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The current ecological debate in France may be summarized by the contrast between philosophers Michel Serres and Luc Ferry. Serres condemns the war on nature that modern humans, desiring in the Cartesian tradition to “master and possess” nature, seem to be waging. He aspires to a “natural contract” between humans and nature, which would entail a symbiotic relationship between the parties. Ferry accuses Serres of being antihumanist—a radical, deep ecologist—and mocks the very idea of a natural contract. While Serres’s world view is ecocentric, placing humans on the same plane as the rest of nature, which should possess legal dignity, Ferry embraces an anthropocentric world view, in which humans are clearly separate from and superior to the rest of nature. Bruno Latour, a student of Serres, accuses Ferry of being mired in Kantian modernism.

This chapter explores the issues of ecology, animal rights and the poverty of humanism in the context of Luc Ferry's book “New Ecological Order.” It analyzes Ferry's humanist frame which shows how radical environmentalism and animal rights emerge as distinct problematics and his discussion of the relation between radical ecology and liberal democracy. This chapter also provides an overview of animal rights philosophy as expounded by Tom Regan and Peter Singer.

This introductory chapter discusses the coverage of this volume about animal rights. This volume analyzes Luc Ferry's “New Ecological Order” which provides a textbook example of contemporary humanist philosophy's attempt to address the challenge of ecology and animal rights and Ludwig Wittgenstein's aphorism “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.” It also analyzes Jonathan Demme's film “The Silence of the Lambs,” the relevant works of Ernest Hemingway and the special discourse in Michael Crichton's novel “Congo.”