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How to Count Animals, more or less (Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics) Illustrated Edition

by Shelly Kagan (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 11 ratings
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Most people agree that animals count morally, but how exactly should we take animals into account? A prominent stance in contemporary ethical discussions is that animals have the same moral status that people do, and so in moral deliberation the similar interests of animals and people should be given the very same consideration. In How to Count Animals, more or less, Shelly Kagan sets out and defends a hierarchical approach in which people count more than animals do and some animals count more than others. For the most part, moral theories have not been developed in such a way as to take account of differences in status. By arguing for a hierarchical account of morality - and exploring what status sensitive principles might look like - Kagan reveals just how much work needs to be done to arrive at an adequate view of our duties toward animals, and of morality more generally.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0198829671
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0198829676
  3. Edition
    Illustrated
  4. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  5. Publication date
    June 16, 2019
  6. Part of series
    Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics
  7. Language
    English
  8. Dimensions
    9.21 x 6.14 x 0.75 inches
  9. Print length
    320 pages
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Shelly Kagan, Clark Professor of Philosophy, Yale University

Shelly Kagan is the Clark Professor of Philosophy at Yale, where he has taught since 1995. He was an undergraduate at Wesleyan University and received his PhD in philosophy from Princeton University in 1982. Before coming to Yale, Professor Kagan taught at the University of Pittsburgh and at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of The Limits of Morality, Normative Ethics, and The Geometry of Desert. The videos of his undergraduate class on death (available online) have been popular around the world, and the book based on the course, Death, was a national bestseller in South Korea.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; Illustrated edition (June 16, 2019)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0198829671
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0198829676
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.21 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.21 x 6.14 x 0.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 11 ratings

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Shelly Kagan

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4.3 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • connor ryan johnston
    5.0 out of 5 stars How I learned to stop worrying and love the hierarchy
    Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Kagan, once again, is a thoughtful commentator in contemporary ethics. Unlike some who might jump to conclusions about his hierarchical theory I tried to go into the book with an open mind even though I was incredibly skeptical of his thesis. As a philosophy student myself I thought this book was not only insightful but accessible to those who may not be philosophically inclined. Kagan goes through all arguments against his thesis in painstaking detail even going as far as to devote whole chapters to addressing concerns over hierarchy in ethical theory. If you are still not convinced I’d still ask you give the book a fair shake. Kagan holds the high status he does in contemporary philosophical circles for a reason and what he has to say may change your mind.
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  • Joel Marks
    2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing hierarchies
    Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2019
    Note: I have not read this book, but I have read a synopsis of it written by the author for the Journal of Practical Ethics, volume 6, number 1, pages 1-18. This is open access, so you can read the article too; just Google “For Hierarchy in Animal Ethics” to get the link.

    Based on Shelly Kagan’s synopsis of his own book, I must express my deep disappointment with it. Kagan is undoubtedly a proponent of animal ethics, animal welfare, and even animal rights. As he writes in his article, “Our treatment of animals is a moral horror of unspeakable proportions, staggering the imagination. Absolutely nothing that I say here is intended to offer any sort of justification for the myriad appalling and utterly unacceptable ways in which we mistreat, abuse, and torture animals” (p. 6).

    Unfortunately, nothing that he “says here” will, so far as I can tell, advance the cause of rescuing nonhuman animals from that horror. Indeed, I suspect that the way Kagan – typical of analytic ethicists – goes about his project will serve only to perpetuate the status quo. For the more one argues the theoretical fine points of any issue in philosophical ethics, the further one departs from the possibility of resolving any concrete issue.

    We have this from Kagan himself, when he writes: “… the requisite arguments for the unjustifiability of our treatment of animals will not be found in my book. To work out those arguments with care one first needs to articulate in detail the appropriate hierarchical normative theory; and as I have already suggested, it seems clear to me that we are very far indeed from having anything like that. My book is intended as a contribution to the attempt to produce the relevant hierarchical theory. But the truth is, it throws out far more questions than it answers” (p. 6).

    This is standard operating procedure for an analytic philosopher, and being one myself, I can hardly spurn it. However, in the face of overwhelming horror and crisis, to engage in it strikes me as fiddling while Rome burns. If there is any place at all for analytic argumentation in animal ethics, it is, I submit, to refute the arguments given by those who use other animals for human purposes. This can be done quite handily with the methods of analytic ethics.

    But to attempt to defend by these same means what is patently obvious to any five-year-old child is worse than useless, since it embroils everyone in intricate dialectic, when that time and effort would be more effectively spent in public education, advocacy, and activism. One good film, like Tribe of Heart’s “The Witness” (which you can view free online), is worth a thousand books of analytic ethics.

    Unfortunately, Kagan’s method is not the only way his new book disappoints me. The very thesis he defends is one that runs directly counter to anything he might hope to accomplish by way of real aid to other animals. Kagan endorses what he calls the common, or commonsense, view, which is, to quote (again from his article): “people have a higher moral status than animals do” or “Animals count for less” (p. 4).

    Kagan also calls this a “hierarchical view” and “A hierarchical approach to normative ethics” (p. 6). In fact this has a double meaning in the book, for it characterizes not only Kagan’s substantive claim about the relative values of various animals, human and nonhuman, but also, as indicated above, the theoretical orientation Kagan assumes to address it. Another term Kagan uses for his approach is “foundational,” and this has to do with the kind of so-called normative ethics that presumes a hierarchy of proof for resolving any given particular issue.

    Thus, is it wrong to eat this hamburger? On Kagan’s account, this would seem to require a very general “principle,” such as that it is wrong to treat any sentient being merely as a means, from which might then be derived the more particular principle that it is wrong to cause or be complicit in the suffering and death of a sentient being when one might easily avoid it with no great harm to oneself or others, from which might then be derived the more particular principle that eating animals is wrong when one might easily avoid it with no great harm to oneself or others, from which one might finally be able to derive the conclusion that eating this hamburger is wrong.

    Unfortunately the starting or foundational principle given above is hotly contested in moral philosophy, and so any particular decision about eating a hamburger must be indefinitely postponed. Except of course that it won’t be, because you are at the restaurant right this minute. But equally contentious would be all the derivations. So this procedure based on a hierarchy of principles turns out to be useless for ethics understood as a practical undertaking.

    Do I have anything to offer as an alternative to Kagan’s hierarchical method and hierarchical thesis? Indeed I do. I suggest that we – laypersons and ethicists alike – stop doing practical ethics in the hierarchical manner and stop talking about “moral status” at all. The latter is, I think, a myth to begin with, used to embellish our nonmoral desires with a moral imprimatur. I have no problem with preferring human beings over nonhuman beings when the former are seriously endangered by the latter, no matter how innocent the latter may be (or guilty the former!). But to the attempt to “justify” this by assigning a lower moral status to the other animals strikes me as adding insult to injury, not to mention sheer hocus pocus.

    If there is such a thing as inherent worth, all animals have it equally. But there isn’t, so they don’t. But neither do they have it unequally, and for the same reason: There is no such thing.
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