columbia university press a communion of subjects animals in religion science and ethics nov 2006

Acknowledgment xiii Essay Abstracts xv Heritage of the Volume mary evelyn tucker 1 PrologueLoneliness and Presence thomas berry 5 Introduction paul waldau and kimberley patton 11 PART IA

A Communion of Subjects:

Animals in Religion,

Science, and Ethics

Paul Waldau Kimberley Patton

Editors

Columbia University Press

A Communion of Subjects

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York, Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 2006 Columbia University Press

All rights Reserved

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A communion of subjects : animals in religion, science, and ethics /

Paul Waldau, and Kimberley Patton, editors.

p cm.

Includes index.

isbn 0-231-13642-0 (clothbound : alk paper) — isbn 0-231-50997-9 (electronic)

1 Animals—Religious aspects I Waldau, Paul II Patton, Kimberley C (Kimberley Christine), 1958–

bl439.c66 2006 205'.693–dc22 2006008168

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper

Printed in the United States of America

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Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for Web sites

that may have expired or changed since the book was prepared

To Barley and Ryely, beloved golden dogsand to Emily, sweet rabbit

A communion unbrokenP.W and K.C.P

‘‘Indeed we must say that the universe is a communion of subjects

rather than a collection of objects.’’

Thomas Berry

Acknowledgment xiii

Essay Abstracts xv

Heritage of the Volume

mary evelyn tucker 1

PrologueLoneliness and Presence

thomas berry 5

Introduction

paul waldau and kimberley patton 11

PART IAnimals in Religion, Science, and Ethics:

In and Out of Time 25

‘‘Caught with ourselves in the

net of life and time’’:

Traditional Views of Animals in Religion

kimberley patton 27

Seeing the Terrain We Walk:

Features of the Contemporary Landscape of

‘‘Religion and Animals’’

paul waldau 40

PART IIAnimals in Abrahamic Traditions

JudaismSacrifice in Ancient Israel: Pure Bodies,

Domesticated Animals, and the Divine

Shepherdjonathan klawans 65

Hope for the Animal Kingdom:

A Jewish Visiondan cohn-sherbok 81Hierarchy, Kinship, and Responsibility:The Jewish Relationship to the Animal World

roberta kalechofsky 91Christianity

The Bestiary of Heretics:

Imaging Medieval Christian Heresywith Insects and Animalsbeverly kienzle 103

Descartes, Christianity,and Contemporary Speciesismgary steiner 117

Practicing the Presence of God:

A Christian Approach to Animalsjay mcdaniel 132Islam

‘‘This she-camel of God is a sign to you’’:Dimensions of Animals in Islamic Tradition

and Muslim Culturerichard foltz 149The Case of the Animals Versus Man:Towards an Ecology of Beingzayn kassam 160

c o n t e n t s

‘‘Oh that I could be a bird and fly,

I would rush to the Beloved’’:

Birds in Islamic Mystical Poetry

ali asani 170

PART IIIAnimals in Indian Traditions

HinduismCows, Elephants, Dogs, and Other Lesser

Embodiments of Ātman:

Reflections on Hindu Attitudes Toward

Nonhuman Animals

lance nelson 179

Strategies of Vedic Subversion:

The Emergence of Vegetarianism

in Post-Vedic India

edwin bryant 194

Buddhism

‘‘A vast unsupervised recycling plant’’:

Animals and the Buddhist Cosmos

ian harris 207

Snake-kings, Boars’ Heads,

Deer Parks, Monkey Talk:

Animals as Transmitters and Transformers in

Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Narratives

ivette vargas 218

JainismInherent Value without Nostalgia:

Animals and the Jaina Tradition

christopher chapple 241

Five-Sensed Animals in Jainism

kristi wiley 250

PART IVAnimals in Chinese TraditionsEarly Chinese Religion

‘‘Of a tawny bull we make offering’’:Animals in Early Chinese Religionroel sterckx 259Daoism

Daoism and Animals

e n anderson and lisa raphals 275

Confucianism

Of Animals and Humans:

The Confucian Perspectiverodney taylor 293

PART VEast Meets West:

Animals in Philosophy and Cultural History

309Human ExceptionalismVersus Cultural Elitism:

(Or ‘‘Three in the morning, four at night’’)

roger ames 311Humans and Animals:

The History from aReligio-Ecological Perspectivejordan paper 325

PART VIAnimals in Myth 333

A Symbol in Search of an Object:The Mythology of Horses in Indiawendy doniger 335

c o n t e n t s

Animals in African Mythology

kofi opoku 351

‘‘Why Umbulka Killed His Master’’:

Aboriginal Reconciliation and

the Australian Wild Dog

(Canis lupus dingo)

ian mcintosh 360

PART VII

Animals in Ritual 371

Knowing and Being Known by Animals:

Indigenous Perspectives on Personhood

Raven Augury from Tibet to Alaska:

Dialects, Divine Agency, and

the Bird’s-Eye View

eric mortensen 423

PART VIII

Animals in Art 437

On the Dynamis of Animals, or

How Animalium Became Anthropos

diane apostolos-cappadona 439

PART IX

Animals as Subjects:

Ethical Implications for Science 459

Wild Justice, Social Cognition, Fairness,and Morality: A Deep Appreciationfor the Subjective Lives of Animalsmarc bekoff 461

From Cognition to Consciousnessdonald griffin 481Are Animals Moral Agents?

Evolutionary Building Blocks of Morality

marc hauser 505

Ethics, Biotechnology, and Animalsbernard rollin 519

Animal Experimentationkenneth shapiro 533

PART XAre Animals ‘‘for’’ Humans?

The Issues of Factory Farming 545Caring for Farm Animals:

Pastoralist Ideals in an Industrialized World

david fraser 547Agriculture, Livestock, and Biotechnology:

Values, Profits, and Ethicsmichael fox 556

Agribusiness: Farming Without Culture

gary valen 568

PART XIContemporary Challenges:

Law, Social Justice, and the Environment

Animals and the LawAnimal Law and Animal Sacrifice:Analysis of the U.S Supreme Court Ruling onSantería Animal Sacrifice in Hialeah

steven wise 585

c o n t e n t sAnimals and Social Justice

‘‘A very rare and difficult thing’’:

Ecofeminism, Attention to Animal Suffering,

and the Disappearance of the Subject

carol adams 591

Interlocking Oppressions: The Nature of

Cruelty to Nonhuman Animals and its

Relationship to Violence Toward Humans

kim roberts 605

Animal Protection and

the Problem of Religion

peter singer 616

Animals and Global Stewardship

Earth Charter Ethics and Animals

steven rockefeller 621

Pushing Environmental Justice

to a Natural Limitpaul waldau 629Conclusion

A Communion of Subjects and aMultiplicity of Intelligencesmary evelyn tucker 645

EpilogueThe Dance of Awejane goodall 651List of Contributors 657Index 667

The editors wish to thank the extraordinary

group of contributors to this volume; their

scholarship, insight, and humanity have offered

us a humbling learning experience as we worked

together with them through the years on A

Communion of Subjects To Thomas Berry,

geo-logian and wise teacher, thank you for

provid-ing the inspiration that drew the various

sec-tors of this book into communion and

coher-ence Our deep gratitude is due to Professors

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, directors

of the Forum on Religion and Ecology, and

to Richard Clugston of the Center for Respect

of Life and the Environment (CRLE) for their

vision and leadership in the area of religion

and ecology, and in particular for their support

of the conference on Religion and Animals at

Harvard University in 1999 Thanks to

Profes-sor Tu Wei-ming of Harvard University and to

the Yen Ching Institute for their sponsorship

of the same conference, which was the genesis

for the present book The funds for the tion editing and for many of the illustrations andpermissions were generously provided by theCRLE and the Religion and Animals Institute

produc-at Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine LeslieBialler, our valiant copyeditor at Columbia Uni-versity Press, brought intelligence, care, and hu-mor to a harrowing task Finally, our heartfeltthanks to the wonderful Wendy Lochner, senioreditor of religion and philosophy at ColumbiaUniversity Press, whose profound interest in thisproject has been steadfast from the beginning,and whose encouragement has sustained us tothe end

To all the creatures of the earth, human andnonhuman, thank you for bearing witness to thecomplexity and power of life itself, as it is ex-pressed in so many forms and subject to so manyvisions: religious, scientific, and ethical.paul waldau and kimberley patton

