Jeremy D Yunt

"A powerfully written work." -Dr. Peter Singer, Princeton University, author of "Animal Liberation" (1975) In this wide-ranging and accessible book, Yunt offers a brief survey of some of the most vital historical, scientific, philosophical, and even religious aspects of animal liberation. Making connections between sexism, racism, homophobia, and speciesism, he shows why nonhuman animals are the last group of sentient beings to gain rights, as well as how the movement to extend basic rights to them-something increasing with each generation-is emerging as the historical and moral end goal humanity has been moving toward throughout its evolution. What's partly aided this evolution are scientific discoveries unveiling the biological and moral relatedness of humans and nonhuman animals. If such facts begin to inform our ethics, then our awareness of these primal bonds-such as suffering, empathy, sorrow, and joy-will enable humanity to move away from its role as oppressor, and into one of cohabitant and caretaker of the planet and other beings. The devastating issues related to our current exploitation of other species-human health epidemics, environmental catastrophes, and the unnecessary brutality against other sentient life-will finally be confronted in earnest, and it will become apparent that the embrace of animal liberation is, in fact, the beginning of true human liberation.

Paul Tillich (1886-1965) is generally considered the most original and influential theologian of the 20th century. What's not as widely recognized, outside of academic circles, is his stature as a first-rate existentialist philosopher-in the lineage of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Pascal. Few people have analyzed more areas of existence: from art and architecture to culture, science, economics, politics, technology, psychology, world religions (particularly Buddhism), history, and health and healing. But one of Tillich's primary and enduring concerns was humanity's troubled relationship with the natural world. It was his belief that empathizing with and defending nature was of vital importance to the human spirit, bringing great depth and meaning to our experience of life itself. Though the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is seen as a pivotal moment in awakening the environmental movement, Tillich was writing decades before this of the commodification and desecration of the natural world. He witnessed the rise of industrialization and the power of this synthetic world to bend humanity to its demands, and warned that "we are living in the late stage of the self-destruction of industrial society, as a world above the given world of nature." Though creative in many respects, he also saw this technical enterprise impoverishing our spiritual lives and inflicting untold suffering on a defenseless planet and our fellow nonhuman animals. With great implications for environmental ethics, a central part of Tillich's theology is his "multidimensional unity of life," a unique scientific and moral perspective that vastly expands our concept of life, granting deep significance to even the inorganic dimension. Perhaps most importantly, Tillich challenges religious views that see life on this planet as subordinate to the "real" lives to come after death, famously stating that "there is no salvation salvus: to heal and make whole] of man if there is no salvation of nature, for man is in nature and nature is in man." In this timely and original assessment of Tillich, Yunt provides a philosophical bulwark against the modern world's increasing assault on science, reason, and nature. And by examining contemporary environmental movements such as deep ecology and ecopsychology, as well as current issues like climate change and the impact of human diet and new technologies on the planet, Yunt brings clarity to the increasingly obvious fact that humans are within the realm of the natural world, not above it.