Ethics in Progress, 2020, Volume 11, Issue 2
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Item Content(Wydział Filozoficzny UAM, 2020-12-30)Item Anthropocentrism and Speciesism in the Context of Environmental Studies. A Synoptic Introduction(Wydział Filozoficzny UAM, 2020-12-30) Romeo, Maria Vita; Sgarlata, SaraItem Towards a Non-human Speciophilosophy(Wydział Filozoficzny UAM, 2020-12-30) Giannetto, EnricoAfter the publication of Jaques Derrida’s book, L’animal que donc je suis, anti-speciesism has been looking for a theoretical foundation for its ethical content. In my opinion, the defect of all these philosophical perspectives is that they still reduce animals to objects of human philosophy. Here, I develop a new framework in which animals are considered as subjects of their own philosophy. In analogy to the concept of ethnophilosophy, the concept of speciophilosophy is here introduced (§ 1, §3). The different ways of thinking between humans and other animals are outlined, by explaining the difference between verbal reasoning and thinking through images (§ 2). Human philosophies are shown to be anthropocentric ideologies, related to carnivorism (§4, § 8). Subsequently, animal speciophilosophies are discussed (§6) and a dialogical symphilosophein (§ 5) among all living beings is proposed to be the extension of the so-called philosophy of dialogue. Finally, it is shown how this perspective was present in the original Christian ethics (§7, §9, § 10).Item Towards a Theological Overcoming of Anthropocentrism. The Vegetarian Choice(Wydział Filozoficzny UAM, 2020-12-30) Trianni, PaoloThe article intends to demonstrate that a theology of vegetarianism is possible, despite some contrary evidence present in the biblical texts. Like other theologies dealing with issues not directly voiced in the Bible, it becomes possible to interpret the biblical statements in a new way, on the bases of a specific methodology. As a result, an objective comprehension will go back inductively to Sacred Scripture. The article advocates for applying this new method as well as for introducing its ethical implications into the Christian tradition. An additional supportive argument in favour of establishing the new understanding can be found in the history of the Roman Church, besides the consolidated custom of carnivorous nutrition: there has been no shortage of positions in favour of vegetarian asceticism. This stance was also represented by Thomas Aquinas. By valorizing classic Christian authors in favour of vegetarianism (starting with Jerome), the inauguration of the theology of vegetarianism becomes legitimised. Such an inauguration would reorient Christian thought toward reconsidering cosmology, ecology and topical contemporary issues such as anthropocentrism and speciesism.Item Nourishing Life – Chinese Environmental Wisdom and Practices(Wydział Filozoficzny UAM, 2020-12-30) Dłużewicz, AlicjaIncreasingly recognized threats from climate change and the progressive sixth mass extinction require not only searching for new technological solutions, but also changing the perception of the world and the beings living in it. There is an urgent need to include individual practices; practices that are an integral part of integrated policies to protect habitats, the climate, and the homo sapiens itself. Eric S. Nelson, in his latest book Daoism and Environmental Philosophy. Nourishing Life introduces the reader to the environmental approach known to Chinese communities for centuries. In a comprehensive and accurate manner, the author presents the Chinese approach to life and development, the understanding and interpretation of which has changed over the centuries, invariably emphasizing man’s belonging to the world of nature. This review introduces the author’s assumptions presented in the book, combining them with relatively new thoughts and paradigms appearing in the 20th and 21st centuries in Western Europe and the United States.Item Why Is Recreational Hunting a Moral Evil?