A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Animals

  • Animals in a war zone

    Fascinating article by conservationist Lawrence Anthony about his efforts to protect zoo animals (and others) in Baghdad during the war. It’s an interesting question for the ethics of war: has anyone ever considered animals as potential “collateral damage”? Read more

  • Notes on an animal theodicy and soteriology

    Early in my blogging career (on Verbum Ipsum, my Blogspot predecessor to ATR) I, perhaps with delusions of grandeur, wrote a five-part series called “The Atonement and the Problem of Evil” (the series is archived here: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V). My reason for writing it was a hunch that Read more

  • Ethical seriousness without self-absorption

    Hugo has a reflective post on his journey “further up and further in” to the vegan lifestyle and contemplates the importance of gradual change. And here’s an insightful post on how the quest for moral improvement can become ironically self-absorbed. The last point is an important one, I think. In our society, obsessed as it Read more

  • Our farm policy: bad for animals, bad for the environment, bad for the poor, bad for our waistlines…

    Michael Pollan writes about how US farm policy keeps the prices of fattening and unhealthy foods artificially low, while allowing prices on things like fruits and vegetables to rise. Why, he asks, would we want to encourage such a situation, especially if we face an “epidemic” of obesity? He also points out how this connects Read more

  • Animal time travelers

    Here’s a NY Times article on some recent research which seems to indicate that at least some animals have a sense of the past and the future. The general trend of research in these areas seems to be toward showing that the mental lives of animals are more complex than has often been thought. This Read more

  • Look for the label

    The last couple of posts got a bit bogged down in philosophical abstraction (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), so I thought I’d offer an example of what I see as a good concrete proposal for changing our treatment of animals. The “Certified Humane” label is a program of Humane Farm Animal Care, a Read more

  • God, animals, and rights

    Brandon has a very good post in response to the post below on animal rights. He argues for a view of rights that is grounded in justice and explicitly connected with our status as creatures of God (all of us, that is). He notes that this can be done in a quasi-Lockean manner, seeing all Read more

  • No rights without duties?

    A surprisingly common argument against animal rights goes like this: only beings capable of exercising moral choice and reasoning have rights. Animals don’t exercise moral choice and reasoning (i.e. they aren’t “moral agents”). Therefore animals don’t have rights. I say that the frequency with which this argument is made is surprising because it implicitly denies Read more

  • Compassionate eating as Christian discipleship

    Here’s a good lecture on our relationship to animals from a Christian perspective by Matthew Halteman, a Calvin College philosopher. He also contributes to a blog on these themes here. Prof. Halteman conceptualizes “compassionate eating” as a Christian discipline, which he defines as a repetitive daily practice undertaken to narrow the gap between who we Read more

  • Animal rights across the political spectrum

    A writer at Alternet makes the case for vegetarianism to her progressive allies. I’ve observed before that even on the Left animal rights still seems to strike many as fringy or unimportant. Matthew Scully, a former speechwriter for President Bush, has made the case for better treatment of animals on broadly conservative grounds. In fact, Read more