Antinaturalism, or anti-naturalism, is the opposition to essentialist invocations of nature or natural order. [1] [2] It is associated with antispeciesism, anti-racism, feminism, and transhumanism. [3] [4]
Antinaturalist philosophy is closely linked to the French animal rights movement and materialist feminism. [1] It is also supported by xenofeminists, who advocate for a form of feminism holding that if nature is unjust, it should be changed. [5] Notable advocates include David Olivier and Yves Bonnardel. [6]
Antinaturalists defend the inherent and absolute moral permissibility of abortion, body modification, divorce, contraception, sex reassignment surgery, and other means by which they believe human beings can assume control of their own bodies and their own environments. [5] Antinaturalism stands in contrast to some radical environmentalist movements, which state that nature itself is sacred and should be preserved for its own sake; instead it advances the idea that all human acts are natural and that ecological preservation is important inasmuch as it is necessary for the well-being of sentient beings, not because of some inherently sacred attribute of nature as a whole. [7] Yves Bonnardel argues that naturalist ideology "goes hand in hand with and legitimises speciesist oppression of non-human sentient beings", [8] and that using natural law to justify the reintroduction of predatory animals to control populations of other animals is a form of speciesism. [9]
Speciesism is a term used in philosophy regarding the treatment of individuals of different species. The term has several different definitions. Some specifically define speciesism as discrimination or unjustified treatment based on an individual's species membership, while others define it as differential treatment without regard to whether the treatment is justified or not. Richard D. Ryder, who coined the term, defined it as "a prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species". Speciesism results in the belief that humans have the right to use non-human animals in exploitative ways which is pervasive in the modern society. Studies from 2015 and 2019 suggest that people who support animal exploitation also tend to have intersectional bias that encapsulates and endorses racist, sexist, and other prejudicial views, which furthers the beliefs in human supremacy and group dominance to justify systems of inequality and oppression.
"A Cyborg Manifesto" is an essay written by Donna Haraway and published in 1985 in the Socialist Review. In it, the concept of the cyborg represents a rejection of rigid boundaries, notably those separating "human" from "animal" and "human" from "machine." Haraway writes: "The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust."
Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone was a Canadian-American radical feminist writer and activist. Firestone was a central figure in the early development of radical feminism and second-wave feminism and a founding member of three radical-feminist groups: New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists. Within these radical movements, Firestone became known as "the firebrand" and "the fireball" for the fervor and passion she expressed towards the cause. Firestone participated in activism such as speaking out at The National Conference for New Politics in Chicago. Also while a member of various feminist groups she participated in actions including protesting a Miss America Contest, organizing a mock funeral for womanhood known as "The Burial of Traditional Womanhood", protesting sexual harassment at Madison Square Garden, organizing abortion speakouts, and disrupting abortion legislation meetings.
Postmodern feminism is a mix of postmodernism and French feminism that rejects a universal female subject. The goal of postmodern feminism is to destabilize the patriarchal norms entrenched in society that have led to gender inequality. Postmodern feminists seek to accomplish this goal through opposing essentialism, philosophy, and universal truths in favor of embracing the differences that exist amongst women in order to demonstrate that not all women are the same. These ideologies are rejected by postmodern feminists because they believe if a universal truth is applied to all women of society, it minimizes individual experience, hence they warn women to be aware of ideas displayed as the norm in society since it may stem from masculine notions of how women should be portrayed.
“Feminist political ecology” examines how power,gender, class, race, and ethnicity intersect with environmental ‘crises’, environmental change and human-environmental relations. Feminist political ecology emerged in the 1990s, drawing on theories from ecofeminism, feminist environmentalism, feminist critiques of development, postcolonial feminism, and post-structural critiques of political ecology. Specific areas in which feminist political ecology is focused are development, landscape, resource use, agrarian reconstruction, rural-urban transformation, intersectionality, subjectivities, embodiment, emotions, communication, situated knowledge, posthumanism, deconstructing theory-practice dichotomies, ethics of care and decolonial feminist political ecology. Feminist political ecologists suggest gender is a crucial variable – in relation to class, race and other relevant dimensions of political ecological life – in constituting access to, control over, and knowledge of natural resources.
Colette Guillaumin, was a sociologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and a French feminist. Guillaumin is an important theorist of the mechanisms of racism and sexism, and relations of domination. She is also an important figure in materialist feminism.
This is a list of articles in continental philosophy.
