Speciesism, Painism and Happiness

This book puts forward a morality for the 21st century, based on the author's previous work. He invented the term speciesism several decades ago and the less felicitous word 'painism' about 20 years ago (neither of these words is yet recognised by the spellchecker!). These ideas have proved very powerful, and are summarised in this book. We do not have the right to exclude non-human animals from consideration, while painism asserts that it is wrong to cause suffering to others (including animals) and that we should not talk about a statistical average of pain and happiness as in the utilitarian contention of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. In this sense it is a qualitative rather than quantitative approach asserting our right not to suffer unnecessarily and insisting that the most important criterion is not the quantity of individuals harmed but rather the quantity of pain suffered by those affected individuals. A vigorous and important presentation.