Harvard Professor to Speak April 4 at Duke on Ethics of Eating Animals

Stanley Cavell of Harvard University will deliver the 2006 Kenan Distinguished Lecture in Ethics, titled "Thinking About and Eating Animals: Reflections on Coetzee's 'The Lives of Animals,'" on Tuesday, April 4, at DukeUniversity.

The lecture, at 5 p.m. in the Nasher Museum of Art auditorium, is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

Cavell is the Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard. A former MacArthur Fellowship recipient, Cavell is well-known for his creative approach to philosophy, literary criticism and cultural studies and for his pioneering philosophical analyses of film. He is the author of many books, including "The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy" (1979) and "Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life" (2004).

His lecture will ask how we are to understand the fact -- and the divide expressed therein -- that while many take it for granted that humans mass-produce and consume non-human animals, others are horrified by the practice.

Sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the annual Kenan Lecture brings a distinguished speaker to campus to address moral issues of broad social and cultural significance. This year's lecture is co-sponsored by the Office of the President, the IGSPCenter for Genome Ethics, Law, and Policy,the DivinitySchool and the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, with supportfrom the philosophy department, the English department and the literature program.

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The Kenan Institute for Ethics is a university-wide initiative at Duke that supports the study and teaching of ethics and promotes moral reflection and commitment in personal, professional, community and civic life. For more information, contact the Kenan Institute for Ethics at (919) 660-3033 or kie@duke.edu, or visit the website

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