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The Case for Animal Rights1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Hugh Lehman
Affiliation:
University of Guelph

Extract

In his previous papers written on the topic of animal rights, Tom Regan argued that on the assumption that certain human beings have moral rights then so do certain animals. Here the argument is carried a stage further; Regan argues that some animals have certain moral rights. For the most part the book is taken up with criticizing alternative views concerning our moral obligations to animals and explaining and defending “The Rights View”. In the final chapter, Regan draws out the implications ofthe rights view. These include arguing for an obligation to be a vegetarian, moral condemnation of hunting and trapping of wild animals as well as of most of the uses of animals for scientific purposes. Animals are not to be used for toxicity tests, in education contexts or in scientific research even though this may produce beneficial consequences for humans and other animals. The book is very clearly written and well argued. It covers all important positions and arguments related t o the question of our moral obligations to animals. It is, I believe, the best book to appear on this subject to date.

Type
Critical Notices/Etudes critiques
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1984

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References

2 See, for example, Regan, Tom, “The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism”, The Canadian Journal of Philosophy 5/2 (10 1975), 181214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, 135.

4 Ibid., 139.

5 Stitch, Stephen P. and Nisbett, Richard E., “Justification and the Psychology of Human Reasoning”, Philosophy of Science 47/2 (1980), 188202CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, 187.

7 Ibid., 243.

8 Ibid., 248.

9 Ibid., 249.

10 Ibid., 240.

11 Ibid., 325.

12 Ibid., 285.

13 Ibid., 391.