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The prevailing view of house elves in Harry Potter’s world is highly speciest, to a far greater extent than exists in our own. Most people have the view that humans are inherently different from animals though when faced with qualifying this distinction, they have a hard time doing so. Without invoking a religious belief, how does one justify not giving equal consideration to “animals” and humans? If one tries to do so on the basis of consciousness or level of awareness, one quickly runs into the problem of those humans who have limited faculties (children, the senile, etc). An adult chicken for instance is more intelligent in some respects (ie awareness of time, the “mirror test,” delayed gratification, puzzles, etc) than a three year old child. Therefore sentience/cognition is not an acceptable basis for distinction and any other argument can be shown to be similarly void. From a moral perspective the interests of animals must be given the same consideration as those of humans.

This raises the question of what is in an animal’s interests? Before I get too far afield, I think it is rather obvious that the practices involved in animal husbandry are not in animal’s interests, nor is the property status that they are afforded in our society. In Harry Potter’s world this is harder to pin down, largely because the house elves are by all indications of equal intelligence to that of the average human. They have a highly developed sense of themselves, that even if largely suppressed, exhibits itself in the odd case like Dobby. The question though of whether to enslave the house elves should not be hard to answer despite the socialization and cultural norms which justify it. If house elves are to be given the same consideration as humans, and the idea of human slavery is viewed as morally abhorent even if for whatever reason the party in question desires that slavery, then house elves should be free to do as they wish, which might very well be a life of servitude. A lot of the finer points of this argument would emerge from a better history of the house elves, and their relation to the wizarding world but the general argument still stands.

If anyone would like to read more about vegetarianism/veganism I would suggest a couple books to explore the basic tenets. The first is Peter Singer’s ground breakign work, Animal Liberation. Published in the mid 1970’s it is the seminal work of the modern animal rights movement and lays out the basic groundwork for the philosophic understanding of animals and their relation to humans. Although dated in some respects it is still quite relevant today. The other is Matthew Scully’s recent book, Dominion. Scully was a speech writer for George Bush and in his book he takes on animal welfare from a conservative/religious perspective (hence the title for anyone familiar with the book of genesis). While I haven’t read it myself yet, it is well regarded and a different perspective on the issue that comes to the same conclusions regarding animals’ relation to humanity.

Hope you got something out of this and thanks for the great podcasts.

Sean

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/#article:9699

yeah, I really wish I were teasin. My little brain can only hold so much information (and unfortunately, as we have seen in the past, most of that is reserved for stupid and inane pop-cultural references).

Last week I came up with an un-arguable reason why Harry HAS to die, but I didn’t write it down at the time or tell anyone and I can’t remember what it was!! I don’t know if maybe it is just my need to not by tragically dissapointed or depressed if/when Harry actually does die, but I really had a good reason. Argh. Hopefully I’ll remember before podcasting time this week.

In any event, There is no way that Dumbledore was begging for his life. The proof for that is his reaction to Draco almost killing him. He is no dummy, that Dumbledore- nor is he a weak man. Men like him DO NOT BEG for their lives. Especially considering his take on death.

Re: the UK book cover… I keep thinking it’s a vault at Gringotts, and the creature on Harry’s back could be a goblin.

S’s guilt over the Potter’s death is posturing. Trelawney may have been in a daze but Dumbledore said how much Snape overheard and i think S heard more than D could tell. Hagrid’s defense of Snape comes from his loyalty to D and his position as a Gamekeeper and later Professor but he was never Snapes equal in tenure. That matters, Hagrid is very respectful of his superiors. Lastly, fat lottta good D’s begging did him right before his murder.

If Snape is going to dye by sacrifice it will be for Ron and Hermione not Harry, not the son of Snape’s rival who looks and acts just like James. Jo says only two people dye in Deathly and i say it’s Voldemort and Harry.

I feel Snape is a true double agent- playing both sides for his own betterment. For a guy who grew up in a troubled home and scorned pitty i think Snape was very peased with his position as a spy and found that Both Voldemort and Dumbledore having great need for him empowering.
Played this way no matter who won he would be rewarded.

I argue that Snape heard the entire prophecy but played dumb about it so as to apease Dumbledore and keep Voldemort in need of him. When Snape learned one of the possibilites of this prophecy results in the death of James Potter, his childhood nemesis, Snape set his own spin into action. V learned of both the Potters and the Longbottoms going into hiding-probably from Snape- and i don’t doubt that Snape planted his own suspicion that the L are red herring (“My lord the Longbottom boy was dorn the 30th i think its the Potter boy”) From there V made his own conclusions and fullfilled the prophecy.

Bellatrix never trusted Snape, thought Snape mislead V into a conventional trap, and convinced Neville is the chosen one targets the Frank and Alice.

We never know of a chocolate frog card relaying more information than what’s printed. I feel the CFC are just a children’s novelty like baseball cards.

BTW, Aaron, we watched most of the first season of “Curb”. I offficially do NOT like it so no worries about Hpprogs turning into a Larry David Prognostications podcast (oh shoot, as I am writing this, Greg is putting the DVD into the DVD player to watch another episode…even he admitted he doesn’t like this and we are HUGE Seinfeld people).

To Greg in Toronto: I work in the tech dept. of the library so I need to get with the children’s dept. and see what they are planning for the book release. I am sure they will be doing something, but I hope to be somewhere buying my very own copy that I can try and race through before people start discussing it at work! I can’t decide if I am going to dress up as a character or if I am going to wear my “I Trust Snape (Albus did)” t-shirt to the release party I am going to. Decisions….decisions.
Needless to say my roommate does not understand my infatuation with the Harry Potter series. Oh Well. To each his/her own!