Defending Animal Rights

Front Cover
University of Illinois Press, 2001 - Nature - 179 pages
The animal rights debate is a divisive, enduring topic in normative ethical theory. Addressing key issues in this sometimes acrimonious debate, Tom Regan responds thoughtfully to his critics while dismantling the conception that "all and only" human beings are worthy of the moral status that is the basis of rights. Systematically unraveling claims that human beings are rational and therefore entitled to superior moral status, Regan defends the inherent value of all individuals who are "subjects of a life" and decries the speciesism that pretends to separate human from nonhuman animals. Independent of any benefits humans might derive from exploiting them, Regan shows that animals have no less value in themselves than do human beings. -- From publisher's description.
 

Contents

Ethical Theory and Animals
1
Whats in a Name?
28
A Decades Passing
39
Mapping Human Rights
66
Putting People in Their Place
85
Patterns of Resistance
106
Understanding Animal Rights Violence
139
Ivory Towers Should Not a Prison Make
150
Work Hypocrisy and Integrity
164
Index
177
Copyright

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About the author (2001)

Tom Regan is professor of philosophy at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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