Learning Ethics From Our Relationships with

Animals: Moral Imagination

Maurice Hamington
Metropolitan State College of Denver

Abstract: The majority of animal advocacy discourse is unidirectional:

Humans are regarded as stewards of animal welfare, and humans control the
bestowal of rights and protections upon animals. This article offers a reversal
of the typical moral reflection used in animal advocacy. I suggest that our
relationship with animals participates in the development of moral faculties
requisite for ethical behavior. In other words, we have a lot to learn from
animals, not in this instance by documenting their behavior, but from having
meaningful relationships with particular animals. Quality interactions with
animals can stimulate the imaginative basis for the care and empathy that
are crucial for social morality. To accomplish this task, I describe embodied
care as an extension of feminist care ethics that addresses the bodys role
in morality, and argue that our relationships with animals can provide the
imaginative foundation for improving human-to-human morality.

Imagination is fundamentally an embodied capacity of the mind.

Catriona MacKenzie and Jackie Leach Scully
An ethics of care is faced with the difficult task of educating the moral
imagination to perceive and interpret nature in such a way that nature is consciously a presence in human life, rather than the absence it has become.
Roger J. H. King

nterspecies care and empathy is an incredible phenomenon. The existential

gulf between animals and humans is enormous. For the most part, we dont
share language, culture, or most of the physical qualities of animals and yet,
humans are capable of overcoming these differences to have affective responses
to species ranging from ferrets to whales. This interspecies empathy is a hopeful
sign for humanity. If human beings are able to have compassionate feelings for
other animals, there remains the prospect that despite our violent history we can
overcome social and cultural barriers to care for one another. This essay explores

2008. International Journal of Applied Philosophy 22:2. ISSN 0738-098X.

pp. 177188

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the role other animals play in developing our moral imagination. The majority of
animal advocacy discourse is unidirectional: Humans are regarded as stewards
of animal welfare, and humans control the bestowal of rights and protections
upon animals. This article offers a reversal of the typical moral reflection used
in animal advocacy. I suggest that our relationship with animals participates in
the development of moral faculties requisite for ethical behavior. In other words,
we have a lot to learn from animals, not in this instance by documenting their
behavior, but from having meaningful relationships with particular animals.
Quality interactions with animals can stimulate the imaginative basis for the care
and empathy that are crucial for personal and social morality. To accomplish this
task, I employ embodied care: an extension of feminist care ethics that addresses
the bodys role in morality. Accordingly, because our relationships with animals
rely less on language and more on corporeal transactions, they can provide the
imaginative foundation for improving human-to-human morality.

Animals and Care Ethics

The modern philosophical underpinnings of animal advocacy has been pioneered
by the work of Tom Regan and Peter Singer1 who represent classic positions in
ethical theory: deontological and teleological morality respectively. Regan articulates a rights-based position so successfully that animal advocacy efforts are
known as the animal rights movement. He straightforwardly contends that if
animals have a natural right to life then consumption or human whim provide
insufficient rationale to warrant that animals rights be abrogated: We cannot
be justified in killing any one or any number of animals for the intrinsic good
their deaths may bring to us.2 In a complementary fashion, Singer employs a
utilitarian argument for the mitigation of unnecessary animal pain. In the introduction to Animal Liberation, Singer claims the conclusions that are argued for
in this book flow from the principle of minimizing suffering alone.3 The moral
approaches of Regan and Singer strike a popular and compelling note thus effectively galvanizing animal advocates around such moral reasoning. However,
feminist care theorists question whether rights-based and utilitarian arguments
provide an adequate foundation for defending animals.
Care ethics emerged in the 1980s as an independent sphere of moral inquiry.
It began with the writing of several feminist theorists including Carol Gilligan,
Nel Noddings, and Joan Tronto.4 Womens experience was the impetus for care
theorizing and there is intriguing research about the relationship between animals, gender, and empathy.5 It is a moral orientation that is less concerned with
the adjudication of individual acts and more concerned with the maintenance of
right relationships in particular contexts. Diemut Bubeck offers one definition of
care: Caring for is the meeting of the needs of one person by another person,
where face-to-face interaction between carer and cared-for is a crucial element of
the overall activity and where the need is of such a nature that it cannot possibly
be met by the person in need herself.6 Care ethicists attend to affectations, conditions, relations, and consequences. Phenomenologically, the one cared-for and the
caregiver engage in a relationship marked by mutuality in terms of attentiveness

