Rational Beasts
Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy
by Matthew Scully
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002
(464 pages; $27.95, hardcover)
reviewed by Christopher Killheffer
It is the rarest thing in the world to hear a rational discussion of vivisection,” wrote C. S. Lewis in a 1944 essay on what today is referred to more obscurely as animal research. Lewis considered the arguments of both opponents and defenders of vivisection to be based entirely on subjective sentiment rather than reason. He found the clouds of sentimentalism not only exasperating but also morally dangerous, for sentiment alone offers no guide to determining the obligations of justice.
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Christopher Killheffer works at Yale University Library and on a farm near New Haven, Connecticut, where he is a parishioner of St. Mary's Church.
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