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This book, the culmination of forty years of theorizing about the moral status of animals, explicates and justifies society's moral obligation to animals in terms of the commonsense metaphysics and ethics of Aristotle's concept of telos (roughly the study of purposiveness, or the study of objects with a view to their aims, purposes, or intentions).
Bernard E. Rollin, University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, is the 2016 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the organization Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research. The founder of Animal Ethics, Rollin has served on the Pew National Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production and on the Institute for Laboratory Animal Resources Council of the National Academy of Sciences. Rollin is also the author of titles, including The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain, and Science.
"Bernie Rollin is a philosopher whose head is most definitely not in the clouds. Instead, it's on our farms and slaughter plants, in our testing laboratories, in our rodeo arenas, and on our hunting grounds – in short, all the places where humans use animals as they see fit. He's given us a lucid, compelling blueprint for how to reimagine our relationship with animals, driven by a social ethic that is common to us all and filled with common sense. This is yet another important book from one of the pre-eminent impact players in the contemporary animal protection movement."
– Wayne Pacelle, president & CEO, The Humane Society of the United States
"Possibly the most important book on animal welfare written to date. In exquisite chapter after chapter Rollin presents the philosophical background of what telos is, why it matters and demonstrates with stories, anecdotes, and data, why common sense is an important basis for understanding animals, their needs and their wants. Rollin has the ability to speak to each reader as if s/he is the only person he is talking to. He is a remarkable talent and brilliant teacher. A great read, a must read."
– Alan Goldberg, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Founding Director Emeritus of the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, Berman Institute of Bioethics
"In his latest of many books, Bernard Rollin, philosopher and animal advocate extraordinaire, appeals to Aristotle's concept of telos to argue that we need to establish a strong link between commonsense morality and animal ethics. One does not have to be well-versed in philosophical thought nor jargon to understand Rollin's most important message, namely, that when we respect other animals for whom they are and for what they do, when they are able to live as freely as possible as the evolved beings they are, we all will be more likely to work together to stop the horrific and brutal abuse to which billions of animals are intentionally and routinely subjected globally each and every day. Indeed, there is no other way to move forward in an increasingly human dominated world in the epoch called the anthropocene, the age of humanity, let's hope that A New Basis for Animal Ethics is not his swan song."
– Marc Bekoff, University of Colorado; author of numerous books including Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence
