Simone Weil once wrote that "the vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence," establishing a relationship between vulnerability, beauty, and existence transcending the separation of species. Her conception of a radical ethics and aesthetics could be characterized as a new poetics of species, forcing a rethinking of the body's significance, both human and animal. Exploring the "logic of flesh" and the use of the body to mark species identity, Anat Pick reimagines a poetics that begins with the vulnerability of bodies, not the omnipotence of thought. Pick proposes a "creaturely" approach based on the shared embodiedness of humans and animals and a postsecular perspective on human-animal relations. She turns to literature, film, and other cultural texts, challenging the familiar inventory of the human: consciousness, language, morality, and dignity. Reintroducing Weil's elaboration of such themes as witnessing, commemoration, and collective memory, Pick identifies the animal within all humans, emphasizing the corporeal and its issues of power and freedom. In her poetics of the creaturely, powerlessness is the point at which aesthetic and ethical thinking must begin.

No creature has been subject to such extremes of reverence and exploitation as the chicken. Hens have been venerated as cosmic creators and roosters as solar divinities. Many cultures have found the mysteries of birth, healing, death and resurrection encapsulated in the hen's egg. Yet today, most of us have nothing to do with chickens as living beings, although billions are consumed around the world every year. In "Chicken" Annie Potts introduces us to the vivid and astonishing world of Gallus gallus. The book traces the evolution of jungle fowl and the domestication of chickens by humans. It describes the ways in which chickens experience the world, form families and friendships, communicate with each other, play, bond, and grieve. "Chicken" explores cultural practices like egg-rolling, the cockfight, alectromancy, wishbone-pulling and the chicken-swinging ritual of Kapparot; discovers depictions of chickenhood in ancient and modern art, literature and film; and also showcases bizarre supernatural chickens from around the world including the Basilisk, Kikimora and Pollio Maligno. "Chicken "concludes with a detailed analysis of the place of chickens in the world today, and a tribute to those who educate and advocate on behalf of these birds. Numerous beautiful illustrations show the many faces (and feathers and combs and tails) of Gallus, from wild roosters in the jungles of Southeast Asia to quirky Naked-Necks and majestic Malays. There are chickens painted by Chagall and Magritte, chickens made of hair-rollers, and chickens shaped like mountains. The reader of "Chicken "will encounter a multitude of intriguing facts and ideas, including why the largest predator ever to walk the earth is considered the ancestor of the modern chicken, how mother hens communicate with their chicks while they're still in the egg, why Charlie Chaplin's masterpiece required him to play a chicken, whether it's safe to take eggs on a sea-voyage, and how "chicken therapy" can rejuvenate us all. This book will fascinate those already familiar with and devoted to the Gallus species, and it will open up a whole new gallinaceous world for future admirers of the intelligent and passionate chicken.

Animal rights sounds like a modern idea, but in fact -- for over three millennia -- philosophers, theologians, and political theorists have grappled with the question of our obligations toward animals. This comprehensive and diverse anthology, the only one of its kind, illuminates the complex evolution of moral thought regarding animals and includes writings from ancient Greece to the present. "Animal Rights" reveals the ways in which a variety of thinkers have addressed such issues as our ethical responsibilities for the welfare of animals, whether animals have rights, and what it means to be human.

The preface by Andrew Linzey dispels many of the misconceptions about the animal rights movement. In light of the growing interest in animal rights, this volume is an indispensable resource for scholars and activists alike.

"Animal Rights" includes writings from Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Kant, Bertrand Russell, John Stuart Mill, Nietzsche, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Peter Singer.

This book is an attempt to lead the way through the moral maze that is our relationship with nonhuman animals. Written by an author with an established reputation in this field, the book takes the reader step by step through the main parameters of the debate, demonstrating at each turn the different positions adopted. In the second part of the book, the implications of holding each position for the ethical permissibility of what is done to animals - in laboratories, farms, the home and the wild - are explained.

Garner starts by asking whether animals have any moral standing before moving on to assess exactly what degree of moral status ought to be accorded to them. It is suggested that whilst animals should not be granted the same moral status as humans, they are worthy of greater moral consideration than the orthodox animal welfare position allows. As a result, it is suggested that many of the ways we currently treat animals are morally illegitimate.

In the final chapter, the issue of political praxis is tackled. How are reforms to the ways in which animals are treated to be achieved? This book suggests that currently dominant debates about insider status and direct action are less important than the question of agency. That is, the important question is not what is done to change the way animals are treated as much as whom is to be mobilised to join the cause.

Students of philosophy, politics and environmental issues will find this an essential textbook.

Christine M. Korsgaard presents a compelling new view of humans' moral relationships to the other animals. She defends the claim that we are obligated to treat all sentient beings as what Kant called "ends-in-themselves". Drawing on a theory of the good derived from Aristotle, she offers an explanation of why animals are the sorts of beings for whom things can be good or bad. She then turns to Kant's argument for the value of humanity to show that rationality commits us to claiming the standing of ends-in-ourselves, in two senses. Kant argued that as autonomous beings, we claim to be ends-in-ourselves when we claim the standing to make laws for ourselves and each other. Korsgaard argues that as beings who have a good, we also claim to be ends-in-ourselves when we take the things that are good for us to be good absolutely and so worthy of pursuit. The first claim commits us to joining with other autonomous beings in relations of moral reciprocity. The second claim commits us to treating the good of every sentient creature as something of absolute importance. Korsgaard argues that human beings are not more important than the other animals, that our moral nature does not make us superior to the other animals, and that our unique capacities do not make us better off than the other animals. She criticizes the "marginal cases" argument and advances a new view of moral standing as attaching to the atemporal subjects of lives. She criticizes Kant's own view that our duties to animals are indirect, and offers a non-utilitarian account of the relation between pleasure and the good. She also addresses a number of directly practical questions: whether we have the right to eat animals, experiment on them, make them work for us and fight in our wars, and keep them as pets; and how to understand the wrong that we do when we cause a species to go extinct.

Do animals have moral rights? If so what does this mean? What sorts of mental lives do animals have, and how should we understand their welfare? After addressing these questions, DeGrazia explores their implications in contexts such as food consumption, zoos, and research.

'A little gem of a book' Brendan O'Connor Tom Inglis and his Wheaten terrier Pepe have lived together for eighteen years: countless days of walks and play and the odd bit of chaos. Now, though, they are both getting old. To Love a Dog tells the story of Tom's life with Pepe, and looks at the ancient connection between humans and dogs. It explores why we take on the hassle of caring for these pet animals who rely on us so completely, who can create mess and upset in our lives, and who will probably die before us, leaving us behind to grieve. This is a book for everyone who has ever loved a dog.

What is a crab? What significance do crabs play in the world? In Crab, Cynthia Chris discovers that these charming creatures are social by nature, creative problem-solvers, and invaluable members of the environments in which they live. Their formidable physical forms, their hard-to-harvest and quick-to-spoil flesh, and their sassy demeanour have inspired artists and writers from Vincent van Gogh to Jean-Paul Sartre. Cynthia Chris sketches vivid portraits of these animals, tracing the history of the crab through its ancient fossil record to its essential role in protecting its own habitats from the threat of climate change.