Animal Rights Law - Chapter 3
Loading
Loading

Chapter 3 - Philosophical Foundations of Animal Rights

  1. Introduction
  • For an historical survey of important Western thinkers who articulated ethical objections to meat eating, see: Howard Williams, The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh Eating (F Pitman 1883), available at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55785/55785-h/55785-h.htm
  • For discussion of animal rights and ethics within the Buddhist traditions, see: Paul Waldau, ‘Buddhism and Animal Rights’ in Daniel Cozort and James Mark Shields (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics (Oxford University Press 2018), available at https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28081/chapter/212146115 and (Chapter 5) The Spirit of Kindness to Animals in Nyugen Thi Kieu Diem, ‘The Role of Animals in Indian Buddhism with Special Reference to the Jatakas’ (Doctor of Philosophy, University of Delhi 2012), available at https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/10603/6464
  • For approaches to animal ethics drawing on Mi’kmaq thought, see: Margaret Robinson, ‘Animal Personhood in Mi’kmaq Perspective’ (2014) 4(4) Societies 672, available at https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/4/4/672 and Margaret Robinson, ‘Is the Moose Still My Brother If We Don’t Eat Him?’ in Jodey Castricano and Rasmus R Simonsen (eds), Critical perspectives on veganism (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33419-6_12

