Corporal Compassion

Reviews / Votes

In this intellectually adventurous and scrupulously argued book, Ralph Acampora takes it as his aim to vitalize the Anglo-American debate on the ethics of transhuman contacts with a bracing injection of modern European thought. * J. M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature * Corporal Compassion is a very important book because it shows that our moral relationships and solidarity with other animals do not have to depend on how similar 'they' are to 'us' in terms of mental capacities or sentience. Acampora avoids charges of anthropomorphism by arguing that compassion for other animals and the ethical responsibilities that follow are fostered because we are all 'bodily beings' with common vulnerabilities and experiences. * Marc Bekoff, University of Colorado * Acampora has written an excellent study that opens up an innovative approach to animal ethics, based in an interspecies morality of compassion. A corporeal phenomenology of affective relations is deployed to avoid anthropocentric, cognitive, and theoretical biases that ignore bodily experience and our animality shared with other species. Particularly noteworthy is the wide variety of topics, sources, and cross-disciplinary research, as well as fruitful exchanges between analytic, continental, and feminist perspectives. This is the finest text I have read on the subject. * Lawrence J. Hatab, Old Dominion University * Reading 'Corporal Compassion' soon went [from being] a fascinating journey to a gratifying learning experience. I recommend the book to all philosophers from an analytic background who would like to view familiar terrain through a new set of lenses. Acampora writes beautifully though exotically, and before too long one greatly appreciates-and even enjoys-the gestalt shift this book engenders. * <i>Anthrozoos</i> * All philosophers interested in animal ethics should read this thought-provoking book. * <i>Environmental Ethics</i> *