Essay Abstracts

‘‘A very rare and difficult thing’’:

Ecofeminism, Attention to Animal Suffering,

and the Disappearance of the Subject

carol adams

This ecofeminist exploration addresses two

out-of-place cows and what they teach us about

sev-eral interrelated issues regarding the religious

imagination and human relations with

non-humans The first cow was fashioned by

film-maker David Lynch for the ‘‘Cow Parade,’’ a

collection of artily-painted sculptured bovines

scattered throughout New York City Lynch’s

painted cow, which had ‘‘Eat My Fear’’

writ-ten across its hacked, decapitated and

disem-boweled body, was on display only two and a

half hours, but caused children to cry and

sub-sequently was kept under wraps in a warehouse

The other cow, an actual cow, jumped a 6-foot

fence in Cincinnati in the winter of 2002 to

es-cape a meatpacking plant and then, until she was

captured, ran free in a city park for 10 days The

day after Easter, she appeared in a parade thatcelebrated the start of the baseball season Nowcalled, ‘‘Cinci Freedom,’’ she received a key tothe city as part of the city’s festivities She wasthen transported to an animal sanctuary to liveout her natural life unmolested by meat packers,while many of the humans who celebrated herfreedom headed to the ballpark to watch base-ball and chomp down on some hot dogs Eco-feminist insights offer assistance in unravelingthe paradoxes concerning nonhuman sufferinginherent in these stories Specifically, these in-sights provide a conceptual understanding ofthe dualistic opposition between ‘‘humans’’ and

‘‘nonhumans/animals,’’ the issues of ied versus embodied responses to suffering, andthe positive nature of grief as a response to thedeath of nonhumans This essay also reviews thefruits of ecofeminist-animal rights theory, such

disembod-as found in the author’s application of the cepts ‘‘absent referent’’ and ‘‘mass term’’ to thefate of nonhuman animals to be consumed as

e s s a y a b s t r a c t s

food It concludes by recommending the

cul-tivation of ‘‘attention’’ to the suffering of

non-humans

Human Exceptionalism Versus Cultural Elitism:

‘‘Three in the morning, four at night’’

roger ames

In classical Western thought, from Aristotle and

the Stoics through Aquinas and Descartes, the

notion of ‘‘human exceptionalism’’—human

be-ings are an exception to nature, both in kind and

quality—has been a persistent theme This

sumption has been reinforced by theological

as-sumptions that make the non-human world,

in-cluding animals, a means to a human end The

chain of being, pathetical fallacy, the sanctity of

human life are all expressions of a world in which

animals have been essentially defined, and

rele-gated to the down side of a familiar dualism

I want to identify and explore philosophical

assumptions in East Asian philosophies broadly,

that locate the animal world in a fundamentally

different natural cosmology There are several

assumptions that inform this natural cosmology

that seem inclusive and liberating: yin-yang

correlative categories rather than exclusive

dual-isms, a this-world sensibility rather than a

two-world ‘‘reality/appearance’’ dichotomy, ars

con-textualis (‘‘the art of contextualizing’’) rather

than linear teleology, bottom-up emergent

har-mony rather than top-down exclusive

righteous-ness, philosophical syncretism rather than

sys-tematic philosophy, the way rather than the

truth Unless we academics are willing to allow

that ideas have little determinative force, how

can we reconcile such seemingly liberating

sen-sibilities with the accusation that the Sinic

cul-tures must take some real responsibility for

be-ing a market that fuels the depletion of

endan-gered species?

There is a real human elitism in East Asian

hierarchical thinking Confucius, in the face

of social and political turmoil, refuses to

with-draw because ‘‘I cannot run with the birds and

beasts Am I not one among the people of thisworld?’’ Mencius claims that the difference be-tween the human being and the beast is ‘‘in-finitesimal,’’ and that in the absence of culture,the human being is deplorably animal Xunzi ar-gues that the human being is a ‘‘super-animal’’that has rescued itself from ugly animal behav-iors through the creation of a moral mind It cer-tainly can be argued that in all three cases, thehuman ‘‘becoming’’ is a cultural achievementrather than a natural kind, but this achievementstill gives the human being privilege of placewithin this world view

Daoism and Animals

e n anderson and lisa raphalsAnimals are mentioned very frequently in Dao-ist texts, but usually in a metaphoric or instruc-tional way; animal parables are used to illus-trate points The world reflected in these stories

is largely pragmatic and rural; animals are forfood and work However, it is also a world inwhich imaginary and fantastic animals have alarge share, and in which ordinary animals havemoral, spiritual, or even shamanistic qualities.The early sources that launched the Daoist tra-dition use animals largely in teaching stories.Later texts, especially in the Six Dynasties pe-riod, often present Daoist figures as having spe-cial relationships with animals They keep tamecranes and ride on them, or they can transforminto various animals for certain purposes Thehuman and animal realms are not sharply sepa-rated Classical Chinese has no word translat-ing the English ‘‘animal(s).’’ Little explicit moralcomment attaches to human use of animals Byimplication, it is the human dao (and thereforenatural and proper) for humans to eat animalsand utilize them for work However, both widerDaoist principles and the explicit conservationideology of early syncretic texts seem to imply

a general sense of respect for the animal world.Wanton slaughter and waste would probably becondemned

e s s a y a b s t r a c t s

On the Dynamis of Animals, Or How

Animalium Became Anthropos

diane apostolos-cappadona

This essay offers a consideration of the visual

process of moving through predominantly

Western art history, acknowledging that the

earliest images reveal a recognition of the power

and dignity of animals in their own right,

fol-lowed by a gradual cultural shift toward the

do-mestication of the animals until they become

sympathetic images of the human condition and

thereby reflect a total impingement of their

indi-vidual dignity and integrity Consequently, the

animal is no longer animalium but anthropos,

no longer icon but image, no longer symbol but

emblem An analogous process can arguably be

detected in the humanization of religion, of

re-ligious ritual, and of (Western) culture This is

not simply the issue of the human craving

iden-tification with the animal or a form of

sympa-thetic magic but, more important, a denigration

of the beauty, power, and integrity of the animal

until it is both owned and controlled by human

beings, a constructed creature rather than an

au-tonomous subject that was frequently ascribed

divine powers

‘‘Oh that I could be a bird and fly, I would rush

to the Beloved’’: Birds in Islamic Mystical Poetry

ali asani

This essay explores the principal themes and

imagery associated with birds in Islamic

mys-tical poetry After a brief examination of the

Quranic basis for the special significance

ac-corded to birds in Sufi poetry, it discusses bird

symbolism in the poems of various Muslim

authors including the Persian poet Farid

ad-Din Attar (d.1220) who composed one of the

most brilliant mystical epics ever written on this

theme, The Conference of the Birds

Wild Justice, Social Cognition, Fairness,and Morality: A Deep Appreciation forthe Subjective Lives of Animalsmarc bekoff

In this essay I will consider various aspects ofthe rapidly growing field called cognitive eth-ology I will conclude with discussion of somemoral implications of the study of animal cog-nition that I call ‘‘wild justice.’’ I will not bedirectly concerned with consciousness, per se,for a concentration on consciousness deflects at-tention from other, and in many cases moreinteresting, tractable problems in the study ofnonhuman animal (hereafter animal) cognition.After presenting some general background ma-terial concerning the ethological approach tothe study of animal behavior, I will considerhow, when, where, and why individuals fromdifferent taxa exchange social information con-cerning their beliefs, desires, and goals My mainexamples come from studies of social play inmammals and antipredator behavior in birds Iwill concentrate on nonprimates so as to givereaders a taste for broad comparative discussion.Basically, I argue that although not all individu-als always display behavior patterns that are bestexplained by appeals to intentionality, it is mis-leading to argue that such explanations have noplace in the study of animal cognition A plural-istic approach is needed and alternative explana-tions all deserve equal consideration

