The Animal Question Why Non-Human Animals Deserve Human Rights

by Cavalieri, Paola; Woollard, Catherine

• ISBN13: 9780195143805
• ISBN10: 0195143809
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-12-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

How much do animals matter--morally? Can we keep considering them as second class beings, to be used merely for our benefit? Or, should we offer them some form of moral egalitarianism? Inserting itself into the passionate debate over animal rights, this fascinating, provocative work by renowned scholar Paola Cavalieri advances a radical proposal: that we extend basic human rights to the nonhuman animals we currently treat as "things." Cavalieri first goes back in time, tracing the roots of the debate from the 1970s, then explores not only the ethical but also the scientific viewpoints, examining the debate's precedents in mainstream Western philosophy. She considers the main proposals of reform that recently have been advanced within the framework of today's prevailing ethical perspectives. Are these proposals satisfying? Cavalieri says no, claiming that it is necessary to go beyond the traditional opposition between utilitarianism and Kantianism and focus on the question of fundamental moral protection. In the case of human beings, such protection is granted within the widely shared moral doctrine of universal human rights' theory. Cavalieri argues that if we examine closely this theory, we will discover that its very logic extends to nonhuman animals as beings who are owed basic moral and legal rights and that, as a result, human rights are not human after all.

Author Biography

Paola Cavalieri is editor of the international philosophy journal Etica & Animali.

Table of Contents

The Cultural Premises	3	(20)
A Problem for Political Philosophy: How to Establish Human Equality	4	(3)
Bioethical Dilemmas: Who Is Human?	7	(5)
After Behaviorism, or How Animal Minds Started to Exist Again	12	(11)
The Problem of Moral Status	23	(18)
Moral Agents and Moral Patients	28	(3)
In Search of the Criteria	31	(1)
Inclusion in the Moral Community	32	(9)
The Traditional Accounts	41	(28)
Absolute Dismissal, or Descartes and God's Clocks	41	(6)
The Superiority of Rational Nature: How Kant Created Humanism	47	(12)
Ethics Makes a Turn: Utilitarianism	59	(8)
After the Inclusion	67	(2)
Speciesism	69	(18)
Traditional Speciesism: Attributing Weight to Biological Characteristics	71	(2)
The Correspondence Approach: Species as a Mark of the Morally Relevant Characteristics	73	(3)
An Attempt to Grant Paradigmatic Status to Nonparadigmatic Humans	76	(3)
Retreat: Comparable Status, Different Treatment	79	(8)
Welfare and the Value of Life	87	(38)
Welfare	88	(13)
When Killing Is Wrong	101	(4)
The Value of Life: Qualitative Theories	105	(4)
The Value of Life: Quantitative Theories	109	(4)
Internal Perspectives on Prudential Value	113	(3)
An Open Problem	116	(1)
The Notion of Person as an Alternative Solution?	117	(8)
A Minimal Normative Proposal	125	(20)
Human Rights: Sphere of Reference	125	(3)
Human Rights: Essential Characteristics	128	(3)
Human Rights: Justification	131	(6)
For an Expanded Theory of Human Rights	137	(8)
Notes	145	(20)
Bibliography	165	(10)
Index	175