Stanley Cavell, "Thinking About and Eating Animals"

Stanley Cavell, Thinking About and Eating Animals: Reflections on Coetzees The Lives of Animals
2006 Kenan Distinguished Lecture in Ethics
April 4, 2006

Cavells lecture asked how we are to understand the fact—and the divide expressed therein—that while many take it for granted that humans mass-produce and consume non-human animals, others are horrified by the practice.

Stanley Cavell is the Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. A former MacArthur Fellowship recipient, Cavell is well known for his creative approach to philosophy, literary criticism, and cultural studies and for his pioneering philosophical analyses of film. He is the author of many books, including The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (1979) and Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life (2004).

The 2006 Kenan Distinguished Lecture in Ethics was cosponsored by the Office of the President, the IGSP Center for Genome Ethics, Law, and Policy, the Divinity School, and the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, with support from the Philosophy Department, the English Department, and the Literature Program.