Prologue: Loneliness and Presencethomas berry

The ‘‘communion of subjects’’ goes beyond theobvious meanings of sharing and relation withbeings outside the human race In fact, since wecannot be truly ourselves in any adequate man-ner without all our companion beings through-out the earth, the larger community constitutesour greater self Thus, our own identities can

be drawn from such a connection The presence

of other, nonhuman beings—the creatures with

e s s a y a b s t r a c t s

whom we share the planet—helps us see

pre-occupation with humans alone is not just

debili-tating, but also a betrayal of human possibility

The recognition that the universe is composed

of subjects with whom to commune, not of

ob-jects to exploit, releases us from an isolated,

de-bilitating loneliness It promotes recovery of

an-cient insights about the value of all life and even

of Earth itself In such matters, religious

tradi-tions have a crucial role to play, raising awareness

of ethics, daily life choices, and wider ecology

The Emergence of Vegetarianism in

Hindu Textual Sources

edwin bryant

The essay will examine the history of animals

in orthodox Hindu Sanskrit textual sources in

terms of their appropriateness as objects of

hu-man consumption It will chart the

develop-ment of attitudes toward meat-eating from the

sacrificial culture of the oldest Vedic period to

the emergence of a vegetarian ethic in later

peri-ods The essay will explore the tension between

the hiṃsā, ‘‘violence,’’ constitutional to the

sac-rificial requirements of the Vedic age, and the

ahiṃsā, ‘‘non-violence,’’ essential to most mokṣa

—‘‘liberation-’’ centered religious cultures of

the post-Vedic age

Inherent Value without Nostalgia:

Animals and the Jaina Tradition

christopher chapple

According to Jaina cosmology, the niche

occu-pied by animal life forms is continuous with the

human realm Humans have experienced

count-less lifetimes as humans and, because no one can

enjoy more than seven consecutive births as a

human, will most likely experience animal life

in the future In the stories of the Ṭīrthaṅkaras,

the twenty-four great teachers of the Jaina faith,

animals play an important role Jaina

iconog-raphy depicts each of these Jaina leaders in

as-sociation with a particular animal When he nounced the world, Mahāvīra, the most recentṬīrthaṅkara, descended from a palanquin orna-mented with animals’ portraits The traditiondescribes his qualities, upon his awakening, asevoking those of powerful animals Animal talesare used throughout the tradition to inspire ethi-cal behavior The Jainas have established an ex-tensive network of animal hospitals and shel-ters (pinjrapoles) for the care of aged or infirmanimals However, this compassion for animals

re-is not sentimental In general, because of their

‘‘live and let live’’ philosophy, Jainas do not keeppets, as this would be considered a form of slav-ery or entrapment Furthermore, they will notengage in the practice of mercy killing of suffer-ing animals, presuming that such action wouldinterfere with the natural karmic process earned

by the animal through past actions less, the Jainas have been champions of animalprotection in India and revere animals for theiractual and potential spiritual attainments

Nonethe-Hope for the Animal Kingdom: A Jewish Visiondan cohn-sherbok

In this new millennium, serious questions arebeing raised about the treatment of animals Inthe past, animals were viewed as provided forhuman use Yet, the Jewish tradition challengessuch a human-centered vision and promotes acompassionate and sympathetic regard for theanimal world This essay charts the development

of such an attitude from biblical times to thepresent and explores its application in modernsociety

A Symbol in Search of an Object:

The Mythology of Horses in Indiawendy doniger

Most of the peoples who entered India entered

on horseback and then continued to importhorses into India: the people formerly known

e s s a y a b s t r a c t s

as Indo-Europeans (who brought their horses

with them), the people who became the

Mu-ghals (who imported Arabian horses from

Cen-tral Asia and Persia, overland and by sea) and

the British (who imported Australian Walers)

There is no native, village tradition of horses in

India as there is among the natives of Ireland

or Egypt, where the people kept horses Yet the

symbol of the horse became embedded in the

folk consciousness and then stayed there even

after its referent, the horse, had vanished from

the scene, even after the foreigners had folded

their tents and gone away To this day, horses

are worshipped all over India by people who do

not have horses and seldom even see a horse, in

places where the horse has never been truly a

part of the land

A Marxist might view the survival of the

my-thology of the aristocratic horse as an

imposi-tion of the lies of the rulers upon the people,

an exploitation of the masses by saddling them

with a mythology that never was theirs nor

will ever be for their benefit, a foreign

my-thology that distorts the native conceptual

sys-tem, compounding the felony of the invasion

itself But the horse-myths of non-horsey people

may pose a challenge to materialist or

Marx-ist interpretations of mythology: the symbolism

has power even where there can be no actual

material basis for its importance to the people

A Freudian, on the other hand, might see in

the native acceptance of this foreign mythology

the process of projection or identification by

which one overcomes a feeling of anger or

re-sentment or impotence toward another person

by assimilating that person into oneself,

be-coming the other Though there is much to be

said for these interpretations, I would want to

modify them in several respects I would point

out that myths about oppressive foreigners and

their horses sometimes became a positive factor

in the lives of those whom they conquered or

dominated

‘‘This she-camel of God is a sign to you’’:

Dimensions of Animals in IslamicTradition and Muslim Culturerichard foltz

Islam, as an Abrahamic faith, has much in mon with Christianity and Judaism All threemonotheistic faiths consider humans to have aspecial status within the hierarchy of creation,distinct from and above other animals How-ever, Islam offers some important differences.Most notably, animals in Islam are believed tohave souls, and to differ from humans only

com-in that they lack volition Islamic tradition com-cludes important references to nonhuman ani-mals in the areas of philosophy, literature, andthe sciences

in-Agriculture, Livestock, and Biotechnology:Values, Profits, and Ethics

michael foxThe intensive production of animals on ‘‘fac-tory farms’’—the bioconcentration camps of theagribusiness food industry—have many hiddencosts and serious long-term consequences forconsumers, the environment, and to rural com-munities The costs and consequences, now be-ing compounded by the nascent ‘‘life science’’(biotechnology) industry, are documented withtwo intentions: first, to demonstrate that theyare the product of an outmoded, if not patho-logical, attitude toward life; second, to contrastthis attitude with the spirit and practice of or-ganic agriculture, which provides basic bioethi-cal principles for a more humane, sustainable,socially just, and healthful approach to meet-ing the nutritional needs of a growing consumerpopulace

Animal agriculture in the West has traditionally

been guided by a pastoralist ethic, descended

from cultural traditions evident in the Bible,

which focuses on the relationship between

ani-mal keepers and domestic aniani-mals in their care

Pastoralist ideals attach value to diligent care

of animals, and they create an unspoken moral

contract that allows people to use animals as

long as appropriate care is provided Today, this

traditional value system is being severely

chal-lenged by competing industrial and

market-related values Market pressures, combined with

technological innovation, have led to (1)

restric-tive environments for farm animals, (2)

elimi-nation of inessential amenities such as bedding

and exercise, and (3) increased automation and

less human–animal contact These changes have

led to widespread public concern Critics

ac-cuse animal producers of having callously

aban-doned traditional animal care values Many

ani-mal producers, however, continue to espouse

traditional values, yet feel compelled by market

forces to use the predominant quasi-industrial

production methods Animal producers, and

so-ciety generally, urgently need a new moral vision

of our relationship with animals to allow

ani-mal agriculture to proceed in a manner that

is ethically satisfactory for both producers and

consumers To be effective, this new vision will

have to set limits on the ability of market forces

to override traditional ethical values To be

ac-cepted, it will likely need to be compatible with

traditional pastoralist values

Epilogue: The Dance of Awe

jane goodall

Based on her extensive, now famous fieldwork

with the wild chimpanzees of Tanzania, this

in-terview with Jane Goodall offers her most

fo-cused reflections to date on the possibility of

a lived spiritual dimension of animal life entific prejudices regarding the ‘‘impossibility’’

Sci-of animal consciousness and emotion, ing throughout her education at Cambridge inthe mid-twentieth century and up to this day,forced Goodall while a student to suppress whatshe believed to be true Based on her encoun-ters with chimpanzees’ unique, responsive ritualdance on the occasion of heavy rainfall andeven more spectacularly to a jungle waterfall, shespeculates that animals may feel something akin

persist-to what we call ‘‘religious awe.’’