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and responsiveness. In this manner, care is an ethic that cannot be separated from
epistemologywe care about that which we know and it is difficult to care for
that which we have little or no knowledge of. Although knowing is not a sufficient
condition of caring, it is a prerequisite.
With the exception of Carol Adamss work, formulations of care ethics have
been largely anthrocentric. Applying care ethics to animal advocacy requires
sufficient knowledge of animals, not merely as abstract descriptive data, but as
unique beings experienced through relationships. Care ethics challenges liberal
assumptions about the nature of moral agency, just as animal advocacy challenged
the exclusive moral agency of humans. Rather than positing moral agents as
thoroughly independent to make decisions based on principles or consequences,
care ethics assumes that every moral agent is a social being existing in a web of
relationships that constitute a context which impinges on ethical decision making. Animals can participate in these relationships and are part of the experiential
fabric that makes up the moral agent.
Care theory has matured over the past quarter century. In the early stages of
theorizing about care, feminists were mostly concerned with naming the previously unnamed and thus care was sharply contrasted with existing accounts of
morality, often categorized as justice. This period of identity formation fostered
a false dichotomy between notions of care and justice that theorists subsequently came to reconcile. Accordingly, care ethics is not posited as an alternative
system of morality to other ethical approaches such as utilitarianism or Kantian
ethics. Instead, care reframes moral questions around the particulars of a given
situation and asks how they are significant. As Virginia Held describes, There
can be care without justice . . . [but] There can be no justice without care.7 Her
claim is based on the notion that care is such a pervasive aspect of human existence, albeit analytically overlooked, that even the most effective system of justice
is underwritten by care for others in a manner that rules, principles, duties, and
rights can never entirely account for. Ultimately, care ethicists are not antithetical
to the development and discussion of systems of justice such as those employed
by Regan and Singer, but they point out that such systems do not encompass all
that is moral.
Another aspect of the maturing field of care ethics is its growing concern for
discussions of social and political philosophy. Much of the original work on care
ethics focused on interpersonal care as manifested in the reciprocal relations of
dyads, often idealizing mother-child relationships. Recently, the work of care
ethicists such as Noddings, Tronto, and Held have turned to theorizing about care
as more than a personal ethic. Their work can be said to socialize care.8 Accordingly, care theorists are exploring the ways in which social institutions, policies,
and practices can facilitate care. Part of the social and political extension of care
ethics has been to apply it to animal welfare.
In the 1990s theorists began adapting care ethics to animal advocacy. Josephine
Donovan and Carol Adams contend that Regan and Singers approaches rely too
heavily upon conceptualizing animals as similar to humans whether the similarity
is rooted in rationality or sentience. This continuity is difficult to sustain across

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specific attributes and species, but also ignores the position of human dependence that many animals find themselves in.9 Donovan and Adams claim that
care ethics is a more appropriate moral approach for animal advocacy because of
its relational ontology, valorization of emotions, and emphasis on context. They
conclude human-animal relationships should be informed by an ethic of care,
nurturance, sympathy, and love, and caring theory provides the basis for this
realization.10 Donovan and Adams argue effectively for the inclusion of care
ethics among the tools of the animal advocacy movement.
In the conclusion of Caring about Suffering: A Feminist Exploration, Adams
offers a tantalizing albeit brief suggestion about the connection between care
ethics and embodiment:
Elaine Scarry observes that power is always based on distance from the body. A
relationship exists between reclaiming the body and its full range of feeling, and
reclaiming animals bodies, including womens. A feminist care ethic for the treatment of animals offers the possibility of such reclamation.11

