25 Facts About David Olivier

David Olivier Whittier was born on David Olivier; 11 March 1956 and is an Anglo-French antispeciesist activist, writer and philosopher.

David Olivier is the founder of the French journal Cahiers antispecistes, the annual event Veggie Pride, and the annual meeting Les Estivales de la question animale.

David Olivier's activism began in his adolescence, focusing initially on ecology, anarchism, anti-sexism, and anti-racism.

David Olivier later turned his attention to animal rights in the mid-1980s.

David Olivier studied physics at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Saint-Cloud and the University of Lyon 1.

David Olivier is considered a founding figure of the French antispeciesist movement.

David Olivier introduced Peter Singer's works to French activists and significantly influenced the formation of the animal rights organisation L214.

David Olivier's activism led to the creation of Veggie Pride and the annual Les Estivales de la question animale meetings, contributing to the animal rights discourse in France and beyond.

David Olivier was born in London on 11 March 1956 to a French-teaching father and an American mother who was a painter.

David Olivier mainly lived in London until 1967, after which he primarily lived in France.

David Olivier's focus on the importance of animal rights grew from the mid-1980s, as he moved away from anarchist and Marxist intellectual influences.

David Olivier pursued studies in physics at the former Ecole Normale Superieure de Saint-Cloud from 1976 to 1981, followed by a DEA in nuclear and particle physics at the University of Lyon 1 in 1988.

From 1983 to 1984, David Olivier worked as a physics teacher but did not complete the CAPES certification year.

Author of a leaflet initially distributed in libertarian circles of Lyonnais from 1985, David Olivier is considered one of the founding figures of the French antispeciesist movement.

David Olivier's meeting with Yves Bonnardel in 1986 made him aware of the existence of an active animal liberation movement in the English-speaking world.

The concept of focusing the fight for animal rights around the ethical concept of antispeciesism lead David Olivier, soon joined by Bonnardel and Francoise Blanchon, to found the journal Cahiers antispecistes in 1989.

In October 2001, in a bid to increase recognition of the refusal to eat animals, David Olivier founded the first Veggie Pride in Paris, defining in his manifesto the term "veggiephobia".

In 2002, David Olivier organised the first meeting of Les Estivales de la question animal, an annual meeting of debate and reflection around the animal question.

In 2004, David Olivier left the editorial staff of Cahiers antispecistes after the publication of issue 23.

In 2018, the publication of The Antispeciesist Revolution by Presses Universitaires de France, containing for one third a collection of David Olivier's articles, met with relative media success.

David Olivier is an antinaturalist, in that he considers nature not to exist, and that it has no reason to affect the ethical decisions of humans.

David Olivier argues that the naturalisation of animals is one of the determining factors of their domination.

David Olivier's antinaturalism is associated with his defense of interventions in favour of reducing wild animal suffering, as well as his rejection of environmentalism.

David Olivier's views have led him to be cited on numerous occasions in the works and forums of critics of antispeciesism.

David Olivier defines himself as progressive, in that he considers significant progress in the state of the world to be possible but does not describe himself as a revolutionary because he does not believe that such progress can be made in a "great evening".