Animal Rights

As is true of so many social phenomena in the United States, the animal rights movement appeared to most Americans to develop out of thin air in the 1980s. As is also true of most social phenomena in the country, however, the animal rights movement is not new. Animal protection organizations have existed in the United States for more than 100 years (Alperson, 1988), and they have even earlier origins in England the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in 1824 (Zak, 1989).

The level of activism and the tactics employed in the pursuit of animal rights in the late1980s, however, do represent changes (Holden, 1989; Zak, 1989). Both sides in the controversy demand moderation in the behavior of the parties in the opposing camp, and each side demands new laws to deal with either the protection of animals, or the protection of those who use (or abuse) animals (Alperson, 1988; Cowley, 1988; Jansy, 1988; Zak, 1989).

This current research examines the concept of animal rights in the context of law and utilitarianism. Specifically, this research attempts to determine what actions a law based upon utilitarian philosophy would deem to be acceptable and unacceptable with respect to the use and treatment of animals. In pursuing this goal, it is necessary to examine (1) utilitarian philosophy, and its relation to law, and (2) the concept of animal rights, before attempting to relate the two. The utilitarian philosophy and its relation

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tion is utilitarian in character, because it holds that the good outweighs the bad. It is an evaluation, however, which presumes that humans have a greater worth than do other animals (McCabe, 1988), although some biomedical researchers emphasize that other animals also benefit from the use of animals in laboratory research (Koshland, 1989). The presumption that other animals lack the same worth as humans began with Aristotle, who held that a lack of rationality makes them by nature slaves to humans (Zak, 1989). Seven hundred years after Aristotle, St. Augustine, in establishing a Christian justification of human domination in the world, argued that Christ taught that (1) to refrain from killing animals is to give in to superstition, and (2) no commonality of rights exist between humans and other animals (Zak, 1989). In the sixteenth century, Rene Descartes added to the philosophical underpinning of the idea that humans had a greater worth than other animals. Descartes developed the doctrine that animals are pure machines, whereas human are machines with minds (Young, 1966). Descartes held that to attribute minds to animals would threaten religious belief, because it would be impious to think that humans have no greater h

Category: Philosophy - A