It is precisely this connection between care ethics and embodiment that I mine
for its implication in developing the moral imagination through animal-human
relationships. It is my suggestion that animal associations can help humans fully
actualize their ethical abilities

Embodied Care
Throughout the history of philosophy, the body has been missing or denigrated
in moral reflection. Philosophers typically pursue abstract moral theories that rise
above bodily experience. Rene Descartess mind/body dualism as expressed in
the claim cogito ergo sum is but one example of the marginalization of corporeal
existence. Some modern philosophers have begun to question this exclusion of
the body from ethical analysis. For example, Gail Weiss argues that morality cannot be reduced to an intellectual endeavor. Weiss claims that, the bodys role in
calling us to respond ethically to one another has continued to be egregiously
neglected.12 In response to this neglect, I propose the notion of embodied care
as a corrective to the abstraction of moral systems. This approach extends the
definition of care to include its corporeal dimension. As I describe it: care denotes
an approach to personal and social morality that shifts ethical considerations to
context, relationships, and affective knowledge in a manner that can be fully understood only if cares embodied dimension is recognized. Care is committed to
the flourishing and growth of individuals; yet acknowledges our interconnectedness and interdependence.13 The starting point for care is knowledge of the other
given that we can only care for that which we know. Accordingly, embodied care
stems from embodied knowledge.
Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty identifies the notion of embodied knowledge: The factual presence of other bodies could not produce thought or the idea
if its seed were not in my own body. Thought is a relationship with oneself and
with the world as well as a relationship with the other.14 If Merleau-Ponty is correct about the knowledge our body possesses, then by extension the body is also

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the basis for a key component of care: empathy. To be empathetic is to engage our
imaginations to understand someone elses feelings, actions, or situation. However,
we are incapable of empathizing in a vacuum. I cannot empathize with those I
have no knowledge of. For example, if there is life on another planet, I have no
feelings for that life because I have no knowledge of it. Yet, observation reveals
that humans have an enormous capacity to empathize even for the unfamiliar.
We can have feelings for strangers when they are suddenly hurt or we can shed
tears for fictional characters in movies. The common denominator for human-tohuman empathy is embodiment. If I see a stranger trip and fall, I can empathize
with them, perhaps even act on their behalf because I know something of this
experience myself. The knowledge of similar experiences is in my body. I too
have a body and have experienced gravity and the weight of my body hitting a
surface unexpectedly. I may never have articulated this experience but my body
knows of it. I know how I would care for my body in this situation and I have
the opportunity to care for someone elses. I have the corporeal resources to give
flight to my imagination of what the other might feel, even across our personal
differences. As Catriona MacKenzie and Jackie Leach Scully claim in their analysis
of understanding disability: It is important that we recognise that our responses
and judgements, and our capacities imaginatively to engage with the perspectives
of others who are differently embodied, are likely to be shaped and constrained
by the specifics of our own embodiment.15 Imagination is a crucial link between
what the body knows, empathy, and care.
Of course, animals have bodies too. If proximal bodily relations provide experiential resources for empathy between humans, it follows that such experiences
also occur with our interactions with other embodied beings. Certain species of
animals such as cats and dogs have a history of strong embodied relations with
humans. The term natural is not one that philosophers invoke lightly, but the
contact between companion animals and humans often appears natural in terms
of ease, frequency, and mutual enjoyment. The medical, hospice, and convalescent communities have acknowledged the human-animal connection through
Animal-Assisted Activities and Therapy (AAA/T) Programs. The stories of animals mitigating the distress of patients through their presence and contact are
legion.16 Such animals play an affective role in a manner that no material object can
in improving the quality of care for patients. There is a familiar comfort between
the bodies of humans and animals that does not require articulation to initiate.
The feelings in such situations run high but translating the corporeal experience
into an imaginative resource for empathy is not guaranteed as social constraints
conspire to isolate bodies.
With animals, as with women and people of color in the past, the challenge
is to overcome powerful and long-lasting oppressive narratives that limit rich
relations. If we acquiesce to narratives that label animals as beasts of burden,
livestock, property, or meat, then the relations we have with them will
lack robustness and inhibit imaginative possibilities. However, if we allow ourselves to experience rich proximal and tactile interactions (discussed in the next
section) with animals our appreciation for their nuanced existence will grow, as

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discussed in the next section. Through relations with nonhuman bodies we can
find our way to care for animals, and perhaps by imaginative extension, understand unfamiliar humans.

