Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism

by Gary Steiner

Overview

While postmodern approaches to politics and ethics have offered some intriguing and influential insights in philosophy and theory, Gary Steiner illuminates the fundamental inability of these approaches to arrive at viable ethical and political principles. Ethics require notions of self, agency, and value that are not available to postmodernists. Therefore much of what is published under the rubric of theory lacks a proper basis for a systematic engagement with ethics.

Steiner provocatively critiques postmodernist approaches to the moral status of animals against the background of a broader indictment of postmodern thought and its inability to establish clear principles for action. He revisits the work of Derrida, Foucault, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, together with recent work by their American interpreters, and shows that the basic terms of postmodern thought are incompatible with any definitive claims about the moral status or rights of animals—and humans. Steiner acknowledges the failures of liberal humanist thought regarding the moral status of animals; but instead of following postmodern thinkers who reject humanist thought outright, he argues for the need to rethink humanist notions in a way that avoids the anthropocentric limitations of traditional humanist thought. Drawing on the achievements of the Stoics and Kant, Steiner builds on his earlier work, developing his ideas of cosmic holism and non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism in order to arrive at a more concrete foundation for animal rights.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231527293
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	04/23/2013
Series:	Critical Perspectives on Animals
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Gary Steiner is John Howard Harris Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University. He is the author of Descartes as a Moral Thinker: Christianity, Technology, Nihilism; Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents: The Moral Status of Animals in the History of Western Philosophy; and Animals and the Moral Commmunity: Mental Life, Moral Status, and Kinship.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Use and Disadvantages of Nietzsche for Life
2. Postmodernism and Justice
3. "Later here signifies never": Derrida on Animals
4. Animal Rights and the Evasions of Postmodernism
5. Toward a Nonanthropocentric Cosmopolitanism
6. Cosmopolitanism and Veganism
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

J.M. Coetzee

Gary Steiner's polemic is directed at a wide range of modern thinkers who have addressed animal-human relations. He also offers an eloquent plea for a cosmopolitanism that will include all living beings.

Richard Wolin

With this book, Steiner establishes himself as one of the most talented and insightful philosophers working in the burgeoning field of animal rights

Paola Cavalieri

Anyone who has struggled with the so-called French theory in the field of animal studies will find in this volume a clear exposition of its cultural roots and substantive contents, together with a sympathetic appreciation of its merits and a lucid assessment of its shortcomings. But this book is much more. It is a global overview and a reasoned critique of our anthropocentric philosophical tradition, from Aristotle to John Rawls, put in the service of the construction of a new and consistent theory of justice for all sentient beings.