Tom Regan's Argument For Animal Rights

We can see today that humans place themselves at the top of the hierarchical chain of moral standing. What I mean is that humans tend to think that they are more deserving of the right to an ethical life, more so than animals. On the other hand, humans are held to certain standards to treat every human as an equal. We clearly exclude non-humans from that sense of equality, or for the purposes of this paper - equal ethical treatment. Even then, we give some “non-humans” higher moral standing than others. Ought animals have rights, or ought they fall under the category of being morally considerable? I argue that there is no single framework in which to address the moral treatment of animals. A careful blend of these two ideas, moral rights and …show more content…
What I truly like about Regan’s argument is that he acknowledges that we, as humans, have rights, not because we are special, but because we simply have them. Regan argues that this idea should be applied to animals too. A Kantian principle can be enacted when we acknowledge that animals do not need to be useful to humankind for us to give them rights to life. Their right to life is completely separate from the value or usefulness they have for humans. Since humans have the ability to become a more “dominant” or “influential” species I would like to further emphasize Regan’s note on humans being the voice for animals who do not have one. If people object to the fact that humans speaking up will not do anything I would point at the civil rights movement as a whole. As we can see right now when the minority group speaks up, those prejudiced peoples will not lend their ear. However, if a person they respect starts to speak up for that same issue it tends to get more recognition. Although it is terrible for one person to have less of a voice than another due to race, gender, religion etc., it is necessary for those of us who are capable and privileged to speak with those whose voices are not heard, in this case the animals. Although I think it is nice of Regan to think humankind and animals have the same rights not to be harmed, the hierarchy of which humanity has followed for thousands of years disproves that animals have the right to life, even when beneficial to humans. If we play around with what rights really entail, we see that rights can be categorized. Therefore I would have to disagree with Regan and his “right to life” argument, and introduce the idea of the right to an ethical/ justifiable death. Not blatantly the right to