Further Animal Liberation

John Tamilio III augments the arguments of Peter Singer.

- John Tamilio III

The work of the contemporary ethicist Peter Singer has advanced the cause of animal liberation more than any other thinker. Nigel Warburton of the Philosophy Bites podcasts calls this Australian philosopher ‘a modern day gadfly’ in the spirit of Socrates. This article will build upon Singer’s work, adding another dimension to it. Before doing so, however, let me place animal liberation in the context of other liberation movements.

A Short Survey of Liberation Movements

As the name suggests, liberation movements seek the deliverance of an oppressed group. To achieve this, liberationists often seek to expose institutional patterns of oppression constructed upon a worldview by which a privileged group justifies wielding power over another, marginalized, group. Such patterns are often precognitive: the privileged typically assume without much self-criticism that their position of power is natural. In some cases, the oppressed are dehumanized. They are then seen as things, not persons. That’s how oppressive structures survive. When brought to light, the horrific, prejudicial nature of such patterns of thought and life are exposed, which leads, ideally, to reform.

Historically, liberation movements have usually focused on human beings, with people challenging what they see as an injustice within a culture – a wrong in which one group sees itself as superior to another. Such marginalization has been based on race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and a host of other categories that would seek not to be scrutinized, for scrutiny would undermine their authority. When Thomas Jefferson opened the US Declaration of Independence with the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” he meant