| This dissertation was born from a perceived deficiency in traditional approaches to questions about nonhuman animals' ontological and ethical status. Its central thesis is that the writings of Emmanuel Levinas contain extremely useful themes for reframing these issues, despite Levinas's own reluctance to apply his ideas in this arena. While traditional approaches assume that granting non-human animals direct ethical consideration requires that one identify some crucial aspect of similarity between them and human beings, Levinas's philosophy of "alterity" opens the way to a fresh approach that grants non-human animals direct ethical relevance based on differences between them and humans.; Chapter One elucidates and evaluates the Kantian and Benthamine approaches, examines twentieth century positions that are based on these lines of thought, and considers the writings of Martin Heidegger, which, while lacking explicit statements about non-human animals' ethical status, offer much more extensive consideration of their ontological status than those of Kant, Bentham, and their intellectual descendents. Chapter Two introduces Levinas's ethical vision, presenting his relationship with Kantian and utilitarian frameworks and with Heidegger's phenomenology. Throughout this chapter, I indicate ways that certain themes from Levinas's philosophy can be used in reevaluating questions about non-human animals' ethical status. Chapter Three examines Levinas's humanism, tracing it roots in his philosophy of religion and his philosophy of language, then analyzes his rare explicit statements about non-human animals' ontological and ethical status. Chapter Four sketches my own quasi-Levinasian ethics of the Other animal, detailing the ways that fundamental Levinasian themes might be employed to shed new light on these issues. These include "the face," Levinas's philosophy of uniqueness, his phenomenology of pain and suffering, and his philosophy of "poverty," including the three related themes of "nakedness," "hunger," and "exile." I conclude that reevaluating questions about the ontological and ethical status of non-human animal with a quasi-Levinasian approach will require sweeping changes on both the theoretical and practical levels. |
