Animals, Empathy, and Anthropomorphism

"Carlo Salzani’s focus on the underexamined role of the moral imagination in ethical knowledge fills a void in ethic-of-care theory. Erudite, deeply researched, and gracefully written, Animals, Empathy and Anthropomorphism opens up important new ways of thinking about ethical comprehension. I highly recommend it."

━Josephine Donovan, Author of Animals, Mind, and Matter

"In this engaging book, Carlo Salzani doesn’t construe philosophical and creative writing as antithetical but privileges the imagination while still thoughtfully attending to the theorists. Salzani warns that we “sometimes have to take a great leap indeed” when we springboard out of the imaginative inquires and inspirations. These leaps are exactly what make his project so exciting."

━Randy Malamud, Regents’ Professor of English, Georgia State University

“In this bracing book, Salzani assays the prime methods ushered in by the affective turn in animal ethics, imagination and empathy, also making a significant contribution to the discussion on anthropomorphism. Using philosophy and literature as touchstones, the book brings home the enabling yet finite preconditions of thinking and feeling animality in ontology and ethics.”

━Ralph Acampora, Professor of Philosophy, Hofstra University

This open access book explores the role of imagination in animal ethics and its constitutive links to empathy/sympathy and anthropomorphism. The book argues for the constitutive role of imagination in ethical deliberation, but acknowledges that there exist important limits to its use. However, “limit” is here understood not merely negatively as restriction and insufficiency, but rather positively as “condition of possibility,” so what the book explores and analyses are the conditions for a positive and fruitful use of the imagination in ethics. The book uses as a “frame” the questions and issues raised in J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals to explore some central and salient themes.

Carlo Salzani is guest research fellow at the Messerli Research Institute of Vienna, Austria.