Animal Pragmatism: Rethinking Human-Nonhuman Relationships

271 Pages·2004·3.21 MB·English

by  Andrew Light

Animal Pragmatism
Edited by
Erin McKenna and
Andrew Light
Animal Pragmatism
Rethinking
Human-Nonhuman
Relationships
Indiana University Press
Bloomington • Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
http://iupress.indiana.edu
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To our nieces and nephews,
Alex, Bonnie, Corrine, Grace, Jennifer,
Johanna, Nathaniel, Tamara, and Quentin.
May the next generation live better
with our fellow critters.
Contents
Foreword ix
John J. McDermott
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Pragmatism and the Future of Human-Nonhuman
Relationships 1
Andrew Light and Erin McKenna
part one: pr ag matism consider ing animals
1. “What Does Rome Know of Rat and Lizard?”: Pragmatic
Mandates for Considering Animals in Emerson, James, and
Dewey 19
James M. Albrecht
2. Dewey and Animal Ethics 43
Steven Fesmire
3. Overlapping Horizons of Meaning: A Deweyan Approach to
the Moral Standing of Nonhuman Animals 63
Phillip McReynolds
4. Peirce’s Horse: A Sympathetic and Semeiotic Bond 86
Douglas R. Anderson
part t wo: prag matism, the env ironment, hunting ,
and far ming
5. Beyond Considerability: A Deweyan View of the Animal
Rights–Environmental Ethics Debate 97
Ben A. Minteer
6. Methodological Pragmatism, Animal Welfare, and Hunting 119
Andrew Light
7. Getting Pragmatic about Farm Animal Welfare 140
Paul B. Thompson
8. Pragmatism and the Production of Livestock 160
Erin McKenna
part three : pr ag matism on animals as cures ,
companions , and calories
9. Is Pragmatism Chauvinistic? Dewey on Animal
Experimentation 179
Jennifer Welchman
10. A Pragmatist Case for Animal Advocates on Institutional Animal
Care and Use Committees 193
Todd M. Lekan
11. Pragmatism and Pets: Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, Maddie’s
SM
Fund , and No More Homeless Pets in Utah 210
Matthew Pamental
12. Dining on Fido: Death, Identity, and the Aesthetic Dilemma of
Eating Animals 228
Glenn Kuehn
Contributors 249
Index 251
viii Contents
Foreword
How we are educated by children, by animals!
—Martin Buber, I and Thou
Animals indeed! If anyone thinks that the lives and habitat of the animals are
not existentially central to the meaning of human life, I urge them to reconsider.
At times, the presence of animals is electrifying, as in my witnessing the snarled
upper lip of a ferocious leopard who was displeased by my gaze. More telling is
an event undergone forty years ago, and yet as sensorially present as if it were
happening now. The place is Yellowstone Park and I have ¤ve young children in
the car. Several grizzly bears meander down the hillside, including a mother bear
and her cub. My children want to exit the car, say hello, and toss them some
forbidden food. I say, no! It is very dangerous for you and it is not good for
the bears. As only children can do, they grouse. Ahead of us is a car with a more
pliant and foolish set of parents. They allow their children to leave the car and,
incredibly, toss Hershey chocolates at the bears. Mistake! The cub picks up a
Hershey bar and instantaneously, Mama Bear belts the cub and sends it ®ying
toward Yosemite. While doing this, the mother bear lets out a roar that stripped
the paint from our car and sent frozen, paralyzing chills down the spines of each
of the seven of us, ne’er to be forgotten to this very day.
My parental response was simple. I told the children, now more than willing
to listen, that they had come close to the inner world of the animal kingdom.
Awe is appropriate, but pedagogically the better word is respect. As John Dewey
is fond of saying, nature has its own affairings and for us as human naturals to
ignore, trample, or exploit those ontological rhythms is to court disaster.
More often and less dramatically, our animals are around and about, provid-
ing a subtle yet pervasive sensibility as to the irreducible and ineluctable fact
that we, too, are animals. Now just what sort of animals are we? Historically, the
millennia-long effort to separate human animals from animals ueberhaupt is by
rendering humans as “higher animals.” Such an appellation runs the risk atten-
dant upon any use of hierarchy as a nomenclature entailing content. The as-
sumption here is that the higher one reaches on the ladder, ostensibly the more
quality is obtained. Surely, and deleteriously, this contention does not hold if
one surveys the personal histories of many popes, political and military leaders,
chief executive of¤cers, and, lamentably, parents.
I cite but two obstacles to the acceptance of hierarchy as a positive source for
evaluation of worth. First, what ladder? The long-held belief that higher is bet-
ter rests on the cultural residue of a discredited geocentric cosmology. High and
low, up and down are but temporal constructs, having no ultimate purchase in