Tony Milligan
King's College London, Theology and Religious Studies, Research Fellow in The Philosophy of Ethics with the Cosmological Visionaries project
I work primarily on normative and applied ethics with a special focus upon the relation between the human and the non-human: other creatures, other places, other ways of being.
An interest in the ethical dimensions of human activity in space falls into this territory. My short book on this subject, Nobody Owns the Moon (North Carolina: McFarland, 2015), looks at issues such as the off-world extension of property rights as well as the usual, more speculative problems (terraforming, our earthliness, our adaptability). Generally, I'm trying to engage with and help to give a bit more shape to discussions of what we can and ought-not to do on our travels. This is ongoing work so, for example, there's the co-edited book on space ethics with Jim Schwartz over at Wichita State University and the guest edited a special edition of the journal Space Policy on ethical dimension of space.
The book on Civil Disobedience: Protest, Justification and the Law (London & New York: Bloomsbury, 2013) covers protest over animals and the environment as well as the civil disobedience tradition and recent dissent. It advances a central argument that we need a revised and more open account of civil disobedience, one which is not modelled restrictively upon the protests of decades ago but which can help us to understand contemporary dissent. More particularly, we need to understand various forms of protest over the environment (including, arguably, some ecosabotage or 'monkey-wrenching') as civil disobedience. Similarly with prostests over the treatment of animals (particularly animal rescue, including some instances of covert rescue as well as open rescue).
Anyone who reads Beyond Animal Rights (London & New York: Continuum, 2010) will recognize that my sympathies are very much with animals. I'm not disputing the idea that animals have rights but I do hold that we need a rich moral vocabulary, one that doesn't reduce everything down to a single concept. (Such as 'rights', consequences' or 'virtue'.) We need lots of moral concepts to do lots of different jobs. Effectively, this is a form of normative pluralism. A further text, Animal Ethics: The Basics (London and New York: Routledge, 2015) will be out during the summer. There seems to be a good deal of interest in how I'm going to handle the final chapters on what has become known as the 'political turn'.
Love (Durham: Acumen, 2011) argues that, as humans, we need to see ourselves not just as the bearers of rights, or as rational agents. We need to see ourselves as beings who can be recipients of a defensible love, i.e. as loveable. An appreciation of this is central to our grasp of our own worth. Openness to love turns out to be an important human virtue. So, again, the concern is with the human and the non-human. In the final chapter I return directly to the question of what is at stake in our love for the non-human, for other creatures, for places, and for nature. The other love book, Love and its Objects (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) is a co-edited volume of essay put together with colleagues (Christian Maurer at Friburg and Kamila Pacovska at Pardubice). The volume was tied to a conference held at the University of Pardubice in 2013.
An interest in the ethical dimensions of human activity in space falls into this territory. My short book on this subject, Nobody Owns the Moon (North Carolina: McFarland, 2015), looks at issues such as the off-world extension of property rights as well as the usual, more speculative problems (terraforming, our earthliness, our adaptability). Generally, I'm trying to engage with and help to give a bit more shape to discussions of what we can and ought-not to do on our travels. This is ongoing work so, for example, there's the co-edited book on space ethics with Jim Schwartz over at Wichita State University and the guest edited a special edition of the journal Space Policy on ethical dimension of space.
The book on Civil Disobedience: Protest, Justification and the Law (London & New York: Bloomsbury, 2013) covers protest over animals and the environment as well as the civil disobedience tradition and recent dissent. It advances a central argument that we need a revised and more open account of civil disobedience, one which is not modelled restrictively upon the protests of decades ago but which can help us to understand contemporary dissent. More particularly, we need to understand various forms of protest over the environment (including, arguably, some ecosabotage or 'monkey-wrenching') as civil disobedience. Similarly with prostests over the treatment of animals (particularly animal rescue, including some instances of covert rescue as well as open rescue).
