Nicolas Delon
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
I work in ethics, and focus on connections between value theory and moral status, animals and the environment. In recent years, I've been especially interested in animal agency, its various forms, and its implications for moral status. Some of that work is informing a current book project on animal agency. Recently, I've also worked on urban wildlife and on social norms. I also have interests in metaethics, experimental philosophy, psychology, and how they bear on the descriptive and normative aspects of our relations to other entities, as well as in the philosophy of death and the ethics of killing, action theory and moral responsibility, and Nietzsche.
Email me for preprints or published versions if you cannot access them.
(* = invited)
Letting animals off the hook, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (forthcoming) (accepted version)
Relational nonhuman personhood, The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2024) (open access)
Strangers to ourselves: A Nietzschean challenge to the badness of suffering, Inquiry (2022) (eprint; accepted version).
Wild animal ethics: well-being, agency, and freedom * (commentary on K. Johannsen, Wild Animal Ethics), Philosophia (2021) (link)
Animal capabilities and freedom in the city, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities (2021) (eprint)
Consider the agent in the arthropod * (w/ P. Cook. G. Bauer & H. Harley) (commentary on Mikhalevich and Powell 2020), Animal Sentience (2020) (open access)
Pervasive captivity and urban wildlife, Ethics, Policy & Environment (2020), (eprint).
Discussed on The Animal Turn podcast.
Valuing humane lives in two-level utilitarianism, Utilitas (2020) (eprint)
Le problème de la souffrance chez Nietzsche et Parfit, Klêsis (2019) (open access)
Beyond the personhood paradigm * (commentary on Thompson, "Supporting Ape Rights"), ASEBL Journal (2019) (open access)
Setting the bar higher * (commentary on Neuhaus & Parent, "Gene Doping – in Animals?"), Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (2019) (final draft; link)
Social norms and farm animal protection, Palgrave Communications (2018) (open access)
Animal agency, captivity and meaning *, Harvard Review of Philosophy (2018) (link; pdf)
Wild animal suffering is intractable (with Duncan Purves), Journal of Agricultural & Environmental Ethics (2018) (read-only pdf)
Meaning in the lives of humans and other animals (with Duncan Purves), Philosophical Studies (2018) (read-only pdf)
L'animal d'élevage compagnon de travail: l'éthique des fables alimentaires *, Revue française d'éthique appliquée (2017) (link)
The values behind calculating the value of trophy hunting * (with Jennifer Jacquet) (re Naidoo et al, 2016), Conservation Biology (2016) (link; pdf)
Un Singer peut-il en remplacer un autre ?, Klêsis (2016) (open access)
Etudes animales : une perspective transatlantique *, Tracés : Revue de Sciences Humaines (2015) (link)
La mort : un mal non nécessaire, surtout pour les animaux heureux ! *, Revue semestrielle de droit animalier (2014) (open access)
Moral status, final value, and extrinsic properties, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (2014) (link)
Pour une éthique animale descriptive, Klêsis (2013) (open access)
The value of death for animals: an overview, The Ethics of Animal Shelters, eds. V. Giroux, A. Pepper, K. Voigt. Oxford University Press (2023) (penultimate draft)
Statut moral et vulnérabilité animale, Animalité et vulnérabilité, S. Bouchard, E. Utria, eds. Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre (2021) (penultimate draft)
The meaning of animal labour, Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice?, C. Blattner, K. Coulter, W. Kymlicka, eds. Oxford University Press (2020) (penultimate draft)
The Replaceability Argument in the ethics of animal husbandry, Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, D. Kaplan & P. B. Thompson. eds. 2nd ed., Springer (2016) (link; pdf)
L'éthique animale en contexte, Recherches sur la philosophie et le langage, M. Jouan & J.-Y. Goffi eds., Vrin (2016)
La sensibilité en éthique animale, entre faits et valeurs, Sensibilités animales - Perspectives juridiques, R. Bismuth & F. Marchadier eds., CNRS (2015)
Against moral intrinsicalism, Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy, E. Aaltola & J. Hadley eds., Rowman & Littlefield (2015) (penultimate draft)
Handicap et animaux, Tous vulnérables ? Le care, les animaux et l'environnement, S. Laugier ed., Payot-Rivages (2012)
Social norms and eating animals: What they are and how they help and hinder farmed animal advocacy (w/ Zoe Griffiths and Courtney Dillard), Mercy for Animals (2022) (pdf)
Animal Consciousness (P. Le Neindre, E. Bernard, A. Boissy, X. Boivin, L. Calandreau, N. Delon, B. Deputte, S. Desmoulin-Canselier, M. Dunier, N. Faivre, M. Giurfa, JL Guichet, L Lansade, R. Larrère, P. Mormède, P. Prunet, B. Schaal, J. Servière, & C. Terlouw), EFSA Supporting Publication (2017) (open access)
Sports and animals in utopia, Public Ethics Blog, Oct. 31, 2022 (link)
Punk rock et libération animale, Penser le punk, C. Guesde, ed. PUF (2022) (draft)
Scarlet letters: Meat, Normality, and the Power of Shame, Books & Ideas (2019) (link)
Les cartographies de l'éthique animale, S'engager pour les animaux, F. Carrié & C. Traïni. eds. PUF (2019) (final draft)
Une théorie morale peut-elle être cognitivement trop exigeante ?, Implications Philosophiques (2015) (link)
Email me for drafts
Agential value
Sports and games as models of interspecies justice
Animal minds and epistemic risks
Procreation, killing, replaceability
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