%0 Journal Article
%A Arandjelović, Ognjen Arandjelović
%D 2026
%J Journal of Controversial Ideas

%@ 2694-5991

%V 6
%N 2
%P 16

%T On Thinking the Unthinkable: Disgust, Sentientism, and Zoophilia
%M doi:10.63466/jci06020016
%U https://www.journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/6/2/327
%X I have two aims here. First, I defend the practice of seriously entertaining “disgusting” ideas in philosophy and ethics, even when the very act of discussion provokes anger or revulsion. I develop three familiar motivations (curiosity, Millian fallibilism, and the historical unreliability of disgust) and add a fourth, a Feyerabendian ethos of proliferation, according to which intellectual health requires the deliberate construction of disruptive alternatives, including positions one does not antecedently endorse. Second, I offer a critique of a recent argument that zoophilia is morally permissible within a broadly antispeciesist and nonanthropocentric framework, and in particular of the claim that some zoophilic acts need not involve animal suffering. I grant much of that argument, yet contend that the conclusion is not robust because it relies on excessive idealization of human psychology. In any world inhabited by humans as they are, the social meaning of zoophilia, together with widespread, refractory disgust responses, predictably produces suffering. My core claim is not that disgust tracks moral truth, but that non-ideal ethical evaluation must treat stable features of human affect as part of the causal structure of suffering. The practical result is a case against normalizing zoophilia (and closely related simulacra). I close by confronting the most obvious objection, that my proposal would justify a “prejudice veto”. I argue that a true sentientist must bite the bullet and admit that even the disgust-mediated suffering of the bigoted and prejudiced deserves moral consideration.