Special Issue E&A

paola cavalieri (paolac@PLANET.IT)
Thu, 1 Aug 1996 14:10:04 +0200

(from Paola Cavalieri).


ETICA & ANIMALI 8 (1996)

Special issue devoted to The Great Ape Project


Contents

=46rom the Editor

Paola Cavalieri and Will Kymlicka, Expanding the Social Contract

Robert Elliot, Solidarity, Property Rights, Redistribution and the Great Ape=
s

Michael Allen Fox, Planet for the Apes

Birut=E9 M. F. Galdikas and Gary L. Shapiro, Orangutan Ethics

Takayoshi Kano, Lingomo-Bongoli, Gen'ichi Idani and Chie Hashimoto, The
Challenge of Wamba

Volker Sommer, "Sind Affen denn auch Leute?" Ja. Denn zwischen Natur und
Kultur flie=DFen die =DCberg=E4nge

Carlo Foppa, L'insoutenable poids de la th=E9orie de
l'=E9volution

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Taking Evolution Seriously: A Matter of Primate
Intelligence

Kristin Andrews, The First Step in the Case for Great Ape Equality: The
Argument for Other Minds

Dieter Birnbacher, The Great Apes - Why They Have a Right to Life

Lorenzo Pe=F1a, Anthropoid Rights and Paternalism



Presentation by Paola Cavalieri, editor


The Great Ape Project, published in 1993, shows that we should respect at
least some nonhuman beings as our moral equals, giving equal consideration
to their interests as to ours. We now know that chimpanzees, gorillas and
orangutans have the very same capacities that warrant regarding all humans
as moral equals. Consequently strong legal, economic and political
protection must be provided for the individual members of these species.

Three years on, the special issue, devoted to the Great Ape Project, of
Etica & Animali bears witness to the vitality of, and widespread support
for, the view that other great apes are our moral equals. In this volume,
authors from a variety of cultural backgrounds, including the continental
intellectual tradition, discuss and develop the view. The question as to
the moral standing of the nonhuman great apes is positioned within
contemporary debates in evolutionary biology, philosophy of mind,
anthropology and applied ethics. Furthermore, discussion of notions such as
bi-cultural citizenship, moral space, and collective rights to resources,
provides a basis for framing and implementing the extended sphere of moral
equals so that justice might be secured for the nonhuman great apes. The
issue also includes descriptions of some individual attempts to improve on
the current situation of nonhuman great apes. The respective authors
believe that no piecemeal approach to securing justice for nonhuman great
apes is likely to be particularly successful.

Moving from a theory of universal human rights - arguably the ethical
paradigm of the present - to a theory of universal anthropoid rights
requires significant changes to dominant worldviews. Hopefully this special
issue of Etica & Animali will contribute to the required changes.


=46or more informations: http://194.21.24.2/freewww/gap_etica/home.html
e-mail: gap_etica@planet.it