It should be obvious to any ethical person that the way we treat animals today is one of the biggest moral failures of our time. With the benefits of further moral progress, our current abhorrent practices will hopefully be universally condemned by future generations. But that progress will only come to life if someone articulates today why change is needed and how it might be implemented in practice. This might be a pathbreaking book in that regard.

The author takes the bull by the horns by identifying the problem (which is easy enough) and then mildly criticizing earlier theories of animal rights and presenting her own Capabilities Approach as an alternative. The Capabilities Approach itself is a reasonably interesting framework, but clearly more easily applicable to humans than animals. It runs into practical challenges pretty quickly since the capabilities of all animal species are extremely different. It would be a monumental task to construct an exhaustive list or categorization of all animal capabilities, and the author does not attempt it.

Instead, she indicates that a political and legal system might be possible where human collaborators learn to understand the ways of life of a given animal species and are given the power to take legal action in the human world to safeguard the capabilities of that species. This legal part of the book was the most interesting one, in my opinion. It is impressive to see a distinguished philosopher work through so many practical implications of her theory, even though the implications must necessarily remain incomplete since our current legal institutions are still so far away from the ideal she sketches.

The author also looks at animal justice from many other perspectives. For example, she provides a nice discussion of sentience, the ability to strive for something, in various animals. She concludes that it does not necessarily make sense to talk about the capabilities of all animal species. Lines will have to be drawn, and this is an interesting conclusion. She also discusses a great variety of present-day interactions between human beings and animals of different kinds, both domesticated and wild. She concludes that most of them do not conform to the Capabilities Approach, but some do.

All in all, there's no doubt that a vast amount of further research needs to be done on every topic discussed in this book. But this is a great starting point for new debates. It will hopefully inspire young readers in philosophy, science, law and many other fields to make things better for animals in the future.

Justice for Animals by Martha Nussbaum is a very accessible presentation of her capabilities approach applied to animal rights. Both informative and thought-provoking, this moves the debate onto new and wider ground.

If you're familiar with her approach as it applies to humans, you will have a better appreciation for the application to nonhuman animals. Some, who admittedly have never read Nussbaum, make the unsubstantiated claim that she somehow doesn't argue for some kind of universal healthcare. Ignore those people, they are what are often called posers. Ignorant yet insistent on trying to look oh so ethical. Fail!

While this is a detailed and relatively thorough presentation of her approach, and refutations of other theories, this is still a work in progress. What it does is move us toward an appreciation of animals without ranking them in some way (more or less human-like for instance). There are a couple things I appreciate in the abstract but wonder how they could be implemented. Even with a focus on law and justice, many of the issues still heavily involve the changing of people's mindsets toward animals, and what they might be willing change in their own lives.

Which brings us to another ignorant position people take. Not ignorant in the ultimate goal they profess to desire but in their fantasy that any major change in society can and must be done at once and immediately. The people I am talking about are the extremists among the vegans. Like one review I read, Nussbaum is taken to task for making changes in her diet but not yet being vegan. This person, while perhaps correct in finding some factual counterpoints to Nussbaum doesn't lament how long it is taking for society to change but rather that because Nussbaum isn't already a perfect vegan all of her ideas should be discarded. Again, posing and faux-righteousness, you know, like posing with your back to the camera to demonstrate you have no creativity whatsoever.

I would highly recommend this to readers who want a framework within which to make change, both ethical and, specifically, legal. You don't have to be familiar with Nussbaum to get a lot from this book. If you're not familiar with her, just try to be an active engaged reader and not make asinine assumptions about her beliefs just because your reading comprehension skills are lacking. This is not a perfect work, but it is designed to move the debate forward, not to be a snap-in-place corrective to everything.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )