The Suffering Animal: Life Between Weakness and Power (The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series) (EPUB)

The Suffering Animal: Life Between Weakness and Power (The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series) (EPUB)

by Simone Ghelli (Author)

This book offers a critical and significant re-examination of the contemporary controversy over the human-animal bond. Starting with a critique of the “official philosophical narrative” of animal studies, followed by a re-examination of Descartes’ animal-machine paradigm, Simone Ghelli found the conceptual foundations of his claim that the suffering animal is a materialist thesis on the condition of the living. While questioning the metaphysical and anthropocentric nature of western philosophy, he ultimately proposed a re-conceptualization of ethics based on the experience of suffering, this is the mutual compassion that all sentient beings feel before the unjustification of their finite nature. The suffering animal paradigm illustrates how, within our religious tradition, the animal question has been consistently associated with the questions of faith and materialism. The ultimate goal of this research is to determine the “ethical balance” between the living’s various aspects, including power, joy, and suffering, as well as life and death. Our philosophy typically considers these issues to be mutually exclusive. To surmount these obstacles is to avoid conflict, in our ethical and political conversations, the defense of the vulnerable and the freedom of the powerful.