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animals
This page considers 'animal rights' as a perspective on conceptualisation
and practical recogition of human rights.
It covers -
introduction
Human rights and animal rights might seem antithetical. Do
animals, particular those that do not have a special status
as domestic companions or as 'noble creatures' (such as tigers,
lions and elephants) that are hard to kill, have rights?
Some philosophers have argued for a hierarchy of rights: those
of humans supersede those of 'dumb' or 'less intelligent'
species, apes deserve more regard than cows, vivisection is
more offensive than incarceration.
Others have more baldly asserted that animals, particularly
'lower' or stigmatised animals (rats, foxes and other vermin)
have no more rights than other life forms such as trees and
inanimate entities such as rocks and rivers, any of which
may be viewed as having spiritual qualities or as manifestations
of a divine creator.
Others have argued that the powerlessness of animals necessitates
and justifies extreme measures by activists, including the
destruction of facilities, offences against property law and
threats or even physical violence to people.
In considering rights philosophers, theologians and legislators
have asked whether humans have any ethical responsibilities
regarding animals. What are those responsibilities and how
strong are they? How do they compare with responsibilities
owed to humans, including children and the disabled? Is responsibility
affected by the type of animals or relationship (and why)?
Answers to such questions are often tied to assessments of
mental capacity: whether animals can think and experience
pain.
Jeremy Bentham argued in 1781 that
The
question is not 'Can they reason?' nor 'Can they talk?'
but 'Can they suffer?'
Peter
Singer's utilitarian Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for
Our Treatment of Animals (New York: Avon 1975) extended
Bentham's analysis, claiming that animals feel pain (eg are
physiologically similar to humans and behave as though they
experience pain). Singer argues that the "capacity for
suffering and enjoyment is a prerequisite for having interests
at all" and that the identity of the species is irrelevant.
Singer does not argue that all animals and humans necessarily
require equal treatment (the concern instead is with equal
consideration) and does not assert that killing an animal
is equally as bad as killing a human.
Martha Nussbaum adopts a different stance, arguing that animals
have entitlements based upon justice as they - like humans
- have a fundamental right to be "all that they can be".
Nussbaum eschews notions of 'enfranchisement', seeking instead
to minimise unecessary cruel treatment. Captivity (for example
of domestic animals) and research that involves pain and premature
death - thereby violating an animal's fundamental entitlements
- is accordingly permitted if truly necessary for a major
human capability.
rights, welfare and responsibilities
A preceding page of this profile noted differentiation between
humanitarian and human rights law. In considering animals
some observers differentiate between animal welfare and animal
rights. The conceptual boundaries between the categories are
blurred. Practice by activists also bridges categories and
epochs: a common thread of rhetoric and violence links the
Victorian, Nazi and contemporary anti-vivisection movements.
Animal welfare proponents have typically
examined the ways in which animals are routinely treated by
humans, going on to argue for strengthening and active enforcement
of existing 'animal welfare' law.
That strengthening includes enactment of additional legislation
and articulation of standards that embody community expectations
about domestic, agricultural and other commercial practice
(eg use of animals in zoos and circuses) to more effectively
protect animals from 'inhumane' treatment.
Animal rights proponents argue that animals
have fundamental rights that are akin to those of humans.
On the basis of those rights animals should not be used for
particular purposes and indeed in the view of some rights
activists should not be used for any purposes.
Rights proponents advocate changes in legal regimes to recognise
the rights. The expectation is that animals would receive
fundamental legal protection that extends beyond traditional
animal welfare law and that compels state intervention in
abuses.
Concern for animal rights sometimes forms part of broader
philosophies and political agendas regarding 'nature' or environmentalism.
issues
Notions of animal rights pose challenges regarding
-
- dealings
with (which generally means dealing in) animals - same legal
and/or ethical frameworks used for
- in
applying principles what rights (or what species or relationships)
take priority - analogous to human rights, where it is common
to see a differentiation between positive and negative freedoms
(speech, religion, political affiliation) and some are elided
or simply dismissed as unnatural (eg gay marriage) or impractical
- disagreement
about a utilitarian calculus of benefit, including justification
of circuses, the costs of global warming (employment versus
species extinction), zoos ("it's still a prison if
you remove the bars, so remove the bears and bison"),
battery farming (with criticism of idyllic fantasies about
life in the wild or the economics of agricultural production)
- anthropomorphism
- the companion animals as more deserving of rights merely
because they are members of the family and closer to home
than people in Darfur or Woomera
It
is clear that animal rights are not distinct from a broader
lived or legal culture. The treatment of animals is often
a reflection of the treatment of people, particularly those
who are disadvantaged or stigmatised.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, for example,
saw mass elimination of 'bourgeois' animals and the quip that
under Chairman Mao both the bears and the literati were in
cages but the bears did not have to sing The East Is Red.
Earlier ethnocentrism saw claims that 'lesser breeds' (in
Spain, Italy, Egypt and India) beat their animals ... and
should indeed be beaten like those animals.
