Ethics was never the province of philosophy alone, but of life itself. The whole human experience is suffuse with ethical presuppositions, meanings and implications.
So as a topic of study and reflection, ethics is shared across all fields of study, with vibrant discussions in the arts and humanities, conservation, law, medicine, politics, sciences and technology to name a few.
Yet the creatives who produce works of visual, musical, literary, digital and other art are often ignored in ethical discourse. This is unfortunate as their work is often more important than the bloodless debates of academics. Poetry, fiction, painting, video and other art forms convey and carry the moral presuppositions that we take for granted. Creative work inspires and challenges us to look deeply at the ethical import of our worldviews.
For instance, the featured image on this page is an illustration for the book Pit’s Letter (2000) by Sue Coe. Coe is a contemporaneous and prolific artist and author of work on animals and social justice. She is comparable to Francisco Goya in her emotionally searing depictions of the horrors we can inflict on other beings. Few arid arguments can capture the immediate moral sentiments conveyed through her work.
So PAN Works is making a special effort to welcome creatives into our think tank. In this section of the website, we feature a growing community of creatives interrogating our individual and collective ethics about animals, and by extension about people and nature.
Stay tuned!