Elisa Aaltola

Although love is often viewed as a deeply personal and even sentimental emotion, with little to offer for serious societal and moral thought, in fact many significant figures also in Western philosophy have acknowledged the intricate connections between love, politics and ethics. For instance, Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch have argued that love allows us to understand “the good,” and that its potentially powerful role should be recognised in political and moral thinking. In this chapter, I will examine two approaches to love: the universalistic depiction of love (offered by for instance Plato and Kant), and the contextual approach to love (favoured by for instance many feminist philosophers). I will argue that whilst the universalistic depiction offers valuable insights into the normative significance of love, the inherently contextual nature of love needs to be acknowledged. Further, I will propose that the epistemic state of “attention,” highlighted by Weil and Murdoch, offers a way to combine the universal and contextual dimensions of love in a manner that helps to illuminate why love is a key moral psychological ingredient of ethics.

The paper explores “animal ethical mourning” through three directions: 1) mourning for nonhuman animals, 2) mourning for lost human ideals, and 3) mourning with nonhuman animals. First, it investigates the political and moral significance of animal ethical mourning arguing it is a radical normative act. Second, it claims such mourning extends also to given human ideals, which our treatment of animals reveals to be forsaken. Here, it introduces “misanthropic melancholia” and argues it to form one affectively challenging yet normatively illuminating aspect of animal ethical mourning. Finally, it considers what it means to mourn with other animals. The paper’s central claim is more rituals and rhetoric are needed to evoke these aspects of animal ethical mourning.

Contemporary literature includes a wide variety of definitions of empathy. At the same time, the revival of sentimentalism has proposed that empathy serves as a necessary criterion of moral agency. The paper explores four common definitions in order to map out which of them best serves such agency. Historical figures are used as the backdrop against which contemporary literature is analysed. David Hume’s philosophy is linked to contemporary notions of affective and cognitive empathy, Adam Smith’s philosophy to projective empathy, and Max Scheler’s account to embodied empathy. Whereas cognitive and projective empathy suffer from detachment and atomism, thereby providing poor support for the type of other-directedness and openness entailed by moral agency, embodied and affective empathy intrinsically facilitate these factors, and hence are viewed as fruitful candidates. However, the theory of affective empathy struggles to explain why the experience of empathy includes more than pure affective mimicry, whilst embodied empathy fails to take into account forms of empathy that do not include contextual, narrative information. In order to navigate through these difficulties, Edith Stein’s take on non-primordial experience is used as a base upon which a definition of affective empathy, inclusive of an embodied dimension, and founded on a movement between resonation and response, is sketched. It is argued that, of the four candidates, this new definition best facilitates moral agency.

The article examines the case of springtime bird hunting in Åland from a moral point of view. In Åland springtime hunting has been a cultural practice for centuries but is now under investigation due to the EU Directive on the protection of birds. The main question of the article is whether restrictions on bird hunting have a sound basis. We approach this question by analysing three principles: The animal rights principle states that if hunting is not necessary for survival, it cannot be morally justified. Therefore hunting merely to engage in a cultural custom is morally suspect. In the light of the species conservation principle the hunting is questionable due to the fact that it seems to have a diminishing effect on the species populations. The formal principle of justice makes up a more difficult question since the special position of the minorities in regard to the use of natural resources is generally recognised so that they have the right to maintain their cultural practices. We claim, however, that even though cultural practices have substantial value and can be the object of special rights, they should be coherent with other principles. The springtime bird hunt in Åland does not accord with the relevant moral principles and for this reason we conclude that the basis for its continuation is weak.

Animal ethics has tended to follow an analytical approach and has focused much attention on moral reason and theory. Recently, some have argued this to be a fundamental problem. The 'paradigmatic account' claims that instead of reason and theory, ethics ought to emphasize common paradigms and meanings. Since these paradigms and meanings tend to be anthropocentric, the pro-animal arguments presented within animal ethics ought to be viewed critically. The paper explores two variants of this account: anthropocentric casuistry and the Wittgensteinian approach. It is maintained that, although the importance of paradigms and meanings ought to be recognized, both of these approaches face severe difficulties that make them, without further development, an unfruitful basis for ethics concerning non-human animals.

Some philosophers have argued that love has moral-psychological power, as it can motivate one to appreciate the existence of others and to offer care for them. This appears evident in the context of our relations with nonhuman animals and nature: love can motivate one to think of them as morally considerable. But what is love? The paper at hand investigates one classic philosophical definition of love and applies it to our relationship with other animals and nature. This definition is the quality view of love, i.e., Platonic love, which, I argue, facilitates deeper moral concern for nonhuman animals and things.

Varieties of Empathy: Moral Psychology and Animal Ethics kartoittaa empatian eri muotoja ja niiden suhdetta moraaliseen toimijuuteen sekä eläinetiikkaan. Kirjan lähtökohtana on empatian käsitteellinen ja konkreettinen vaihtelevuus sekä tapa, jolla empatian suhde moraaliseen toimijuuteen riippuu tästä vaihtelusta. Keskeisiä kysymyksiä ovat: Mitä "empatia" tarkoittaa? Miten eri empatian muodot vaikuttavat moraaliseen kyvykkyyteen? Läpi kirjan esimerkkitapauksena toimii moraalinen toimijuus suhteessa muihin eläimiin.

