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Sabrina Brando

Context and relationship are central in our interactions with different nonhuman animals

Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2015

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Another excellent book by Dr. Gruen. As someone working for and with animals in a variety of settings, doing a lot of staff training, and very interested in the human-animal interaction and relationships I was immediately drawn to this book. The book discusses a different approach, where context and relationship are central in our interactions with different nonhuman animals, and how we might make ethical decisions concerning other beings.

It is an excellent read and offers a lot to think about, I am sure that I will read this book many more times. The book highlights the fact that our understanding, knowledge, actions, interactions and feelings are work in progress, and this is an important message. Keeping in mind we have to practise, to remind oneself that there is still so much to learn, understand, to feel, which seem obvious but it harder to achieve then we probably admit to.

As Dr. Gruen points out, "Entangled empathy is not something we can engage in without critical attention, practice, and correction. I think it is wise to add a good dose of humility to the process of empathizing and the actions that spring from it. In other words, entangled empathy requites work; in that work, however, lie great rewards."

I also enjoyed the personal stories and practical examples.

It is a very important book I hope everyone will read it, and also, practice!

John C. Fentress

Celebrating Our Entangled Lives

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2015

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An insightful view of how humans and other species share various levels of empathetic understanding and caring for each other. I found this very helpful in the final preparation stages of my wolf book: LUPEY JOURNALS - LESSONS FROM THE HEART OF A WOLF (see lupeywolf.com). The reason for bringing that into the discussion here is that Lori Gruen's insights and ability to share them illustrates the empathy and thus trust that can operate between us and our animal cousins. This is a lovely read with an important message.

Jean Vengua

Entangled Empathy Provokes Thought & Feeling

Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2016

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Very interesting book on empathy and human-animal interaction; remarkably lucid and readable. I found it very useful for my practice of haptic drawing and painting [...]. I only wish that Gruen's book had been longer, and that she had gone more deeply into the subject. .

David Swanson

Ethics of Not Ruining Everything

Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2017

Today I listened to the audio book of Entangled Empathy: An Alternative Ethic for Our Relationship With Animals by Lori Gruen while reading the hardcopy of From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds by Daniel Dennett. As a result I have been better able to empathize with Dennett’s obsession with the uniqueness of human consciousness, and I have been better able to marvel at the complex precision of Gruen’s theorizing. But I don’t seem to be any better off than I was before when it comes to knowing how to persuade or otherwise mobilize people to stop humanity from wrecking this planet or harming various life forms on it. In that and other senses, both books read/listen to me like eternal introductions that never get around to the tofu of the matter.

In the end I don’t place an emphasis on thinking about human consciousness. Once we’ve established that humans’ brain power is neither a reason to value nor a reason to devalue non-human animals, and rejected silly dualist conceptions of it as non-physical, the one thing we can be certain of — pace Descartes — is that thinking about our thinking is self-indulgent. Of course our thinking is interestingly unique and interestingly engaged with an accumulating cultural collection of knowledge and habits and verbal language — though that uniqueness may be eroded by computers. But either we’re going to stop rendering the planet uninhabitable or we are not, and how our experience of apocalypse differs from chimpanzees’ experience of apocalypse gains my interest less than whether we can prevent the apocalypse.

Dennett objects to expanding ethics to include those who suffer, because he says we do not know who suffers. We must — simply must — he insists, draw “the moral line” somewhere between microbes and humans. But we simply don’t know where to draw it. The clear conclusion is that we must do what we have no ability to do, which would seem to be a radically extreme failure as an ethical system.

On the other hand, Dennett’s demystifying of human consciousness seems to place it in greater proximity to the lives of at least some other beings — something that might be appreciated by Gruen, who proposes an ethics of empathy in place of, or in addition to, an ethics of justice or an ethics of rights. Certainly, empathy is a practice that greatly benefits human thinking as we relate to people and other living things — perhaps even non-living things. (If Gruen can feel empathy for trees, why can’t I for rocks?) And Gruen helpfully points us toward the need to engage in careful and respectful empathy that does not desire for other creatures what we would want if we were they. (Desiring that chimps never fight is probably harmful to chimps.)

