When the body phenomenological considerations for listening to animals in the making of their rights

Abstract

This interdisciplinary dissertation draws primarily on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, as well as ethology, legal theory, human–animal studies, care ethics, bioethics, and critical intersectional scholarship. It aims, first, to construct a phenomenological argument grounding animals’ legal personhood within the Interest Theory of Rights and Visa Kurki’s Bundle Theory of legal personhood. Second, to develop an understanding of sentience that takes animals’ (embodied) intentionality, agency, and (inter)subjecthood as a given, rather than reducing it to the capacity to feel pain. Lastly, to argue for the human duty to listen to animals’ embodied communication and translate it into legal institutions, notably by employing the phenomenological bi- or multi-constructive method developed by Dominique Lestel to (i) outline fundamental rights arising from animals’ own embodied, intersubjective, vulnerable, and agentic experiences, and (ii) grant animals legal standing and access to courts of law, seeking to learn their preferences so they are included in the process of decision-making on matters that affect their lives.