ABSTRACT
This chapter explains why the focus of normative concern is on interspecies relations. It explores why solidarity in general and interspecies solidarity in particular, involves both care and justice. The chapter argues that overcoming speciesism is a question of justice and overcoming human chauvinism is a question of care. It investigates the normative discourse of interspecies solidarity in preference to common existing alternatives: that is, why the scope of the ethic encompasses living species and their members rather than either being confined to humans only or extended to 'nature as a whole'; and why the appropriate form of ethic is one of solidarity. The chapter also explains how ethical orientation, in its focus on moral disposition, serves as an antidote to human chauvinism. Human chauvinism is appropriately predicated on attempts to specify relevant differences in ways that invariably favour humans.
