tists to breed physically or mentally ill animals such as mice born with arthritis, rats born with addiction, or dogs born with cancer. The new technologies are opening the door for science fiction-like possi- bilities within animal agriculture also, as animals can be bred to grow even faster and produce even more.

They offer the gateway to creat- ing hybrids between different species, and knocking out or introduc- ing genes in order to create continually bigger and more productive animals. The aim is to have animals with huge muscles and a phenom- enal milking capacity — or to create meat that has an entirely new taste or includes both fish and cow genes. Very productive animals may be cloned, and species combined by implanting, say, broccoli genes into pigs.

What happens to the animal herself attracts very marginal atten- tion.

Yet it should be a cause of profound concern. As seen, already within traditional breeding, rapid growth, massive production and huge muscles cause suffering. Moreover, already within traditional forms of animal testing, the cost to animals is often unbearable. The Practice 45 modification, the consequences can be detrimental. This has obvious consequences: Moreover, the risk is that the mental capacities of the animals no longer match their own bodies. For instance, what happens to a bird that suddenly cannot fly, or a mammal that cannot properly walk?

Here, the bodies of the animals become sources of continuous pain and suffering. In this way, the body becomes the enemy of the animal — the source of her misery and plight. Moral implications The foundational problem of animal industries whether they be linked to agriculture, entertainment or experimentation is that animals cannot behave as they are inclined to behave.

Millions of years of adapta- tion and evolution are thrown away, as animals are forced to exist in conditions that are utterly unsuitable for their needs. Animals have been shown to experience less pain when they live in a diverse environment, in which there are other things to concentrate on or capture their attention Gentle The sad implication is that animals kept in barren conditions feel pain and suffering even more acutely than their wild cousins. Furthermore, the barren conditions of animal industries may warp the very being of animals. When all the basic needs related to food and shelter are taken care of, and when the activity of the animal is so restricted that she has no dynamic and proactive contact with her envi- ronment, the risk is that she begins to exist in a type of vacuum, where she cannot experience any links between her own actions, her needs and her environment.

Philosophy and Culture may adversely impact the development of the animal: Therefore, even when all the physical needs of an animal are taken care of, she may experience great suffering. Marian Stamp Dawkins has a useful explanation for this disparity between sat- isfied bodily needs and welfare. She draws a crucial distinction between ultimate goals, such as health, nutrition and reproduction, and proxi- mate needs, such as the need to socialize or build nests. It is the lat- ter that most matter from the viewpoint of welfare, for they are the things that animals primarily experience.

Human beings can ensure the healthy and balanced nutrition of an animal, but if the animal can- not satisfy the need to behave in a certain way, suffering will become a very real possibility Dawkins In fact, when human beings ensure that the ultimate goals of animals are satisfied, they may be act- ing against the proximate needs and therefore the welfare of other ani- mals. Farmers who raise piglets in clean, pathogen-free environments, separated from their mothers, will achieve excellent health for their animals, even though the animals remain utterly frustrated and bored in their inability to follow their niche tendencies.

What we deem that the animals need on an objective level is very different from what the animals need on the subjective level. This disparity has its consequences. Animals kept in barren condi- tions display two types of behaviour. First, there is a decrease in out- ward activity. Animals become lethargic and quiet, and manifest the clinical signs of depression.

Second, there is an increase in the type of self-directed behaviour mentioned earlier. Animals will begin to gnaw at their own bodies, and may resort to extreme forms of self-mutilation Wemelsfelder These behaviours can have a detrimental effect on the core being of the animal: Some concerns involve dis- ease and injury. Yet other welfare concerns involve an inability to use normal cogni- tive processes. Here, we come back to the harrowing but very real possibility that animal industries may, in their inability to take the animal perspective into consideration, render animals into mentally broken beings.

Therefore, intensive farming and experimentation take a mammoth toll on animals. In farming, animals are reduced to production units, mechanisms of financial gain and factories that feed human gluttony, while the animal herself — the experiencing, thinking being with her own wants — is sidelined. In experimentation, animals are reduced to body parts and genes, and ultimately objects of knowledge, whose expe- riences are rendered irrelevant. In animal experimentation, mechanomorphia is disturb- ingly explicit. It refers to efficient management of animals, and implies two things: In short, humans should operate the animal machine with an optimal technique in order to gain an optimal result.

We aim to minimize the time that animals take to grow up to slaughter weight, to be slaughtered and processed, for breeding animals to become pregnant and reproduce, to wean their offspring and to become pregnant again. The last sentence in particular makes an important point. When animals are viewed as production units, and when their treatment is a matter of technology, the human—animal relationship takes on a frighteningly detached and clinical form.

Elisa Aaltola

We no longer relate to other animals from up close, but instead manipulate them from afar. Ontologically, animals become objects of manipulation, and epistemologically, human beings become blind to the animal viewpoint. The animal herself becomes lost, and with that loss the human—animal relationship breaks down. Philosophy and Culture dual interaction between two beings is reduced into one-sided exploita- tion: This may have significant consequences for our own identity. Juan Carlos Gomez has argued that personhood is built upon the capacity to recognize other beings including other animals as persons.

That is, we are only persons when we see personhood in non-human animals, too: This suggests that how animals are treated and viewed bears crucial relevance to what types of creatures human beings are. We have a choice between morphing into empathetic fellow-beings or detached technologists. It is crucial to steer away from the jargon of mechanomorphia and detachment, because it affects how we relate to other beings and ultimately may turn us into ruthless aggressors, who see nothing morally troubling in treating sentient creatures as though they were mere biological matter, consisting of nothing but bodily tis- sue and blind instinct.

