Most approaches to animal ethics ground the moral standing of nonhumans in some appeal to their capacities for intelligent autonomy or mental sentience. Corporal Compassion emphasizes the phenomenal and somatic commonality of living beings; a philosophy of body that seeks to displace any notion of anthropomorphic empathy in viewing the moral experiences of nonhuman living beings. Ralph R. Acampora employs phenomenology, hermeneutics, existentialism and deconstruction to connect and contest analytic treatments of animal rights and liberation theory. In doing so, he focuses on issues of being and value, and posits a felt nexus of bodily being, termed symphysis, to devise an interspecies ethos. Acampora uses this broad-based bioethic to engage in dialogue with other strains of environmental ethics and ecophilosophy. Corporal Compassion examines the practical applications of the somatic ethos in contexts such as laboratory experimentation and zoological exhibition and challenges practitioners to move past recent reforms and look to a future beyond exploitation or total noninterference—a posthumanist culture that advocates caring in a participatory approach.

Traces the literary history of the elephant, and its role in South Africa's cultural imaginary Elephants are in dire straits – again. They were virtually extirpated from much of Africa by European hunters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but their numbers resurged for a while in the heyday of late-colonial conservation efforts in the twentieth. Now, according to one estimate, an elephant is being killed every 15 minutes. This is at the same time that the reasons for being especially compassionate and protective towards elephants are now so well-known that they have become almost a cliché: their high intelligence, rich emotional lives including a capacity for mourning, caring matriarchal societal structures, that strangely charismatic grace. Saving elephants is one of the iconic conservation struggles of our time. As a society we must aspire to understand how and why people develop compassion – or fail to do so – and what stories we tell ourselves about animals that reveal the relationship between ourselves and animals. This book is the first study to probe the primary features, and possible effects, of some major literary genres as they pertain to elephants south of the Zambezi over three centuries: indigenous forms, early European travelogues, hunting accounts, novels, game ranger memoirs, scientists’ accounts, and poems. It examines what these literatures imply about the various and diverse attitudes towards elephants, about who shows compassion towards them, in what ways and why. It is the story of a developing contestation between death and compassion, between those who kill and those who love and protect.

Empathy is a term used increasingly both in moral theory and animal ethics, with the suggestion that empathy enhances our moral ability and agency. Yet, its precise meaning is often left unexplored, together with the various obstacles and challenges met by an empathy-based ethic, such as those concerning the ways in which empathy is prone to bias and may also facilitate manipulation of others. These oversights render the contemporary discussion on empathy and animal ethics vulnerable to both conceptual confusion and moral simplicity. The book aims to tackle these problems by clarifying the different and even contradictory ways in which “empathy” can be defined, and by exploring the at times surprising implications the various definitions have from the viewpoint of moral agency. Its main question is: What types of empathy hinder moral ability, and what types enable us to become more morally capable in our dealings with the nonhuman world? During the contemporary era, when valuable forms of empathy are in decline, and the more hazardous, self-regarding and biased varieties of utilising empathy in the increase, this question is perhaps more important than ever.

Returning to some of the issues in his now classic book The Absent Body published by this Press in 1990, philosopher and physician Drew Leder turns his attention in his new book to distressed bodies the experience of illness and pain, and a variety of medical responses thereto; the experience of being imprisoned in our age of mass incarceration; and also the mis-treatment of animal bodies, as in modern factory farms. Yet this book is not just about suffering, but the healing of suffering. Each chapter takes up a single topic -- be it the experience of pain, the use of pills in medicine, organ transplantation, or factory farming employing interpretive tools appropriate to the issue. At the same time, the book clarifies for the reader how each chapter connects to and builds upon previous material. After a general Introduction, the book s first section is called Illness and Treatment: Phenomenological Investigations. It uses phenomenological methods, largely, though not exclusively, to examine what is it to be ill or in pain, and how modern medicine does and could -- respond. This leads us into Section Two of the book, Medicine and Bioethics: Hermeneutical Reflections. In this section, Leder uses tools explicitly and implicitly drawn from figures like Heidegger and Gadamer. Up to now the focus has been on the ill body and its treatment by the medical system. But this is far from the only sort of distressed body. In Section Three, Discarded and Recovered Bodies Leder reveals striking parallels between the lifeworlds of animals and prisoners. This stunning collection of essays showcases Leder s powerful and imaginative intellect."

The authors offer a phenomenological reflection on the problem of the interconnection between empathy and ethics; essential reading for professionals and scholars of philosophy, psychiatry, health science, psychology, and sociology.

Forms of Emotion analyses how drama, theatre and contemporary performance present emotion and its human and nonhuman diversity. This book explores the emotions, emotional feelings, mood, and affect, which make up a spectrum of ‘emotion’, to illuminate theatrical knowledge and practice and reflect the distinctions and debates in philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and other disciplines. This study asserts that specific forms of emotion are intentionally unified in drama, theatre, and performance to convey meaning, counteract separation and subversively champion emotional freedom. The book progressively shows that the dramatic and theatrical representation of the nonhuman reveals how human dominance is offset by emotional connection with birds, animals, and the natural environment. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers interested in the emotions and affect in dramatic literature, theatre studies, performance studies, psychology, and philosophy as well as artists working with emotionally expressive performance.

Praise for the previous edition: ...an excellent first-stop resource for research on animal rights...well organized, clearly written, and a great starting point for research...Recommended.-Choice...comprehensive...invaluable for reports on a popular current topic.-VOYA... a] very complete research guide that will be most useful at the high school and college level.-American Reference Books AnnualThe treatment of animals has become a controversial issue over the years, with many questioning an animal's fundamental rights. For some, the issue of animal rights is merely an attempt to improve conditions of animals used for clothing, food, and other products, while others believe animals should be granted the same legal rights afforded to humans. Animal Rights, Revised Edition provides an overview of the history of the animal rights movement and reactions to it, as well as the issues of animal experimentation, conditions on factory farms, laboratory animals, animals in entertainment, hunting, and the actions of those involved in the animal rights debate. New content includes such documents as the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act of 2006 and contemporary court cases such as Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Glickman. These documents provide both past and present perspectives on the issue and plot a course for future debate about animal rights. A comprehensive and up-to-date overview essay, capsule biographies, a large annotated bibliography, a chronology of significant events, organization and agency listings, and a glossary all combine to make this an ideal first-stop reference to animal rights.Coverage includes: Whether medical testing performed on animals is ethicalWhether animals should be banned from circuses and other forms of entertainmentHow threats against investors in companies that participate in animal drug testing should be handle