From Cognition to Consciousnessdonald griffin

This essay proposes an extension of tific horizons in the study of animal behaviorand cognition to include conscious experiences.From this perspective animals are best appre-ciated as actors or active ‘‘subjects’’ rather than

scien-as pscien-assive objects A major adaptive function oftheir central nervous systems may be simple, butconscious and rational, thinking about alterna-tive actions and choosing those the animal be-lieves will get what it wants, or avoid what it dis-likes or fears Versatile adjustment of behavior

in response to unpredictable challenges providesstrongly suggestive evidence of simple but con-scious thinking Especially significant objectivedata from animal thoughts and feelings are al-ready available, once communicative signals arerecognized as evidence of the subjective experi-ences they often convey to others The scien-tific investigation of human consciousness hasundergone a renaissance in the 1990s, as ex-emplified by numerous symposia, books, andtwo new journals The neural correlates of cog-nition appear to be basically similar in all cen-tral nervous systems Therefore, other speciesequipped with very similar neurons, synapses,and glia may well be conscious Simple per-ceptual and rational conscious thinking may be

e s s a y a b s t r a c t s

at least as important for small animals as for

those with large enough brains to store

exten-sive libraries of behavioral rules Perhaps only

in ‘‘megabrains’’ is most of the information

pro-cessing unconscious

Knowing and Being Known by Animals:

Indigenous Perspectives on Personhood

john grim

This essay seeks to open understanding of such

central symbols as the horse and buffalo in

the formation of a healer among the Plains

Lakota, as well as ritual modes in sub-Arctic

Cree hunting divination, in which hunters speak

of hunted animals using the erotic languages

of human love The essay also explores the

Co-lumbia River Plateau Salish Winter Dance, in

which visionary songs reenact the knowing of

animals in the acquisition of spiritual power,

and being known by animals in ethical

reflec-tion upon food and responsibility to the natural

world Finally, this essay considers the embodied

speech relationships of ancestors and animals

among the Dogon peoples of sub-Saharan

Af-rica These rituals draw attention to different

modes of human–animal interdependencies, or

communion, such as human sovereignty in the

context of animal ‘‘nations,’’ erotic intimacies,

an animal’s capacity to respond to human need

by transmitting cosmological forces in a song,

and the ways in which animals are understood

as assisting humans during the times and spaces

of transitions In four words: person, intimacy,

transition, and ecstasy

‘‘A vast unsupervised recycling plant’’:

Animals and the Buddhist Cosmos

ian harris

Buddhism is a two and a half thousand year old

tradition that has flourished in most regions of

Asia Its heritage has been preserved in written

texts, architectural structures, political systems,and village customs Not unsurprisingly, its view

of animals is complex and continually shifting.Nevertheless, there are some underlying conti-nuities, and this essay will provide a clear over-view of the following central issues:

1 Sentience in Buddhist cosmology

2 Traditional classificatory kind, animals, and other beings

models—human-3 Rebirth and the conservation of sentience

4 Ethical implications

5 Hostile and exemplary animals

6 Animals in Buddhist modernism

Are Animals Moral Agents? A History

of Temptation and Controlmarc hauser

In this essay I follow the footsteps of ImmanuelKant and look at the problem of morality theway a chemist would look at the structure of

a crystal By decomposing morality into some

of its core ingredients, we can better assess thecapacities of animals to engage in moral action

In particular, I begin by making a distinction tween moral agents and patients, arguing thatthe former depends upon the capacity to take

be-on respbe-onsibilities I then explore the nature ofanimal emotion, the capacity to inhibit actions,and the ability to take into account what othersbelieve and desire Although animals have some

of the core moral ingredients, they appear tolack the capacity for understanding what othersthink, have an impoverished capacity for inhi-bition, and appear not to make the distinctionbetween right and wrong In this sense, animalsare not moral agents They do, however, deserveour complete dedication as moral patients, or-ganisms with emotion who deserve to be pro-tected from harm

e s s a y a b s t r a c t s

Hierarchy, Kinship, and Responsibility:

The Jewish Relationship to the Animal World

roberta kalechofsky

This essay will explore two basic tenets that

have guided Judaism’s relationship to the animal

world The first tenet is that all animals share

in and reflect God’s justice and mercy The

sec-ond tenet was developed within the parameters

of a hierarchy that posited the human race at

the center of the moral drama and, at the same

time, sustained a kinship with and responsibility

for, primarily, domestic animals The essay will

demonstrate how this position gave rise to a

multitude of laws (commandments or mitzvot)

that regulated that human responsibility This

position, however, was developed between two

poles of religious thought that will be

exam-ined: the belief that the animal was created ‘‘in

order that good should be done to it’’; and the

tradition that human beings were given

permis-sion to eat meat This permispermis-sion is

tradition-ally viewed as related to conditions in the

post-flood world, as provisional, and ultimately

con-trary to a messianic and redeemed world Eating

meat, though tolerated, has always been viewed

as morally debatable

The Case of the Animals Versus Man:

Toward an Ecology of Being

zayn kassam

The Case of the Animals Versus Man, a

tenth-century work written by a group of

philosophi-cally minded Muslim authors called the Ikhwān

al-Ṣafā’ (‘‘the Brethren of Purity’’) raises the

is-sue of human maltreatment of animals, and

whether it is at all justified for humans to

mar-shal the bodies of beasts for their own purpose

Were animals created to serve humans as

ar-gued in sacred texts, and should they be

sub-jected to enslavement and maltreatment as a

consequence? While ultimately the text argues

in favor of the first (animals were created to serve

humans), the authors nonetheless subversivelydraw attention to the symbiotic relationship be-tween the world of humans and the animal king-dom and give humans pause to think on how all

of God’s creatures might be treated regardless

of their rank in a divinely ordained ontologicalhierarchy

The Bestiary of Heretics: Imaging MedievalChristian Heresy with Insects and Animalsbeverly kienzle

Twelfth-century Europe experienced a able upsurge of popular heresy and a vast pro-duction of anti-heretical literature that adoptedcreatures such as the moth and the wolf in thesearch for biblical authorities to bolster its ar-guments The Western church, challenged bycharismatic itinerant preachers, lay apostolicmovements, and the Cathar counter-church, re-sponded with pen, pulpit, and crusade In sodoing, it relied on the learning of the ‘‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance,’’ the flowering of cathe-dral schools that continued and developed pa-tristic exegesis and crystallized various genres ofbooks, such as bestiaries and aviaries Medievalauthors drew from biblical, ancient, and patris-tic sources to moralize animal lore and apply

remark-it to preaching and wrremark-iting against heresy Themedieval imagination, in its inheritance of Pla-tonism, possessed a ‘‘symbolist mentality’’ thattransformed animate creatures into figures forheretics From the lowly moth to the wily fox,these creatures and their behavior patterns came

to symbolize dissident Christians and their duct This essay explores the imaging of heresywith insects and animals during this key period

con-of European religious history and analyzes howmoral consequences were drawn from descrip-tions of animal behavior

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Sacrifice in Ancient Israel: Pure Bodies,

Domesticated Animals, and the Divine Shepherd

jonathan klawans

Various biases, both religious and cultural, have

had a negative impact on scholarship on

sacri-fice in the Hebrew Bible As a result, too many

analyses focus exclusively on the killing of the

animal, without recognizing that these rituals

had religious meaning to those who practiced

them This study will examine the sacrificial

pro-cess broadly conceived, including both the

pre-paratory rites of purification and the

prerequi-site rearing of the animals to be offered When

the scope is widened, it becomes much easier

to imagine what these rituals meant in ancient

Israel By lording over their herds and flocks—

and by selecting which animals will be given to

the altar—ancient Israelites were reflecting on

their own relationship to their God, whom they

imagined as their shepherd

Hunting the Wren: A Sacred Bird in Ritual

elizabeth lawrence

The wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) was once the

object of an annual ritual carried out in

cer-tain areas of Bricer-tain and Europe in which the

bird was hunted and killed, generally around the

time of the winter solstice The seasonal

slaugh-ter of this tiny song bird at first seems

paradoxi-cal, for throughout its range the wren is

gener-ally beloved and protected by strict prohibitions

against harming it Killing the wren, however,

undoubtedly originated as the solemn ritual

sac-rifice of a revered creature performed in order to

bring about the spring return of the sun’s light

and warmth, ensuring the renewal of all life on

earth Over time, the original motivation for the

sacrifice of the wren was lost, and new meanings

were superimposed upon a ritual that continued

to be carried out as an important part of popular

tradition.Vestiges of the wren-hunt ritual persist

today

Analysis of the elements of the wren hunt

in conjunction with consideration of the bird’ssalient attributes and people’s reactions to thoseattributes sheds light on the process whereby aliving creature in the natural world was trans-formed into a sacred being who was the object ofbeliefs that were expressed in an elaborate ritual.Consideration of the wren’s visible character-istics that were believed to indicate the pres-ence of invisible inner power helps to elucidatethe process whereby a certain animal becomeendowed with religious significance The wren-hunt ritual, with its various attendant ceremo-nies, demonstrates that the input of both animaland human in a particular human–animal inter-action determines the symbolic status of thatanimal, which in turn influences treatment ofthe species in society It is often the cognitiveimage of a species, not its actual biological traits,that motivates people’s interactions with ani-mals In today’s world, that image can influencethe fate of the species—determining whether itwill face extinction or be allowed to survive

Practicing the Presence of God:

A Christian Approach to Animalsjay mcdaniel

A seventeenth-century Christian monk, nowknown as Brother Lawrence, once spoke ofChristian living as ‘‘practicing the presence ofGod.’’ The subject of my essay is ‘‘practicingthe presence of God’’ in relation to our closestbiological and spiritual kin, often called ‘‘theanimals.’’

