scholarly journals Almost Like Waging War. Tom Regan and the Conditions for Using Violence for the Sake of Animals

Relations ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Zuolo
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Animal Liberation ◽  
Jus Ad Bellum ◽  
Litmus Test ◽  
Tom Regan

This paper investigates Tom Regan’s attitude towards violence as a litmus test to understand the justifiability of the use of violence in animal rights activists (ARAs). Although Regan’s take seems uncontroversially against a recourse to violence, there is an ambiguity in his position. By comparing Regan’s conditions for the legitimate use of violence for the sake of animal liberation with the standard conditions for jus ad bellum, I show that Regan construed the conditions for the former in a specular manner as the conditions for the latter. However, since he was not an absolute pacifist, there is some contradiction, and he should have been more willing to justify some recourse to violence than he in fact does. I conclude by gesturing towards some possible changes that his thought should undergo in order to adjust this incoherence.

The Case for Animal Rights

Dialogue ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 669-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Lehman
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Toxicity Tests ◽  
Wild Animals ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Moral Condemnation ◽  
Tom Regan

In his previous papers written on the topic of animal rights, Tom Regan argued that on the assumption that certain human beings have moral rights then so do certain animals. Here the argument is carried a stage further; Regan argues that some animals have certain moral rights. For the most part the book is taken up with criticizing alternative views concerning our moral obligations to animals and explaining and defending “The Rights View”. In the final chapter, Regan draws out the implications ofthe rights view. These include arguing for an obligation to be a vegetarian, moral condemnation of hunting and trapping of wild animals as well as of most of the uses of animals for scientific purposes. Animals are not to be used for toxicity tests, in education contexts or in scientific research even though this may produce beneficial consequences for humans and other animals. The book is very clearly written and well argued. It covers all important positions and arguments related t o the question of our moral obligations to animals. It is, I believe, the best book to appear on this subject to date.

scholarly journals O moralnych obowiązkach ludzi wobec zwierząt. Etyka Gary’ego Francione

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-106
Author(s):  
Dorota Probucka
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Peter Singer ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Animal Rights Movement ◽  
Human Interest ◽  
Biological Trait ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
Tom Regan

The purpose of my article is to present and analyze the ethical views of Gary Francione – the leading, contemporary representative of the Animal Rights Movement. He built his theory by criticizing the views of two other supporters of the idea of animal liberation: Peter Singer and Tom Regan. In his opinion, neither of these philosophers did not escape from the anthropocentric paradigm binding the moral obligations to animals with the primacy of human interest. Singer believed that only humans have the ability to plan their own future, and only they want to live and extend their own existence. While according to Regan, in conflict situations, respect for human interest should be dominant. Francione agrees that only people understand a deeper meaning of their own existence, but it does not follow that only they want to live and do not want to die. The need to preserve and continue life is not the result of mental states, but it is a consequence of sensitivity – the biological trait which aims to safeguard and continuation of life. According to Francione, if every sensitive creature has an interest in preserving his own life and avoiding suffering it they also have a moral right to life and not being treated in a cruel manner.

Departure and Aftermath

2020 ◽  
pp. 124-139
Author(s):  
Robert Garner ◽  
Yewande Okuleye
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Animal Ethics ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Animal Liberation ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
The World ◽  
Oxford Group ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

This chapter describes the subsequent lives and careers of the group of ethical vegetarians who met at Oxford. More analytically, it seeks to consider how influential their crusade for animal rights has been, focusing on the impact of Singer’s Animal Liberation. In short, it is difficult to quantify the contribution made by the Oxford Group, and Singer’s work in particular, to the revitalization of the animal protection movement since the 1970s. Clearly, Animal Liberation has had a considerable influence, for some acting as a catalyst for the way they see the world, and for others reinforcing, and giving structure to, their already existing disquiet at the way animals are treated. It is extremely likely, however, that the considerable strides made by the animal protection movement (documented in this chapter) would have happened anyway even if the Oxford Group, and Singer’s work on animal ethics, had not existed.

Animal Rights and Political Theory

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Vegetarian Diet ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
Charles Hartshorne ◽  
Tom Regan ◽  
Bernard Mandeville

In the ancient world, the idea that killing animals for food is wrong arose mainly from belief in a deep continuity between the animal and human psyche. The underlying thought is that the victimization of an animal is sinful and dehumanizing. Among the Greeks, orphic ritual and mysticism mixed with philosophy prescribe a vegetarian diet as a condition of self-purification. Perhaps the major extant work on vegetarianism dating from classical antiquity is On Abstinence from Animal Flesh by the neo-Platonist Porphyry, the student and biographer of Plotinus, himself a vegetarian. Peter Singer's immensely popular book Animal Liberation (1975) almost immediately generated a new movement for animal rights as distinct from a program limited to animal welfare, animal protection, and prevention of cruelty. This article explores the link between animal rights and political theory, focusing on the views of such thinkers as John Wesley, Bernard Mandeville, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jeremy Bentham, Tom Regan, Immanuel Kant, Christine M. Korsgaard, and Charles Hartshorne.

scholarly journals Animal Ethics: Beyond Neutrality, Universality, and Consistency

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 34-45
Author(s):  
Sreetama Chakraborty
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Animal Ethics ◽  
Animal Experimentation ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Peter Singer ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Animal Use ◽  
Tom Regan ◽  
Power Hierarchy

This paper reflects a possibility of going beyond the postmodernists’ way of ethically examining non-human animals based on the tripartite pillars of neutrality, universality, and consistency. My concentration focuses on some interrelated queries, such as – What does animal ethics conventionally mean? How did power, hierarchy, and domination separate humans from other animals? How does the fate of non-human animals (whether they ought to be morally considered or not) depend on humans’ moral values? How far is it justified to secure animal rights in the age of perilous animal use, especially for food or during animal experimentation? While examining these issues, I bring into light the several arguments and positions put forward by thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham, Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Carl Cohen, Brian Berry, and others. Moreover, my search is for a non-anthropocentric sustainable paradigm, to balance human interests and animal needs together, in order to sustain the future generations of human and non-human intimacy.  

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