Vol.15 No.12 (December 2005), pp.1030-1033

 

DEFENDING ANIMAL RIGHTS, by Tom Regan.  Urbana and Chicago:  University of Illinois Press, 2001.  224pp.  Cloth. $24.95.  ISBN: 0-252-02611-X.

 

Reviewed by Claire Rasmussen, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Delaware.  E-mail:  cerasmus [at] udel.edu

 

Some of the more moving images from post-Hurricane New Orleans involved animals, whether the images of dogs waiting on top of rooftops in vain for human rescuers, cats found in the tangled remains of homes, or even human animals who had risked death rather than leave behind their pets.  In the wake of human tragedy, non-human animals nonetheless retained the capacity to evoke sympathy, emotion, and even action on their behalf.  In spite of the centrality of animals in everyday life, as food, as companions, as clothing, as annoyances, animal rights still exists as a marginal fringe in scholarship, whether philosophy, law, or politics.  Tom Regan’s DEFENDING ANIMAL RIGHTS represents the work of one of the few—and among the most prominent—moral philosophers tackling the question of animal rights from an intellectual and activist perspective.  The book is a collection of Regan’s speeches and essays from the last decade ranging in topics from the philosophical foundations of animal rights to the relationship of ethical philosophy to activism.  While less systematic than Regan’s previous treatments of animal rights, the book is a provocative invitation to legal scholars to explore an underdeveloped arena of study.  Indeed, Regan’s opening chapters that lay out his philosophical argument are both less persuasive and less interesting than his closing chapters that are more directly political, placing animal rights in a broader legal and historical context.  Though offering little new to those familiar with the animal rights debate, Regan’s text does provide a valuable introduction to the intellectual, political, and personal debate in an accessible format that would be appropriate for scholars seeking to introduce themselves to the philosophical debate or for students of moral and legal philosophy.

 

The first half of DEFENDING ANIMAL RIGHTS is dedicated to the formidable intellectual task of defending the idea that non-human animals ought to be included in the moral community of humans as moral equals.  Regan defends this principle through a quasi-Kantian argument that, just as all humans ought to be treated as ends rather than means, so too ought animals be considered.  The criteria for membership in the moral community of rights-bearing subjects includes holding a status of what Regan refers to as a “subject of a life,” or possessing inherent value by virtue of meeting minimal requirements as beings to whom we have a moral duty.  Like many defenders of animal rights, Regan makes his case for animals in part from an argument from marginal cases in order to undermine the belief that human beings possess unique and special traits that make them the only candidates for moral personhood.  He argues that certain humans, whether infants, children or the seriously mentally or physically disabled, lack the [*1031] characteristics we often associate with rights-bearing subjects – such as autonomy, rationality, and language.  Nonetheless, we would find it reprehensible to engage in experimentation or extermination of infants or the severely physically disabled.  In a similar manner, he believes our recognition that animals are living beings with minimal mental capacities qualifies them for membership in the moral community.

 

Regan’s argument differentiates him from other defenders of animal rights, most notably Peter Singer, in his deployment of the idea of a moral community that is similar to, though obviously much broader than Kant’s, requiring us to view members of our moral community through the lens of duty.  Singer, on the other hand, as utilitarian, has argued for a more pragmatic position that would allow the sacrifice of, say, animals, infants or the severely disabled if it might serve the greater good.  And, in doing so, Singer has often reaffirmed the worst fears about animal rights advocates.  In spite of his often less sensationalistic conclusions, Regan’s philosophical position nonetheless draws some of the boldest lines involving animal rights.  Throughout the book he most frequently refers to one of the “hard cases” for animal rights proponents, the use of animals in research that may benefit animals, human and otherwise.  Although some animal rights defenders reluctantly allow such research for the long term greater good, and animal welfare advocates argue in favor of greater regulation to enable better care and conditions for the animals, Regan is absolutist.  If non-human animals are part of the moral community, thus mandating a moral duty to treat them as ends rather than as means, then experimenting on animals for our own good violates our own moral community.

 

Regan lays out this argument in greater detail in what many consider to be an animal-rights classic, THE CASE FOR ANIMAL RIGHTS, published in 1983.  In this text, he provides a useful introduction to his argument through a comparison with other animal rights arguments, including those of Singer, ecofeminists and deep ecology.  He also defends his view against detractors, most notably his long-time intellectual adversary, Carl Cohen.  Regan is most comfortable refuting other ethical philosophers arguing on similar philosophical terrain.  He seems somewhat less at ease arguing against feminist philosophers who attack the concept of rights, rather than just the premise that animals have rights.   In relying on a fairly narrow scope of literature among care feminists, Regan seems to miss the range of feminist critics of rights and to mischaracterize the literature with which he engages, reducing it to the simplistic charges that men have developed the concept of rights and, therefore, it is sexist, and that ethics should be built on care rather than reason.  As a philosopher rooted to some degree in the Kantian tradition, Regan’s argument might have been better served by giving more attention to those who examine rights in historical context, such as Charles Mills (1999), concluding that the co-existence of rights with practices like slavery is a conceptual and political problem.

