Animal and Human Rights in the Enlightenment

Abstract

Abstract Arguments that animals should have fundamental rights are often believed to be a product of the late twentieth century. This chapter shows that they can in fact be traced to French Enlightenment debates in the eighteenth century, where they emerged in tension with human rights arguments. Giving rise to that tension were two partly conflicting streams of thinking that emerged at the time: naturalism (Section 2) and egalitarianism (Section 3). Section 4 unpacks the tension between animal and human rights by explaining how naturalists’ empirical focus challenged egalitarians’ positions on the equality of humans and their separateness from other species. Sections 5 and 6 then illustrate this tension by drawing on the naturalist writings of Jean-Claude Delamétherie, who made a pioneering proposal for animal rights, and the egalitarian Jean-Baptiste Salaville, who rejected this proposal on the ground that it would undermine human equality and rights. Section 7 concludes the chapter.