Animals and Why they Matter by Mary Midgley

In this beautiful essay Animals and Why they Matter by Mary Midgley a book mainly for scholars the philosophical approach at the importance of animals, wild and domestic in our lives.
Why animals must matter to us?
For many reasons. Starting from the "human approach" at the thematic, so analyzing at first our needs, who we are, what we want from life in a fascinating intellectual trip including Spinoza, Kant for naming some thinkers of the past, religions included, we will see the mutation of the philosophical approach at the thematic of animals and who they are in the modernity.
Talking of domestic animals the author writes: "All creatures which have been successfully domesticated are ones which were originally social. They have transferred to human beings the trust and docility which, in a wild state, they would have developed towards their parents,  and in adult life towards the leaders of their pack of herd."

Published at first in 1983 by The University of Georgia Press this book  remains a modern classics of the thought. Written with great class and erudition, I highly recommend it to my readers.

I thank Eurospan Group for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori