Archive for January 15th, 2008
Tom Regan’s Case for Animal Rights
Tom Regan is Professor of philosophy at North Carolina State University and a leading animal rights advocate. His best known work is in the form of his book The Case for Animal Rights (1983).
Regan’s position on animal rights and how it differs from that of Singer’s.
Regan disagrees with Singer’s utilitarian program for animal liberation, for he rejects utilitarianism as lacking a notion of intrinsic worth. According to Regan, animals and humans all have equal intrinsic value on which their right to life and concern are based. This is precisely where Regan and Singer philosophically differ as Singer does not take into account this intrinsic value that Regan argues for; that utilitarianism lacks.
Regan calls for the total abolition of the use of animals in science, the total dissolution of the commercial animal agriculture system, and the total elimination of commercial and sport hunting and trapping. Regan writes, “The fundamental wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us – to be eaten, or surgically manipulated, or put in our cross hairs for sport and money.” As Regan so eloquently puts it, “People must change their beliefs before they change their habits. Enough people, especially those elected to public office, must believe in change – must want it – before we will have laws that protect the rights of animals.”