As I use the phrase, ‘‘practicing the presence’’

is more than ‘‘thinking about animals’’ and ing compassionately toward animals.’’ It lies inbeing aware of them, in seeing them, as subjects

‘‘act-of their own lives, as valued by God for their ownsakes, and as ways through which, in humility,Christians receive divine presence In OrthodoxChristianity, this way of seeing other creatures

is called ‘‘the contemplation of nature.’’

e s s a y a b s t r a c t s

ing to Kallistos Ware, it involves an awareness

of other beings in their ‘‘suchness’’ and also an

awareness of these beings as sacramental

pres-ences through which holy light shines This

con-templation is understood to be a complement

to that ‘‘contemplation of God’’ which occurs in

silent prayer

My thesis is that, in the contemporary

set-ting, there are many theologies available within

Christianity that can help Christians ‘‘practice

the presence,’’ ranging from Orthodox to

Evan-gelical to Protestant And there are several

guide-lines for compassionate acting in relation to

ani-mals, most specifically those developed by the

Annecy Conference in France under the

aus-pices of the World Council of Churches But

what is most needed is an emphasis on

prayer-ful living, on fresh ways of seeing, that can

com-plement and support such thinking and acting

I will discuss such ways of seeing, emphasizing

their connectedness to traditions of

contempla-tive prayer

Ridiculus Mus: Of Mice and Men

in Roman Thought

christopher mcdonough

Although the ominous significance of the mouse

in the classical world was frequently noted by

the ancients, no study has satisfactorily

ex-plained why in particular the mouse should be

so reckoned Of great significance in

under-standing the foreboding status of the mouse is

the widespread belief in its autochthonous

ori-gin As a creature of the earth, the mouse was

marked by tremendous fecundity, yet at the

same time it was intimately associated with

death The appearance of mice in several

Etrus-can tombs is especially noteworthy in this

con-text Likewise important is the association of

mice with domestic architecture: it was a sign of

a house’s imminent collapse when mice deserted

it, thus indicating the connection of mouse and

house The mouse, living as it does within the

walls of the house, is easily seen as a creature

of borders, crossing without difficulty betweenthe realms of public and private, just as it passesover the boundary of life and death As a mar-ginal entity, the mouse poses a problem for theRoman religious system, which prefers definitecategories to ambiguity This inability to fit intotraditional Roman taxonomy of thought bringsthe mouse’s ominous status more sharply intofocus While we might smile along with Horace

at the ridiculus mus, its liminality was a source

of Roman cultural anxiety, surely no laughingmatter

‘‘Why Umbulka Killed His Master’’: AboriginalReconciliation and the Australian WildDog ( Canis Lupus Dingo)

ian mcintoshIts origins are a mystery About four thousandyears ago, the dingo appears in Australia anderadicates the thylacine (zebra-striped nativedog) By the time of European colonization in

1788, the Tasmanian Tiger, as the thylacine wasknown, was a memory in northern Australia.The only evidence of its former presence was inancient Aboriginal rock paintings in places likeKakadu National Park Yet despite this demise,the new invader inspired a richness and variety

of narratives almost unparalleled in Aboriginalcosmology Apart from the perhaps the watersnake or rainbow serpent, there is no other to-temic symbol of such power and import Thisessay looks at the ways in which Aboriginesmake reference to this animal in narratives thatconvey a profound message about themselvesand their relationships with others—a nation-wide movement of shared ideas that reached itsfullest expression at the time of first contact withnon-Aborigines

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Raven Augury from Tibet to Alaska: Dialects,

Divine Agency, and the Bird’s-Eye View

eric mortensen

Ravens (Corvus corax), through their speech and

behavior, serve as divinatory messengers in Tibet

and Mongolia, and among religious cultures as

diverse within Central Asia as the Naxi to the

Tuvinians The morphology of raven folklore

across the various cultural regions of

northeast-ern Asia and northwestnortheast-ern native North

Amer-ica, across the Bering Strait, witnesses the raven

becoming a deity, a mischievous creator, a

trans-former How and why and when did the raven

come to be seen and heard, religiously, in such

differing ways? Historical migration of peoples,

transmission of folklore, and the diffusion of

di-verse religions, all conspire to complicate a lucid

analysis of the changing role of the raven

Never-theless, upon close scrutiny of textual and oral

evidence, we find that the distinction between

medium and divinity is itself inexact and

mal-leable This essay scrutinizes the shifting role

of the raven, postulating that the speech and

behavior of the bird informs its diverse

reli-gious roles Furthermore, given raven

intelli-gence, communication, and active participation

in the construction of human religious

tradi-tions, can we wonder about the raven’s divine

agency? Can ritual, with a syntax, reactivate

myth?

Cows, Elephants, Dogs, and other Lesser

Embodiments of Ātman: Reflections on Hindu

Attitudes toward Nonhuman Animals

lance nelson

This essay will explore dominant Hindu

atti-tudes toward nonhuman animals as revealed in

major Sanskrit texts of classical Hinduism, such

as the Hindu law books (dharmaśāstras), the

epics, the Purāṇas, and the literature of Yoga

and Vedānta, as well as in other sources It will

be shown that, from the point of view of

con-temporary ecological and animal-rights

para-digms, the Hindu material is ambivalent, ticularly in terms of its notions of hierarchy

par-Animals in African Mythologykofi opoku

The mythology of Africa is the product of theunceasing wonder of our African ancestors whoraised essentially fundamental questions aboutthe origin and nature of the universe, humandestiny, and the meaning of the many experi-ences we have in life This wondering engen-dered a reflection on the fundamental aspects ofhuman existence and experience The answers tothe questions that they posed came in the form

of timeless stories that expressed profound andmultidimensional truths, which helped them tounderstand their place in the cosmos and theirrelations with their environment, both physicaland spiritual

These timeless stories reflected a keen ness of their environment, and since they be-lieved themselves to be interconnected with,and interdependent on, all that existed they didnot consider themselves as separate beings.Animals, who were credited with conscious-ness and with whom humans could communi-cate, feature prominently in African mythology

aware-as agents in creation, companions of the first man beings, messengers of the spirits; and theywere considered to be altogether indispensable

hu-in the human quest for meanhu-ing, which has notbeen rendered obsolete by humanity’s increas-ing technological advancement These storiescontinue to speak to the human condition

