ABSTRACT

To date, philosophical discussions of animal ethics and Critical Animal Studies have been dominated by Western perspectives and Western thinkers. This book makes a novel contribution to animal ethics in showing the range and richness of ideas offered to these fields by diverse Asian traditions.

Asian Perspectives on Animal Ethics is the first of its kind to include the intersection of Asian and European traditions with respect to human and nonhuman relations. Presenting a series of studies focusing on specific Asian traditions, as well as studies that put those traditions in dialogue with Western thinkers, this book looks at Asian philosophical doctrines concerning compassion and nonviolence as these apply to nonhuman animals, as well as the moral rights and status of nonhuman animals in Asian traditions. Using Asian perspectives to explore ontological, ethical and political questions, contributors analyze humanism and post-humanism in Asian and comparative traditions and offer insight into the special ethical relations between humans and other particular species of animals.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian religion and philosophy, as well as to those interested in animal ethics and Critical Animal Studies.

chapter |37 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|18 pages

Being sentiently with others

The shared existential trajectory among humans and nonhumans in Jainism

chapter 2|17 pages

Animal compassion

What the Jātakas teach Levinas about giving “the bread from one's own mouth”

chapter 3|20 pages

China's Confucian horses 1

The place of nonhuman animals in a Confucian world order

chapter 4|19 pages

Heidegger and Zhuangzi on the nonhuman

Towards a transcultural critique of (post)humanism

chapter 6|19 pages

Cutting the cat in one

Zen Master Dōgen on the moral status of nonhuman animals

chapter 8|10 pages

Bovine dharma

Nonhuman animals and the Swadhyaya Parivar

chapter 9|23 pages

Snakes in the dark age

Human action, karmic retribution, and the possibilities for Hindu animal ethics