Will Beauty Save the Animal World?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54103/2039-9251/32301Keywords:
beauty, animal ethics, sentience, dignityAbstract
In the last decades, human exploitation of animals has expanded dramatically, reaching levels of cruelty that cannot
be ignored. Many leading thinkers have offered effective solutions to the issue of animal suffering within the fields
of ethics and philosophy of law. In this essay, I wonder whether aesthetics could also provide some support for the
animal cause. More specifically, I’ll look for a notion of beauty that, like the one Dostoevsky refers to in his novel The
Idiot, has a sort of saving power towards the (in this case, animal) world. After examining some of the main philosophical models of animal beauty, I will argue for an expanded version of this notion, which also takes into account
the cognitive and emotional capacities of animals as they manifest themselves in some particular traits or gestures. So
conceived, animal beauty can provide a further reason to improve our relations with the other sentient beings with
whom we share the planet.
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