Tom Regan and Animal Rights Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Tom Regan and Animal Rights - Essay Example There was a time when it was commonly accepted by â€Å"civilized† people that those of non-European descent deserved to be chattel. There was a time when women could be viewed as property. In general, it seems that humanity has over time increased its level of moral sophistication and expanded its moral universe. In particular, there has been a focus on rights-based analysis: People have intrinsic rights, inalienable, and it is always wrong to eclipse them. In the modern era, there are many, such as Regan, who submit that perhaps the next logical evolution in our expanding moral universe is animal rights, treating animals with certain inalienable levels of treatment Regan makes clear that animal rights generally mean just that: Rights that animals have to certain levels of treatment. Like all rights analyses, these arguments are deontological rather than utilitarian or consequentialist. Even if you can get a â€Å"good† outcome for killing a cow or experimenting on a rabbit, it is wrong because it violates some norm that, if the violation were universalized, would cease to exist. Society as a whole might benefit from animal testing, but it is still tortured. A key assumption to this argument is some kind of parallelism between animal and humanity. Virtually no one sheds a tear for the destruction of a rock. If a rock needs to be destroyed for society's good, there is no hand-wringing. The consequentialist analysis is assumed when we are speaking of the purely material world. Thus, animal rights debate center not just on the classic deontological-consequentialist debate, but also on the issues: What is life? If we view life as divine, is that divinity only confined to man? What matters in our moral universe? Is it sentience? If so, how much sentience? Is it the ability to feel pain? If so, to what degree of sensitivity? There are some who argue that animal rights are absolute, that just as a human's free speech can never be violated so can an animal's rights against pain or death never be undermined. Regan contrasts these people with those who view animal rights as something more contingent and fluid (70).