But what I want is an ethics of not ruining everything. If I respect every bit of an ecosystem out of humility and enlightened self-interest, based on the overly well documented fact that arrogantly screwing with things often has extremely negative consequences, do I really have to worry about the mental state of rats or slugs or oak trees or humans?

I’m not just proposing this as an ethical system for broad public policies that fails to apply to small-scale interactions. I think it helps there too. Why not treat other humans with humility and respect? I often suspect various humans of lacking certain cognitive abilities: those in a coma, infants, admirers of one or the other of the two big U.S. political parties, etc. In fact, I often suspect various humans of something worse than lacking mental abilities; I suspect them of possessing evil ones, of scheming for greed or power or sadistic pleasure.

I don’t mean to reject the value of thinking in terms of empathy or rights or utilitarianism or any other valuable framework. And the fact that none of them is working does not necessarily mean that another could have. I just think they’ve all rather fallen behind the wisdom contained in the simple injunction to first do no harm. Combining that with proper humility about which actions risk doing harm to an environment understood as planetary and therefore containing all variety of mental capacities known to us seems of urgent importance.

Martin Rowe

A grounded, intersectional approach

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2015

I'm the editor and publisher of this book, and I couldn't be more delighted to welcome Lori Gruen to Lantern! I've been immersed in the philosophy of animal rights for many years, and I've always been a little distrustful of one-size-fits-all systematic theories that aim to offer expansive general principles that explain all situations. We should be especially wary of such theories when it comes to nonhuman animals, given that we're always interacting with different nonhuman animals in different ways. Context and relationship, it seems to me, are all, and Gruen grasps these realities with both hands. In carefully calibrated and refreshingly straightforward prose—with minimal grandstanding, great dollops of humility, and many (perhaps a few too many) caveats—she offers a grounded, intersectional way we might approach ethical decisions regarding other-than-human life. Her book is personal, thoughtful, and—most significantly—centered on relationships with actual animals. She rightly places a great deal of emphasis on understanding the societies and personalities of animals, as individuals and species, and on the need to be attentive to their needs. The book has a terrific afterword from the always interesting pattrice jones and a lively foreword and preface from Marc Bekoff and the women who run Chimp Haven sanctuary.

Jennifer

Kindle vs Print?

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2015

I saw Dr Gruen speak yesterday evening at Yale and I'd prefer the Kindle version but before I purchase it I'd just like to make sure it includes all of the same pictures as the print version.

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Miss Hall

Accessible and relatable

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 25, 2020

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Accessible overview of what empathy is and how we can develop it in our relationships. Gruen historically situates this empathy within feminist care ethics and environmental ethics rather than other orientations (Eastern ethics is another it overlaps significantly with as empathy, compassion and self-understanding are also key in Buddhist ethics). Balanced mix of contextual ethical examples in the form of anecdotes and theory. Helps to move beyond the dichotomies of 'sides' in social injustices to bring the ethical dilemmas closer to our lived experience and reflect on how we can better perceive our ethical relationships and act more appropriately.

Alejandro Herrera

Recomiendo la lectura de este libro de Lori Gruen.

Reviewed in Mexico on February 13, 2018

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El concepto de empatía está ganando adhesiones sobre los conceptos de simpatía y de compasión. Yo estoy de acuerdo con ello. El análisis que de este concepto hace Lori Gruen es muy bueno. Examina las objeciones que algunos filósofos han hecho, y propone la forma de fortalecer dicho concepto. Su lectura es necesaria para todo aquel que esté interesado en la empatía que va más allá del antropocentrismo.

Tamaramacelloni

An important message on animal and ethic

Reviewed in Italy on July 18, 2017

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I think that we need to read and spread more books and messages on ethic and the relation with the other creatures on earth.

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