Review by Choice Review
Philosophers Bramble (Lund Univ., Sweden) and Fischer (Texas State U.) present an edited volume of 12 new essays on the ethics of eating meat. The book is divided into three parts: "Defending Meat," "Challenging Meat," and "Future Directions," making it a largely balanced introduction to varied philosophical perspectives ranging from circumstances where eating meat may be morally justified to the obligations of vegans in interacting in a "carninormative world." Moral Complexities, as its name suggests, takes the reader through more nuance than arguments simply supporting vegetarianism. Contributors are an impressive roster of English-language philosophers, some well known for their work on food and animal rights, others established ethicists invited to lend perspectives to a new (for them) topic. The essays are uneven in readability. Most are accessible to a general reader, though some seem to assume an audience of fellow philosophers. Scholars will appreciate the extensive notes. The book builds on and pays homage to influential works on the topic like Peter Singer's Animal Liberation (40th anniversary edition, 2015; 1st ed., 1975) and Carol Adams's The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (CH, Feb'91, 28-3347) (anniversary edition, 2015). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals/practitioners. --Jonathan M. Deutsch, Drexel University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Vegetarianism and veganism claim countless adherents, and many say they follow these meat-free regimens out of a sense of high moral purpose. This collection of rigorously reasoned essays examines the philosophical arguments behind vegetarianism and finds that things may not be quite so easily pigeonholed into good-and-evil, black-and-white categories. In fact, the initial essays point out instances in which meat eating may be the moral choice. One contributor goes so far as to assert that strict vegetarianism is immoral. Other essayists, considering the issue from other perspectives, reason their way to wholly different conclusions, and they outline complex sets of premises about animals' moral status as sentient beings. Ethical analyses presented here frame themselves in professional philosophers' highly specific vocabularies and scrupulously constructed sentences, and the audience they address is not untutored thinkers but their academic peers. Each essay concludes with a bibliography.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