 

Of greater interest than the philosophical story, however, may be the more [*1032] political and personal essays that comprise the second half of the book.  In Chapter Six, Regan links the struggle for equality on the basis of race, gender, and sexual orientation, making the suggestion that animal rights may be the next stage of rights expansion.  Regan is quite adept in making the case that scientific and religious expertise was often abused to reason that non-white humans, women, and non-heterosexuals were less than fully human.  He then contends that scientific and religious justifications for the subservience of animals may be similarly misguided and potentially embarrassing in the future.  The chapters that follow are discussions of advocacy regarding the unjust treatment of non-human animals, including the debate over use of violence in the animal rights movement (which Regan is mostly opposed to) and the implications of animal activism to Regan’s personal and professional life. 

 

The chapters that veer into political terrain are the least “intellectual” but may be the most engaging for legal scholars interested in questions of animal rights.  The philosophical chapters, rooted deeply in Anglo-American philosophy, seem oddly disengaged from the actual subjects they address, only rarely discussing actual animals and then primarily through the lens of ethical philosopher, imagining them in the hypothetical.  As with many animal rights treatises, I found myself dissatisfied by the articulation of abstract principles whereby we might transform our relationships with and use of animals.  I cannot imagine they would be convincing to the scientist experimenting on animals or the unrepentant meat eater.  As theorists outside of philosophy departments have waded into the thick of animal rights, many have made a similar argument that waxing philosophic about the definition of the rights-bearing subject, and wondering whether animals fit our anthropocentric definition, is merely a repetition of androcentrism and may prevent us from imagining other and better relationships with animals.  Emphasizing the various ways we live with animals, Cary Wolfe (2003) and J.M. Coetzee (2001) spring to mind as alternative constructions of a more complex ethical universe with animals. 

 

Regan’s later chapters, however, made me question why animal rights has not been of greater interest to legal scholars beyond the realm of ethical and legal theory.  Regan’s characterization of animal rights as just another struggle for social justice and his comparisons amongst struggles for gender struck me as emphasizing the various differences among categories of identity and the malleability of the rights-bearing subject.  Although I do not necessarily agree with Regan’s lumping together of struggles—a politically dangerous move as can be seen by the reaction to PETA’s recent traveling display comparing slavery, sexism, and child labor to our treatment of animals—the dynamics of the social movement and the shifting meaning of rights and rights-bearing subject within the law are certainly fruitful avenues of research.  One of the few texts that takes animal rights seriously as a social movement is Silverstein’s excellent UNLEASHING RIGHTS: LAW, MEANING, AND THE ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, and the area certainly warrants more attention.  More recently, Sunstein’s and Nussbaum’s (2004) edited volume tackles some of the historical and [*1033] contemporary debates about the treatment of animals.

 

Regan’s expansion of the category of rights may also contribute to the debate about whether rights, legal change, and state-based strategies are the proper avenues for the pursuit of animal-based concerns.  Examining the struggle for animal rights, where limited animal welfare reforms have been successful but broad-based social changes seem unlikely, may be a fruitful source of inquiry for those curious about the efficacy of rights-based struggles.  Further, the inquiry could challenge the very meaning of the “rights-based subject” for human and non-human animals.  Regan may open the door to inquiring whether animals are properly excluded from our moral community, but more work must be done in terms of determining what our duties toward our non-human others might be, especially since they are often unable to voice their own concerns and articulate their own ends (a problem not unique to non-human animals, of course). 

 

Regan’s book reads as a reflection on a long career as one of the lone voices in academia taking the problem of animals seriously.  While unlikely to convince skeptics, it nonetheless charts a course of study that considers our legal and moral relationships to animals as a philosophical, political and personal problem.  I finished the book feeling that the philosophical debate has failed to settle the ethical questions raised by our lives with animals, though Regan’s long career perhaps indicates that animal rights is not destined to remain always a fringe issue.   I remain unconvinced that Regan’s argument is a satisfactory treatment of the question of the moral and legal status of animals, but I am convinced by his work that animals are too important to be left only to scientists and ethical philosophers.

 

REFERENCES:

Coetzee, J.M.  2001.  THE LIVES OF ANIMALS.  Princeton:  Princeton University Press.

 

Mills, Charles. 1999.   THE RACIAL CONTRACT.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

 

Regan, Tom.  1985.  THE CASE FOR ANIMAL RIGHTS.  Berkeley: University of California Press.

 

Silverstein, Helena. 1996.  UNLEASHING RIGHTS:  LAW, MEANING, AND THE ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT.  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

 

Singer, Peter. 2001.  ANIMAL LIBERATION. New York: Harper Perennial.

 

Sunstein, Cass and Martha Nussbaum.  2004.  ANIMAL RIGHTS:  CURRENT DEBATES AND NEW DIRECTIONS.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press.

 

Wolfe, Cary. 2003.  ANIMAL RITES:  AMERICAN CULTURE, THE DISCOURSE OF SPECIES, AND POSTHUMANIST THEORY.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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© Copyright 2005 by the author, Claire Rasmussen