Responses
include
- "quiet
loving kindness" practiced day by day
- advocacy
and rescue activity by civil society organisations, with
the risk of institutional ossification and co-option of
humane societies that is also evident in some human rights
groups
- animal
welfare legislation and codes of practice, encompassing
animal acts in circuses and zoos, bans on hunting foxes
and other animals, mandatory sterilisation of some pets,
restrictions on farming methods (eg battery cages, mulesing
and branding) or farming of particular species, restrictions
on capture and trade in particular species
- consumer
boycotts of particular organisations or products, notably
fur and long-line tuna
- illegal
action by extremists, from denial of service (DoS) attacks
on corporate web sites and disruption of academic conferences
to arson against university or commercial research laboratories
and against third parties such as couriers and accountants
with only a peripheral involvement
- maximalist
approaches that eschew fur, fin, meat, leather or feather
in favour of an austere vegan lifestyle sans pet
or farm animal.
studies
Mary Midgley's Animals & Why They Matter (Athens:
Uni of Georgia Press 1983), Paola Cavalieri's The Animal
Question: Why Nonhuman Animals deserve Human Rights (New
York: Oxford Uni Press 2001), Tom Regan's The Case for
Animal Rights (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1983),
David Degrazia's Taking animals seriously: mental life
and moral status (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1996),
Animal Rights: Current Debates & New Directions
(Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 2004) by Cass Sunstein & Martha
Nussbaum and In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave
(Oxford: Blackwell 2005) edited by Peter Singer
Bibliographies include Charles Magel's A Bibliography
of Animal Rights and Related Matters (Washington: Uni
Press of America 1981) and John Kistler's Animal Rights:
A Subject Guide, Bibliography, and Internet Companion
(Westport: Greenwood 2000)
For zoos see Stephen Bostock's Zoos and animal rights:
the ethics of keeping animals (London: Routledge 1993),
Nigel Rothfels' Savages & Beasts: The Birth of the
Modern Zoo (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press 2002),
Eric Baratay's Zoo: A History of Zoological Gardens in
the West (London: Reaktion 2002), David Hancocks' A
Different Nature: The Paradoxical World of Zoos and Their
Uncertain Future (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 2001)
and Ethics on the ark: zoos, animal welfare & wildlife
conservation (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press
1995) edited by Norton, Stevens & Maple.
For activism see Gary Francione's Rain without thunder:
the ideology of the animal rights movement (Philadelphia:
Temple Uni Press 1996), Hilda Kean's Animal rights: political
and social change in Britain since 1800 (London: Reaktion
1998), Moira Ferguson's Animal Advocacy & Englishwomen,
1780-1900: Patriots, Nation & Empire (Ann Arbor:
Uni of Michigan Press 1998), David Perkins Romanticism
and Animal Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2003),
Susan Sperling's Animal liberators: research and morality
(Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1988), For the Love
of Animals: The Rise of the Animal Protective Movement
(New York: Holt 2008) by Kathryn Shevelow and The Animal
Rights Crusade: The Growth of a Moral Protest (New York:
Free Press 1992) by James Jasper & Dorothy Nelkin.
Francione's provocative Introduction to Animal Rights:
Your Child or the Dog? (Philadelphia: Temple Uni Press
2000) explores differences between the animal rights and animal
welfare movements. Committed: A Rabble-Rouser's Memoir
(New York: Atria 2007) by Dan Mathews is an account by a PETA
activist.
Among works on the vexed area of animal experimentation see
Hugh Lafollette's Brute science: dilemmas of animal experimentation
(London: Routledge 1996), Experimenting with Humans and
Animals: From Galen to Animal Rights (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Uni Press 2003) by Anita Guerrini, Antivisection
and Medical Science in Victorian Society (Princeton:
Princeton Uni Press 1975) by R D French, Vivisection in
Historical Perspective (New York: Croom Helm 1987) edited
by Nicolaas Rupke and The Case for Animal Experimentation
(Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1986) by Michael Fox. Bernard
Rollin's The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal
Pain, and Science (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1989) surveys
changing attitudes toward animal consciousness, in particular
identification and measurement of animal pain.
Historical accounts include Keith Thomas' Man & the
Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500 -1800
(London: Allen Lane 1983), Harriet Ritvo's The Animal
Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age
(Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1987), Kathleen Kete's The
Beast in the Boudoir: Petkeeping in Nineteenth-Century Paris
(Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1994), James Turner's Reckoning
with the Beast: Animals, Pain, and Humanity in the Victorian
Mind (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press 1980), Paul
Waldau's The specter of speciesism: Buddhist and Christian
views of animals (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 2002) and
Peter Singer's Ethics into action: Henry Spira & the
animal rights movement (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield
1998).
Among philosophical disagreements see James Rachels' Created
from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (Oxford:
Oxford Uni Press 1991), Michael Leahy's Against Liberation:
Putting Animals in Perspective (London: Routledge 1991),
Erica Fudge's Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality and
Humanity in Early Modern Thought (Ithaca: Cornell Uni
Press 2006), The Animals Issue (Cambridge: Cambridge
Uni Press 1992) by Peter Carruthers, Animal Minds &
Human Morals: The Origins of the Western Debate (Ithaca:
Cornell Uni Press 1993) by Richard Sorobji, Frontiers
of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership
(Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 2006) by Martha Nussbaum and
Interests & Rights: The Case Against Animals
(Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980) by Raymond Frey.
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