Animal Liberation After Aggregation- A Post-Singerian Defense of the Lexical Veto.

This essay, Animal Liberation After Aggregation: A Post-Singerian Defense of the Lexical Veto, offers a critical structural revision of Peter Singer’s animal ethics. While acknowledging the historical significance of Animal Liberation, the author highlights a fundamental vulnerability in its aggregative approach: the theoretical possibility of sacrificing individuals for overall benefit. Introducing the concept of the Singer Limit, the paper argues that when suffering crosses the threshold of agency collapse (Smax), aggregation ceases to provide moral justification. By developing the notion of proto-agency and analyzing the systematic production of Smax in industrial animal farming, the work defends the Lexical Veto principle: no human benefit can justify the intentional infliction of extreme suffering on sentient beings. The essay establishes a post-Singerian framework that moves from aggregative reasoning to non-aggregative consequentialism, grounding abolitionist ethics in the structural recognition of individual separateness and moral addressability.