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The longstanding tradition of conceiving the moral relevance of animal others as a valuation of discrete factors of mental complexity or sentience has in many ways proven itself to be an anemic moral theory in light of the widespread disagreement and partisanship that surrounds the contemporary animal ethics scene. There is a growing demand for more varied ethical approaches, informed by a wider and richer array of philosophical insights that avoid this anthropocentric bias. In Corporal Compassion: Animal Ethics and Philosophy of Body, Ralph R. Acampora responds to this demand by exploring a phenomenological method to considering the ethics of human and nonhuman relations. Acampora attempts to explicate a shared somatic basis for compassion as an understanding of interspecies experiences, perceptions, and behaviors. He believes that, as bodily beings, we have the capacity to relate the phenomenological characteristics of embodiment intersubjectively and across species, thereby furnishing a rich locus for compassionate reflection. By enhancing ethical theory with felt insights into the shared struggles, fears, and interests inherent to corporal existence, Acampora hopes to redirect ethical discourse away from its traditional presuppositions. One of the biggest virtues of Acampora's scholarship is in his ability to incorporate a diverse range of philosophical disciplines and styles--including analytic, continental, feminist, and pragmatist--into a comprehensive examination of the ethical implications of a phenomenology of "somaticity". In attempting to answer the question of how we should describe transhuman morality, Acampora looks at various angles within the history of philosophy. He carefully mediates between the interpretive ethical views afforded by Sartrean, Heideggarian, and Merleau-Pontyan existential and phenomenological frameworks, working through a range of discrepancies in understanding interspecies relationships, and constructing a phenomenological methodology that has been updated to accommodate those relationships. Acampora also repudiates Thomas Nagal's famous challenge to animal phenomenology taken from philosophy of mind by arguing that our ability to relate our experiences to nonhumans is a function of being-with others (rather than "becoming others"). As a result, animal ethics is provided a much needed existential basis in shared somatic experience and "symphysical" moral value--or an axiology of physical togetherness. A highlight of the book, Corporal Compassion includes an impassioned exploration of "ethics-in-action" (a distinction which sets it apart from applied ethics) for symphysical morality and somaticity in the context of laboratories and zoos. Acampora delves into the somaesthetic implications of phenomenological encounters with the carnal and the carceral in experimentation and confinement. Fascinatingly, he illustrates the extent to which imprisonment becomes an internalized feature of carnal existence--the worldhood of the animal forcefully mirroring its prison. Caging animals becomes individually, socially, and ontologically harmful from the standpoint of somaesthetic experience. It is rightly pointed out in the case of zoo captivity that the encounter with animal others is limited to a volitional act of "seeing", rather than having the effect of directly engaged bodily consciousness, and the potential for somaesthetically guided moral growth is therefore hindered. Acampora continues his helpful comparative approach by sizing up his thesis with other ethical theories. Of Singer's utilitarian ethics, he concludes that while the vision of animal liberation may stray from his own conception of corporal solidarity, the two approaches should be seen as complementary, with interspecies compassion underpinning Singer's attention to sentient suffering. Of deep ecology and ecofeminism, he determines that his symphysics of morality reflects, informs, and intensifies ecological holism, relationality, and the value of care. To this extent, I believe Acampora might also have much common ground with Marc Berkoff's "Deep Ethology, Animal Rights, and The Great Ape" in developing an ethological method for understanding animality in terms of mutual corporal existence. In considering pragmatist conceptions of transhuman morality, he finds that his symphysical ethos dovetails with pragmatist views of embodied transaction entailing shared "horizons" of meaning. I might add that the imaginative feature of experiencing somaticity in being-with a nonhuman other also seems to suit a pragmatist view of moral imagination. Symphysical morality is given attention in light of applied ethics as well, with Dale Jamieson's critique of zoos, eventually turning to a focus in Continental ethics on the "sensate nature of morality". Corporal Compassion concludes by reflecting upon the bearing symphysical morality holds for culture at large. By asserting the significance of shared somatic experience as a symphysical ethos (rather than a symphysical principle), Acampora succeeds in providing an enriching and insightful resource without restricting himself to a single narrow ethical theory. The implications of taking this phenomenological approach to the intermingling of compassion with somaesthetic insight should, however, accompany any serious consideration of transhuman relationships if philosophy is to guide culture to more encompassing moral awareness.
