I was interviewed for an article in Der Spiegel on the criminal trial and punishment of animals. The short version of my argument on this topic, about which I have written elsewhere, is that trials of animals only look like a foolish ritual of our benighted ancestors until we realize that these were a reflection of an awareness of their moral status, and that the primary difference today is that we skip straight to summary execution. The finer points of the argument don't really come across in the article, which for the most part follows the convention of treating the practice as a historical curiosity rather than an occasion for gaining insight into the trans-species dimensions of social life.
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