I certainly believe that we have a moral obligation to care for the dogs, cats, and other nonhumans whose existence we have caused or facilitated as part of the institution of 'pet' ownership. But I maintain that we ought to abolish the institution and stop causing or facilitating the existence of more 'companion' animals.
Interpretation
We have a responsibility to care for pets, but owning them may be morally questionable.
In this quote, Gary L. Francione discusses the moral implications of pet ownership, arguing that while humans are responsible for the care of pets they have brought into existence, the act of owning pets itself is problematic. He challenges the notion of companion animals by suggesting that instead of perpetuating their existence through breeding, society should abolish the institution of pet ownership altogether, highlighting the ethical considerations involved in the treatment of nonhuman beings.
In practice
During a lecture on animal ethics, this quote can be used to illustrate the moral responsibilities of pet owners.
The idea that we have the right to inflict suffering and death on other sentient beings for the trivial reasons of palate pleasure and fashion is, without doubt, one of the most arrogant and morally repugnant notions in the history of human thought.
Humans treat animals as things that exist as means to human ends. That's morally wrong. Sexism promotes the idea that women are things that exist as means to the ends of men. That's morally wrong. We need to stop treating all persons - whether human or nonhuman - as things.
They are nonhuman persons. They are not food. If animals matter morally at all, there is one and only one rational response: go vegan. Everything else is just participation in animal exploitation.
We cannot talk simultaneously about animal rights and the 'humane' slaughter of animals.
We are vegans not simply because being vegan will reduce suffering. We are vegan because every sentient being values her or his life even if no one else does. We are vegan because justice minimally requires that we not take life for trivial purposes.
We can no more justify using nonhumans as human resources than we can justify human slavery. Animal use and slavery have at least one important point in common: both institutions treat sentient beings exclusively as resources of others. That cannot be justified with respect to humans; it cannot be justified with respect to nonhumans—however “humanely” we treat them.
Armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity.
There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.
People first feel things without noticing them, then notice them with inner distress and disturbance, and finally reflect on them with a clear mind.
The greatest wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present the supreme object of life; because that is the only reality, all else being merely the play of thought. On the other hand, such a course might just as well be called the greatest folly: for that which in the next moment exists no more, and vanishes utterly, like a dream, can never be worth a serious effort.
By binding image and desire, glamour gives us pleasure, even as it heightens our yearning. It leads us to feel that the life we dream of exists, and to desire it even more.
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