David Olivier Whittier (born David Olivier; 11 March 1956) is a French and British philosopher and antispeciesist activist. He is founder of the French journal '' Cahiers antispécistes'' ("Antispeciesist Notebooks"), the annual event Veggie Pride and of the annual meeting Les Estivales de la question animale ("The Summers of the Animal Question")''.'' Olivier is also the creator of the term " veggiephobia" and of numerous articles and conferences. He is an advocate of

utilitarian In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different charac ...

and antinatauralist ethics, and defines himself politically as a progressive.

Early life

David Olivier was born in London on 11 March 1956, to a French-teaching father and an American mother who was a painter. He mainly lived in London until 1967, after which he primarily lived in France. From childhood, he objected to the killing of animals for consumption. In adolescence, he was drawn to

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

, then to

anarchism Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessa ...

, devoting himself to

anti-sexist Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primari ...

and

anti-racist Anti-racism encompasses a range of ideas and political actions which are meant to counter racial prejudice, systemic racism, and the oppression of specific racial groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate ...

activism. In Lyon, he was an activist for the French

family planning Family planning is the consideration of the number of children a person wishes to have, including the choice to have no children, and the age at which they wish to have them. Things that may play a role on family planning decisions include marita ...

and

gay liberation The gay liberation movement was a social and political movement of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s that urged lesbians and gay men to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride.Hoffman, 2007, pp.xi-xiii. ...

movements. His focus on the importance of the "animal question" grew from the mid-1980s, as he moved away from anarchist and

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

intellectual influences.

Antispeciesist activism

Author of a leaflet initially distributed in

Lyonnais The Lyonnais () is a historical province of France which owes its name to the city of Lyon. The geographical area known as the ''Lyonnais'' became part of the Kingdom of Burgundy after the division of the Carolingian Empire. The disintegratio ...

libertarian circles from 1985, Olivier is considered one of the founding figures of the French antispeciesist movement. His meeting with Yves Bonnardel in 1986, made him aware of the existence of an active

animal liberation movement The animal rights (AR) movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a social movement that seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals ...

in the

English-speaking world Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the '' Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest languag ...

. With Bonnardel, Françoise Blanchon, also present in Lyon squat circles, and two other activists, he produced the pamphlet ''Nous ne mangeons pas de viande pour ne pas tuer d'animaux'' ("We don't eat meat so we don't kill animals"). Being bilingual, Olivier was able to create some of the first translations of Peter Singer's works into French; introducing Singer to his fellow activists. The concept of focusing the fight for animal rights around the ethical concept of antispeciesism lead Olivier, in 1989, soon joined by Françoise Blanchon and Yves Bonnardel, to found the journal ''Cahiers antispécistes''. The journal remained, for a long period, the essential media supporting the antispeciesist movement in France. Oliver himself authored many of the journal's articles, in addition to creating French translations of the texts of Peter Singer,

Tom Regan Tom Regan (; November 28, 1938 – February 17, 2017) was an American philosopher who specialized in animal rights theory. He was professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University, where he had taught from 1967 until his reti ...

Paola Cavalieri Paola Cavalieri (born 26 October 1950) is an Italian philosopher, most known for her work arguing for extension of human rights to the other great apes and more broadly, "to mammals and birds, and probably vertebrates in general". In addition to ...

James Rachels James Webster Rachels (May 30, 1941 – September 5, 2003) was an American philosopher who specialized in ethics and animal rights. Biography Rachels was born in Columbus, Georgia, and graduated from Mercer University in 1962. He received his Ph ...

and Steve F. Sapontzis. He and the other co-founders of the journal were a decisive influence on Sébastien Arsac and Brigitte Gothière, future founders of the animal protection organization L214. Olivier left the editorial staff of ''Cahiers antispécistes'' in 2004, after the publication of issue 23. In October 2001, in a bid to increase recognition of the refusal to eat animals, Olivier founded the first Veggie Pride in Paris, defining in his manifesto, the term "veggiephobia". Veggie Pride was intended to bring together people expressing their pride in refusing to eat animals (

vegetarians Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter. Vegetarianism may ...

and

vegans Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal product—particularly in diet (nutrition), diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. An individual who follows the diet or philosophy is kn ...

) and denouncing the discrimination they feel they suffering their social life (community food for example) or in defense of their ideas. The event was exported to several French, European and North American cities, and organized its 18th Parisian event in 2018. In 2002, Olivier organized the first meeting of ''Les Estivales de la question animal'', an annual meeting of debate and reflection around the "animal question". This gathering of association leaders and theoreticians of the French-speaking animalist movement lead to the launch of the organization L214, the movement towards the legal abolition of meat and the creation of the French

Animalist Party The Animalist Party (french: Parti animaliste) is a French political party focused on animal rights and against cruelty to animals. History For the 2022 French legislative election, the party presented 421 candidates in the first round of thi ...