Therefore, the type of efficiency around which animal agriculture revolves ought to be resisted if one wants to have a meaningful relationship with other animals, and if one wants to hold on to moral awareness in oneself. All this suggests that animal suffering needs to be pushed onto the agenda more firmly.

Society needs to take the issue of animal suffering seriously, and encourage reflection on how and on what basis animals are treated within animal industries, homes and hunting fields. However, not every- body agrees. One argument is that animal suffering is, in fact, both extremely difficult if not impossible to define, and that we can never know for sure whether an animal suffers. This sceptical take on animal suffering gains its foothold from the inherently subjective nature of suffering: Are the critics correct?

Impossible definitions According to one view, all efforts to define suffering are deficient. Suffering cannot be defined, because it is something that will always remain alien to language and understanding. Simply stated, suffering is so horrifying that we cannot begin to put it into words. The rationale behind this view is that suffering goes against us, and therefore defies language and reason; it is a force hostile to human beings, like the dark matter at the centre of the universe, wholly oppo- site to anything that we are or anything that makes sense to us.

The list of those who support this view is long. In similar vein, A. Philosophy and Culture we seek to represent a phenomenon which appears to be so dynami- cally adapted to the purpose of negating every aspect of our being? This means that whenever we think we have grasped suffering, it has already escaped Scarry Because of this incomprehensibility, contemporary social research into suffer- ing tends to approach it through paradoxes and dichotomies rather than logical analyses Chouliaraki Perhaps the most famous advocate of this view was Hannah Arendt.

In her thoughts on the Holocaust and totalitarianism, and in her efforts to shed some light on how human beings come to cause extreme harm to one another, one of the underlying premises is the utter incompre- hensibility of violence and suffering. Following this premise, Arendt sought not to solve or define suffering, but rather simply to point out our inability to make sense of it.

In fact, Arendt argued that efforts to define and understand suffering often lead to undermining and trivi- alizing it: Expert jargon and bureaucratic talk are typical examples of this. Within the vocabularies of scientists and civil servants, suffering becomes clin- ical and simple: Significantly, this leaves the door open for deliberate marginalization of given groups of sufferers and their suffer- ing Arendt When suffering becomes just another mundane term on a form, it is much easier to overlook and cast aside. Therefore, the human inability to define suffering has disturbing implications.

First, false definitions can be used to justify violence towards others. Second, lack of definitions may lead to what Ricoeur calls aporia in human thinking Ricoeur ; see also Wilkinson Because suffering is such a powerful, negative force, it not only escapes human language but may also destroy it, as sufferers are no longer able to think sensically or communicate their own experiences to others Scarry With the loss of communication, sufferers become lonely, abandoned creatures, who ultimately may not be able to identify with others.

Arendt argues that, with extreme suffering, humanity itself can become superfluous, as we can no longer relate to each other as valuable creatures Arendt Hence, suffering is a negative force that may dissolve the very ability for compassion. These claims have much relevance in relation to non-human ani- mals. Moreover, if assessments of suffering only work to hide its horror, is there not a danger that, in discussing animal suffering, we render it into something mundane? Are non-human animals doomed to remain utterly alone in their plight? The first question has remained the bedrock of scepticism towards animal suffering, as scientific discourse has repeatedly maintained that if we cannot define or verify animal suffering with scientific certainty there is no point in discussing it.

However, here a lesson from Thomas Nagel is in order. Nagel famously pointed out that we need to separate two things: Even if we do not have the latter, we can acquire the former Nagel This means that even if I do not know what animal suffering is like, or even how it ought to be accurately defined, I can state that it is like something, and that it exists. That is, comprehending what non-human suffering is plagued with difficulties, but one can still assert with certainty that it does take place we shall come back to this topic shortly.

Second, leaving suffering without scrutiny can also help to mar- ginalize those who suffer. To state that the suffering of others cannot be known opens the door to a cynical attitude which leaves suffering untouched, and which in fact allows us to cause even more of it. That is, suffering becomes a formidable force that is allowed to take its course without resistance; an independent, all-empowering entity over which one can have no power and hence no responsibility. Just as defining suffering can render it mundane, leaving suffering without analysis can render it omnipotent, which again serves as an excuse for not caring.

Wilkinson argues that the study of suffering must offer us tools with which to fight what suffering does to others: Following this, it can be claimed that a genuine effort to understand and discuss suffering serves as a way of beating down its force: Hence, declaring that suffering is fully known may be used to take control over the suffering of others, but letting go of all defini- tion and knowledge may open the door to utter disregard. Perhaps the best we can do is to acknowledge that suffering always surpasses com- plete understanding, but that the act of striving to understand it is all a moral creature can do — and is ultimately the very essence of morality.

English View all editions and formats Summary: Philosophy and Culture explores how animal suffering is made meaningful within Western ramifications. It is often argued that today's culture is ambivalent in its attitudes toward non-human animals: The book gains its impetus from here, as it seeks to map out both the facts and norms related to animal suffering.

It investigates themes such as animal welfare and suffering in practice, scepticism concerning the human ability to understand non-human suffering, cultural and philosophical roots of compassion, and contemporary approaches to animal ethics. At its centre is the pivotal question: What is the moral significance of animal suffering? The key approach brought forward is 'intersubjectivity', via which the suffering of other animals can be understood in a fresh light. Find a copy online Links to this item View full text.

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Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item Electronic books Additional Physical Format: Aaltola, Elisa, Animal suffering. Document, Internet resource Document Type: Elisa Aaltola Find more information about: Exploring how animal suffering is made meaningful within Western ramifications, the book investigates themes such as skepticism concerning non-human experience, cultural roots of compassion, and contemporary approaches to animal ethics.

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