ABSTRACT
The following conversation between Carol J. Adams and Matthew Calarco is part of an ongoing dialogue aimed at trying to discern points of commonality and divergence between a feminist care ethics approach to animal issues and the approach to animal issues found in the writings of French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Here, Adams and Calarco discuss the “ground of animal ethics,” by which they mean the root or foundation for our ethical relations with animals. In standard philosophical treatments of animal ethics (found in the writings of influential authors like Peter Singer and Tom Regan), it is often argued that reason is what compels us to extend ethical treatment to animals. On this account, whether we have any genuine feelings of affection or concern for the well-being of animals is largely irrelevant; what matters for these authors is that we intellectually grasp the idea that extending ethics to animals is required by reason. Adams and Calarco suggest that the feminist care ethics tradition and the Derridean-inspired approach to the question of the animal proceed from a very different orientation, with a focus on such themes as care, relation, embodiment, suffering, and passion. Although the feminist care ethics tradition and Derrida’s work are characterized by considerable differences in philosophical commitments and heritage, on several points the authors uncover surprising and productive intersections that they believe hold promise for innovative work on animal ethics in the future. The inspiration for this conversation and their larger work is their commitment to activism, and the understanding that activism benefits from engaged theory.