Animals and Stimulating The Moral Imagination

Anthropologist and psychologist Barbara Smuts values individual encounters
with animals as a resource for animal advocacy. As a scientist, she is familiar
with exploring the truth of rational arguments but Smuts views the sympathetic
understanding that comes from experience as an important affective corollary to
propositional knowledge. She suggests for the heart to truly share anothers being, it must be an embodied heart, prepared to encounter directly the embodied
heart of another.17 Smuts lived for months in close proximity with nonhuman
beings including gorillas, chimpanzees, baboons, and dolphins. While ostensibly collecting research data, her affective understanding of these animals was
enhanced by the embodied knowledge only possible through proximal relations.
For example, Smuts describes living among baboons: I came to know every one
as a highly distinctive individual.18 Through ongoing contact, the baboons became more than a category of animal but individual beings with unique features.
This process of concretization makes the potential for greater caring possible.
Understanding the character of each baboon made them something more than
abstraction and led to affective relations. Smuts experience is not unusual. The
lack of social constraints makes for the possibility of greater tactile interactions
with many animals. Those with companion animals often experience a rich tactile
relationship, many times even more so than with other human friends. Entering
into such relationships with animals provides the foundation for new caring and
imaginative associations.
A crucial aspect of an ethic of care is the moral imagination. If we only care
about those whom we come in contact with, than caring is simply a justification of
biased behavior and therefore of limited moral usefulness. Care becomes a serviceable moral orientation when we are able to extrapolate our proximal relations to
others outside our direct experiential field. It is praiseworthy to care for families,
friends, and companion animals but not as morally praiseworthy as caring for
those for whom we are less familiar. That extension or reach to empathize with
unfamiliar others requires an imaginary leap. Empathetic imagination needs a
basis for commonality that allows us to understand something of the stranger in
order to have an affective response. For example, if I were to hear about a drought
that was devastating aboriginal Australians, the potential for my caring and action is low (but not nonexistent) given my lack of imaginative comprehension of
their existence and context. If I read a novel, visit, or watch a documentary about
aboriginal Australians, my imagination has more substance to work with and
the potential for concern increases. If I have direct personal experience with an
aboriginal Australian then the potential for an affective response becomes greater.
In order to care, my imagination is asked to transcend physical distance, culture,
and language to see the shared humanity and understand the experience of an
other. The challenges to making such connections are great as witnessed by the

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horrendous atrocities humans have perpetrated against one another throughout

history. Dehumanizing narratives participate in prejudice and oppression. Establishing connections across species is more difficult than between humans, but
perhaps more rewarding for its expansion of imaginative capabilities.
Philosopher Mark Johnson views the moral imagination as an overlooked yet
essential aspect of ethical theorizing: Unless we can put ourselves in the place
of another, unless we can enlarge our own perspective through an imaginative
encounter with the experience of others, unless we can let our own values and
ideals be called into question from various points of view, we cannot be morally
sensitive.19 My thesis hinges on the notion that moral imagination improves
with use. Like a physical skill, moral imagination develops when it is exercised
and it can atrophy if it is not utilized. For example, in Poetic Justice: The Literary
Imagination and Public Life, Martha Nussbaum claims that literature can similarly
stimulate our moral imaginations.
Unlike most historical works, literary works typically invite their readers to put
themselves in the place of people of many different kinds and to take on their
experiences. In their very mode of address to their imagined reader, they convey
the sense that there are links of possibility, at least on a very general level, between
the characters and the reader. The readers emotions and imagination are highly
active as a result, and it is the nature of this activity, and its relevance for public
thinking, that interests me.20

