Issues to do with animal ethics remain at the heart of public debate. In Beyond Animal Rights, Tony Milligan goes beyond standard discussions of animal ethics to explore the ways in which we personally relate to other creatures through our diet, as pet owners and as beneficiaries of experimentation. The book connects with our duty to act and considers why previous discussions have failed to result in a change in the way that we live our lives.
The author asks a crucial question: what sort of people do we have to become if we are to sufficiently improve the ways in which we relate to the non-human? Appealing to both consequences and character, he argues that no improvement will be sufficient if it fails to set humans on a path towards a tolerable and sustainable future. Focussing on our direct relations to the animals we connect with the book offers guidance on all the relevant issues, including veganism and vegetarianism, the organic movement, pet ownership, and animal experimentation.
Tony Milligan is an Honorary Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, UK. He works primarily on ethics with a particular focus upon animal ethics and virtue theory. His first two books Beyond Animal Rights (2010) and Love (2011) are due to be joined by a third volume Civil Disobedience: Protest, Justification and the Law towards the end of 2012 or early in 2013. He has published in various academic and popular journals, including the Journal of Applied Philosophy, Philosophical Investigations, Philosophy, Public Affairs Quarterly, Ratio, Religious Studies, Think and Philosophy Now.