Animal Rights and WrongsA revised and improved edition of a book in continuing demand. Do animals have rights? If not, do we have duties towards them? If so, what duties? Why are animal-rights groups so keen to protect the rights of badgers and foxes but not of rats mice or even humans? How can we bridge the growing gap between rural producers and urban consumers? Why is raising animals for fur more heinous than raising them for their meat? Are we as human beings driving other species either to extinction or to a state of dependency? This paperback edition is fully updated with new chapters on the livestoick crisis, fishing and BSE and a layman's guide introduction to philosophical concepts, the book presents a radical respponse to the defenders of animal rights and a challenge to those who think that because they are kind to their pets, they are therefore good news for animals. |
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angling animal rights argued argument attitude balance of nature behaviour believe calculation chickens concept concern conflict consciousness covered creatures death Demos open access Demos This page depend Descartes desire dialogue distinction distinguish duty of care emotions ethic example exist fact farmers favour fear feel fish forbid fox-hunting horse horse-racing hunter-gatherer hunting with hounds immoral individual inflict instinctive interests involves killed kind live look means mental merely moral community moral judgement moral law moral questions moral thinking motive natural world Nevertheless open access licence page is covered pain person Peter Singer pets philosophers piety pleasure precisely principles rational rats reason recognise relations respect response Richard Ryder rights and duties rights reserved RSPCA self-conscious sense sentimental Singer social society source of moral species sport stag suffering surely sympathy things thought tion Tom Regan totem treat utilitarian vicious victim wild animals wrong zoos
Popular passages
Page 51 - For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, Is God our Father dear; And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, Is man, His child and care. For Mercy has a human heart; Pity, a human face; And Love, the human form divine: And Peace, the human dress.
Page 38 - But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rationaL as well as a more conversable animaL than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not. Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
Page 85 - ... Environmental, pragmatic and utilitarian arguments all count in favour of fox-hunting. But the real question of its morality is a question of human vice and virtue. And this is invariably the case in our dealings with wild animals. What really matters is the attitude with which we approach their joys and sufferings. When Jorrocks praised hunting as 'the image of war with only five and twenty per cent of the danger' he was consciously praising the human virtue which it displays and encourages.
Page 70 - The spectators need take no pleasure in the bull's sufferings; their interest, we assume, is in the courage and skill of the matador. Nevertheless, many people feel that it is immoral to goad an animal in this way, and to expose other animals, like the horses of the picadors, to the dire results of its rage. Even in this case, however, we must see the animal's sufferings in context. Only if the spectators' interest were cruel or sadistic could it be condemned out of hand; and the question must arise...
Page 96 - habits of the heart'. They form character, create behavioural dispositions and educate us in patterns of selfrestraint. Roger Scruton makes a fascinating observation in relation to BSE or 'mad cow disease' and the biblical prohibition against 'seething a kid in its mother's milk': The Jewish law which forbids us to seethe a young animal in its mother's milk may have little sense, when considered from the standpoint of a hard-nosed utilitarianism. But our disposition to hesitate before the mystery...
Page 29 - The virtues that inspire our admiration are also the qualities which preserve society, whether from external threat or from internal decay: courage and resolution in the face of danger; loyalty and decency in private life; justice and charity in the public sphere. At different periods and in different conditions the emphasis shifts — virtue is malleable, shaped by material, spiritual and religious circumstances.
Page 60 - ... Only by refraining from personalising animals do we behave towards them in ways that they can understand. And even the most sentimental animal lovers know this, and confer 'rights' on their favourites in a manner so selective and arbitrary as to show that they are not really dealing with the ordinary moral concept. When a dog savages a sheep no one believes that the dog, rather than its owner, should be sued for damages. Sei Shonagon, in The pillow book, tells of a dog breaching some rule of...
Page 110 - Quantitative study of primary sensory neurone populations of three species of elasmobranch fish' in journal of Comparative Neurology, August, 97-103.
Page 59 - Scruton discusses a varietr of areas of our treatment of animals in these terms. NON-MORAL BEINGS 1 The account of moral reasoning that I have just sketched offers an answer, even if not a fully reasoned answer, to the question of animals. In developing this answer, I shall use the term 'animal' to mean those animals that lack the distinguishing features of the moral being — rationality, self-consciousness, personality, and so on.
Page 59 - The concept of the person belongs to the ongoing dialogue which binds the moral community. Creatures who are by nature incapable of entering into this dialogue have neither rights nor duties nor personality. If animals had rights, then we should require their consent before taking them into captivity, training them, domesticating them or in any way putting them to our uses. But there is no conceivable process whereby this consent could be delivered or withheld. Furthermore, a creature with rights...