The climate crisis is an enormous challenge for contemporary societies. Yet, public discussions on it often lead to anger, mocking, denial and other defensive behaviours, one prominent example of which is the reception met by the climate advocate Greta Thunberg. The paper approaches this curious phenomenon via shame. It argues that the very idea of anthropogenic climate change invites feelings of human failure and thereby may also entice shame. The notion of “climate shame” is introduced and distinguished from “climate guilt”. Whereas climate guilt prioritises the flourishing of the environment and is focused on actions and morality, climate shame is concerned with human identity and selfhood. The paper then explores whether shame is a morally destructive or constructive emotion. Making use of both psychological and philosophical literature on shame, it argues that although shame faces many challenges that question its usefulness in moral pedagogy, these challenges can be met with “moral maturity”—moreover, following a utilitarian approach, the overall benefits of climate shame can justify its costs to individuals. My argument is that climate shame holds the potential of being a highly effective moral psychological method of persuasion, capable of inviting wholesale critical reflection on current, environmentally damaging practices and cultivation of more virtuous ways of co-existing with the rest of the natural world and other species.

Love of nonhuman animals and nature is often presumed to have positive moral implications: if we love elks or forests, we will also better appreciate their moral value and treat them with more respect and care. This paper investigates perhaps the most common variety of love – here termed ‘the biological definition of love’ – as applied to other animals and nature. Introducing the notion of ‘the love paradox’, it suggests that biological love of other animals and nature can also have deeply negative and anthropocentric moral consequences, due to the self-directedness and biases inherent to it. The need for more other-directed definitions of love is underlined.

With the recent sentimentalism revival, both emotion and empathy have re-emerged as prominent contenders for the throne of moral agency. Particularly the emotive argument, according to which emotions are both the necessary and sufficient criterion for moral ability, has become increasingly popular. The emotive argument is supported by neurostudies and social psychology, which have manifested that the majority of moral decision-making appears to be rested on immediate intuition, and ultimately emotion. However, not all have been willing to accept emotion as the foundation of moral agency, and particularly supporters of the rationalistic argument have presented an arsenal of criticisms against it. The paper explores this rift between Humean and Kantian ethics in the light of contemporary literature, and analyses particularly arguments offered by Jesse Prinz and Jeannette Kennett. It will be suggested that both emotion and reason fail to offer a convincing basis for moral agency, and that we should instead favour a multi-tier approach, with affective empathy as the key capacity on which core moral agency is built.

Radical environmental discourse often contains anarchic elements. These elements include criticism of authoritarian politics and capitalism, and an emphasis on collectivism, individual freedom and self-fulfilment. These anarchic tendencies have increasingly led to the use of the term ‘green anarchism’. This chapter investigates two versions of radical environmental discourse, which have included, or have been used to support, ideas familiar to green anarchism: deep ecology and primitivism. The aim is to bring forward their main premises, explore the similarities between the two, examine the criticism directed against them, and suggest some possible future directions.

Animal ethics has presented challenging questions regarding the human-animalrelationship. According to some philosophers, non-human animals have value inthemselves. This claim is most commonly based on sentience or consciousness inthe phenomenal sense: since it is like something to be an animal, animals cannotbe treated as mere biological matter. However, the claim has been met with criticism.This paper analyses three of the most common arguments against what ishere called the “individual value” of non-human animals. These arguments are thecapacity argument, the humanistic argument, and the special relations argument.It is maintained that they all face severe problems, which leave the door open forthe possibility that non-human animals may, indeed, have individual value.

Traditionally animal ethics has criticised the anthropocentric worldview according to which humans differ categorically from the rest of the nature in some morally relevant way. It has claimed that even though there are differences, there are also crucial similarities between humans and animals that make it impossible to draw a categorical distinction between humans who are morally valuable and animals which are not. This argument, according to which animals and humans share common characteristics that lead to moral value, is at the heart of animal ethics. Lately the emphasis on similarity has been under attack. It has been claimed that the search for similarity is itself part of anthropocentric morality, since only those like us are valuable. It also has been claimed that true respect for animals comes from recognising their difference and ‘otherness’, not from seeing similarities. This paper analyses the new ‘other animal ethics’ by critically examining its basis and consequences. The conclusion is that despite the fact that other animal ethics is right in demanding respect also for difference, it remains both vague and contradictory in its theoretical basis, and leads to undesirable consequences from the perspective of animal welfare.

Recently, many pro- animal thinkers have expressed critical views on the animal rights movement. In particular, the movement has been criticized for being philosophically uninformed, politically regressive, and practically unpersuasive. This paper investigates these criticisms and seeks to map out the philosophy behind the grassroots animal rights movement, specifically. It concludes that the criticism presented by animal studies scholars is often misplaced due to a lack of understanding of the philosophical notions within the movement, but that the critics are right to argue that the movement needs to place more emphasis on persuasion.

External descriptions, which approach animals via external mechanisms rather than internal mental states, have gained a prominent position. However, according to strong objectivism, attention needs to be placed on the presumptions that lay behind given beliefs. When applied to the topic of animal minds, it reveals that perhaps inter-nal rather than external descriptions would offer a fruitful option. This claim is sup-ported by the Wittgensteinian criticism of skepticism, which seeks to avoid “deflection” and brings forward an “affective stance”. Still, in order to avoid relativ-ism and conservatism, internal descriptions and the affective stance need to place em-phasis on the epistemological ramifications behind beliefs concerning animal minds, and centralise the animal as the reference point of inquiry.