Should Animals Have the Same Rights as People?

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To have a right means being justified in preventing those who have the choice from intruding on one within a given sphere of jurisdiction. If I have the right to use a community swimming pool, no one is justified in trying to prevent me from making the decision as to whether I will use the pool.

When a right is considered natural, the freedom involved in having this right is supposed to be justified by reference to the kind of being one is, one's nature as a certain kind of entity. The idea of natural rights was formulated in connection with the issue of the proper relationship between human beings, especially between citizens and governments.

Since Locke's time, the doctrine of natural rights has undergone a turbulent intellectual history, falling into disrepute at the hands of empiricism and positivism but gaining a revival at the hands of some influential political philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. Ironically, at a time when natural-rights theory had not been enjoying much support, the idea that animals might also have rights came under increasing discussion. Most notable among those who proposed such a notion was Thomas Taylor. His anonymous work Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, published in 1792, discussed animal rights only in the context of demeaning human rights. More positive (though brief) was the contribution of Jeremy Bentham, who, in his An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), argued that those animals capable of suffering are owed moral consideration, even if those that molest us or we may make good use of may be killed -- but not “tormented.”

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Henry S. Salt devoted an entire work to the idea of animal rights.  And in our time, numerous philosophers and social commentators have made attempts to demonstrate that if we are able to ascribe basic rights to life, liberty, and property to human beings, we can do the same for many of the higher animals. Their arguments have two essential parts.

First, they subscribe to Darwin's thesis that no difference of kind, only a difference of degree, can be found between other animals and human beings.  Second, they claim that even if there were a difference in kind between other animals -- especially mammals -- and human beings, since they both can be shown to have interests (for example, the avoidance of pain and suffering), for certain moral and legal purposes, the difference does not matter; only the similarity matters.

Now, I do not wish to give the impression that no diversity exists among those who defend animal rights. Some do so from the viewpoint of natural rights, treating animals’ rights as basic limiting principles that may not be ignored except when it would also make sense to disregard the rights of human beings. Even on this matter, there are serious differences among defenders of animals rights -- some do not allow any special regard for human beings,  while some hold that when it comes to a choice between a person and a dog, it is ordinarily the person who should be given protection.

Others choose to defend animal rights or obligations we owe to animals (including abstaining from hurting them) on utilitarian grounds: to the extent that it amounts to furthering overall pleasure or happiness in the world, animals must be given consideration equal to what human beings receive. Thus an animal that is capable of experiencing pleasure or happiness may be sacrificed to further some human purpose only if that demonstrably contributes to the overall pleasure or happiness on earth. Barring such a demonstrable contribution, animals and humans enjoy equal rights.

One advocate of animal rights began his argument with the rather mild point that “reason requires that other animals are as much within the scope of moral concern as are men” but then moved on to the more radical claim that therefore “we must view our entire history as well as all aspects of our daily lives from a new perspective.”

Of course, folks have usually invoked some moral considerations about how animals should be treated -- think about disapproval of the proverbial kids’ play of pulling off the legs of flies. I personally recall such cases from living on a farm in Hungary when I was eleven. I got all kinds of rebuke about how I ought to treat the animals, receiving severe scolding when I mistreated a cat and lots of approval for taking the favorite cow grazing every day and establishing some kind of bond with it over time. Hardly anyone can have escaped one or another moral lecture from parents or neighbors concerning the treatment of cats, dogs, or birds.

I recall that when a young boy once tried out an air gun by shooting a pigeon sitting on a telephone wire before the apartment house in which he lived, there was no end of rebuke in response to this wanton callousness. Yet those who rebuked the boy were not implying that “we must view our entire history as well as all aspects of our daily lives from a new perspective.” Rather, they seemed to understand that reckless disregard for the life or well-being of animals shows a defect of character, lack of sensitivity, callousness -- without denying, at the same time, that numerous human purposes justify our killing animals and using them in the various benign ways they have been used throughout human history.

And this really is the crux of the matter. But why? Why is it more reasonable to think of animals as available for our sensible use rather than owed the kind of respect and consideration we ought to extend to other human beings? It is one thing to have this as a commonsense conviction; it is another to know it as a sound viewpoint, in terms of which we may confidently conduct ourselves.