THE ANIMAL TURN
S6E3: Moral Imagination and Habitat Rights with Steve Cooke
In this episode Steve Cooke discusses the significance of philosophy in helping to foster moral imagination. Such imagination allows for conceptual development, making moral progress and political change possible. With this backdrop, Steve unpacks how the development of habitat rights for animals would be an important step in ensuring animal vital interests are protected.
About Steve Cooke
Steve Cooke is an Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of Leicester. He works on justice and nonhuman animals, and in the ethics of protest and activism. His main interests are in what a just society for human and nonhuman animal might look like, and the ethics of different ways of achieving it. He recently published What are Animal Rights For?, published by Bristol University Press. Learn more about Steve on his university profile page or connect with him on Mastodon.
What are Animal Rights For? by Steve Cooke.
Imagined Utopias: Animals Rights and the Moral Imagination by Steve Cooke
A Theory of Justice by John Rawls
The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Fellow Creatures: Kantian Ethics and Our Duties to Animals by Christine M. Korsgaard.
Featured:
In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas focuses on the story of a speific hawk in New York - Pale Male. Virigina thinks about the controversy that erupted around Pale Male setting up a nest atop a highend apartment building as well as the public's response and attachment to Pale Male. Read more about it here.
Image accessed from Urban Hawks.
Animal Highlight: Pale Male
“When man first said to the sheep ‘the pelt which you wear was given to you by nature not for your own use, but for mine’ and took it from the sheep to wear it himself, he became aware of a prerogative which … he enjoyed over all the animals; and he now no longer regarded them as fellow creatures, but as means and instruments to be used at will for the attainment of whatever ends he pleased.” – Immanuel Kant in Christine Korsgaard’s 'Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals.'
Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; Christiaan Mentz for hi editing work, Virginia Thomas for the Animal Highlight, Gordon Clarke for the bed music, Jeremy John (Website) for the logo. This podcast is hosted and produced by Claudia Hirtenfelder.