. The publication of ''The Antispeciesist Revolution'', by

Presses Universitaires de France Presses universitaires de France (PUF, English: ''University Press of France''), founded in 1921 by Paul Angoulvent (1899–1976), is the largest French university publishing house. Recent company history The financial and legal structure ...

, containing for one third, a collection of Olivier's articles, met with relative media success. Renan Larue, as well as the critic Thierry Jacquet, consider the book's publication to be symbolic, by doing justice to the work of the editors of ''Cahiers antispécistes'' and granting the "animal question" the seriousness it deserves.

Philosophy

Olivier opposes speciesism, which he defines in these terms: "Speciesism is to species as racism is to race and sexism is to sex: a discrimination based upon species, nearly always in favour of the members of the human species, ''Homo sapiens''." He also contends that "

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

" do not exist and asserts that the concept is irrevocably essentialist and should be ontologically discarded in the same way that

race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...

has been for humans. A utilitarian, Olivier considers that "the sole relevant criterion for taking into account the interests of a being is its being sentient and thus having interests", that is to say that they have feelings. For him, ethics is the science of the right answer to the question "what to do?", and therefore the consideration of the consequences of the actions envisaged from the point of view of

sentient beings Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations. The word was first coined by philosophers in the 1630s for the concept of an ability to feel, derived from Latin '' sentientem'' (a feeling), to distinguish it from the ability to ...

potentially affected. Olivier is also a hedonistic utilitarian. That is to say, he considers "it is these sensations, and they alone, which have a moral value, positive for happiness, negative for unhappiness; this value is independent of any other characteristic of the being that experiences them". The just act is therefore, according to him, that which puts the world in the best possible state, that is to say, the state in which sentient beings experience the most happiness and the least unhappiness. Olivier is an antinaturalist, in that he considers

nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

not to exist, and that it has no reason to affect our ethical decisions. He also argues that the naturalization of animals is one of the determining factors of their domination. Olivier's antinaturalism is associated with his defense of interventions in favour of reducing

wild animal suffering Wild animal suffering is the suffering experienced by nonhuman animals living outside of direct human control, due to harms such as disease, injury, parasitism, starvation and malnutrition, dehydration, weather conditions, natural disasters, an ...

, and his rejection of environmentalism. His views have led him to be cited on numerous occasions in the works and forums of critics of antispeciesism. Olivier defines himself as progressive, in that he considers significant progress in the state of the world to be possible, but does not describe himself as a revolutionary because he does not believe that such progress can be made in a "great evening".

Personal life

Olivier is an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

. He has been married since 2008 and has two children, Héloïse (born 2009) and Emil (born 2015). In June 2020, Olivier was diagnosed with

autism The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...

. In 2023, he legally added his mother's maiden name Whittier to his full name.

Selected publications

Articles published in books

In ''Luc Ferry ou le rétablissement de l'ordre'' (tahin party ed., 2002): * "Luc Ferry or restoration of order," (''Cahiers antispécistes'', no. 5, December 1992); Italian translation published in Etica & Animali a.VI, no. 1–2, 1993. * "Strange Drive" (''Cahiers antispécistes'', no. 10, September 1994). In ''Espèces et Éthique - Darwin: une (r)évolution à venir'' (ed. Tahin party, 2001): * "Nature does not choose" (''Cahiers antispécistes'', no. 14, December 1996). * "The species either do not exist" (''Cahiers antispécistes'', no. 11, December 1994). * "Richard Dawkins' Selfless Selfishness" (original article). In ''La Révolution antispéciste'' (ed. PUF, 2018): *
What is speciesism?
(''Informations et Réflexions libertaires'', April 1991 and ''Cahiers antispécistes'', no. 5, December 1992). * "Towards a non-naturalist ecology? "(''Cahiers antispécistes'', no. 17, December 1999). * "The species either do not exist" (''Cahiers antispécistes'', no. 11, December 1994). * "On superiority" (original article).

Pamphlets

*
We don't eat meat so as not to kill animals
' (1989)

References

External links

*
''Cahiers antispécistes''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Olivier, David 1956 births Living people 20th-century French philosophers 20th-century English philosophers 21st-century French philosophers 21st-century English philosophers English animal rights activists English people with disabilities English animal rights scholars British veganism activists French animal rights activists French writers with disabilities French atheists English atheists French people of American descent English people of American descent English emigrants to France People on the autism spectrum Consequentialists Hedonism People from London Utilitarians British activists with disabilities British writers with disabilities