Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
5/5
Audiobook11 hours
A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion
Written by Matthieu Ricard
Narrated by Shaun Grindell
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
A powerful and wide-ranging indictment of the treatment of animals by humans-and an eloquent plea for animal rights
Every cow just wants to be happy. Every chicken just wants to be free. Every bear, dog, or mouse experiences sorrow and feels pain as intensely as any of us humans do. In a compelling appeal to reason and human kindness, Matthieu Ricard here takes the arguments from his bestsellers Altruism and Happiness to their logical conclusion: that compassion toward all beings, including our fellow animals, is a moral obligation and the direction toward which any enlightened society must aspire. He chronicles the appalling sufferings of the animals we eat, wear, and use for adornment or "entertainment," and submits every traditional justification for their exploitation to scientific evidence and moral scrutiny. What arises is an unambiguous and powerful ethical imperative for treating all of the animals with whom we share this planet with respect and compassion.
Every cow just wants to be happy. Every chicken just wants to be free. Every bear, dog, or mouse experiences sorrow and feels pain as intensely as any of us humans do. In a compelling appeal to reason and human kindness, Matthieu Ricard here takes the arguments from his bestsellers Altruism and Happiness to their logical conclusion: that compassion toward all beings, including our fellow animals, is a moral obligation and the direction toward which any enlightened society must aspire. He chronicles the appalling sufferings of the animals we eat, wear, and use for adornment or "entertainment," and submits every traditional justification for their exploitation to scientific evidence and moral scrutiny. What arises is an unambiguous and powerful ethical imperative for treating all of the animals with whom we share this planet with respect and compassion.
Author
Matthieu Ricard
MATTHIEU RICARD is a French Buddhist monk who resides at Schechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal. He is the son of the late Jean-François Revel, a renowned French philosopher. He is the author of many bestselling titles, including The Monk and the Philosopher, and The Quantum and the Lotus.
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