Changes

Jump to: navigation, search

Timeline of wild-animal suffering

1,749 bytes added, 10:47, 29 February 2020
Full timeline: Add event
|-
| 1779 || || Publication || {{w|David Hume}} || David Hume in his posthumous work ''{{w|Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion}}'' makes reference to the antagonism experienced and inflicted by wild animals upon each other.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hume|first=David|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4583|title=Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion|date=|publisher=|year=1779|isbn=|location=|pages=|language=English|quote=Observe [...] the curious artifices of nature, in order to embitter the life of every living being. The stronger prey upon the weaker, and keep them in perpetual terror and anxiety. The weaker too, in their turn, often prey upon the stronger, and vex and molest them without relaxation. Consider that innumerable race of insects, which either are bred on the body of each animal, or flying about infix their stings in him. These insects have others still less than themselves, which torment them. And thus on each hand, before and behind, above and below, every animal is surrounded with enemies, which incessantly seek his misery and destruction.}}</ref>
|-| 1821 || || Publication || {{w|Joseph de Maistre}} || Joseph de Maistre in ''The Saint Petersburg Dialogues'', describes the extent of suffering and violent deaths experienced by animals in the wild.<ref>{{Cite book|last=de Maistre|first=Joseph|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4583|title=The Saint Petersburg Dialogues|date=|publisher=|year=1821|isbn=|location=|pages=|chapter=Seventh Dialogue|language=English|quote=In the immense sphere of living things, the obvious rule is violence, a kind of inevitable frenzy which arms all things ''in mutua funera''. Once you leave the world of insensible substances, you find the decree of violent death written on the very frontiers of life. Even in the vegetable kingdom, this law can be perceived: from the huge catalpa to the smallest of grasses, how many plants ''die'' and how many are ''killed''! But once you enter the animal kingdom, the law suddenly becomes frighteningly obvious. A power at once hidden and palpable appears constantly occupied in bringing to light the principle of life by violent means. In each great division of the animal world, it has chosen a certain number of animals charged with devouring the others; so there are insects of prey, reptiles of prey, birds of prey, fish of prey, and quadrupeds of prey. There is not an instant of time when some living creature is not devoured by another [...] Thus is worked out, from maggots up to man, the universal law of the violent destruction of living beings. The whole earth, continually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be sacrificed without end, without restraint, without respite until the consummation of the world, the extinction of evil, the death of death.}}</ref>
|-
| 1822 || || Publication || {{w|Lewis Gompertz}} || Lewis Gompertz in ''Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes'' explores predation as a moral issue and advocates intervening to prevent it in certain circumstances.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Gompertz|first=Lewis|url=https://archive.org/details/moralinquiriesonthesituationofmanandofbrutes-lewisgompertz|title=Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes|date=|publisher=Centaur|year=1992|isbn=|editor1-last=Singer|editor1-first=Peter|location=Fontwell|pages=93–94|language=English|quote=Y: As you think it wrong for man to kill other animals for food, do you also think it wrong that animals should devour each other? As this is the general law of nature.<br>Z: It appears wrong, according to the rules by which we govern our own actions to each other; and should I witness the attempt in any animal of destroying another, I would endeavour to frustrate it; though this might probably be wrong.}}</ref>
94
edits

Navigation menu