A.F.A.R.
Wednesday April 12th, 2023 with Carolyn Harris
This week, the vegan philosopher Silvia Caprioglio Panizza speaks about the concept of moral impossibility as it relates to veganism and animal ethics; the need for a radical paradigm shift in how we relate to our fellow animals; and vegan feminism.

This week, I am pleased to present my interview with the academic philosopher Silvia Caprioglio Panizza, leader of the Vegan Studies Network. Silvia is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, located at the University of Pardubice in the Czech Republic. She is the author of The Ethics of Attention: Engaging the Real with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil, and a co-editor of three other philosophy books. She is also a vegan feminist who has been bringing philosophical concepts such as moral impossibility into conversation with veganism and animal ethics. In 2021, she co-organized the academic virtual conference, Veganism: A Paradigm Shift. In this interview, Silvia describes how the concept of moral impossibility can inform our approaches to veganism and animal advocacy, and she tells me about her work on attention and reification as these ideas relate to animal ethics. Then Silvia speaks about the need for a radical paradigm shift with regards to how humans relate to other animals; how studying philosophy can help us as grassroots activists; her thoughts on being a vegan academic working in non-vegan universities; and the connections between veganism and feminism.