Course Reader REL 407/507 The Bull in the China Shop, Winter 2010: Annotated

1. Jeremy Lloyd, “The Good Hunter,” The Sun (December 2009), 4-11.

Interview w/David Petersen: Ethics of killing animals for food. Attempts to go beneath the surface of the food culture and questions vegetarianism as well as trophy hunting. Makes case for hunter-gatherer respect for food animals.

2. Robert Garner, “Ch. 6: Rights, Utility, Contractarianism and Animals,” Animal Ethics (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2005), 83-103.

Provides overview of three of the most prominent ethical view of animals: Rights, Utilitarianism, and Contractarianism, and raises questions of all three.

3. Susan Armstrong & Richard G. Botzler, eds, “General Introduction, Animal Ethics: A Sketch of How It Developed and Where It Is Now,” The Animal Ethics Reader [AER] (NY: Routledge, 2008), 1-11.

Outline of the history of animal ethics in the West and adds comments regarding Virtue Ethics & the Ethics of Care.

4. Rabbi Stephen Fuchs, “Enhancing the Divine Image,” AER, 283-285.

Religious basis for one Jewish Rabbi’s vegetarianism.

5. Martin Forward and Mohamed Alam, “Islam,” AER, 294-296.

Brief account of a Muslim view of animal ethics citing the Qur’an.

6. Marti Kheel, “The Killing Game: An Ecofeminist Critique of Hunting,” AER, 454-462.

Ecofeminist critique of hunting for psychological, ecological, spiritual, and psychosexual need. Offers alternative to hunting relationship to animals.

7. Christopher Chapple, “Noninjury to Animals: Jaina and Buddhist Perspectives,” in Animal Sacrifices, ed. Tom Regan (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1986), 213-235.

Overview of Jaina and Buddhist view of animals in India, followed by discussion of animal use in science.

8. Joan Dunayer, “Ch. 8: Nonspecisist Philosophy,” Speciesism (Derwood, MD: Ryce, 2004), 123-134.

Presents a view of animals that is not speciesism (i.e., not based on human-centered species bias) and instead claims the equality of all animals, human and nonhuman, based on sentience, characterized by perception, feeling, and in this article especially, the capacity to suffer.

9. Mark Rowlands, Animals Like Us (NY: Verso, 2002), 195-205.

Discusses the consequences of large scale farming of animals, e.g., the agribusiness of food animals.

10. “Confucius’ World of Ideas,” diagram by Mark Unno.
11. “Key Terms I” in Early Confucianism by Mark Unno.
12. Outline of Early Chinese Civilization by P. J. Ivanhoe.
13. P. J. Ivanhoe, “Ch. 1: Confucius,” Confucian Moral Self Cultivation (Peter Lang, 1993), 9-17.

The three key early Confucians are: Confucius (Kongzi), Mencius (Mengzi), and Xunzi. This article gives a snapshot of Confucius’ ethics, especially ethical development, or moral cultivation.

14. P. J. Ivanhoe, “Chinese Self-Cultivation and Mencian Extension,” unpublished paper, 1-21.

Explains Mencius’ method of extending virtue from immediate surroundings into society. Focuses on the key passage for Confucian view of sacrificing oxen, Mencius 1A7. Essential reading.

15. James Behuniak, “Human Virtue in the Sacrifices,” Mencius on Becoming Human (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2005), 114-121 (pages are sorted in backwards order in the course reader).

Further examination of animal sacrifice in Mencius, in particular ritual, li, and human virtue.

16. P. J. Ivanhoe, “A Happy Symmetry: Xunzi’s Ethical Thought,” JAAR, LIX/2, 309-322.

Xunzi is the third great Confucian after Confucius himself and Mencius. Here, Ivanhoe describes Xunzi’s contrast with Mencius on human nature, and also Xunzi’s view of the partnership of Heaven, Earth, and Human Beings.

17. P. J. Ivanhoe, “Zhuangzi on Skepticism, Skill, and the Ineffable Dao,” JAAR, LXI/4, 639-654.

Zhuangzi’s view of blending with the Dao beyond words with the example of Cook Ding carving oxen.

18. Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] (NY: Columbia, 1968), 134-5, 218-9.

Two episodes not in Basic Writings: Zhuangzi out hunting, and Zhuangi refusing to use a pulley to draw water.

19. Zhuangzi’s Conversion Experience, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Fall 1991: 13-25.

There are two key episodes in the Zhuangzi for this course: Cook Ding the oxen carver, and this episode, hunting in Diaoling Park (Tiao-ling), the focus of this article by Ivanhoe, and what he calls Zhuanzi’s conversion experience.

20. Mark Berkson, “Conceptions of Self/No-self and Modes of Connection,” Journal of Religious Ethics, 33:2, 2005: 293-331.

Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism on the “self” concept and time w/great consequences for nature & society.

21. Akira OMINE, “Probing the Japanese Experience of Nature” (Kyoto: Koyo Shobo, 1989), 11-36.

Japanese views of nature, especially Buddhist, and culminating with the Pure Land views of Shinran.