Theory Of Animal Rights Research Articles

Dilemmas and Insights About Recognition of Plant Rights

Plant rights, which are relatively new compared to animal rights theories have both negative and positive aspects. Because all of the negative rights established for animals are difficult to apply to plants, it is necessary to focus on positive relational responsibilities. For this reason, instead of applying the basic principles set out by animal rights theorists to plants, we are opening up discussions on issues that would prevent arbitrary violence against plants and their total instrumentalisation. Thus, we aim to evaluate the arbitrariness applied in both ordinary states and states of exception in the context of ecocide, ecological mourning, and the relationship between law and violence.

Occupational injustice across species

ABSTRACT COVID-19 and the prospect of a sixth mass extinction, among other crises, have underscored the urgency of recognizing humans' ethical and ecological entanglements with the more-than-human world. In light of these entanglements, this article brings together theories of occupational justice with those of animal rights in order to stimulate further discussion toward the development of a multispecies theory of occupational justice. First, a precedent and basis for nonhuman occupational rights is established in Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. Second, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s political theory of animal rights is invoked as a lens through which to understand how various types of nonhuman animals are differentially at risk for experiencing four occupational injustices: occupational deprivation, alienation, displacement, and apartheid. The article concludes that a commitment to multispecies occupational justice changes how science is practiced. Implications for occupational science and adjacent design sciences are explored, as well as directions for future research and political work.

Sentience and Intrinsic Worth as a Pluralist Foundation for Fundamental Animal Rights.

To date, welfare protections have failed animals. In this context, many animal advocates and scholars have supported recognition of animal rights. Animal rights theory, however, remains underdeveloped. This article contributes to the development of animal rights theory and, in this respect, proposes the utilisation of sentience and intrinsic worth concepts as a pluralist foundation for prospective animal rights. Sentience and intrinsic worth as a conceptual underpinning for animal rights hold clear benefits in that (i) the concepts are already embedded in many legal systems, (ii) sentience would enable the development of animal rights to be built on the established interest theory of rights, and (iii) sentience directly links to the justification of rights as being primarily concerned with the prevention of pain and suffering.

Managing Our Relationship with Free-Roaming Cats in Zoopoland

Abstract Debate over the proper management of our relationship with free-roaming cats has escalated based on concerns over impacts on biodiversity and public health, with some calling for their eradication. It is often waged between animalists, primarily focused on the interests of the individual animal, and traditional conservationists, primarily focused on preserving native species and biodiversity. An ethical paradigm that accounts for the interests of all animals and nature to develop a management scheme that promotes interspecies justice is needed. I propose the political theory of animal rights developed in Zoopolis as a fruitful ethical paradigm. Grounded in modern citizenship theory, it defines universal negative rights due to all sentient beings and positive rights due to them based on our relationships to them as citizens, denizens, or foreigners. Application of this political theory in a modern fictional jurisdiction, Zoopoland, is explored to develop a just management strategy for free-roaming cats.

A Strategic Proposal for Legally Protecting Wild Animals

Philosophers have long articulated theories of animal rights. However, concrete questions such as “How should the Constitution of Australia change if it recognized the right to self-determination of some wild animals?” have rarely, if ever, been studied. Inspired by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s theory of animal rights, this article explores a legal strategy about how wild animals’ interest in self-determination could be recognized in the Australian Constitution. I argue that conferring strong constitutional protection to wild animals regarding self-determination would require: (1) recognizing fundamental legal rights of wild animals to political representation, immunity from being objects of property rights, self-determination, and territory, and (2) defining to whom the proposed rights would apply and identifying the territories over which animals would have a right to govern themselves. I offer a strategic proposal in relation to point 2 and suggest that granting a legal status beyond the personhood–property divide, what I call “legal animalhood,” is the soundest strategy to recognize the fundamental legal rights of wild animals. Finally, I show that the proposed strategy is a better approach to confer strong legal protection to wild animals than Karen Bradshaw’s property rights strategy and ecocentric approaches.

Karl Christian Friedrich Krause On Animal Rights

Krause’s philosophy deserves to be memorized as the first link in a chain of thinking on animal rights that is still on the way today. Though Krause was not the first to talk of animal rights in the history of animal ethics, his theory of animal rights is pathbreaking in embedding a conception of animal rights in an all-encompassing metaphysical system. The essay situates Krause’s theory of animal rights in the framework of his general theory of rights and points to the challenges Krause’s theory faces by the inevitability of trade-offs between animal and human rights.

David DeGrazia on Animal Rights: A Critical Analysis

The article aims to critically discuss the theory of animal rights developed by American social philosopher David DeGrazia. It consists of two parts. The first one describes the main elements of DeGrazia’s approach, namely his views on animal minds, the principle of equal consideration, the idea of unequal moral status, the concept of border persons, and practical remarks concerning improving the treatment of animals by humans. The second part presents remarks about the points where DeGrazia’s proposals should be supplemented and corrected so as to make them more convincing and widely accepted. The conclusion of the essay is the proposal of a cultural revolution for the benefit of animals, which should be initiated by famous people, like actresses, actors, sportswomen and sportsmen, because of their influential position in contemporary societies.

