In 2006, Dr. Lisa Kemmerer published In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals in the ASI-managed Brill Human-Animal Studies Book Series. This volume introduces the most important ideas in animal ethics and builds on a critical dialogue emerging at the intersection of animal rights, environmental ethics, and religious studies. In Search of Consistency questions what it means to be human and challenges our assumed place in the universe.
As part of our Interview with the Author series, we sat down with author, activist, ecofeminist, and long-time ASI friend, Lisa Kemmerer, to learn more about this earlier and important work.
ASI: Why is In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals important?
LK: In Search of Consistency provides an excellent critical overview of ethics and anymals, including utilitarian, rights, religious ethics, and environmental ethics. There simply is no book that offers as much as this fat text offers by way of an overview of ethics and anymals. Moreover, the final chapters put forward my own moral theory. Looking back on it, it was a remarkably ambitious undertaking for such a young scholar. Readers have told me that my writing in these chapters is some of the best reading on the subject, extremely important work, and it is, sadly, largely undiscovered.
ASI: How does the book relate to your background and general areas of interest?
LK: This book includes the primary moral angles for examining anymal ethics, which I continue to focus on in my writing. Especially in the years when the book was published, there was little crossover between anymal ethics and world religions, or environmental ethics and anymal liberation, but this book includes both. I would, however, add one more today: ecofeminism, another sadly overlooked topics in the larger movement.
ASI: How is the work situated, and how does it advance debates, within the field of Human-Animal Studies?
LK: In Search of Consistency provides a critical examination of the work of four scholars in the area of anymal ethics: a utilitarian (Singer), a rights theorist (Regan), a theologist (Linzey), and an environmentalist (Taylor). This book widens the scope of anymal ethics, while taking note of the strengths and weaknesses of each scholar, including weaknesses that no other author had yet noted, like singer’s assumption that life is to be assessed as a general happiness, and that Regan’s criteria for a subject-of-a-life can be boiled down to sentience, same as Singer’s work. The religious ethics portion of the book examins Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, Islamic, and indigenous ethics. Again, this was a largely unexplored field, and a field that is still comparatively underrepresented. In contrast, many contemporary anymal studies people link animal ethics to environmental ethics, but including Taylor in a book exploring Singer and Regan was unusual and unexpected twenty years ago. Finally, my own theory, the Minimize Harm Maxim, has yet to be widely discussed, but one day it will be, and it is both an important and interesting philosophical journey into anymal ethics.
ASI: What are some of the major messages in In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals?
LK: As the title suggests, the importance of consistency stays at the forefront throughout the book. Shortcomings that I find in each author tend to be inconsistencies. Another key message is that all scholars contribute to the field, but none is perfect. Finally, there is the message of the Minimize Harm Maxim, a new theory, which examines ethics and anymals guided by a commitment to consistency.
ASI: Who was your intended audience when you wrote this work, and has your audience changed at all since publication?
LK: I was too young to think about the intended audience when I wrote the book. I was still a graduate student. I probably thought of other students, but mostly, I was just excited about the ideas and the thoughts those ideas inspired. I would say In Search of Consistency is good for any philosopher to read—is important for those interested in anymal ethics, religious ethics, or environmental ethics.
ASI: What were/are your goals of your research in terms of welfare and positive policy change?
LK: I have always been a full-on abolitionist writing to push the ball little farther down the field, hoping to expand minds and hearts and ethics just a little bit more. That is pretty much all any of us can do.
ASI: In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals was published in 2006, what changes have you seen in the field and in the world in the past 18 years related to your research?
LK: Anymal ethics has moved from a tiny fringe topic among a few activists and scholars to an accepted field of study, not just in ethics, but literature and psychology, feminism and law, social justice and ethology, to name just a few. Additionally, anymal ethics is increasingly important for many who are religious, and for environmentalists who are sincere in caring about the planet—one who actually cares about the planet must choose vegan. Simultaneously, anymal activism has moved from a bizarre fringe element of society to something about which most households and communities have at least some measure of awareness, and their awareness includes a distaste for much of what was long hidden; the basics of what has been done to anymals as a matter of routine has been at least somewhat exposed to the reading, viewing, and listening public. What has not changed is our exploitation of anymals. As long as a preponderance of human beings accept domination and hierarchy as the norm, including sexism, racism homophobia, and agism, anymals will continue to be exploited by and for human beings.
ASI: What are you currently working on?
LK: Many things! I have just finished an updated version of Vegan Ethics: AMORE, and am working on a book on the pro-life movement and animal liberation, comparing the two topics from a moral point of view. I am also working on the website for my Animals and Religion project, which is currently being designed and beautified. Additionally, I fulfill as many requests for articles as I am able; I am currently working on and a chapter for an anthology on ecofeminism and climate change and an article on religion and animals for Stanford philosophy online.
I am also busy with a direct action initiative, bringing vegan foods to local restaurants. It has been remarkably successful. Restaurant offerings (items have to be on the menu with a price) in a nearby town, where I have been working, have quadrupled! Learn more about the Fine(ally) Dining Hospitality Challenge here.
I am also painting and writing poetry for the movement. In the last year I have published two poetry chapbooks and I often paint in the evenings. Arts, like religion, are an under-utilized method of bringing change.
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Learn more and purchase In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animal here.
Learn more about Lisa Kemmerer’s work, publications, and articles here.
Lisa also runs the international mentoring program, Tapestry, in the field of Animal Studies, through which has works directly with activists, scholars, and students of all ages to help maintain and build a rigorous program of research, writing, teaching, and activism. Lisa engages in one-on-one discussions with students to explore their dissertation topics, works with instructors to provide Zoom presentations for classrooms, offers talks at conferences, and brainstorms with activists and thinkers in the field of Animal Studies on both nuanced philosophical ideas and unfolding local events.