Publisher's Description:
This book further develops the interventionist literature on wild animal suffering using different theoretical frameworks, including some that have never previously been used to ground our positive duties to wild animals.
Though we’ve always known that the wild is a nasty place where predators lethally attack prey, only recently have most animal ethicists come to realize that most wild animals fail to flourish. In fact, what we know about wild animal reproduction suggests that the majority of sentient beings born into the world may not even live lives worth living. It’s not unreasonable for one to initially respond to the above with a sense of depressed resignation, but a growing number of ethicists believe that we both can and should intervene. The purpose of this book is to further develop the interventionist literature by bringing together philosophers who agree that we have significant duties to help wild animals, but who use different theoretical frameworks, or who disagree about the details, e.g., about the reasons that ground our obligations to help wild animals, about how those obligations should be classified, about the content of our obligations, about the means we should use to fulfill our obligations, etc.
This book will be an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers and students of animal ethics, animal welfare, environmental ethics, philosophy, and sustainability. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethics, Policy & Environment.
Positive Duties to Wild Animals (Abingdon: Routledge, 2025).
This collection was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethics, Policy & Environment (specifically Issue 2 of Volume 26). It contains single-authored contributions from Catia Faria, Josh Milburn, Eze Paez, and Jeff Sebo; and co-authored contributions from Mara-Daria Cojocaru and Alasdair Cochrane, and Oscar Horta and Dayrón Terán.
Publisher's Description:
Though many ethicists have the intuition that we should leave nature alone, Kyle Johannsen argues that we have a duty to research safe ways of providing large-scale assistance to wild animals. Using concepts from moral and political philosophy to analyze the issue of wild animal suffering (WAS), Johannsen explores how a collective, institutional obligation to assist wild animals should be understood. He claims that with enough research, genetic editing may one day give us the power to safely intervene without perpetually interfering with wild animals’ liberties.
Questions addressed include:
In what way is nature valuable and is intervention compatible with that value?
Is intervention a requirement of justice?
What are the implications of WAS for animal rights advocacy? What types of intervention are promising?
Expertly moving the debate about human relations with wild animals beyond its traditional confines, Wild Animal Ethics is essential reading for students and scholars of political philosophy and political theory studying animal ethics, environmental ethics, and environmental philosophy.
Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (New York: Routledge, 2021).
Was reviewed by Thomas Lepeltier in the July 2021 issue of the magazine Sciences Humaines.
Was reviewed by Elizabeth Mullineaux in volume 32 of the journal Animal Welfare.
Was reviewed by B.V.E Hyde in volume 33 of the journal Environmental Values.
Was the subject of a book symposium hosted by the Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law, and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E.) research group at Queen’s University. Revised versions of the symposium papers were published in the July 2022 issue of the journal Philosophia.
For information about the book, see the book’s Wikipedia page.
For interviews (and a talk) where I discuss my views about wild animal suffering:
“Wild and Farmed Animal Welfare: Connections, Conflicts, and Comparisons.” EAGxToronto (August 18, 2024).
“A Chat with Kyle Johannsen, Author of Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering.” Effective Altruism Forum (June 18, 2022).
“That’s Moral Progress – You Have to Interfere in Things.” Sentientist Conversations (June 12, 2021).
“Reducing Wild Animal Suffering with Kyle Johannsen.” Knowing Animals (March 22, 2021).
An interview about my book Wild Animal Ethics. New Books in Philosophy (January 11, 2021). In addition to interviewing me, the New Books Network made my book their January 11 ‘Book of the Day’.
Publisher's Description:
Conceptual analysis has fallen out of favor in political philosophy. The influence of figures like John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin has led political philosophy to focus on questions about what should be done, and to ignore questions about the usage of words.
In this book, Kyle Johannsen calls for renewed attention to the manner in which the word ‘justice’ is and should be used. Focusing on the late work of G.A. Cohen, Johannsen argues that debates over both the content and scope of egalitarian justice are, to a large extent, really just conceptual. Whereas some philosophers have been using the term ‘justice’ to refer to one among a plurality of values, others have been using it to refer to institutional rightness. Though the latter use of ‘justice’ is presently more dominant, he argues that much is to be gained from thinking of justice as one value among many. Doing so sheds light on the nature of both democracy and legitimacy, and, paradoxically, makes better sense of the idea that justice is ‘the first virtue of institutions’.
A Conceptual Investigation of Justice (New York: Routledge, 2018).
Was the subject of a book symposium held at the 2018 meeting of the Canadian Philosophical Association. After some revisions, the papers presented at the symposium were published in the December 2019 issue of the journal Dialogue.