Humans and Animals: The History from

a Religio-Ecological Perspectivejordan paper

Humans, being animals, have been intimatelyinterrelated with other animals from their in-ception as a recognizable species For most ofhuman history, humans understood the ani-

e s s a y a b s t r a c t s

mals, as well as plants, on which their lives

de-pended as superior numinous beings and related

to these beings ritually Horticulture,

agriture, herding, industrial, and postindustrial

cul-tures led to continuing changes in the nature of

the relationship This essay analyzes the changes

in these relationships between humans and

ani-mals, with a focus on ritual, from the

method-ology of religio-ecmethod-ology

‘‘Caught with ourselves in the net of life and

time’’: Traditional Views of Animals in Religion

kimberley patton

The recent discovery of the powerful

repre-sentations of animals in the Paleolithic

Chau-vet Cave, particularly of predators as well as

the expected range of hunted prey, has

recon-firmed the enshrined symbiosis between

ani-mals and human beings Delineating the

con-tours of the religious nature of that ancient

relationship, however, has long been an

inter-pretive challenge Lévi-Strauss’s famous

asser-tion about indigenous forms of cogniasser-tion that

‘‘animals are good to think’’ can serve only as

one starting point in the kaleidoscope of

se-mantic fields traditionally played by animals

in human religiousness, even the most

subli-mated, including cosmogony, magic, sacrifice,

myth, metamorphosis, antinomianism,

therio-morphism, divination, and mimesis Animals

both bear and make meaning for human beings

Sacrifice: Metaphysics of the Sublimated Victim

kimberley patton

In a highly rationalistic contemporary idiom,

the paradoxical ritual realm of animal sacrifice

easily lends itself to caricature; rights-based

ap-proaches all too readily, without reflection,

in-terpret animal sacrifice as a kind of cruel

reifica-tion of the victim whose only role is as

theologi-cally (and anthropocentritheologi-cally) exploited and

ultimately ruined object In fact, a more

tex-tured analysis of sacrificial forms reveals the mal victim, at least in the lens of the sacrificingtradition, as an elevated being whose unique-ness, active agency, and metaphysical status areguaranteed by the theurgic efficacy of the ritualitself

ani-Interlocking Oppressions: The Nature of Cruelty

to Nonhuman Animals and Its Relationship

to Violence Toward Humanskim roberts

The idea that there is a connection between theway individuals treat animals and their treat-ment of fellow human beings has a long history

in popular culture but a shorter history as thesubject of scientific research Recently a growingbody of evidence has confirmed an associationbetween repeated, intentional abuse of animalsand a variety of antisocial behaviors includingchild abuse, domestic violence, and other vio-lent criminal activities As a result of the researchand high-profile cases, animal abuse is begin-ning to gain recognition as an indicator of expo-sure to violence in the home, and a predictor ofincreased risk of future acts of violence.This essay explores the interconnections be-tween violence against animals and violenceagainst people, using research findings and caseexamples and briefly discusses how we canaddress this connection through the develop-ment of coordinated community responses toviolence

Earth Charter Ethics and Animalssteven rockefeller

The Earth Charter, the heart of which is anethic of respect and care for Earth and all life,came out of the 1990s global ethics movementand is now receiving growing worldwide sup-port This essay explores how the Earth Charterviews animals and how its ethic of respect andcare is applied to them The discussion of the

e s s a y a b s t r a c t s

various Earth Charter principles relevant to

rela-tions between people and animals provides brief

accounts of some of the debates that influenced

the wording of these principles

Biotechnology and Animals: Ethical Issues

in Genetic Engineering and Cloning

bernard rollin

Since scientific ideology distances itself from

ethics in declaring science ‘‘value-free,’’

scien-tists typically do not articulate the issues

emerg-ing from new developments The advent of

ge-netic engineering has thus created a lacuna in

social ethics that demands filling in Following

what I call ‘‘Gresham’s Law for Ethics,’’ bad

ethi-cal thinking tends to seize center stage

Promi-nent amongst such thinking are the claims that

genetic engineering is intrinsically wrong,

be-cause it violates ‘‘God’s will’’ or the ‘‘natural

order.’’ It is difficult to find ethical sense in

such claims—they are either theological or else

they devolve into consequentialist claims, and

thus fail to claim intrinsic wrongness The most

difficult ethical issues emerging from

biotech-nology are in fact the least discussed—the fate of

the animals developed by these modalities Two

such issues are the sacrifice of animal welfare for

profit in commercial agriculture and the

devel-opment of genetically engineered models of

hu-man disease

Animal Experimentation

kenneth shapiro

How can we evaluate animal research?

Momen-tarily bracketing the several ethical arguments,

how effective is the strategy of developing

ani-mal models of human disorders? I present a

cri-tique of the concept and current practice of

vali-dation of animal model research The critique is

based on a published empirical study of animal

models of selected psychological disorders I

ar-gue that validation studies are rarely undertaken

and, in any case, are less critical than assessment

of the degree to which the research is tive of further understanding and/or advances intreatment I suggest that such productive gen-erativity is a broader and more relevant crite-rion than validation for assessing animal modelresearch In addition to some practical sugges-tions for animal care committee members andinvestigators, I conclude that the limited gen-erativity found in the models evaluated stronglysuggests the need to reexamine the strategy ofanimal model research itself The primary theo-logical implication of this project—‘‘the devil is

produc-in the details’’—is discussed

Animal Protection and the Problem of Religionpeter singer

I argue that the Judeo-Christian tradition is, toits core, biased against giving equal consider-ation to the interests of nonhuman animals At-tempts to reinterpret religion in a manner morefavorable to animals may do some good, but thehistorical record suggests that, in the West, thestatus of animals has been advanced more bythe decline in religious belief than by the reinter-pretation of religious traditions

Descartes, Christianity, andContemporary Speciesismgary steiner

It is well known that Descartes considered mals to be organic machines and that as suchthey may be used as resources in the general en-deavor to render human beings ‘‘the masters andpossessors of nature.’’ What led Descartes to thisconception of the moral status of animals? Inorder to get to the ethical roots of Descartes’sviews about animals, we must consider not onlyhis conception of mechanism but also the ex-tent to which his conception of moral rights andobligations regarding animals is influenced byancient and medieval philosophy in the West

e s s a y a b s t r a c t s

Several key figures in that tradition of thought

are Christian thinkers, and it turns out to be

im-possible to understand Descartes’s views about

animals without acknowledging the influence

that these thinkers had on Descartes Moreover,

Descartes’s desire to use animals as resources

re-flects a form of the ‘‘speciesism’’ that has

domi-nated thinking about animals from Aristotle to

the present, and a reflection on the historical

influences that shaped Descartes’s views about

animals promises to help us understand the

his-torical genesis as well as the specific nature of

contemporary speciesism

‘‘Of a tawny bull we make offering’’:

Animals in Early Chinese Religion

roel sterckx

This essay surveys the various roles of animals as

subjects and objects in early Chinese sacrificial

religion.We examine the question of zoolatry in

early China, the role of animals as mediums, and

the use of animal victims in sacrifice The essay

focuses on religion in practice—in other words,

on the internal architecture of devotional

wor-ship, and is based on a close reading of the early

Chinese ritual canon

Of Animals and Man:

The Confucian Perspective

rodney taylor

The Confucian tradition, both in its classical

phase as well as its later development in

Neo-Confucianism, focuses upon the establishment

of moral order within the individual and the

world at large While it has traditionally looked

to a set of specific moral relations, a set of

relations that excludes animals, to enact the

moral transformation of individual and world,

the broader agenda of Confucian learning and

self-cultivation precludes no living thing With

a foundational moral injunction that no

hu-man being can bear to witness the suffering ofanother living thing, the tradition recognizes aunity of all life Though priority historically hasalways been played upon the relation of one per-son to another, the tradition has also embracedthe sense of Heaven, earth, and humans as asingle entity In this perspective, all people areone’s brothers and sisters, and all living thingsare one’s companions The implications of thisfundamental moral axiom for the Confucianshould be apparent in how we interact with allliving things

A Communion of Subjects and aMultiplicity of Intelligencesmary evelyn tuckerThomas Berry’s theme of identity through com-munion with other, nonhuman subjectivities,draws upon a lifetime of work and insight.Weav-ing together multiple themes and, ultimately,drawing all of us, human and nonhuman alike,together into a differentiated, diverse, and shar-ing community, this view of the earth’s livingbeings in concert helps us see our place in re-lation to our world characterized by intercon-nection, not separation.When we recognize that

we live amidst a multiplicity of intelligences—hunting and foraging intelligences, courting andmating intelligences, flying and swimming in-telligences, migrating and molting intelligences,communicating and playing intelligences—webegin to appreciate that life is displayed in par-ticular and differentiated forms throughout theenormous array of species with whom we shareour planet It is this vision that must be acti-vated in our consciousness and experience if thehuman venture is to continue This will require

a shift from an anthropocentric sense of nation to an anthropocosmic sense of commu-nion with all life forms The implications of thisidea are richly refracted throughout this volumethrough the lenses of multiple disciplines

