Perpetual Strangers: animals and the cosmopolitan right

Political Studies 62 (4):930–944 (2014)
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Abstract

In this article I propose a cosmopolitan approach to animal rights based upon Kant's right of universal hospitality. Many approaches to animal rights buttress their arguments by finding similarities between humans and non-human animals; in this way they represent or resemble ethics of partiality. In this article I propose an approach to animal rights that initially rejects similarity approaches and is instead based upon the adoption of a cosmopolitan mindset acknowledging and respecting difference. Furthermore, and in agreement with Martha Nussbaum, and Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, I endorse the view that theories of animal rights need to be theories of justice and include a political component. Contra Donaldson and Kymlicka, however, I argue that the starting point for analysis of political theories of animal rights should be at the global rather than national level. Taking animals as strangers, I propose adopting a Kantian cosmopolitan mindset and ethic of universal hospitality towards them. I address how a ius cosmopoliticum that is hospitable to the interests of non-human animals can govern interactions with animals on fair terms, and I respond to concerns that cosmopolitanism cannot accommodate non-human animals because it is a democratic ideal, is grounded in logocentrism or rests upon ownership of territory by humans.

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Steve Cooke
University of Leicester

Citations of this work

Animal ethics and the political.Alasdair Cochrane, Robert Garner & Siobhan O’Sullivan - 2018 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 21 (2):261-277.
Betraying Animals.Steve Cooke - 2019 - The Journal of Ethics 23 (2):183-200.
Who Loves Mosquitoes? Care Ethics, Theory of Obligation and Endangered Species.Eleni Panagiotarakou - 2016 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 29 (6):1057-1070.

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