Vegan Education and Animal Rights Activism

Abstract

AbstractIn recent years, the direct action-versus-pacifism controversy has all but taken the place of the famous 1970s utilitarianism-versus-rights debate in animal advocacy discourse. The central issue of the acrimonious exchange is arguably the effectiveness of the respective strategies. While both American philosophers are practicing vegans, Steven Best is an outspoken non-pacifist who endorses ‘direct action’ beyond ‘open rescue’, whereas Gary Francione favours a pacifist stance, with veganism as the baseline in the fight against animal abuse and exploitation. Both Best and Francione advocate education. But, whereas Francione seems to be confident that education (coupled with active veganism) will bring about substantial changes, Best favours a critical pedagogy approach coupled with tactics far beyond mere education. After discussing the pros and cons of the respective positions, as well as ‘acceptable’ uses of violence in response to the suffering and loss of life inflicted on countless other-than-human animals every single day, I offer an account of animal rights activism and education characterised by rational persuasion that arguably avoids the problems of both absolute pacifism and unqualified ‘direct action’.KeywordsAnimal rights activismDirect actionPacifismVegan educationViolence