Draft:Animal Rights

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Introduction

The term animal rights is ordinarily used to convey the idea that non-human animals are worthy of a high degree of moral consideration. It can also be used more specifically to refer to a rights-based philosophical approach to animal ethics as opposed to other philosophical frameworks. Additionally, animal rights can refer to a legal concept, but that is outside the scope of this article.

In this article, we use the term in the general sense but in a philosophical context, covering:

• How animal rights philosophy contextually fits into the overall areas of philosophy
• The philosophical approaches to animal ethics
• The major philosophers who shaped the landscape
• Objections to animal rights philosophy
• The usefulness of animal rights philosophy in advocacy and outreach

Approaches

Utilitarianism

Negative Utilitarianism

Rights Based, Deontological

Virtue Ethics

Philosophers

Pythagoras (570 BCE–490 BCE)

René Descartes (1596–1650)

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)

Tom Regan (1938–2017)

Richard Ryder (1940– )

James Rachels (1941–2003)

Peter Singer (1946– )

Meta

This article was originally authored by Greg Fuller. The contents may have been edited since that time by others.