Departure and Aftermath

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.

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

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.