Art and culture contributes to imagination but so do the many transaction we

have with diverse people, both human and nonhuman.
Caring for animals requires imaginative workmore so than when humans
care for other humans. Animals not only do not share culture and language, but
they have different embodied existence, physical capacities, and brain structures.
Although some animals have developed sophisticated partnerships with humans,
the chasm between human and animal existence means that greater effort is
required to come to a level of understanding. Part of the empathetic challenge
is that the precision by which humans understand animals is not the same as it
can be between humans. The quality and quantity of contact between particular humans and particular animals can foster caring relationships. Proximity is
crucial. Animals and humans living in close quarters can develop a trust and
understanding. For the humans, the understanding fosters unique appreciation
for the animal. Smuts describes the potential for this connection:
My own life has convinced me that the limitations most of us encounter in our
relations with other animals reflect not their shortcomings, as we so often assume,
but our own narrow views about who they are and the kinds of relationships we
can have with them. And so I conclude by urging anyone with an interest in animal
rights to open your heart to the animals around and find out for yourself what its
like to befriend a nonhuman person.21

What I am suggesting is that not only does this kind of relationship foster greater
care for animals but also it exercises imagination in a manner that can help humans extend care to other humans. One example of stimulating the imagination
is anthropomorphism.

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In Praise of Anthropomorphism
Typically, anthropomorphizing animals is conceived as an error. Ascribing human qualities to nonhumans appears patently incorrect. Tom Tyler, for example,
describes, Anthropomorphism, as the reckless assignation of human traits to the
brutes, is a projection a kind of fetishism entirely inappropriate in any genuinely
analytic enterprise. The very suggestion that a theory or approach is anthropomorphic is, implicitly always an accusation.22 Nevertheless, anthropomorphizing
animals is a pervasive human activity. For example, we live with a dog that is a
basset hound mix and because of the extra skin around the eyes, when she lays
her head on the floor, it appears that she is sad. This is a confusion between the
physical appearance of the dog and human physiognomy. Although wrong, such
anthropomorphizing is understandable: It is the mapping of the known onto the
unknown. Such mapping tells us nothing about the truth of animals existence, and
is therefore not useful for the development of scientific data on animal behavior,
however, it is not arbitrary. Anthropomorphism often represents an imaginative
or playful attempt to understand animals. I claim that to the extent that anthropomorphism facilitates caring for unknown others, humanizing animals can
be morally beneficial.
Anthropomorphizing can also represent an imaginative starting point: beginning with the familiar and moving to the less familiar. Philosophers Richard Holton
and Rae Langton dismiss imagining the position of unfamiliar animals such as
slugs, sea anemones, or locusts because the differences are too great.23 Holton
and Langton are correct. To jump from our human existence to these species is
too much of an imaginative leap. However, this model of imagination does not
take into account metaphoric chains of understanding. To move to empathizing
with the unfamiliar, first we understand the familiar and extrapolate from there.
Although they are enormously different than me, I understand my companion
animals more than other animals. If I attend to this relationship carefully, and
allow my imagination to roam and develop, the potential for empathizing with
other animals grows. Playful anthropomorphizing is not an end, but an imaginative exercise that creates possibilities.
Several authors have applied psychologist Albert Banduras theory of moral
disengagement to try to understand the cruel treatment of animals by humans.24
Bandura attempts to account for those occasions when peoples behaviors are
not consistent with their moral standards or what he refers to as moral disengagement. In applying Banduras theory to animal cruelty, Vollum, et al. offer
dehumanization attitudes as one of the independent variables in their effort
to determine what factors influence peoples behavior toward animal cruelty.
They conclude,
Dehumanization and property attitudes were the strongest predictors of concern
both about animal cruelty and punitiveness toward those who commit acts of
violence against animals. It is not surprising individuals who are able to separate
themselves from nonhuman animals by marginalizing them through such mechanisms of moral disengagement would be less concerned about them as victims of
violence. These two forms of attitudes have predominated throughout history as

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rationales for relegating non-human animals to a position unworthy of compassion

and consideration.25

This is an intriguing conclusion given the fundamental misattribution of anthropomorphism: our ability to find continuity between animals and humans is
predictive of concern for animal cruelty. My suggestion is that if this imaginative
ability can cross to beings of other species then it can only help us extend that
imagination to other humans as well.

