Animal Rights
Animal rights are rights primarily against killing and treating animals cruelly, which are thought to be possessed by higher nonhuman animals (such as apes) and many lower ones by virtue of their sentience.
The case for animal rights usually hinges on two perceived facts:
- the complexity of their cognitive, emotional, and social lives, or their having a central nervous system (which, for instance, bivalves lack and insects possess to a very low extent), and
- their capacity to experience physical or emotional pain or pleasure.
Animal Rights in the Classical World
The Pythagoreans (6th–4th century bce) and the Neoplatonists (3rd–6th century ce) urged concern for animals’ interests, primarily because they believed in the transmigration of souls between human and animal bodies.
In his biological writings, Aristotle (384–322 bce) repeatedly suggested that animals lived for their own sake, but made an influential claim in the Politics that nature made all animals for the sake of humans (Great Chain of Being), which was unfortunately destined to become his most influential statement on the subject.
Animal Rights in Eastern Religions
Respect for the welfare of animals is a precept of some ancient Eastern religions, including Jainism, which enjoins ahimsa (“noninjury”) toward all living things, and Buddhism, which forbids the needless killing of animals.
Animal Rights in Christianity
In the West, traditional Judaism and Christianity taught that animals were created by God for human use, including as food, and many Christian thinkers argued that humans had no moral duties of any kind to animals, even the duty not to treat them cruelly, because they lacked rationality or because they were not, like Man, made in the image of God.
Modern Views
The traditional Christian view prevailed until the late 18th century, when ethical philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham applied the principles of utilitarianism to infer a moral duty not to inflict needless suffering on animals.
Since the beginning of the modern animal rights movement, which was initiated by philosophers in the 1970s, animal rights has been a popular topic of discussion within the academic study of applied ethics, or the application of normative ethical theories to practical problems.>
The ethical philosopher Peter Singer and others have attempted to show that a duty not to harm animals follows straightforwardly from simple and widely accepted moral principles, such as It is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering.
They have also argued that there is no morally relevant difference
between humans and animals that would justify raising animals, but not humans, for food on factory farms or using them in scientific experiments or for product testing (e.g., of cosmetics).
An opposing view held that humans have no moral duties to animals because animals are incapable of entering into a hypothetical moral contract to respect the interests of other rational beings. The modern animal-rights movement was inspired in part by Singer’s work. At the end of the 20th century, it had spawned a large number of groups dedicated to a variety of related causes, including protecting endangered species, protesting against painful or brutal methods of trapping and killing animals (e.g., for furs), preventing the use of animals in laboratory research, and promoting what adherents considered the health benefits and moral virtues of vegetarianism and veganism.