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Agribusiness: Farming Without Culture

gary valen

Agriculture is an ancient relationship between

humans and nature that provides sustenance

and livelihood for all the generations we call

civilization The foundations of human

organi-zations, from family units to empires, are based

on the ability to produce food Through most

of history, interrelationships between animals

and humans, along with soils and climate, have

formed the cornerstones of agriculture

The industrialization of food production and

the emergence of agribusiness is ending the

deli-cate balance between humans, animals, and

nature in modern farming systems Machines,

technologies, and the use of animals as

com-modities now produce incredible profits for a

few powerful conglomerates One half of the

United States’ favorable balance of trade comes

from the sale of agricultural products,

technol-ogy, and services If we measure success as

finan-cial, then farming and farm businesses as well

as food processing and distribution are the most

successful enterprises in history Few small-scale

and community-based farmers share in this

eco-nomic success

Agribusiness is flourishing now and with new

technologies and factory-like systems promise

to make Western nations even richer in the

com-ing years as populations explode in places that

are not blessed with fertile soils, favorable

cli-mates, masses of animals, and wealthy

landown-ers This is not agriculture! When viewed as a

culture or special set of human relationships

with Earth, agriculture weaves the elements of

people, animals, plants, and land into a fabric of

food production that will be passed intact to

fu-ture generations Agriculfu-ture does not abuse or

destroy any of its crucial elements, for to do so

would bring the end to all that agriculture holds

up in human civilization

As agribusiness gradually forces the

elimi-nation of agriculture as a special set of

rela-tionships, all people, and especially those who

treasure ethics, must raise a cry of alarm thatthere is more to farming than profit An agri-cultural production ethic must be embraced sothat the culture and human relationships withEarth that produce food are once again restored

to the land, the farmers and our partners, theanimals

Snake-kings, Boars’ Heads, Deer Parks,Monkey Talk: Animals as Transmittersand Transformers in Indian and TibetanBuddhist Narrative Literature

ivette vargasDespite the complicated cross cultural transmis-sion of Buddhism through diverse genres, Bud-dhists have always told a lot of stories, many con-taining animals Buddhist studies constructedmodels of thinking about the rules of thesestories in terms of portraying Buddhist doc-trines One way of thinking usually portrayedsophisticated Buddhists as employing stories tocommunicate Buddhist doctrine to the ordinarylay person who could not otherwise understandthe teachings The implication was that suchstories could never be taken literally or as repre-sentative of real Buddhist thought Aside fromthis model, an idea arose in another directiongoing back to the nineteenth century that inter-preted narratives like the Jātakas (birth stories

of Buddha’s previous lives) as mere childish folktales wherein animals were anthropocentricallyexploited These views are now so embedded inthe general scholarly consensus about what con-stitutes proper Buddhist thought and its suit-able genre that it has become completely natu-ralized in the scholarly literature about Bud-dhism However, such thinking is changing, andanimals should take center stage in the enlight-enment that stories are sophisticated didactictools

This essay draws attention to the continuedpresence of animal figures historically in Indianand Tibetan Buddhist literature Animal fig-

e s s a y a b s t r a c t s

ures and narrative literature are important

part-ners in the spread of Buddhist doctrine

cross-culturally, and it is the special quality that these

figures and the genre of narrative hold that will

help scholars better understand the

transmis-sion process of doctrine and practice By

study-ing a few select narrative genres, animals are

examined for their role as active transmitters

of Buddhist doctrine (transmitters of

particu-lar Buddhist philosophical movements and even

moral values) and transformers in their roles as

catalysts and participants of the paradoxically

ontological process of transformation—one of

the fundamental principles of Tibetan tantric

practice They also reflect the struggles between

Buddhist and indigenous religious traditions

and political identities The works of Buddhist

scholars and religious historians as well as

liter-ary theorists are consulted Overall, this essay

highlights the wide scope that animals have

tra-ditionally played in human religiousness

Seeing the Terrain We Walk: Features

of the Contemporary Landscape of

‘‘Religion and Animals’’

paul waldau

There is an astonishing range of issues that come

under the rubric ‘‘Religion and Animals.’’ In this

essay I survey such topics I argue that it is

im-portant when addressing religious views of

non-human animals to take the following

consider-ations into account: (1) information about the

realities of other animals, (2) interdisciplinary

approaches to the diverse subject matter, (3) the

shortcomings of scientific approaches; (4) the

centrality of humans’ ethical abilities; and (5)

the interlocking nature of oppressions of

mginalized humans and nonhuman animals I

ar-gue further that the ability to see nonhuman

animals is critically related to the social

dimen-sions of human knowledge, and that

consider-ation of these dimensions pushes one to engage

problems of epistemology, sociology of

knowl-edge, traditional treatment of nonhuman mals, and pluralism

ani-Pushing Environmental Justice

to a Natural Limitpaul waldau

‘‘Environmental justice,’’ like many prominentterms used in contemporary circles engagingproblems of social justice and the expansion

of ethical discourse beyond the human realm,

is a term that has been used in a number ofdifferent, and sometimes contrary, ways Thisessay identifies the range of uses, and then sug-gests terminology and concepts for these re-lated but distinguishable concerns The group

of concerns as a whole is then related to theconcerns at the center of the study of religionand nonhuman animals Examples from withinand without religious traditions are used to showthat, across the history of ethical discussion,there not infrequently has been an identifiableconservativism that has limited many advocates

of social and environmental justice to a ingly minimal expansion of the moral circle.Two points are drawn from this First, some veryprominent environmental justice advocates re-flect this kind of conservativism, and thus fail

surpris-to notice and take seriously issues that are minating for their own work Second, at thesame time, other proponents of environmentaljustice advocate a much broader, more holisticset of concerns also commonly called ‘‘environ-mental justice’’ but in fact qualitatively differentthan the concerns of the first set of ‘‘environ-mental justice’’ advocates The essay concludes

illu-by reflecting on sociological studies pointingout the interlocking nature of oppressions af-fecting disempowered individuals, marginalizedgroups, and nonhuman species generally in the

‘‘developed’’ world

e s s a y a b s t r a c t s

Five-Sensed Animals in Jainism

kristi wiley

This essay treats the place of five-sensed

ratio-nal animals in the realm of all living beings (i.e.,

other animals and humans, excluding heavenly

beings and hell-beings) It focuses on the

com-mon experience of pleasure and pain of

five-sensed rational animals and humans, of animals

and humans as moral agents, and the basic

in-stincts and desires that are shared by all living

beings With this as a basis, Jain approaches to

themes of conversion, suffering, communion,

cosmology and eschatology are examined

Animal Law and Animal Sacrifice: Analysis ofthe U.S Supreme Court Ruling on SanteríaAnimal Sacrifice in Hialeah

steven wiseThis essay describes the oft-cited 1993 UnitedStates Supreme Court case that addressed thecircumstances under which Santería practition-ers could be prohibited from ritually sacrificingnonhuman animals This important case is oftenerroneously said to hold that religious sacrificecannot be regulated by American law What thecase actually means is merely that religiouslymotivated killing of nonhuman animals cannot

be prohibited while comparable secular tices are permitted

prac-A Communion of Subjects

Heritage of the Volume

mary evelyn tucker

This unique volume on world religions and

ani-mals arose in the context of a three-year

inten-sive conference series entitled ‘‘Religions of the

World and Ecology,’’ held at the Center for the

Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity

School The series critically examined attitudes

toward nature in the world’s religious traditions

in addition to highlighting environmental

proj-ects around the world inspired by religious

val-ues From 1996 to 1998 the series of ten

con-ferences examined the traditions of Judaism,

Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism,

Bud-dhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Shinto, and

in-digenous religions The conferences, organized

by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, at that

time of Bucknell University, in collaboration

with a team of area specialists, brought together

some eight hundred international scholars of the

world’s religions as well as environmental

activ-ists and leaders

Recognizing that religions are key shapers

of people’s worldviews and formulators of their

most cherished values, this broad research

proj-ect has identified both ideas and practices porting a sustainable environmental future Thepapers from these conferences are published in

sup-a series of ten volumes from the Center for theStudy of World Religions and Harvard Univer-sity Press