The Moral Challenge of Our Age

The relationship between human cruelty toward animals and human cruelty
toward other humans has been intuited by some in society for ages. In Emily
Bronts 1847 classic, Wuthering Heights, the male protagonist, Heathcliff, demonstrates extraordinary cruelty toward animals. In a scene that is not included
in film adaptations of the novel, Heathcliff hangs Isabellas dog, Fanny, which
foreshadows the subsequent domestic abuse Heathcliff heaps on Isabella. Writing in an era when organized concern for animals was in its infancy (the British
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, for example, formed in 1824),
Bront found continuity between various forms of violence.26
Contemporary social scientific research appears to vindicate Bronts suspicion
in a theory of violence that criminologist Piers Beirne describes as the progression thesis or the notion that violence against animals has a causal link to violence against humans.27 Beirne is concerned that because the concept is relatively
new, first being used in the 1980s, the progression thesis is not always carefully
employed and thus more longitudinal and specific studies are needed. Nevertheless, based on the large and growing body of evidence, Beirne concludes that if
careful study is done: In reducing abusers compassion, animal abuse might be
found to increase tolerance or acceptance of pro-violent attitudes and, thereby, to
foster interhuman violence.28 Beirnes conclusions are supported by a number
of studies including the research of sociologist Clifton P. Flynn who surveyed
university students to determine if killing or torturing animals as a child was
predicative of later attitudes regarding violence committed against women and
children. Flynn describes a statistically significant result was obtained [which]
suggests that the relationship is a fairly powerful one. Based on these findings,
Flynn proposes, Ending animal abuse will have important consequences for the
well-being of children and women.29 Recent social science has indicated there
is momentum for finding a causal link between animal abuse and violence committed against humans. Thus, violence committed against animals may facilitate
the immoral imagination, but is there a positive corollary to this research? Can
human care and kindness toward animals through meaningful relationships foster moral abilities that lead to improved human interactions? Beirne speculates
that, Indeed, a plausible corollary of the progression thesis, if found to be true,
is that children who have, or who are taught to have, compassion for animals
might be more likely to become adults who act more sensitively and more gently
toward humans.30

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Just as there exists a widespread belief that cruelty toward animals is linked
to cruelty toward humans, there is a general perception that animals can and do
have a positive impact on human interaction. Today, therapeutic animal programs
exist for the physically handicapped, terminally ill, residents of long-term care
facilities, at-risk youth, and prisoners. Social science can again provide some clues
to the role animals can play in developing the moral imagination. Like Beirne,
psychologists Kelly L. Thompson and Eleonara Gullone are concerned that inadequate study has been done. They attribute some of the paucity of research to
a historical bias against valuing human-animal interaction.31 Despite these concerns, Thompson and Gullone cite a number of studies that indicate a positive
correlation between children having positive experiences with animals and their
ability to empathize with humans. One such study provided 4th and 5th graders
with a 40-hour program of contact and education with animals. These students
demonstrated higher levels of human-directed empathy than a control group
that did not have the training and higher levels were maintained when a one-year
follow-up study was conducted.32 Nevertheless, Thompson and Gullone point
out that much more study is needed on such issues as the quality and character
of animal contact as well as the nature of the empathy created.
Care ethics, and more specifically, embodied care, provides a theoretical framework for understanding the role of animals in fostering moral imagination. The
character of interaction with companion animals is physicaltouching, walking,
playing, petting. The experience is embodied, and it adds to our moral resources.
Empathizing with unfamiliar others may be the moral challenge of the twentyfirst century. Technology has made the world smaller than ever but the newfound intimacy has not translated into widespread sympathetic understanding.
Violent conflict continues to permeate a world separated into us and them.
Although some continue to delude themselves that the next act of aggression
will make the world safer, peace may ultimately hinge on our ability to empathize with others. Certainly, animals must depend on human empathy to avoid
violence and extinction but maybe they can also be part of a solution. If we can
see our way to care for non-human creatures, not as property, but as extensions
of ourselves, perhaps we can also come to care for and about one another. Deep
empathyreally allowing the internalization of care for particular embodied
beings of any kindis no trivial matter. Taken seriously, it entails altering behavior, changing cultural norms, and reorienting social systems. For example,
there is a moral contradiction in empathizing with animals and consuming
them.33 Yet, if I have the moral will not to participate in violence perpetuated
against animals, the challenge to care for bipedal animals that are a lot like me
does not seem so great.