Anyone who reads Beyond Animal Rights (London & New York: Continuum, 2010) will recognize that my sympathies are very much with animals. I'm not disputing the idea that animals have rights but I do hold that we need a rich moral vocabulary, one that doesn't reduce everything down to a single concept. (Such as 'rights', consequences' or 'virtue'.) We need lots of moral concepts to do lots of different jobs. Effectively, this is a form of normative pluralism. A further text, Animal Ethics: The Basics (London and New York: Routledge, 2015) will be out during the summer. There seems to be a good deal of interest in how I'm going to handle the final chapters on what has become known as the 'political turn'.
Love (Durham: Acumen, 2011) argues that, as humans, we need to see ourselves not just as the bearers of rights, or as rational agents. We need to see ourselves as beings who can be recipients of a defensible love, i.e. as loveable. An appreciation of this is central to our grasp of our own worth. Openness to love turns out to be an important human virtue. So, again, the concern is with the human and the non-human. In the final chapter I return directly to the question of what is at stake in our love for the non-human, for other creatures, for places, and for nature. The other love book, Love and its Objects (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) is a co-edited volume of essay put together with colleagues (Christian Maurer at Friburg and Kamila Pacovska at Pardubice). The volume was tied to a conference held at the University of Pardubice in 2013.
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Books by Tony Milligan
Kniha je zamyšlením nad pojmem pravdy a odpovědnosti vůči pravdě jak v běžném životě, tak zejména v politice. Ani ve sféře politiky bychom podle Milligana neměli pravdu a pravdivost odsouvat stranou; a systematicky to ani není možné. Pravda je velmi komplexní pojem, jenž se v různých kontextech chová různě: Má se říkat vždy pravda bez ohledu na důsledky, které to může přinést? Je přípustná milosrdná lež? Kniha analyzuje tyto otázky v souvislostech aktuálních politických změn. Naznačuje, že současná éra není érou „postpravdy“ v politice, nýbrž érou stále hybridnější demokracie.
There are times when we need to accommodate the dreadfulness of loss for opponents, even when the cause for which they fght is unjust. We may also have to come to terms with the irreversibility of historic injustice and reconcile. Political compassion of this sort carries risks. Pushed too far, it may weaken our commitment to justice through too great a sympathy for those on the other side. It would be convenient if such compassion could be constrained by a clear set of political princi- ples. But principles run the quite different risk of promoting an ‘ossifed dissent,’ unable to respond to change.
In this book, Tony Milligan argues that principles are only a limited guide to dissent in unique, contingent circumstances. They will not tell us how to deal with the truly diffcult cases such as the following: Should the Lakota celebrate Thanksgiving? When is the crossing of a picket line justifed? What kind of toleration must animal rights advocates cultivate to make progress within a broadly liberal political domain? And how should we respond to the entangling of aspiration toward social justice with anger and prejudice (such as the ‘anti-Zionist’ discourse)? We may be tempted to answer these questions by presupposing that alignment (the business of choosing sides) is ultimately more important than com- passion, but sometimes political compassion trumps alignment. Some- times, being on the right side is not the most important thing.
We need a new account of civil disobedience, one which is rooted in, and draws from, the tradition of Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, but which is relevant to compemporary forms of protest over animals and the environment (some of which is open protest, some of which is more covert). We also need to abandon a number of restrictions upon the concept that have accumulated over the past 40 years since the peak of protest over Vietnam War. Civil disobedience has come to be seen as respectful of the law (by contrast with respectful of persons), necessarily communicative (rather than a form of 'direct action') and ultimately deferential. This places the concept itself in danger, makes it vulnerable to an 'argument from below' to the effect that it is too accepting of the existing state of affairs. My argument is that a claim of civil disobedience is a claim of special standing (special moral, legal, even spiritual standing). And that a plausible account of civil disobedience can be based around acceptance of a minimal set of basic civil norms. Such norms concern matters such as violence, hate-speech, reckless endangerment and cruelty. Even some (but not all) forms of reactionary protest should qualify. Recognition of the special standing of the relevant sorts of protest can and ought to be codified into law. (And doing so need not require us to buy into any conception of the political neutrality of the latter.)
