The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity

by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer

Book Overview

A compelling and revolutionary work that calls for the immediate extension of our human rights to the great apes. The Great Ape Project looks forward to a new stage in the development of the community... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312104731
• ISBN13: 9780312104733
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

good collection

"The Great Ape Project" is a good collection of reasons for supporting the project of the same name.

Tearing down the walls that divide

This book is an excellent source of information provided by a variety of scientific and legal experts. The authors show us the rich emotional and cultural lives of non-human great apes. Researchers who use other apes because of their genetic and psychological complexity ought to be required to read this book. Indeed, the one flaw of this book is the fact that a few chapters are the works of researchers who have used, for example, the linguistic talents of other apes to advance their own careers. Other sections of the book, including a chapter vividly comparing the non-human and human slave trade, and a description of the case for legal rights based on the personhood of hominids, underscore that flaw with haunting and brilliant sensitivity. Overall, The Great Ape Project lucidly demonstrates the unconscionability of continuing to use the other apes for experimentation, for teaching, for trade in their body parts, and in the entertainment industry. Moreover, it inspires us to broaden our definition of slavery to include our nearest living relatives.

Compelling Case for Sentience Rights

The contributors make a compelling case for sentience rights for higher primates based on strong empirical evidence and demonstrable harm caused to other higher primates that infringes on their rights claims as sentient beings. I would ask if the authors might consider a similar work that expands the case for cetacean rights on the same basis, though.

Well written and fascinating

The essays in this book are remarkable and well done. A very important work for the animal rights movement. I did find it a little repetitive at times, but this did not detract from the point of the book, to make us aware of how closely related great apes really are to us, and their capacity to communicate in a human language.

Fascinating

I have to admit, our family's copy of the Great Ape Project sat on the shelf for a few years before I got around to looking at it.I had deep reservations about the book, fearing that it would lead to a reinforcement of anthropocentric criteria for moral standing.However, once I started reading I was hooked. The huge number of contributors with many different viewpoints ranging from rather anthropocentric to radical animal rights make for a lively read. In addition, the book is chockablock full of fascinating information about the great apes--they really are more similar to us than even I, an animal rightist for years, would have thought possible. A challenging book that raises the questions: what does it mean to be human? And how can we justify treating our fellow great apes the way we do?