Endnotes
This essay is dedicated to Snoopy and Woodstock, four-legged members of the family.
1. Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1983). Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: New York Review, 1975).

 Learning ethics from our relationships with animals: moral imagination

187

2. Tom Regan, Do Animals Have A Right To Life? in Tom Regan and Peter Singer
Animal Rights and Human Obligations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976).
3. Peter Singer, Writings on Ethical Life (New York: Harper Collins, 2000), 46.
4. Carol Gilligan, In A Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Womens Development
(Cambridge: Harvard University, 1982); Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to
Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); and Joan C.
Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for An Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge,
1993).
5. Bill C. Henry, Bullying and Animal Abuse: Is There a Connection? Society & Animals
15 (2007): 124
6. Diemut Bubeck, Care, Gender, and Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995),
29.
7. Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal Political, and Global (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 17.
8. Maurice Hamington and Dorothy C. Miller, Socializing Care: Feminist Ethics and Social
Issues (Langham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
9. Josephine Donovan and Carol J. Adams, eds., Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring
Ethic for the Treatment of Animals (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1996),
1415.
10. Ibid., 16.
11. Carol J. Adams, Caring about Suffering: A Feminist Exploration in Beyond Animal
Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals, ed. Josephine Donovan and Carol
J. Adams, 193.
12. Gail Weiss, Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality (New York: Routledge, 1999),
161.
13. Maurice Hamington, Embodied Care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Feminist
Ethics (Urbana, Il: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 3.
14. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston,
IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 145.
15. Catriona MacKenzie and Jackie Leach Scully, Moral Imagination, Disability and
Embodiment, Journal of Applied Philosophy 24:4 (2007), 348.
16. Andrea Leigh Ptak and Ann R. Howie, Healing Paws & Tails: The Case for AnimalAssisted Therapy in Hospitals, Interactions 22:2 (2004): 9.
17. Barbara Smuts, Reflections in J. M Coetzee, The Lives of Animals, ed. Amy Gutman
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 108.
18. Ibid., 111.
19. Mark Johnson, Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1993), 199.
20. Martha Nussbaum, Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life, (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1995), 5.
21. Ibid., 120.
22. Tom Tyler, If Horses Had Hands . . . Society & Animals 11:3 (2003): 270.
23. Richard Holton and Rae Langton, Empathy and Animal Ethics, in Dale Jamieson,
Singer and his Critics (Blackwell, 1999), 225.
24. Scott Vollum, Jacqueline Buffington-Vollum, and Dennis R. Longmire, Moral Disengagement and Attitudes about Violence toward Animals Society & Animals 12:3 (2004).

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25. Ibid., 228

26. Maureen Adams, Emily Bronte and Dogs: Transformation Within the Human-Dog
Bond, Bronte Studies 29 (March 2004): 4352.
27. Piers Beirne, From Animal Abuse to Interhuman Violence? A Critical Review of
the Progression Thesis, Society & Animal 12:3 (2004), 40.
28. Ibid., 55.
29. Clifton P. Flynn, Animal Abuse in Childhood and Later Support for Interpersonal
Violence in Families, Society & Animals 7:2 (1999), 16172.
30. Beirne, From Animal Abuse to Interhuman Violence? 55.
31. Kelly L. Thompson and Eleonara Gullone, Promotion of Empathy and Prosocial
Behavior in Children through Humane Education, Australian Psychologist 36:3 (November
2003): 177.
32. Ibid., 180.
33. Michael Allen Fox, Why We Should Be Vegetarians, International Journal of Applied
Philosophy 20:2 (2006): 295310.