The lives of animals
(Book)

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Published
Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 2016.
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Published
Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 2016.
Format
Book
Physical Desc
127 pages ; 22 cm
Language
English

Notes

General Note
First edition published 1999.
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description
"The idea of human cruelty to animals so consumes novelist Elizabeth Costello in her later years that she can no longer look another person in the eye: humans, especially meat-eating ones, seem to her to be conspirators in a crime of stupefying magnitude taking place on farms and in slaughterhouses, factories, and laboratories across the world. Costello's son, a physics professor, admires her literary achievements, but dreads his mother's lecturing on animal rights at the college where he teaches. His colleagues resist her argument that human reason is overrated and that the inability to reason does not diminish the value of life; his wife denounces his mother's vegetarianism as a form of moral superiority. At the dinner that follows her first lecture, the guests confront Costello with a range of sympathetic and skeptical reactions to issues of animal rights, touching on broad philosophical, anthropological, and religious perspectives. Painfully for her son, Elizabeth Costello seems offensive and flaky, but--dare he admit it?--strangely on target. In this landmark book, Nobel Prize-winning writer J.M. Coetzee uses fiction to present a powerfully moving discussion of animal rights in all their complexity. He draws us into Elizabeth Costello's own sense of mortality, her compassion for animals, and her alienation from humans, even from her own family. In his fable, presented as a Tanner Lecture sponsored by the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, Coetzee immerses us in a drama reflecting the real-life situation at hand: a writer delivering a lecture on an emotionally charged issue at a prestigious university. Literature, philosophy, performance, and deep human conviction--Coetzee brings all these elements into play. As in the story of Elizabeth Costello, the Tanner Lecture is followed by responses treating the reader to a variety of perspectives, delivered by leading thinkers in different fields. Coetzee's text is accompanied by an introduction by political philosopher Amy Gutmann and responsive essays by religion scholar Wendy Doniger, primatologist Barbara Smuts, literary theorist Marjorie Garber, and moral philosopher Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation. Together the lecture-fable and the essays explore the palpable social consequences of uncompromising moral conflict and confrontation" --,Publisher's description.

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Citations

APA Citation, 7th Edition (style guide)

Coetzee, J. M., Gutmann, A., Garber, M. B., Singer, P., Doniger, W., & Smuts, B. B. (2016). The lives of animals (First Princeton Classics edition.). Princeton University Press.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

J. M. Coetzee et al.. 2016. The Lives of Animals. Princeton University Press.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities (Notes and Bibliography) Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

J. M. Coetzee et al.. The Lives of Animals Princeton University Press, 2016.

MLA Citation, 9th Edition (style guide)

Coetzee, J. M., et al. The Lives of Animals First Princeton Classics edition., Princeton University Press, 2016.

Note! Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. Citation formats are based on standards as of August 2021.

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