Animal Liberation as a political movement is only 40 years old. Although the central ideas of animal liberation can be found in other traditions, and especially in Buddhism, it emerged in the late 20th century as a continuation of the Western liberal tradition of opposition to arbitrary forms of discrimination, such as racism and sexism. In this lecture I will explain how the movement was radically opposed to earlier Western ideas, which had come to dominate the modern world. I will describe and defend the ethical basis of the animal liberation movement, and the progress it has made since it emerged in the 1970s. I will close with some speculations about the future of the movement.
