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Animal rights introduction
Animal rights Research paper
Animal rights Research paper
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In Paola Cavalieri’s text, “Are Human Rights Human?”, Cavalieri provides the reader with the antiquities of Western ethics and descriptively outlines the “zero grade moral status” treatment of nonhumans. Paola’s goal throughout the text is to provide context for the reader to display how animals have been completely excluded from the moral community, which is mostly emphasized in her evaluations on recent views toward nonhumans being limited to a moral patient status. She believes that since the focus of human rights is the right to create a purpose in life, animals should be given the same legal rights as humans because of their ability to express and feel emotion, the main difference between an object and subject. Many different perspectives are shown through the four sections of the text, and the passage is broken down term by term so the reader can only infer what the author is saying in one way.
Cavalieri begins the first section quoting Immanuel Kant, a Prussian philosopher who said, “so far as animals are concerned, we have no direct duties. Animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as means to an end. That end is man. . . . Our duties towards animals are merely indirect duties towards humanity” (Animal Ethics Pg. 30). As the reader, I took this as Kant saying that animals do not think like humans when it comes to repentance and compensation, and humans need to respect animals for their way of thinking and not take advantage of them for their lack of understanding. He then provides a quote from Aristotle, the exact contrast of his first quote that describes nonhumans as nothing but an existence for the good of the man in regard to his needed services and food. He then emphasizes the wild ones to take priorit...
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...le in freedom to the human rights system. If only all humans could recognize that we are truly treating animals today like we did in the years of civil rights for African Americans. Forcing animals to live in horrible conditions until they are slaughtered for cheap meat, in my opinion is truly comparable. Why should animals have to do face these horrors in order for us to get cheap food? No one truly wants to live a life like this and all of the Homo sapiens on this planet truly need to come up with a solution to fix all of this unethical mistreatment.
Works Cited
Armstrong, Susan Jean, and Richard George Botzler. The Animal Ethics Reader. London ;New York, NY: Routledge, 2008. Print.
Cavalieri, Paola. "Are Human Rights Human?" The Animal Ethics Reader. By Susan Jean Armstrong and Richard George Botzler. London ;New York, NY: Routledge, 2008. 30-35. Print.
The long-term aim is to develop an approach to ethics that will help resolve contemporary issues regarding animals and the environment. In their classical formulations and as recently revised by animal and environmental ethicists, mainstream Kantian, utilitarian, and virtue theories have failed adequately to include either animals or the environment, or both. The result has been theoretical fragmentation and intractability, which in turn have contributed, at the practical level, to both public and private indecision, disagreement, and conflict. Immensely important are the practical issues; for instance, at the public level: the biologically unacceptable and perhaps cataclysmic current rate of species extinctions, the development or preservation of the few remaining wilderness areas, the global limitations on the sustainable distribution of the current standard of living in the developed nations, and the nonsustainability and abusiveness of today's technologically intense crop and animal farming. For individuals in their private lives, the choices include, for example: what foods to eat, what clothing to wear, modes of transportation, labor-intensive work and housing, controlling reproduction, and the distribution of basic and luxury goods. What is needed is an ethical approach that will peacefully resolve these and other quandaries, either by producing consensus or by explaining the rational and moral basis for the continuing disagreement.
...nimal rights yet I do question myself where to draw the line. I do not condone violence or harm against animals, yet I shudder at the thought of a mice plague and feel saddened by the extinction of our native animals by ‘feral’ or pest species. Is it right to kill one species to save another? I am appalled by the idea of ‘circus’ animals yet I will attend the horse races every summer for my entertainment. I think Tom Regan’s argument and reasoning for animal rights was extremely effective at making whoever is reading the essay question his or her own moral standards. Reading the essay made me delve into my own beliefs, morals and values which I think is incredibly important. To form new attitudes as a society it is important we start questioning how we view the lives of others, do we see animals as a resource to be exploited or as equals with rights just like we do?
