Friderike Spang

This invited review of Eva Meijer’s Multispecies Dialogues: Doing Philosophy with Animals, Children, the Sea and Others (Amsterdam University Press, 2025) offers an in-depth engagement with Meijer’s exploration of communication across species. It traces how the book expands the idea of dialogue beyond language to include embodied and material forms of exchange—touch, movement, shared practice—and how these modes can transform everyday coexistence between humans and nonhumans. The review commends Meijer’s ability to weave lived experience and philosophical reflection while drawing attention to the book’s ethical and political implications for interspecies care and listening. At the same time, it raises critical questions about anthropomorphism, scale, and the challenges of extending such dialogical practices beyond intimate contexts. In doing so, the review both affirms Meijer’s contribution to animal ethics and multispecies philosophy and advances the discussion on what meaningful communication and coexistence with nonhuman beings might require. Meijer, Eva. Multispecies Dialogues: Doing Philosophy with Animals, Children, the Sea and Others. Amsterdam University Press, 2025.

This short paper sheds light on the nature of concessions in compromise. Central to my analysis is Chiara Lepora’s (2012) taxonomy of three compromise types that are defined by the distinct kinds of concessions that they entail. These compromise types are conjunction, intersection, and substitution compromise. While Lepora’s taxonomy pertains to inter-personal compromise, this paper examines how the different concession types apply to intra-personal compromise. Aside from one notable exception (Räikkä, 2024), the extant literature on compromise has not yet specified concessions for intra-personal compromise and the first part of this paper aims to fill this gap. The second part refines our understanding of concessions in compromise by refuting Lepora’s claim that full concessions amount to capitulation.

This paper addresses the question of whether vegan activists should cater to their audience by framing their message according to the pre-existing values of their interlocutors. Specifically, I focus on deliberative activism, which is based on speech and exchanges with the audience. I propose that message framing can lead to a neglect of animal suffering in favor of focusing on less contentious motives for veganism, such as environmental or health benefits. I claim that neglecting the issue of animal suffering can have several problematic consequences. Concretely, I argue that message framing can: (1) lead to the objectification of animals, treating them as mere means to other ends (such as environmental and health benefits); (2) imply a denial of their personhood; (3) perpetuate their status as property; (4) enable future harm to animals; and (5) create a hierarchy of moral worth among different animal species. For these reasons, I suggest that message framing is less appealing than it initially seems.

Arguments against inflicting violence on people to defend animal rights have relied on the view that inflicting violence is always wrong. But these arguments end up prohibiting too much, as defensive violence should be permissible in certain extreme cases. We argue that considerations about the counterproductiveness of defensive violence are better at distinguishing permissible and impermissible instances of animal rights violence than a blanket rejection of violence. We respond to the objection that assuming violence to be counterproductive is ad hoc, discussing real-world and fictional examples of animal rights violence. We argue that defensive violence on behalf of animals should almost always be assumed to be counterproductive because it threatens to trigger self-reinforcing reactions on the part of the socio-technical regimes that violate animal rights in the first place.

This review article provides a topic-centered overview of the state of compromise in political theory, where compromise is increasingly discussed as a promising approach to dealing with disagreement in politics and society. Given the growing literature on compromise, a systematic approach to the topic is due. The first sections are focused on clarifying the concept of compromise, while the remainder of the article offers different perspectives on those aspects of compromise that are subject to debate.

This paper addresses the question of whether the animal rights movement should make use of what I call “deliberative activism”, i.e., activism based on deliberative processes. To date, animal rights activists rely primarily on non-deliberative activism, such as strikes, protests, boycotts, demonstrations, leafleting, rescue actions, etc. In contrast to such non-deliberative forms of protest, recent work by Robert Garner and Lucy Parry emphasizes the potential benefits of deliberative democratic structures for the animal rights movement. This paper aims to contribute to this endeavor by putting deliberative activism under scrutiny. More specifically, this paper evaluates three proposed benefits of deliberation for the animal rights movement: 1) deliberation can change (moral) minds; 2) deliberation can counter the “ideological hegemony” of the animal industry; 3) deliberation can avoid both alienation of stakeholders and reputational damage to the movement. I argue that whether the animal rights movement can reap these benefits depends to a large degree on whether the deliberative processes in question are designed to support recognition respect, that is, respect for each other as persons.

Moral compromise, i.e. compromise on moral values, is increasingly discussed as a promising strategy for accommodating disagreement in pluralistic societies. Political theorists are primarily concerned with the question how moral compromise can be normatively justified. In particular, the debate revolves around the question whether moral compromise is justified for principled or pragmatic reasons. But assuming that moral compromise can be justified – for either principled or pragmatic reasons – is it also feasible? The literature on moral compromise largely neglects to address the issue of feasibility and this paper aims to fill this gap. With reference to research in cognitive science, I argue that moral compromise faces a feasibility problem because moral opponents tend to experience a deep emotional reluctance towards compromising on their moral values. I develop the counterintuitive claim that this reluctance, which I call ‘affective aversion’, is unlikely to be overcome by pragmatic reasons for compromise. Instead, I suggest that the feasibility of moral compromise increases if compromise is motivated by principled respect for other persons. Whether moral compromise is feasible therefore depends to a significant degree on whether it is motivated by pragmatic or by principled reasons. From a perspective of feasibility, principled compromise is to be preferred over pragmatic compromise.

I argue in this paper that the process of compromising needs to be deliberative if a fair compromise is the goal. More specifically, I argue that deliberation is structurally necessary in order to achieve a fair compromise. In developing this argument, this paper seeks to overcome a problematic dichotomy that is prevalent in the literature on deliberative democracy, which is the dichotomy between compromise and deliberation. This dichotomy entails the view that the process preceding the achievement of a compromise is essentially a process of negotiating or bargaining, which, I claim, should not be the case if a fair compromise is the goal. The reason for this claim is, in a nutshell, that negotiation or bargaining processes do not provide for an in-depth understanding of the reasons that each party has for holding their respective position. However, an in-depth understanding of each other’s reasons, is, as I will show, a necessary condition for achieving a fair compromise. In contrast to negotiation or bargaining, the deliberative process, by its very structure, provides for mutual understanding and is therefore a necessary condition for achieving a fair compromise.

The goal of this dissertation is to specify the feasibility conditions of compromise. More specifically, the goal of this dissertation is to specify the conditions of increasing the feasibility of compromise. The underlying assumption here is that feasibility is a scalar concept, meaning that a socio-political ideal can be feasible to different degrees (Lawford-Smith 2013). In order to specify the conditions of increasing the feasibility of compromise, it is necessary to first identify potential feasibility constraints. The main chapters of this dissertation are devoted to this task. My research identifies two kinds of feasibility constraints that compromise potentially faces: A psychological feasibility constraint on realizing moral compromise (i.e. compromise on moral issues) and a structural feasibility constraint on realizing fair compromise. The psychological feasibility constraint consists in what I call an “affective aversion” to compromise. Affective aversion designates a deep emotional reluctance to compromise on moral values, which, I propose, can be reduced by cultivating an affective attitude of respect for other persons. The structural feasibility constraint refers to the process through which a compromise is achieved. I argue that if a fair compromise is the goal, the process of compromising needs to be based on deliberation rather than on the negotiation or bargaining processes that are commonly associated with compromise. Based on these results, my research indicates a) that an affective cultivation of respect is a condition for increasing the feasibility of moral compromise; and b) that deliberation, not negotiation or bargaining, is a condition for increasing the feasibility of fair compromise.