“From Human Rights to Animal Rights" (2015)

Theories of rights are many and engaging in a detailed discussion of those theories is beyond the scope of this essay. However, here we shall start with the views of the 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes, which informed attitudes towards animals well into the 20th century. Descartes based his rights arguments on cogito, ergo sum: I think, therefore I am 1. Therefore consciousness and thought were central to his views on humans and animals. In part five of Discourse on Method published in 1637, he examined the nature of animals and how they were distinguished from humans. Mind, for Descartes, was not part of the physical universe; it was a separate substance and a link between humans and the mind of God. This link to God i.e. mind was unique to humans and non-humans had no mind and therefore no link to the mind of God. 2 His views suggest that the use of language is a sign of rationality and only beings that possess minds and souls are rational and argues that animals do not have immaterial minds or souls and are therefore not rational. It therefore follows that animals do not have sensations like pain, thirst or hunger. Animals for Descartes, were therefore nothing more than a "complex automata" and the squeals of pain, were mechanical reactions of the animal to external stimuli and not evidence of any sensation of pain. Humans on the other hand have minds or rational souls hence their capacity to use language and feel sensations like hunger, thirst and pain and this justifies their entitlement to holding rights. Furthermore, philosophers such as Locke and Grotius attached great emphasis on the ability of humans to reason, which for them justified their equal access to rights. However, the basis proposed by Descartes, Locke, and Grotius and defended by modern philosophers such as Georodie Duckler is being increasingly questioned. Questions are being asked about the moral standing of animals and whether their interests should also be considered. Amongst the commentators who have increasingly questioned the justification for focusing exclusively on human interests to the exclusion of all other species is Peter Singer who has attacked the basis of the theories of natural law. Singer is an advocate of utilitarianism and in Animal Liberation Movement, he refers to the proposals of equality of consideration by many philosophers, but points to their failure to recognize that this principle also applies to members of other species and not only humans. 3

In the following paper I critically review and compare Robert Garner's recent rights-based approach to justice for animals with competing accounts by Martha Nussbaum focused on individual capabilities and species norms, and by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka focused on citizenship theory. What does it mean to say that the status and treatment of animals is an issue of justice and why must this feature in a theory of (global) justice that is meant to contribute to the solution of urgent practical problems? I take the question of whether animals place significant moral demands on us as settled in the affirmative. I argue that animal rights are a matter of justice that must be covered by any substantive theory of global justice. In light of my critical survey of these innovative new political theories of animal rights I ask how animals might be included in global justice theory and how their inclusion might significantly enrich and inform global politics.

Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics, 2017

It is widely held that moral obligations to non-human beings do not involve considerations of justice. For such a view, nonhuman interests are always prone to be trumped by human interests. Rawlsian contractarianism comprises an example of such a view. Through analysis of such theories, this essay highlights the problem of reconciling the claim that humans have obligations to non-humans with the claim that our treatment of the latter is not a matter of justice. We argue that if it is granted that the basic interests of non-human beings sometimes count for more than the peripheral interests of humans, then our understandings of obligation and of justice must be aligned, so that what we say about obligation is not countered by assumptions about the invariable priority of humans in matters of justice. We further consider whether such a conclusion can be endorsed by those who adopt certain alternative theories to contractarianism. We conclude that adherents of a range of theories includ...

Essays in Philosophy, 2004

2012

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015

A Century is a Short Time: The Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902, 2005

On human animals, non-human animals and suffering in wars

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1986

What can we say, in good faith, about the moral status of animals? This article explores the above question through the prism of Emmanuel Levinas’s theory of ethics. I begin by examining the ambiguous position of non-human animals in Levinas’s writings. I argue that Levinas’s theory is best read as suggesting that non-humans present claims for recognition as ethical beings, but that these demands have a different character to those presented by humans. I then explore the implications of Levinas’s view of ethics for the structure of moral reasoning. I contend that Levinas’s theory yields a conception of moral reasoning as reflective, good faith engagement with primordial social judgements of ethical significance. In the final part of the article, I suggest that it is both possible and constructive to thematise the ethical claims of non-human animals in the language of rights. Indeed, from a Levinasian perspective, animal rights might properly be viewed as a model for the notion of human rights, since they capture the essential asymmetry of the ethical encounter.