Wild animal suffering is suffering experienced by non-human animals living in the wild, outside of direct human control, due to natural processes such as disease, injury, parasitism, starvation, malnutrition, dehydration, weather conditions, natural disasters, killings by other animals, and psychological stress. Some estimates indicate that these individual animals make up the vast majority of animals in existence. An extensive amount of natural suffering has been described as an unavoidable consequence of Darwinian evolution, as well as the pervasiveness of reproductive strategies, which favor producing large numbers of offspring, with a low amount of parental care and of which only a small number survive to adulthood, the rest dying in painful ways, has led some to argue that suffering dominates happiness in nature.
A critical theory is any approach to humanities and social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to attempt to reveal, critique, and challenge or dismantle power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals. Some hold it to be an ideology, others argue that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation. Critical theory finds applications in various fields of study, including psychoanalysis, film theory, literary theory, cultural studies, history, communication theory, philosophy, and feminist theory.
David Olivier Whittier is an Anglo-French antispeciesist activist, writer and philosopher. He is the founder of the French journal Cahiers antispécistes, the annual event Veggie Pride, and the annual meeting Les Estivales de la question animale. Olivier coined the term "veggiephobia" and has authored numerous articles and delivered many conferences. An advocate of utilitarian and antinaturalist ethics, he identifies politically as a progressive.
The Cahiers antispécistes, originally called Cahiers antispécistes lyonnais, was a French-language journal published from 1991 to 2019, with the aim of disseminating antispeciesist ideas and stimulating debate on animal ethics, particularly on the distinction between animal liberation and ecology. It was published quarterly during its first years of existence, then annually. Issue 43, the last issue, was published in August 2019.
The relationship between animal ethics and environmental ethics concerns the differing ethical consideration of individual nonhuman animals—particularly those living in spaces outside of direct human control—and conceptual entities such as species, populations and ecosystems. The intersection of these two fields is a prominent component of vegan discourse.
Yves Bonnardel is a French activist, philosopher, writer and editor. He advocates for antispeciesism, libertarianism and egalitarianism. Bonnardel is one of the founding members of the French journal Cahiers antispécistes and of the events Veggie Pride, Les Estivales de la question animale and the march to close all slaughterhouses.
Thomas Lepeltier is a French independent scholar, essayist and science writer specializing in the history and philosophy of science and applied ethics, known in particular for his contributions to the field of animal law. He is the author of several philosophical works on animal ethics such as L'imposture intellectuelle des carnivores and of science history books including Darwin hérétique and Univers parallèles. Known initially as a science historian, he now mainly advocates in defense of animals in the French media.
Brigitte Gothière is a French animal rights and veganism activist. She is the director and spokesperson of the animal rights organization L214, which she co-founded with her husband Sébastien Arsac. Gothière was also the editor of the antispeciesist journal Cahiers antispécistes from 1998 to 2019.
Valéry Giroux is a Canadian philosopher, lawyer and animal rights activist from Quebec. She is an adjunct professor at the Université de Montréal Faculty of Law, associate director for the Centre de recherche en éthique, a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and an author and speaker on animal ethics issues and veganism, with a notable focus on the topic of antispeciesism through her co-editorship of the antispeciesist journal L'Amorce. Her philosophy argues for the equal moral consideration of all sentient beings, objects to the ethical notion that the utilization of non-human animals by humans as being morally permissible, and advocates for the individual right to freedom for all sentient beings, regardless of their species, emphasizing negative or republican freedom over positive freedom.
Catia Faria is a Portuguese moral philosopher and activist for animal rights and feminism. She is assistant professor in Applied Ethics at the Complutense University of Madrid, and is a board member of the UPF-Centre for Animal Ethics. Faria specialises in normative and applied ethics, especially focusing on how they apply to the moral consideration of non-human animals. In 2022, she published her first book, Animal Ethics in the Wild: Wild Animal Suffering and Intervention in Nature.
Renan Larue is a French writer, literary scholar and historian of vegetarianism. He is the author of several books on vegetarianism or veganism, including Le végétarisme et ses ennemis (2015), a history of vegetarianism from Pythagoras until the modern day, and La pensée végane: 50 regards sur la condition animale (2020). In 2016 he offered the first course in vegan studies in the United States at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Jérôme Segal is a French-Austrian essayist and historian, lecturer at Sorbonne University and a researcher and journalist in Vienna. He is also known for his contributions in the field of animal law. He is the author of several articles and books, in particular on Jewishness and animal advocacy.
The Montreal Declaration on Animal Exploitation is a manifesto published on October 4, 2022, in which more than 500 scholars and academics specialising in moral and political philosophy declare their support for the idea that an end to all forms of animal husbandry, fishing and exploitation in general is the only collective horizon that is both realistic and fair.