Rainer Ebert

Each year, close to sixty billion non-human animals are killed worldwide to produce meat, eggs, and dairy. Many more suffer at our hands in fur farms, zoos, rodeos and circuses. Most of these animals have rich subjective lives that matter to them. They consciously experience emotions such as pain, joy, grief and anger, and their lives can go better or worse, from their point of view.

Once one acknowledges these facts, it becomes hard to ignore that justice requires us to radically rethink our treatment of those animals who we eat, wear, experiment on and use for entertainment. I consider myself an animal rights advocate, speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves. As an academic, I am trying to sort out some of the many philosophical questions concerning the moral status of non-human animals that are still open and the object of vivid academic debate. Do predators violate the rights of their prey? Is animal testing ever justified? To what extent do moral agents have moral obligations towards non-human animals? Where do we draw the line between entities that deserve moral consideration and entities that do not? Towards these ends, I initiated and organized the first ever comprehensive lecture series dedicated to the moral status of non-human animals in Germany at Heidelberg University in 2006. This lecture series culminated in a book titled Tierrechte - Eine interdisziplinäre Herausforderung that, I hope, contributed to thoughtful public and academic debate in the German-speaking world about how we ought to treat animals.

The average number of deaths from poverty each hour is roughly equivalent to the number of victims who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Most of those who die of poverty-related causes are children. From an ethical perspective, extreme poverty should be the top story in every newspaper, every day. But it is not.

Neither are widespread and systematic violations of human rights by governments, their agents and other political bodies around the world. The facts of poverty, inequitable distribution of the world's resources, human rights abuses, war and environmental degradation argue for a call to conscience, for sustained awareness and engaged action on the part of all of us. All of these issues have significant moral components to them which are in serious need of systematic philosophical analysis. Because of their extensive training, professional philosophers are particularly well-equipped to articulate and communicate the kind of universals that can cross cultural boundaries and help us shape morally-informed foreign policies and international agreements for the betterment of this, our unavoidably globalized world. As an activist, I have been working with a children’s village in Bangladesh and have written newspaper articles to create awareness for the LGBT movement in South Asia.

My philosophical interests further include the political philosophy of libertarianism, philosophical logic and the Gettier Problem. I also regularly catch myself pondering about the concepts of ethics and their nature: Is ethics objective? Are there moral facts? If so, how do we learn about them? Do (some) ethical statements express propositions? If so, are some of these propositions true? Are there genuine moral dilemmas?

I would like to hear from you if you share my interests in any manner.