Kai Horsthemke

Questions about the cognitive and conative life, as well as the status and treatment of other-than-human animals have been receiving systematic consideration by philosophers for close to 50 years. Courses on comparative psychology, animal ethics and animal rights have been introduced in the undergraduate and postgraduate curricula of a substantial number of universities worldwide. It is all the more puzzling, then, that fairly little has been produced on the subject within philosophy of education, apart from the odd reference to humane education. By contrast, environmental education has received wide coverage, not only by philosophers but also by other social scientists, natural scientists and politicians.The present chapter attempts, at least in part, to fill this gap. It reviews empirical evidence for the purported links between animal abuse and human violence.The chapter’s chief normative focus is both on the moral implications of a psychophysical continuum between humans and non-humans and on the promise of theriocentric education. Does anti-racist and antisexist education logically entail anti-speciesist education? Similarly, is there a necessary link between human rights education and animal rights education?In attempting to answer these questions, the chapter presents an account of moral education as both education in matters of social justice and education in ‘moral feeling’, cultivation of moral sentiments. Given most children’s natural interest in, and feeling for, animals, this should arguably be easier than is commonly assumed.However, it does require some effort and commitment on the part of educators, parents and teachers alike.

The section New Areas and Developments presents essays on relatively new topics and concerns that have attracted the interest of philosophers of education in recent years, as well as novel approaches to philosophy of education. To date, emerging issues that have garnered considerable media attention, such as cyberbullying, school shootings, or radicalization, have been addressed predominantly from psychological and sociological perspectives. By contrast, the essays in this section focus on the philosophical questions that emerge from a study of these phenomena. Other topics, such as academic freedom or the question of non-human animals, are not exactly new but appear to be generating new work within philosophy of education. Finally, the increasing interdisciplinarity of academic departments and institutions, and of academic work generally, arguably requires that philosophers of education examine the boundaries of their field. A few of the essays in this section are concerned, explicitly or implicitly, with the need to address these boundaries and the connections with contiguous fields.

The question of elephant “management”, presented here as epitomizing the conflicts of interests between human beings and free-ranging animals, is widely regarded as one of the more intractable problems on the African continent. Generally valued as magnificent and among the most intelligent members of the continent’s population of free-roaming animals, admired by Africans and foreign tourists alike, elephants are also considered to be among the most problematic in that they have a substantial impact on their environment. What makes the issue of “culling”—or “legal” killing for purposes of population management—different from cases of abuse and cruelty is that killing is characteristically seen to require justification, whether in terms of resources, health, welfare or interests. Such a defence, which is characteristically not forthcoming in instances of abuse and cruelty, may assume several forms, or combinations of the following considerations: cultural, scientific, economic, and/or moral. Confronting advocates of killing on their home territory, this chapter argues that—just as it is morally reprehensible as a means towards curbing human overpopulation and human environmental degradation—killing is impermissible in the case of non-human animals, especially in cases where these animals are relevantly similar to human beings.

This book explores how the ethical treatment and status of other-than-human animals influence pedagogy, teaching, and learning in general, aiming to fill what has been a gap in the philosophy of education. It examines key trends in this regard, including environmental education, humane education, posthumanist education, ecopedagogy, critical animal pedagogy, critical animal studies, animal standpoint theory, and vegan education. The book discusses animal minds and interests, and how animals have been accommodated in moral theory. Further, it investigates whether anti-racist and anti-sexist education logically entail anti-speciesist education and closes by proposing animal rights education as a viable and sound alternative, a pedagogy that does justice not only to animals in general and as species, but also to individual animals. If animal rights education is philosophically and educationally meaningful, then it can arguably offer a powerful pedagogical tool, and facilitate lasting pro-animal changes.

The claim is frequently made on behalf of African moral beliefs and customs that African cultures do not involve objectification and exploitation of nature and natural organisms, unlike Western moral attitudes and practices. Through exploration of what kind of moral status is reserved for other-than-human animals in African ethics, I argued in my recent book Animals and African Ethics that moral perceptions, attitudes and practices on the African continent have tended to be resolutely anthropocentric, or human-centred. Although values like ubuntu and ukama have, in recent years, been expanded to include non-human nature, animals characteristically have no rights, and human duties to them are almost exclusively ‘indirect’. Taking into account the brutal and dehumanising ravages of colonialism, racism and political, cultural and moral apartheid that Africans have historically been subjected to, it does not seem to be wholly off the mark to invite people in sub-Sahara Africa, especially, to reflect on an even longer, more deeply-entrenched historical process of discrimination, oppression and exploitation, namely that of species apartheid. Yet, adoption of a more enlightened stance vis-à-vis the non-human world and animals in particular would almost certainly involve giving up the moral anthropocentrism that characterises many attitudes and practices on the African continent. This need not entail surrendering what is arguably at the core of sub-Saharan morality—the emphasis on community and harmonious communal relationships. ‘I am because we are’ could reasonably be interpreted as not being confined to the human realm, as transcending the species barrier. I have in mind here something like a relational approach to animal rights and environmental ethics that is neither anthropocentric nor speciesist. The multifarious historical and geographical relationships we have with other-than-human animals give rise to a multitude of moral obligations that differ according to the kinds of relationships we find ourselves in. There is an increasing awareness among African scholars of the untenability of a rigidly species-governed ‘us-against-them’ thinking, that anthropocentrism shares many relevant features with ethnocentrism, and that speciesism is relevantly like racism. It is my aim in the proposed contribution to explore these ideas and conceptual tools in more detail.