Animal Rights Lectures 2026 with DDr. Martin Balluch

SAVE THE DATE We warmly invite you to the ANIMAL RIGHTS LECTURES in autumn 2026! In five lectures, VGT chair DDr. Martin Balluch will speak about the philosophical basis of the animal rights movement, which was discussed very intensely in the 1980s to 2000s and is currently receiving less attention. That these topics are far from settled will become clear at our ANIMAL RIGHTS LECTURES - after a one-hour lecture, there will be a short break to recharge before the discussion that follows. Come along and join the discussion! Register at: events@vgt.at We look forward to seeing you! 2nd lecture: Reducing suffering or the right to autonomy: In the animal rights movement, the idea has surprisingly become established as if it were self-evident that its most important task is to reduce suffering in the world. This is strange in several respects. First, those thinkers who first formulated the ethics of suffering reduction declared rights - such as animal rights - to be absolute nonsense ("nonsense on stilts"). Rights sometimes stand in the way of suffering reduction. Second, it is tacitly assumed that suffering is a universally objective negative value. Yet there can be no objective values, because there are no deities that could define them. And third, for humans, rights rather than suffering reduction are the central ethical determinant. As antispeciesists, we should not grant this privilege to humans alone. On the other hand, it seems so obvious: how could one not want to reduce suffering? All info: vgt.at/de/aktuelles/detailseite/8916/animal-righ…