Three culminating conferences were alsoheld at the American Academy of Arts and Sci-ences, at the United Nations, and at the Ameri-can Museum of Natural History in New York

in October 1998 These events brought sentatives of the world’s religions into conversa-tion with one another as well as into dialoguewith key scientists, economists, educators, andpolicymakers in the environmental field.1

repre-This volume by Columbia University Pressmakes a distinctive contribution by extendingthe research project to include attitudes of worldreligions toward other species The conference

on World Religions and Animals was held at theHarvard-Yenching Institute in May 1999 It wasthe intention of this gathering to build on theearlier conferences involving both interreligious

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m a r y e v e l y n t u c k e r

and multidisciplinary perspectives A

Commu-nion of Subjects brings together a wide range of

scholars to illustrate the varied ways in which

re-ligions have portrayed animals in myths,

sym-bols, and rituals, as well as how such views were

translated into actual practice The original

con-ference was highly unusual in that it was not

lim-ited to the study of religion, but also embraced

multidisciplinary perspectives of religion,

sci-ence, law, agriculture, social justice, and global

stewardship This volume reflects that unique

breadth as the papers include those from the

conferences as well as others that were specially

solicited to broaden the conversation

The intention is to suggest the movement

outward of ethical concerns exclusively from the

human sphere to encompass other species and

the larger web of the natural world Just as

reli-gions played an important role in creating

socio-political changes in the twentieth century

through moral challenges for the extension of

human rights, so too now, in the twenty-first

century, religions are contributing to the

emer-gence of a broader environmental ethics based

on diverse sensibilities regarding the sacred

di-mensions of the ‘‘more-than-human world.’’2

The understanding of nature, and

particu-larly of animals as numinous realities to be

rev-erenced, is widespread in world religions and is

now being recovered This ranges from the

posi-tions in the Western religions of Judaism,

Chris-tianity, and Islam that the earth and its species

are part of divine Creation and therefore should

be respected, to the views of indigenous

tradi-tions that nature and nonhuman animals are

in-fused with a sacred presence, to the perspectives

of particular Asian religions that earth and its

life forms participate in ongoing creative

trans-formations with which humans are in harmony

In many ways the recovery of these

perspec-tives constitutes a reentry of the religions into

a range of cosmological issues that has been

re-linquished almost entirely to the scientific

disci-plines

A Communion of Subjects makes a

distinc-tive contribution to these efforts Its goals take

on a special urgency as scientists acknowledgethat we are now living amidst a sixth extinc-tion period where an enormous, worldwide loss

of species is being documented They edge as well that, unlike earlier ones, this ex-tinction period is caused in large part by humaninterference with ecosystems The implications

acknowl-of this massive loss acknowl-of biodiversity are only ginning to be understood, at the same time as weare appreciating anew the unique kinds of intel-ligences that distinguish the more-than-humanworld It is the subtle interactions of these intel-ligences that constitute what Thomas Berry hascalled ‘‘a communion of subjects.’’

be-Berry’s keynote address at the Harvard ference on world religions and animals high-lighted this theme of experiencing the world as

con-‘‘a communion of subjects, not a collection ofobjects.’’ Berry has devoted a lifetime of think-ing, writing, and teaching to articulating thisperspective As a cultural historian who beganhis work reflecting on Giambattista Vico’s phi-losophy of history, he has been particularly con-cerned with situating our historical moment inthe context of history of the earth and evolu-tion of the universe He is deeply committed toopening the human community to our role asparticipants in the larger earth community.3

A central aspect of Berry’s project is evokingthe numinous dimensions of the natural world

In doing this he calls humans to awaken to theunnumbered species with whom we share thisplanet The multiple intelligences and rich emo-tional life of each species contributes to thelarger whole and creates the grounds for com-munion, resonance, and relationship Thusclearly for Berry, the more-than-human world

is not simply an inert, dead world of objects to

be exploited by humans, but is a vital, alive, minous communion of subjects with which weco-inhabit the earth

nu-Berry’s lifelong study of the world’s historyand religions and his particular attention toAsian cultures and indigenous traditions havegiven him a unique perspective from which tocritique our current situation He is particularly

h e r i t a g e o f t h e v o l u m e

eager for humans to resituate themselves in

communion with other species, no longer as

de-spoilers, dominators, or manipulators The

ob-jectification of the natural world and its many

life forms has allowed for untold degradation of

ecosystems and the destruction of species and

their habitats Berry is proposing a new story

of the unfolding display of the evolution of the

universe that awakens an understanding of our

profound connection to every life form He

sug-gests that this comprehensive story of evolution

will provide the context for healing our

alien-ation from the natural world, from other species

and from one another.4

As we recover again and discover anew our

kinship with life, from atoms to galaxies, there

will blossom forth a reinvigorated reverence for

life It is this deep feeling for life that lies at

the heart of Berry’s phrase, ‘‘a communion of

subjects.’’ It is this affective, feeling dimension

that will help to carry us through our most

dif-ficult challenges ahead As Berry notes, we can

place our confidence in the powers that haveshaped the universe through its 14 billion-yearjourney to sustain the human in this transfor-mative moment:

If the dynamics of the universe from the ning shaped the course of the heavens, lightedthe sun, and formed the earth, if this same dyna-mism brought forth the continents and seas andatmosphere, if it awakened life in the primor-dial cell and then brought into being the un-numbered variety of living beings, and finallybrought us into being and guided us safelythrough the turbulent centuries, there is reason

begin-to believe that this same guiding process is cisely what has awakened in us our present un-derstanding of ourselves and our relation to thisstupendous process Sensitized to such guidancefrom the very structure and functioning of theuniverse, we can have confidence in the futurethat awaits the human venture.5

pre-N OT E S

1 A major result of these conferences was the

establishment of an ongoing Forum on Religion and

Ecology that was announced at the United Nations

press conference to continue the research,

educa-tion, and outreach begun at the earlier conferences

A primary goal of the Forum is to develop a field

of study in religion and ecology that has

implica-tions for public policy Toward this end the Forum

has continued to sponsor various conferences at

Harvard and on the West Coast as well as

work-shops for high school teachers www.environment

.harvard.edu/religion

2 This term is used by David Abram in his book

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language

in a More-Than-Human World (New York: VintageBooks, 1997)

3 Berry develops these ideas further in his latestbook, Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on the Earth asSacred Community (Berkeley: Sierra Club Booksand University of California Press, 2006)

4 He develops this perspective most fully in hisbook with Brian Swimme, The Universe Story (SanFrancisco: Harper San Francisco, 1992)

5 Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (SanFrancisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988), p 137

Loneliness and Presence thomas berry

At the time of his treaty with the European

settlers in 1854, Chief Seattle of the

Suquam-ish tribe along the North Pacific coast is

re-ported to have said that when the last animals

will have perished ‘‘humans would die of

loneli-ness.’’1This was an insight that might never have

occurred to a European settler Yet this need for

more-than-human companionship has a

signifi-cance and an urgency that we begin to

appreci-ate in more recent times To understand this

pri-mordial need that humans have for the natural

world and its animal inhabitants we need only

reflect on the needs of our children, the two-,

three-, and four-year-olds especially We can

hardly communicate with them in any

mean-ingful way except through pictures and stories

of humans and animals and fields and trees, of

flowers, birds and butterflies, of sea and sky

These present to the child a world of wonder and

beauty and intimacy, a world sufficiently

entic-ing to enable the child to overcome the sorrows

that they necessarily experience from their

earli-est years This is the world in which we all grow

up, in, to some extent in reality, to some extentthrough pictures and stories

The child experiences the ‘‘friendship tion’’ that exists among all things throughoutthe universe, the universe spoken of by ThomasAquinas in his commentary on the writings ofPseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the mysticalChristian neoplatonist of the fifth or sixth cen-tury Indeed we cannot be truly ourselves in anyadequate manner without all our companion be-ings throughout the earth This larger commu-nity constitutes our greater self Even beyondthe earth we have an intimate presence to theuniverse in its comprehensive reality The scien-tists’ quest for their greater selves is what evokestheir relentless drive toward an ever greater un-derstanding of the world around them.Our intimacy with the universe demands anintimate presence to the smallest particles aswell as to the vast range of the stars splashedacross the skies in every direction More im-mediately present to our consciousness here onEarth are the landscapes; the sky above, the

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