Gary Steiner
The Animal Rights Debate presents the views of two preeminent thinkers working on a key debate in the study of the moral status of animals-namely, do animals deserve to be treated well while we use them to satisfy our needs and desires, or do animals deserve not to be used to satisfy human desires at all? This is a subject of extremely heated debate in animal studies and society at large, and Gary L. Francione and Robert Garner address it as no others can.
Gary Steiner, Bucknell University
Stephen Clark
Gary L. Francione and Robert Garner challenge each other, and their readers, to reevaluate our relations with the nonhuman. Should we seek merely to reform our present practices in farms, laboratories, zoos, and households, or should we give them up entirely? The authors debate practical and theoretical issues clearly, honestly, courteously, and with all appropriate passion. Neither persuades the other, but both together must persuade many that change is needed.
Stephen Clark, associate editor, British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Richard Ryder
Gary L. Francione's and Robert Garner's positions correspond approximately with the dominant ethics underlying the American political campaigns and the British/European ones respectively, raising the unresolved question as to which has proved the most effective. In the end, they skillfully fill in some of the gaps between areas of speciesism ethics, on the one hand, and law and politics, on the other.
Richard Ryder, author of Speciesism and Painism: A Morality for the Twenty-first Century