Stephen R. L. Clark

Twenty years ago, people thought only cranks or sentimentalists could be seriously concerned about the treatment of non-human animals. However, since then philosophers, scientists and welfarists have raised public awareness of the issue; and they have begun to lay the foundations for an enormous change in human practice. This book is a record of the development of 'animal rights' through the eyes of one highly-respected and well-known thinker. This book brings together for the first time Stephen R.L. Clark's major essays in one volume. Written with characteristic clarity and persuasion, Animals and Their Moral Standing will be essential reading for both philosophers and scientists, as well as the general reader concerned by the debates over animal rights and treatment.

Limits and Renewals is a trilogy based on the Stanton Lectures in the Philosophy of Religion delivered at the University of Cambridge in 1986-8. In this, the second volume, Professor Clark attempts to restate a traditional philosophy of mind, drawing upon philosophical and poetic resources that are often neglected in modern and post-modern thought, and emphasizing the moral and political implications of differing `philosophies of mind and value'. He presents a study of the soul as it has traditionally been conceived and as it can be understood through imaginative attention to our changing moods, beliefs, and fears. He argues that without that traditional concept we have little reason to believe that liberal values (rational thought and individual autonomy) are either possible or desirable. Particular topics discussed include the political context of identity claims, the uses of introspection, free will, `the beast within' as alien monster or necessary angel, the possibility of knowledge and the dangers of curiosity, the fear of death, the philoprogenitive gene, the political roots of the distinction between facts and values, and the body-mind problem. Notable features of the book are the author's citation of writers other than the conventionally philosophical (Augustine, Hopkins, Stapledon, and Weil), and the emphasis that he gives to traditions other than the self-consciously secular.

Late Antique Epistemology explores the techniques used by late antique philosophers to discuss truth. Non-rational ways to discover truth, or to reform the soul, have usually been thought inferior to the philosophically approved techniques of rational argument, suitable for the less philosophically inclined, for children, savages or the uneducated. Religious rituals, oracles, erotic passion, madness may all have served to waken courage or remind us of realities obscured by everyday concerns. What is unusual in the late antique classical philosophers is that these techniques were reckoned as reliable as reasoned argument, or better still. Late twentieth century commentators have offered psychological explanations of this turn, but only recently had it been accepted that there might also have been philosophical explanations, and that the later antique philosophers were not necessarily deluded.

People, as Aristotle said, are political animals. Mainstream political philosophy, however, has largely neglected humankind's animal nature as beings who are naturally equipped, and inclined, to reason and work together, create social bonds and care for their young. Stephen Clark, grounded in biological analysis and traditional ethics, probes into areas ignored in mainstream political theory and argues for the significance of social bonds which bypass or transcend state authority. Understanding the ties that bind us reveals how enormously capable we are in achieving civil order as a species. Stephen Clark advocates that a properly informed political philosophy must take into account the role of women, children, animals, minorities and the domestic virtues at large. Living and comnducting our political lives like the animals we are is a more congenial prospect than is usually supposed.

This second volume in the Limits and Renewals trilogy is an attempt to restate a traditional philosophy of mind, drawing on philosophical and poetical resources that are often neglected in modern and postmodern thought, and emphasizing the moral and political implications of differing philosophies of mind and value. Clark argues that without the traditional concept of the soul, we have little reason to believe that rational thought and individual autonomy are either possible or desirable. The particular topics covered include the political context of identity claims, the possibility of knowledge and the dangers of curiosity, the fear of death, the philoprogenitive gene, and the mind-body problem.