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New Book Shows Mark Twain an Early Advocate Against Animal Cruelty

Critter News

A new book by author and Stanford professor Shelly Fisher Fishkin reveals that Mark Twain was an early advocate against animal cruelty. From the review: Twain writes about cruelty to animals in a range of contexts, criticizing, for example, the insensitivity involved in the exploitation of animals for sport or entertainment.

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John Passmore (1914-2004) on the Moral Status of Animals

Animal Ethics

And by this they mean not only that it is wrong to enjoy torturing animals—which few moralists would ever have wished explicitly to deny, however little emphasis they might have placed on cruelty to animals in their moral teaching—but that it is wrong to cause them to suffer unnecessarily. Controversies no doubt remain.

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