Is It Important to Save Black Bears?

Abstract

Editors’ Abstract Bear bile is an important ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine. Each year, many bears are rescued from illegal bear farms, where they are kept in cages and frequently used for bile harvest through tubes attached to their bodies. In this article, Chen defends bear-rescuing activists against the charge that they fail to prioritize the human suffering, for school dropout kids in China seem to deserve help more urgently than bears. Chen argues that such a utilitarian picture misrepresents practical deliberation in general and life choices in particular: Our practical deliberation does not begin with such a value hierarchy, nor can it stand without connecting to what we are committed to.