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The Case for Animal Rights is a 1983 book by the American philosopher Tom Regan, in which the author argues that at least some kinds of non-human animals have moral rights because they are the "subjects-of-a-life", and that these rights adhere to them whether or not they are recognized. [1]
Daniel Dombrowski writes that the argument can be traced to Porphyry's third-century treatise On Abstinence from Eating Animals. [7] Danish philosopher Laurids Smith who was familiar with the arguments of Wilhelm Dietler argued against the idea that animals cannot possess rights because they cannot understand the ideas of right and duty.
Counter-arguments include that first-order beliefs may be held in the absence of second-order ones – that is, a non-human animal or human infant might hold a belief while failing to understand the concept of belief — and that human beings could not have developed language in the first place without some pre-verbal beliefs. [2]
This argument holds that if marginal human beings such as infants, senile people, and the cognitively disabled are granted moral status and negative rights, then nonhuman animals must be granted the same moral consideration, since animals do not lack any known morally relevant characteristic that marginal-case humans have.
Steven M. Wise (December 19, 1950 – February 15, 2024) was an American lawyer and legal scholar who specialized in animal rights, primatology, and animal intelligence.He taught animal rights law at Harvard Law School, Vermont Law School, John Marshall Law School, Lewis & Clark Law School, Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, and at the Master’s in Animal Law and Society of the ...
In his 1982 book, The Case for Animal Rights, Regan argued that it is difficult to reconcile Aldo Leopold's holistic land ethic, where the "individual may be sacrificed for the greater biotic good", with the concept of animal rights and that, as a result, Leopold's view could justly be labelled as "environmental fascism". [13]
A proponent of gradual change, he formed Animal Rights International in 1974, and introduced the idea of "reintegrative shaming", whereby a relationship is formed between a group of animal rights advocates and a corporation they see as misusing animals, with a view to obtaining concessions or halting a practice.
The animal rights movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a social movement that advocates an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and an end to their use in the research, food, clothing, and entertainment industries.