Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 35 (2004) 743–751 www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc Essay review Jamieson on the ethics of animals and the environment Hallvard Lillehammer Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 9DA, UK Morality’s Progress. Essays on humans, other animals, and the rest of nature Dale Jamieson (Ed.); Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002, pp. ix+380, Price £50 hardback, ISBN 019-9251-444. 1. Moral theory and vulnerable nature Over the past thirty years, the resurgence of moral theory has brought new light to a number of areas in ethics that had been largely ignored by mid-twentieth-cen- tury moral philosophy. These areas include the moral status of distant needy humans, sentient non-human animals, and non-sentient nature. In each of these areas, moral theory, and consequentialist moral theory in particular, has brought to the centre of philosophical attention the difficulty of producing a rigorous account of the moral status of entities which for whatever reason are incapable of engaging in effective rational discussion about actions affecting them. Distant needy humans fall into this category to the extent that they are either too dis- advantaged to bring anything to the bargaining table, too distant from the centre of agency to make their needs heard, too infirm to engage in rational discussion, or not individually identifiable as potential victims of harm. Non-human animals fall into this category to the extent that they are preyed upon and exploited by human beings without having the capacity to verbally object to their treatment. Non-sen- tient nature also falls into this category in the obvious sense of being subject to human exploitation while being necessarily incapable of having any view about it. 1 E-mail address: hallvard.lillehammer@kings.cam.ac.uk (H. Lillehammer). 1 This category also includes disabled and infirm human beings, such as the severely mentally disabled or patients in a permanent vegetative state. It may also include some children, women, prisoners, slaves, and other marginalised groups, who for some reason are excluded from a process of decision-making. 1369-8486/$ - see front matter # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2004.09.010