Throughout the last century the concern of animals being treated as just a product has become a growing argument. Some believe that animals are equal to the human and should be treated with the same respect. There are many though that laugh at that thought, and continue to put the perfectly roasted turkey on the table each year. Gary Steiner is the author of the article “Animal, Vegetable, Miserable”, that was published in the New York Times right before Thanksgiving in 2009. He believes the use of animals as a benefit to human beings is inhumane and murderous. Gary Steiner’s argument for these animal’s rights is very compelling and convincing to a great extent.
As I have progressed through this class, my already strong interest in animal ethics has grown substantially. The animal narratives that we have read for this course and their discussion have prompted me to think more deeply about mankind’s treatment of our fellow animals, including how my actions impact Earth’s countless other creatures. It is all too easy to separate one’s ethical perspective and personal philosophy from one’s actions, and so after coming to the conclusion that meat was not something that was worth killing for to me, I became a vegetarian. The trigger for this change (one that I had attempted before, I might add) was in the many stories of animal narratives and their inseparable discussion of the morality in how we treat animals. I will discuss the messages and lessons that the readings have presented on animal ethics, particularly in The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Dead Body and the Living Brain, Rachel in Love, My Friend the Pig, and It Was a Different Day When They Killed the Pig. These stories are particularly relevant to the topic of animal ethics and what constitutes moral treatment of animals, each carrying important lessons on different facets the vast subject of animal ethics.
Regan, Tom. “The Case for Animal Rights.” In Defense of Animals. Ed. Peter Singer. New York:
“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”(Arthur Schopenhauer)
As an advocate of animal rights, Tom Regan presents us with the idea that animals deserve to be treated with equal respect to humans. Commonly, we view our household pets and select exotic animals in different regard as oppose to the animals we perceive as merely a food source which, is a notion that animal rights activists
Morrison, Nick. "Animal Rights and Wrongs." Northern Echo, 24 Feb. 2001: n. pag. elibrary. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
The Case for Animal Rights. Routledge, London-New York, 1988. Regan T. The Struggle for Animal Rights. International Society for Animal Rights.
In this essay, I will discuss and define both speciesism and moral individualism in Paola Cavalieri’s book, The Animal Question. Additionally, I will provide my opinion on which is the strongest argument for speciesism and why I still disagree with it. Speciesism is the belief that humans are inherently superior to all other animals, solely based on their species membership. This widely held belief is used to justify the blatant discrimination of nonhuman animals, resulting in a lack of moral rights and the exploitation of defenseless beings. This view, that humans are of special moral status, is constantly attempted to be rationalized in various ways.
In conclusion, I agree with Tom Regan’s perspective of the rights view, as it explores the concept of equality, and the concept of rightful treatment of animals and humans. If a being is capable of living, and experiencing life, then they are more than likely capable of feeling pleasure and pain, except in a few instances. If humans are still treated in a respectable and right way even if some cannot vote, or think for themselves, then it is only fair that animals who also lack in some of these abilities be treated as equals. As Regan puts it, “pain is pain, wherever it occurs” (1989).
Tom Regan, “The Case for Animal Rights,” in In Defense of Animals, ed. Peter Singer (Oxford:
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Call Number: HV4711.A5751992. Morris, Richard Knowles, and Michael W. Fox, eds. On the Fifth Day, Animal Rights. and Human Ethics.
Waples KA, Stagoll CS. Ethical issues in the release of animals from captivity. Roundtable. 1997; 115-120.
Humans place themselves at the top of the sociological tier, close to what we as individuals call our pets who have a sentimental value in our lives. Resource animal’s on the other hand have a contributory value within our lives: they provide us with meat and other important resources. In order to determine the boundaries between how we treat animals as pets and others simply as resources, utilitarians see these “resource animals” as tools. They contemplate the welfare significances of animals as well as the probable welfares for human-beings. Whereas deontologists see actions taken towards these “resources animals” as obligations regardless of whom or what they harm in the process. The objection to these theories are, whose welfare are we