University of Silesia in Katowice

English abstract: Animal protection as an emerging field of legislation needs to be constitutionalized as well as comprehensively expounded by legal scholars. As it is a growing body of regulation and accompanying legal theories, it needs to develop a solid conceptual and axiological framework, in particular a set of basic values and principles on which detailed rules are to be founded. Lacking these, the domain of animal law is still in the pre-paradigm stage and remains an assemblage of dispersed ideas, concepts and regulatory measures. It yet has to develop into a coherent whole that may grow to be a mature regulatory and doctrinal domain of the law. In order to reach this stage, it should be founded on clear theoretical and constitutional grounds. Lacking those, its further development, and effective operation may be seriously impeded. There seem to be two basic approaches that may serve as the possible foundations for a viable model of animal protection law. The first may be referred to as the “dignity” approach and the other, as the “sentientist” approach. According to the first of those two approaches, animal protection law should rely on the concept of animal dignity as its philosophical foundation. The second approach rejects the idea that the concept of animal dignity as the basis for the relevant legislation as philosophically dubious and entailing objectionable normative consequences for the scope and content of legal protections of animals. Thus, it aims rather at legal norms and policies being based directly on scientifically informed theories of sentience, evolutionarily developed nervous structures underlying cognitive and emotional capabilities or species-typical biological and psychological needs that condition the subjective well-being of a given creature. The aim of this paper is to analyse and discuss both these approaches and to argue that the former is philosophically, conceptually and practically flawed. The second approach, even despite some serious disadvantages, is therefore deemed to be preferable and more promising.

Keywords: animals, dignity, rights, law, constitution, ethics

Language: English

Published: Number 2(27)/2021, pp. 69-82.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2021.2.69

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Number of downloads: 469

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University of Łódź

English abstract: The article presents selected problems relevant for the contentious issue of abortion and the related discourses indicating that one of the characteristic features of abortion discourse is its mediatization. The author aims to characterize the constraints on abortion discourses and the varied environments in which the different types of such discourses emerge. Abortion discourses are sociolinguistically diverse and may exhibit different styles and modes of expression. Although they share the scope of the subject matter involved as in all cases they are centred on abortion-related problems, the field of discourse in each case is defined by the nature of the communicative situation in which a particular discourse is embedded. All abortion discourses are underlined by particular assumptions concerning the nature of human life and its beginning, as well as the issues of the dignity and liberty of the human person. The author suggests that what really hampers abortion discourses and prevents their participants from reaching a consensus is the fact that people who engage in such disputes are faced with the incommensurability of the values which translate into decisive factors and the final arguments used by interacting discussants. Another problem is posed by the fact that the two extreme positions in the debate are formulated with the use of different styles and registers, which results in the clash of asymmetric discourses. Finally, it is not insignificant that subjectively important values are much varied and that they must coexist with two main sets or “families” of abortion-oriented fundamental values present in the polarised camps.

Keywords: abortion discourse, dignity, liberty, human person

Language: English

Published: Number 1(10)/2015, pp. 53-68

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2015.1.53

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Number of downloads: 481