  • For an analysis of animal rights considering both Jewish and Islamic law, see: Samier Saeed, ‘Squashing the Beef: Why American Animal Rights Advocates Should Start Liking Jewish and Islamic Law’ (2022) 47(2) Columbia Journal of Environmental Law 521, available at https://doi.org/10.52214/cjel.v47i2.9871
  • For a discussion of North and South American Indigenous (or Amerindian) perspectives on animal rights, see: Markus Fraundorfer, ‘The Rediscovery of Indigenous Thought in the Modern- Legal System: The Case of the Great Apes’ (2018) 9 Global Policy 17, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12517
  • For a discussion of Māori approaches to animal ethics, see: Jordan Woodhouse and others, ‘Conceptualizing Indigenous Human–Animal Relationships in Aotearoa New Zealand: An Ethical Perspective’ (2021) 11 Animals 2899, available at https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/11/10/2899
  • For a non-contractualist argument that Kantian ethics require humans to care for the welfare of animals as its own end, despite animals not being owed direct duties, see: Arthur Ripstein and Sergio Tenenbaum, ‘Directionality and Virtuous Ends’ in John J Callanan and Lucy Allais (eds), Kant and Animals (Oxford University Press 2020), available at https://academic.oup.com/book/37423/chapter/331510163
  • For an elaboration on the modern tradition of antispeciesist ethics within Italian philosophy, see: Leonardo Caffo, ‘Speciesism and the Ideology of Domination in the Italian Philosophical Tradition’ in Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics (1st ed. 2018, Palgrave Macmillan UK: Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan 2018), available at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-36671-9_7
  1. Peter Singer’s Utilitarianism
  • For an exposition on the principle of equal consideration in utilitarian ethics, see: Marco EL Guidi, ‘“Everybody to Count for One, Nobody for More than OneThe Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests from Bentham to Pigou’ (2008) 4 La Revue d’études benthamiennes, available at https://journals.openedition.org/etudes-benthamiennes/182
  • For an engagement with methodological issues and assumptions underlying debates about speciesism, see: Jeroen Hopster, ‘The Speciesism Debate: Intuition, Method, and Empirical Advances’ (2019) 9 Animals 1, available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6940905/
  • For literature on the supposed replaceability of individual animals within utilitarian animal ethics, see: Tatjana Višak, Do Utilitarians Need to Accept the Replaceability Argument? and Shelly Kagan, Singer on Killing Animals, in Tatjana Višak and Robert Garner (eds), The Ethics of Killing Animals (Oxford University Press 2016), available at https://academic.oup.com/book/6231
  • For an argument that animal liberation and speciesism are compatible, see: Introduction, Is Speciesism Opposed to Liberationism?Why Animals Matter, Tzachi Zamir, Ethics and the Beast: A Speciesist Argument for Animal Liberation (Princeton University Press 2007), available at https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400828135
  1. Tom Regan’s Deontological Approach
  • For a critique of Regan’s approach which argues that animals’ rights should be weaker than those of humans, see: Mary Anne Warren, ‘Difficulties with the Strong Animal Rights Position’ (1986) 2 Between the Species 163, available at https://doi.org/10.15368/bts.1986v2n4.2
  • For an argument that Regan’s approach is a form of natural rights philosophy, see: Mark Rowlands, ‘Tom Regan: Animal Rights as Natural Rights’, Animal Rights: Moral Theory and Practice (2nd ed, Palgrave Macmillan 2009), available at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230245112_4
  • For background on the issue of intuitions in moral theories, see: William H Shaw, ‘Intuition and Moral Philosophy’ (1980) 17 American Philosophical Quarterly 127, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/20013855
  • For an argument that challenges the value of intuitions about the moral status of animals held by meat-eaters, drawing on cognitive science, see: Simon Christopher Timm, ‘Moral Intuition or Moral Disengagement? Cognitive Science Weighs in on the Animal Ethics Debate’ (2016) 9 Neuroethics 225, available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-016-9271-x
  1. Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach
  • For an argument that Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach—contrary to Nussbaum’s own view—does not permit the killing of animals for food, see: Anders Schinkel, ‘Martha Nussbaum on Animal Rights’ (2008) 13 Ethics & the Environment 41, available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/239381
  1. Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s Political Theory
  • For a discussion of the political turn in animal ethics, see: Will Kymlicka, ‘Review of Robert Garner and Siobhan O’Sullivan (eds), The Political Turn in Animal Ethics (Rowman and Littlefield2016)’ (2017) 6 Animal Studies Journal 175, available at https://ro.uow.edu.au/asj/vol6/iss1/10/
  • For a defence of Donaldson and Kymlicka’s focus on positive duties to animals, which critiques their account of animal self-determination, arguing for a political theory that renders impermissible the domination of non-self-determining entities, see: Michael P Allen and Erica von Essen, ‘The Republican Zoopolis: Towards A New Legitimation Framework for Relational Animal Ethics’ (2016) 21 Ethics & the Environment 61, available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/621894
  • For an argument that Donaldson and Kymlicka’s theory insufficiently accounts for the difficulty in knowing what animals want and underemphasizes that the politics of human-animal relationships is a sphere of activity solely conducted by humans, see: Thomas Saretzki, ‘Taking Animals Seriously: Interpreting and Institutionalizing Human-Animal Relations in Modern Democracies’ (2015) 40 Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 47, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24583244#metadata_info_tab_contents
  • For critiques of using political concepts to characterise and evaluate human-animal relationships, and a defence by Donaldson and Kymlicka, see: Bernd Ladwig, ‘Animal Rights Politicised, but Not Humanised: An Interest-Based Critique of Citizenship for Domesticated Animals’ (2015) 40 Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 32, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24583243, Christopher Hinchcliffe, ‘Animals and the Limits of Citizenship: Zoopolis and the Concept of Citizenship’ (2015) 23 The Journal of Political Philosophy 302, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12057, and Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, ‘Interspecies Politics: Reply to Hinchcliffe and Ladwig’ (2015) 23 The Journal of Political Philosophy 321, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12066
  • For an argument that individualism and relationality are individually insufficient but jointly sufficient grounds for moral consideration, see: Martin Huth, ‘How to Recognize Animals’ Vulnerability: Questioning the Orthodoxies of Moral Individualism and Relationalism in Animal Ethics’ (2020) 10 Animals 235, available at https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/2/235
  1. Critical Approaches to Animal Rights
  • For a critique of animal rights approaches based on Derrida’s thought and posthumanism, see: Barnaby E McLaughlin, ‘A Conspiracy of Life: A Posthumanist Critique of Approaches to Animal Rights in the Law’ (2019) 14 University of Massachusetts Law Review 150, available at https://scholarship.law.umassd.edu/umlr/vol14/iss1/3
  • For an articulation of a feminist-based scepticism of human and animal rights—the latter for reinforcing dualistic thinking that denigrates animals—see: Joanna Bourke, ‘“Are Women Animals?”: The Rise and Rise of (Animal) Rights’ in Danielle Celermajer and Alexandre Lefebvre (eds), The Subject of Human Rights (Stanford University Press 2020), available at https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503613720-005
  • For further critique of animal rights discourse as being overly rationalistic, drawing on feminist thought, see: Cathryn Bailey, ‘On the Backs of Animals: The Valorization of Reason in Contemporary Animal Ethics’ (2005) 10 Ethics and the Environment 1, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/40339093 and Josephine Donovan, ‘Sympathy and Interspecies Care - Toward a Unified Theory of Eco- and Animal Liberation’ in John Sanbonmatsu (ed), Critical theory and animal liberation (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2011), available at https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442205802/Critical-Theory-and-Animal-Liberation
  • For a critique of attempts to include animals within Rawlsian theories of justice as inconsistent with Rawls’s theory, see: David Svoldba, ‘Is There a Rawlsian Argument for Animal Rights?’ (2016) 19 Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 973, available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-016-9702-0
  1. Conclusion
  • For a discussion of methodological concepts and key terminology that is relevant to many of the issues covered in this chapter, see: Lisa Kemmerer, ‘Methods and Terms’, In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals (Brill 2006), available at https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047408406_005
  • For a critique of the use of “moral status” as a concept in ethics, see: Oscar Horta, ‘Why the Concept of Moral Status Should Be Abandoned’ (2017) 20 Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 899, available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-017-9829-7
  • For a consideration of how ethical norms in theory and in practice may differ, see: Jeff Sebo, ‘Kantianism for Humans, Utilitarianism for Nonhumans? Yes and No’ [2022] Philosophical Studies, available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01835-0

  • For an accessible argument about the types of reasoning that inform human-animal ethics, see: Todd May, ‘Moral Individualism, Moral Relationalism, and Obligations to Non-Human Animals’ (2014) 31 Journal of Applied Philosophy 155, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24355952