Interspecies Justice in the History of Western Political Thought

With the collection we seek to advance our understanding of interspecies justice and the political obstacles that might stand in the way of its implementation. With the aim of extending theories of justice and related political concepts to animals - and dismantling those that are not flexible enough to encompass animals - the book adopts a view of animals as more than merely objects of moral concern. Rather, the book is committed to a view of animals as agentic, self-determining, other-regarding beings, who exist both as individuals and as members of human-nonhuman, and their own, (political) communities.

In re-reading the Western canon through the lens of animal agency, the book’s key contribution will be to critically analyse the foundations of Western political thought by de-centring the place of the human in this tradition. It seeks to highlight the explicit and implicit assumptions that canonical political thinkers have made about animals and how this has impacted on their thought - and the social, political, and economic systems that have arisen on the basis of these ideas. By so doing, we aim to determine whether, and to what extent, a more informed understanding of animals and their capacities might challenge long-held Western notions about justice. Ultimately, we ask ‘what remains?’ of the Western canon (both in relation to a negative and a positive legacy, and both inside and outside of Europe) when we challenge the notion that (certain privileged groups of) humans are both unique and uniquely valuable.

In addressing the question of how animals have been represented politically in the history of Western political thought, we take seriously how this canon has - rightly - been subject to challenge, criticism, and rejection. As such, in referring to it, we do not seek to reproduce and reconfirm it. Indeed, the promotion of a (superior) Western canon in political and intellectual thought has become untenable today. Not only have its oppressive orientation and consequences been called out, but current scholars such as Achille Mbembe, Susan Buck-Morss and Dipesh Chakrabarty, among many others, have also highlighted how both Western/European and non-Western/non-European perspectives have always permeated and shaped each other in their intermingling. The renunciation and questioning of such a Western canon, moreover, has undermined its central cohesiveness from within over recent decades, by producing a wealth of research on differing and dissenting perspectives and opinions in Western political and intellectual thought as well. LIkewise, it is clear that its legacy remains effective today, a problem that we need to reckon with.