Beyond Nature

Marco Maurizi takes on the animal question from a new angle. He argues that animal rights activism has long leaned on abstract moral arguments, and he rejects that approach. In its place he offers a historical-materialist account of how humans and other animals relate to one another. Set against Hegel, Marx and the Frankfurt School stand the animal rights thinkers Peter Singer, Tom Regan and Gary Francione. Through this comparison the book develops a social and dialectical theory of animality, along with a different way of addressing animal suffering in practice.

The book also re-examines the hopes many people have placed in veganism, animal liberationism and grassroots activism. Maurizi reads these movements through a political and revolutionary lens, one in which the liberation of humans and the liberation of animals are no longer treated as competing causes.