ABSTRACT
The topic of animals and ethics existed only around the margins of philosophical and scientific discourse until the second half of the twentieth century. Classical philosophers, such as Aristotle, and moderns such as Kant and Bentham, briefly discussed what we owe animals, but their views were consequences of their broader philosophical outlooks rather than the results of focused investigation. (For a somewhat different view, see Sorabji 1993.) Since animals were ubiquitous in daily life and central to food production and transportation in this period, it is surprising how invisible they were as independent objects of philosophical interest and moral concern.