Creating a Just and Joyful World for Dogs

Framing debates about how we should relate to companion animals as "rights vs welfare" is misleading and potentially harmful. Far from being the sole territory of abolitionists, many working behavior consultants today are using concepts that come from animal rights theory, although they may not recognize them as such. This article uses the theories of Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka to explain how animal rights can inform how we relate to and treat companion animals in our care, and argues that extending rights to our pets is both a moral obligation and a logical conclusion to the beliefs many behavior consultants already evince.

The Ways to Improve the Legal System for Wildlife Protection——From the Perspectives of "Animal Rights Theory" and "Modern Anthropocentrism"

China's current wildlife protection legislation is imperfect, there are multiple contradictions between human and wildlife resources. Scientific and reasonable protection of wildlife resources is conducive to economic development and ecological civilization construction. As to whether China should adopt the "theory of animal rights" to formulate relevant laws, this paper discusses the "theory of animal rights" and the legal status of China's wildlife resources protection, and puts forward reasonable suggestions to build a scientific and effective legal system of wildlife resources management and protection.

Animalismo e non violenza. L’incidenza della lezione gandhiana sul pensiero di Tom Regan

In opposition to the anthropocentric model of domination, in Gandhi as in Regan there is the full recovery of an ethical-philosophical tradition based on the model of kinship or fraternity and that insists on the possibility of extending the rules of justice to all living beings. The result of this perspective is the duty of vegetarianism and the radical opposition to any practice that treats animals as means at the service of human interests. But Gandhi’s lesson is particularly useful both to address the properly political issues arising from animal ethics, that are at the heart of Regan’s philosophy (starting with the debate on the nature and justification of animal rights theories and their possible inclusion in the political community), and to define the most appropriate non-violent fighting strategies for the achievement of the aims of animal rights defenders.

Thinking-of-the-Animal-Other with Emmanuel Levinas

This article situates the texts in which Emmanuel Levinas directly addresses questions of animality against the backdrop of his larger oeuvre and argues that, despite an explicit attempt to arrange a privileged ethical (dis)position for humans, Levinas' ethical logic opens onto a deeper conception of ethics without boundaries or a priori content. Juxtaposing Levinas' ethical subjectivity with the relational structure underlying the prominent models of animal rights, it proceeds to examine the implications of Levinas' ethics for a theory of animal rights. The article concludes that Levinas' theory is not logically consistent with a thematisation of the ethical claims of animals in the language of rights and that it is best utilised as a framework within which to deconstruct the inherent anthropocentric character of current models of animal rights.

Political Agency in Humans and Other Animals

In virtue of their capacity for political agency, political agents can possess special rights, powers, and responsibilities, such as rights to political participation and freedom of speech. Traditionally, political theorists have assumed that only cognitively unimpaired adult humans are political agents, and thus that only those humans can be the bearers of these rights, powers, and responsibilities. However, recent work in animal rights theory has extended the concept of political agency to nonhuman animals. In this article, I develop an account of political agency that identifies the capacities that one must possess to be a political agent and captures the fact that political action is a distinctive type of action. Crucially, this account makes sense of the standard assumption that only some humans count as political agents, and explains why few nonhuman animals, human infants, and severely cognitively impaired humans are likely to possess the capacity for political agency. I go on to reject the view, recently advanced by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, that nonhuman animals can be ‘nonintentional political agents’. I conclude by suggesting that most nonhuman animals, as well as human infants and humans with severe cognitive impairments, cannot straightforwardly be assigned rights to political participation.

Animal Politics: advocating for full access to health care for companion animals

Conceived by the ideas of several personalities and in permanent expansion, the field of animal ethics has been able to blur and redefine the limits of the moral community, incorporating non-human animals. But even though we are witnessing how moral anthropocentrism is entering into the category of mental scheme from a past era, unfortunately it continues to be responsible for drawing the political horizon of animals. Therefore, the challenge is to pay attention from the political and legal world to the growing public sensitivity towards animals. Thus, what is presented here constitutes a simple attempt to provide a better political scenario for them. Based on the animal rights theory of Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, pursuing a meaningful interspecies political community requires identifying what kind of actions can be expected to bring that desired situation. Consequently, improving access to health care for companion animals should be seen as a step forward in that direction.

Tom Regan’s Philosophy of Animal Rights: Subjects-of-a-Life in the Context of Discussions of Intrinsic and Inherent Worth

Modern animal rights debates began in the 1970s, mainly as part of the budding field of applied ethics in Anglo-American philosophy. In just a short time, these animal rights discourses received international academic respect, especially through analytically trained philosophers. Central for this development was the analysis that rights language can be principally used species neutrally. This paper’s contribution is to examine the central terms of Tom Regan’s still widely discussed theory for their actuality and usefulness. Hence strengthening these arguments for modern animal rights theory as a serious approach in (inter)national ethical and legal disputes. Translated from German by Gary Steiner, Bucknell University

David DeGrazia o prawach zwierząt – analiza krytyczna

The article aims to critically discuss the theory of animal rights developed by American social philosopher David DeGrazia. It consists of two parts. The first one describes the main elements of DeGrazia’s approach, namely his views on animal minds, the principle of equal consideration, the idea of unequal moral status, the concept of border persons, and practical remarks concerning improving the treatment of animals by humans. The second part presents remarks about the points where DeGrazia’s proposals should be supplemented and corrected so as to make them more convincing and widely accepted. The conclusion of the essay is the proposal of a cultural revolution for the benefit of animals, which should be initiated by famous people, like actresses, actors, sportswomen and sportsmen, because of their influential position in contemporary societies.