"
Papers by Tony Milligan
Kniha je zamyšlením nad pojmem pravdy a odpovědnosti vůči pravdě jak v běžném životě, tak zejména v politice. Ani ve sféře politiky bychom podle Milligana neměli pravdu a pravdivost odsouvat stranou; a systematicky to ani není možné. Pravda je velmi komplexní pojem, jenž se v různých kontextech chová různě: Má se říkat vždy pravda bez ohledu na důsledky, které to může přinést? Je přípustná milosrdná lež? Kniha analyzuje tyto otázky v souvislostech aktuálních politických změn. Naznačuje, že současná éra není érou „postpravdy“ v politice, nýbrž érou stále hybridnější demokracie.
There are times when we need to accommodate the dreadfulness of loss for opponents, even when the cause for which they fght is unjust. We may also have to come to terms with the irreversibility of historic injustice and reconcile. Political compassion of this sort carries risks. Pushed too far, it may weaken our commitment to justice through too great a sympathy for those on the other side. It would be convenient if such compassion could be constrained by a clear set of political princi- ples. But principles run the quite different risk of promoting an ‘ossifed dissent,’ unable to respond to change.
In this book, Tony Milligan argues that principles are only a limited guide to dissent in unique, contingent circumstances. They will not tell us how to deal with the truly diffcult cases such as the following: Should the Lakota celebrate Thanksgiving? When is the crossing of a picket line justifed? What kind of toleration must animal rights advocates cultivate to make progress within a broadly liberal political domain? And how should we respond to the entangling of aspiration toward social justice with anger and prejudice (such as the ‘anti-Zionist’ discourse)? We may be tempted to answer these questions by presupposing that alignment (the business of choosing sides) is ultimately more important than com- passion, but sometimes political compassion trumps alignment. Some- times, being on the right side is not the most important thing.
We need a new account of civil disobedience, one which is rooted in, and draws from, the tradition of Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, but which is relevant to compemporary forms of protest over animals and the environment (some of which is open protest, some of which is more covert). We also need to abandon a number of restrictions upon the concept that have accumulated over the past 40 years since the peak of protest over Vietnam War. Civil disobedience has come to be seen as respectful of the law (by contrast with respectful of persons), necessarily communicative (rather than a form of 'direct action') and ultimately deferential. This places the concept itself in danger, makes it vulnerable to an 'argument from below' to the effect that it is too accepting of the existing state of affairs. My argument is that a claim of civil disobedience is a claim of special standing (special moral, legal, even spiritual standing). And that a plausible account of civil disobedience can be based around acceptance of a minimal set of basic civil norms. Such norms concern matters such as violence, hate-speech, reckless endangerment and cruelty. Even some (but not all) forms of reactionary protest should qualify. Recognition of the special standing of the relevant sorts of protest can and ought to be codified into law. (And doing so need not require us to buy into any conception of the political neutrality of the latter.)
"
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is the study of the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the
universe—including Earth. Understanding life, and in particular the basic conditions
for life, is important for our ability to create a sustainable future on Earth. The
connection goes both ways, however. The preservation of biodiversity and of
pristine environments on Earth is of the greatest importance for our ability to study
life, its origin, distribution and future. Of special interest from an astrobiology
perspective is the preservation of areas with conditions that can serve as analogues
to extraterrestrial environments, areas with conditions similar to those under which
life originated on Earth, and in general environments where extreme adaptations can
be studied. Astrobiology also presents some direct environmental challenges that
need to be considered, namely in the form of forward and back contamination. Both
issues need to be approached from a technical perspective, but also from a societal
perspective. And both must be understood within a broader context of ensuring the
sustainability of practices, both scientific and commercial.