(Wydział Filozoficzny UAM, 2020-12-30) Szklarska, AnnaThe paper reviews the recent book edited by Dorota Probucka, entitled The Ethical Condemnation of Hunting (in Polish: Etyczne potępienie myślistwa), Universitas Press, Kraków 2020, pp. 426. Probucka is one of the most prominent Polish experts in animal studies, especially in applied ethics and the field of animal rights (e.g., Probucka 2018a, 2018b, 2017). The discussed monograph encompasses the contributions of 19 authors representing 9 universities from Poland and abroad. Their core issue of consideration was the topical problem of hunting, examined from various perspectives: ethical and legal, psychological, social and cultural, both on the theoretical level and in relation to the practice of hunting. This review focuses on the core arguments against hunting and discusses them in detail.The Ethics in Progress journal had the honour of contributing to the media patronage of Dorota Probucka’s et al. edition.Item « Il faut prescrire l’usage de la viande en petite quantité, comme on prescrit l’arsenic » Josephine Joteyko et Varia Kipiani: la recherche médicale pionnière en faveur du végétarisme en 1906(Wydział Filozoficzny UAM, 2020-12-30) Joteyko, Josephine; Kipiani, VariaThis compilation is based on the original report on a clinical survey conducted in Brussels (1905-1906) by Josephine Joteyko and Varia Kipiani with 43 vegetarians. Having advanced expertise in physiology and experimentalism, Joteyko (with Lithuanian and Polish origins) and Kipiani (with Georgian origins) discussed their findings at the Congress of the Belgian Society for Vegetarianism in 1906. For both children and adults, females and males, regardless of age, the findings demonstrated vegetarian dietary habits to be beneficiary for human development, the subjects’ physical and mental health, welfare, and physical and intellectual efficiency. Surprisingly, Joteyko and Kipiani confirmed C. Darwin’s observation across various nutritional cultures that vegetarian food would increase the energetic balance of the human body. Additionally, their focus on the moteur humain shows affinities with Taylorism, the modernist utopias of labor, the enhancement of human faculties, the protection of workers and their rights from automation, and applied social science represented by Joteyko and Kipiani as multidisciplinary investigators. The compilation was made on: J. Joteyko & V. Kipiani, Enquête scientifique sur les Végétariens de Bruxelles, Conférence donnée à la Société végétarienne de Belgique, le 4 décembre 1906, pp. 1–77, with no further correction.Item Peter Sloterdijk’s Technopolitics. How Technology Redesigns the Environment and the Polis(Wydział Filozoficzny UAM, 2020-12-30) Della Torre, CeciliaThis paper will analyse the role played by technology in Peter Sloterdijk’s theory, where he seeks to redefine and reconstruct ethics, society and democracy. Indeed, the philosopher’s project is to build a new kind of society, which risks being antidemocratic and elitist: technopolitics. This lemma refers to Sloterdijk’s reconfiguration of the social structure through the elimination of the human rights paradigm in a technological and anti-egalitarian manner. In order to do this, Sloterdijk redesigns the environment as a dangerous place whose rules cannot be followed, and which must be reshaped through technology. Hence, the philosopher reduces ethics to technology, and reinterprets society on the basis of new techno-ethical premises which support a hierarchical and selective new polis.Item Nutritional Choices, New Health Approaches and Anti-speciesist Thinking(Wydział Filozoficzny UAM, 2020-12-30) Tinghino, BiagioNutritional choices are affected by culture, tradition and above all by the narrative we adopt for human history. The article gives an overview of the (pseudo)scientific beliefs, psychological factors and ethical orientations that affect nutritional choices. Among the various food theories today, great importance is given, for example, to the so-called Paleolithic diet, which consists of proposing a dietary model based on blood groups, which are assumed to have developed throughout different periods of the natural evolution of Homo sapiens, which were characterized by peculiar alimentary regimes. Moreover, psychological determinant drivers affect food choices and could lead to pathological eating behaviors (e.g., anorexia, overeating, binge eating). Finally, the ethical aspects of nutrition are closely correlated to vegetarianism, which in turn embraces an anti-speciesist thinking and recognizes the need for humans not to inflict unnecessary suffering on animals. Vegetarianism, anti-speciesism and ecologism often represent different aspects of the same issue: a lifestyle that testifies the need for a change in traditional paradigms, in the interest of humankind and the future of life on our planet.