A plea for the animals
Subtitle: the moral, philosophical, and evolutionary imperative to treat all beings with compassion
By: Matthieu Ricard ; translated by Sherab Chödzin Kohn
Contributors: Chödzin, Sherab, translator
Edition: First English edition.
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 341
ISBN-13: 9781611803051
Subjects: Compassion; Animal rights
Work titles: Plaidoyer pour les animaux
Description: A powerful and wide-ranging indictment of the treatment of animals by humans--and an eloquent plea for animal rights. -- Amazon.com Every cow just wants to be happy. Every chicken just wants to be free. Every bear, dog, or mouse experiences sorrow and feels pain as intensely as any of us humans do. In a compelling appeal to reason and human kindness, Matthieu Ricard here takes the arguments from his best-sellers Altruism and Happiness to their logical conclusion: that compassion toward all beings, including our fellow animals, is a moral obligation and the direction toward which any enlightened society must aspire. He chronicles the appalling sufferings of the animals we eat, wear, and use for adornment or “entertainment,” and submits every traditional justification for their exploitation to scientific evidence and moral scrutiny. What arises is an unambiguous and powerful ethical imperative for treating all of the animals with whom we share this planet with respect and compassion.
Notes: Translation of: Plaidoyer pour les animaux.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Translated from the French.
Table of contents: title: A brief history of the relations between humans and animals; title: Out of sight, out of mind; title: Everybody loses: effects of industrial breeding and meat eating on poverty, the environment and health; title: The real face of industrial animal breeding; title: Sorry excuses; title: The continuum of life; title: The mass killing of animals: genocide versus zoocide; title: A little side trip into the realm of moral judgment; title: The dilemma of animal experimentation; title: Illegal trade in wildlife; title: Animals as objects of entertainment: the will to power; title: Animal rights, human obligations; title: Conclusion: an appeal to reason and to human kindness.