DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY
COLLOQUIUM SERIES
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2012
WATSON HALL, ROOM 517 @ 4:30 p.m.
Will Kymlicka (Queen’s University)
Title: “Do We Need a Political Theory of Animal Rights?”
To date, inter-disciplinary work on animal ethics has primarily been advanced by moral philosophers/bioethicists and scientists of animal behaviour, cognition, etc. This partnership between ethicists and scientists has enriched our understanding of animals and compelled us to consider the moral implications for our treatment of them in light of their many capacities. However, this paper argues that animal ethics also requires the resources of political philosophy. Our legal and constitutional order is grounded in principles of democracy, citizenship, and popular sovereignty, and animals are unlikely to be taken seriously until we can situate them within this political order. Moreover, the different ways that animals relate to human communities raise issues of membership status that require the conceptual tools of the social sciences and of political theory, as a supplement to the long-standing concepts of both ethology and moral philosophy.