Animal Agora

Many theorists of the ‘political turn’ in animal rights theory emphasize the need for animals’ interests to be considered in political decision-making processes, but deny that this requires self-representation and participation by animals themselves. I argue that participation by domesticated animals in co-authoring our shared world is indeed required, and explore two ways to proceed: 1) by enabling animal voice within the existing geography of human-animal roles and relationships; and 2) by freeing animals into a revitalized public commons (‘animal agora’) where citizens encounter one another in spontaneous, unpredictable encounters in spaces that they can re-shape together.

Animal welfare versus animal abolitionism: a comparison of the theories by Peter Singer and Tom Regan and their influence on the Brazilian Federal Constitution

With the emergence of environmental concerns and the awakening regarding animal treatment issues, the anthropocentric paradigm has begun to shift, causing many countries to review their position on the legal status of animals. Within the movement for animals, there are two mainly followed philosophical theories: the animal welfare perspective, which has Peter Singer as its leading author, and the animal rights theory, likewise known as the abolitionist movement, with Tom Regan as its central theorist. Utilizing the method of comparative analysis, this article seeks to analyze each author’s thought process and compare theories, contrasting each viewpoint’s moral and philosophical foundations and which principle each author has determined as most fundamental. The main differences between them will also be compared, as well as their conclusions and effects on society, with a particular focus on their influences on the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988.

Animal Rights Theory from the Legal and Bioethical Perspectives

Based on the alterations of new scientific paradigms that sustain the demand for a relationship between humans and non-human animals founded on bioethics, this paper seeks to highlight the urgency in the creation of a new legal status for animals in Brazil, and the need of relocating Animal Law as an autonomous academic discipline.

Can a critical reading of Zoopolis by Donaldson and Kymlicka lead to advocating dialogue between animal rights theorists and zoologists?

This essay is a zoologist’s response to Zoopolis. A political theory of animal rights by Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011). What drew me to look at their new approach was that geography played a part in conceptualising animal communities and, in particular, the specific focus on wild animals and urban wildlife. To oversimplify, Donaldson and Kymlicka say, much of the debate operates within one of three basic moral frameworks: a welfarist, an ecological and a basic rights approach, but none has proved capable of fundamental change. That change will only be possible, they consider, if we can develop a new moral framework that connects the treatment of animals more directly to the fundamental principles of liberal–democratic justice and human rights. A major point of agreement between zoologists and Donaldson’s and Kymlicka’s views is that animals deserve more than being over-ridden at every encounter with human interests. A major stalling point in advocating a dialogue between animal rights theorists and zoologists is where Donaldson and Kymlicka accept the animal rights position at the outset, rather than letting their thesis play out to see what their position might be for each geographic zone and for each species. Also, it is clear that Donaldson’s and Kymlicka’s starting point is the traditional animal rights agenda, which rules out animal research as morally illegitimate. The conservation of Australia’s fauna could not survive in that regime. Consequently, I cannot advocate dialogue between animal rights theorists and zoologists from a critical reading of Zoopolis.

The Edge of “Animal Rights”

A central task of environmental ethics, which have been arising since 1960s, is to extend the objects of moral concern beyond the individuals of Homo sapiens. (Here, it involves the issue of the boundary of environmental ethics. In a narrow sense, an environmental ethic must grant moral concern to holistic environmental objects (such as ecosystems). On the other hand, if we broadly define the environmental ethic as an ethic that shows moral concern not limited to Homo sapiens and its individuals only, then, these “generalized” environmental ethics include Peter Singer’s “animal liberation” and Tom Regan’s “animal rights”. In this article, the term “environmental ethic” refers to an environmental ethic in a generalized sense.) All the objects deserving moral concern constitute the moral community. The trajectory and boundary of this extension are different among different schools. Compared to other schools, Tom Regan’s “animal rights” has a relatively smaller moral community, making it more “conservative” at first sight. Meanwhile, the rights view, like other schools, faces the question regarding the edge of moral concern. This question consists of two sub-questions: (1) where is the boundary of the moral community and (2) how ought we to treat the objects of moral concern near the boundary? Given the closeness of Regan’s theory to traditional ethics (regarding the boundary of the moral community), this study is mainly focused on analyzing the edge of moral concern within the framework of the theory of animal rights. Further, I investigate the similarities and differences in the boundary of moral concern among various schools of environmental ethics. The comparative analysis demonstrates a subtle relation between science and moral philosophy, and reveals a similar form of a metaphysical premise adopted by all environmental ethics. This research helps to clarify the moral concern of environmental ethics, which is an essential prerequisite for establishing a new ethic, and therefore helps to consolidate the reference of environmental ethics to environmental management.