The Aesthetic Value of Animals

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will argue in favour of Russow’s claim that the aesthetic value we have for a species is actually the aesthetic value we have for individuals of that species. Aesthetic value cannot apply to a species because the term species is just a word to categorize the individual members within it. Just like it would be wrong to apply aesthetic value to the word impressionist painting, instead you would apply the aesthetic value to individual works of art that fall into that category. Therefore when speaking of why we must morally protect a species, it is for the aesthetic value of the individual animals and not the whole species. “We have moral obligations to protect things of aesthetic value, and to ensure their continued existence, thus we have a duty to protect individual animals, and to ensure that there will continue to be animals of this sort.” Again links can be drawn between museums and how they protect and care for individual pieces of art differently based on aesthetic value, the Mona Lisa for example has a 7.5 million dollar room all to herself in the Louvre , compared to how we...

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