How Does Animal Testing Violate Their Right To Happy Healthy Life

The Case for Brute Rights

past Tom Regan

In PETER Vocalist (ed), In Defense of Animals (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985, pp. xiii-26)

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Philosopher Tom Regan

I regard myself equally an abet of brute rights — as a part of the animal rights movement. That movement, as I conceive it, is committed to a number of goals, including:

the total abolitionism of the apply of animals in scientific discipline;

the total dissolution of commercial animal agronomics;

the full elimination of commercial and sport hunting and trapping.

At that place are, I know, people who profess to believe in animal rights but do not avow these goals. Factory farming, they say, is incorrect - it violates animals' rights - just traditional animal agriculture is all right. Toxicity tests of cosmetics on animals violates their rights, but of import medical enquiry — cancer research, for instance — does non. The clubbing of baby seals is abhorrent, but not the harvesting of adult seals. I used to remember I understood this reasoning. Not anymore. You lot don't alter unjust institutions by tidying them up.

What'south wrong — fundamentally incorrect — with the mode animals are treated isn't the details that vary from case to case. Information technology'southward the whole organisation. The forlornness of the veal calf is pathetic, heart wrenching; the pulsing pain of the chimp with electrodes planted deep in her brain is repulsive; the slow, tortuous death of the racoon caught in the leg-hold trap is agonizing. Simply what is wrong isn't the pain, isn't the suffering, isn't the deprivation. These compound what's wrong. Sometimes - often - they brand information technology much, much worse. Just they are non the key wrong.

The fundamental incorrect is the system that allows us to view animals as our resource, here for united states of america — to exist eaten, or surgically manipulated, or exploited for sport or money. In one case nosotros accept this view of animals - as our resources - the remainder is as predictable as it is regrettable. Why worry about their loneliness, their pain, their death? Since animals exist for us, to benefit u.s. in one way or another, what harms them really doesn't matter — or matters simply if it starts to bother us, makes us experience a trifle uneasy when nosotros consume our veal escalope, for example. And then, aye, let us get veal calves out of solitary confinement, give them more infinite, a little straw, a few companions. But allow united states of america continue our veal escalope.

But a little straw, more space and a few companions won't eliminate - won't even touch - the basic incorrect that attaches to our viewing and treating these animals as our resources. A veal calf killed to be eaten afterward living in close confinement is viewed and treated in this mode: only so, too, is another who is raised (as they say) 'more than humanely'. To correct the incorrect of our treatment of farm animals requires more than than making rearing methods 'more humane'; it requires the full dissolution of commercial brute agronomics.

How we exercise this, whether we do it or, as in the case of animals in science, whether and how we abolish their utilise - these are to a big extent political questions. People must modify their behavior before they change their habits. Enough people, especially those elected to public office, must believe in modify - must want it - before we will accept laws that protect the rights of animals. This process of change is very complicated, very demanding, very exhausting, calling for the efforts of many hands in education, publicity, political arrangement and activity, downwards to the licking of envelopes and stamps. Every bit a trained and practicing philosopher, the sort of contribution I tin make is limited but, I like to retrieve, important. The currency of philosophy is ideas - their meaning and rational foundation - not the basics and bolts of the legislative process, say, or the mechanics of community organization. That'southward what I have been exploring over the by ten years or then in my essays and talks and, about recently, in my book, The Case for Creature Rights. I believe the major conclusions I accomplish in the book are truthful because they are supported by the weight of the best arguments. I believe the idea of animal rights has reason, not simply emotion, on its side.

In the space I have at my disposal here I can only sketch, in the barest outline, some of the main features of the book. Information technology's main themes - and we should not be surprised by this - involve asking and answering deep, foundational moral questions most what morality is, how information technology should exist understood and what is the best moral theory, all considered. I hope I can convey something of the shape I think this theory takes. The effort to practise this will be (to employ a word a friendly critic once used to describe my work) cerebral, perhaps also cerebral. Only this is misleading. My feelings about how animals are sometimes treated run but as deep and just every bit strong equally those of my more volatile compatriots. Philosophers do — to employ the jargon of the day — have a correct side to their brains. If it's the left side nosotros contribute (or mainly should), that's because what talents nosotros have reside in that location.

How to proceed? We begin past asking how the moral status of animals has been understood by thinkers who deny that animals have rights. Then nosotros test the mettle of their ideas past seeing how well they stand up up nether the heat of fair criticism. If we start our thinking in this fashion, we soon discover that some people believe that we accept no duties direct to animals, that we owe zero to them, that we can practice zip that wrongs them. Rather, we can practice wrong acts that involve animals, and then we have duties regarding them, though none to them. Such views may be called indirect duty views. Past way of analogy: suppose your neighbor kicks your dog. Then your neighbor has washed something wrong. But not to your dog. The wrong that has been done is a incorrect to you. Subsequently all, it is incorrect to upset people, and your neighbor's kicking your domestic dog upsets you. So you are the 1 who is wronged, non your canis familiaris. Or again: by kick your dog your neighbour damages your holding. And since it is wrong to damage another person's property, your neighbor has done something incorrect - to y'all, of course, not to your dog. Your neighbour no more wrongs your dog than your auto would be wronged if the windshield were smashed. Your neighbour's duties involving your dog are indirect duties to you. More than mostly, all of our duties regarding animals are indirect duties to one another — to humanity.

How could someone effort to justify such a view? Someone might say that your domestic dog doesn't feel anything and then isn't hurt past your neighbour'south kick, doesn't intendance about the hurting since none is felt, is equally unaware of annihilation as is your windshield. Someone might say this, but no rational person will, since, among other considerations, such a view volition commit anyone who holds information technology to the position that no human being feels hurting either - that human being beings likewise don't care about what happens to them. A 2nd possibility is that though both humans and your dog are hurt when kicked, it is just human pain that matters. Simply, again, no rational person can believe this. Pain is pain wherever it occurs. If your neighbour's causing you lot pain is wrong because of the hurting that is caused, we cannot rationally ignore or dismiss the moral relevance of the pain that your dog feels.

Philosophers who hold indirect duty views — and many nevertheless practice — take come to understand that they must avoid the ii defects but noted: that is, both the view that animals don't feel anything as well as the idea that just homo pain tin can be morally relevant. Among such thinkers the sort of view at present favoured is one or other form of what is called contractarianism.

Here, very crudely, is the root idea: morality consists of a set of rules that individuals voluntarily concur to abide past, as nosotros practise when we sign a contract (hence the name contractarianism). Those who understand and accept the terms of the contract are covered direct; they have rights created and recognized past, and protected in, the contract. And these contractors can also have protection spelled out for others who, though they lack the ability to sympathise morality and so cannot sign the contract themselves, are loved or cherished by those who tin. Thus young children, for example, are unable to sign contracts and lack rights. Simply they are protected by the contract none the less because of the sentimental interests of others, nigh notably their parents. Then we take, then, duties involving these children, duties regarding them, but no duties to them. Our duties in their case are indirect duties to other homo beings, usually their parents.

As for animals, since they cannot understand contracts, they obviously cannot sign; and since they cannot sign, they have no rights. Like children, however, some animals are the objects of the sentimental interest of others. You, for example, love your domestic dog or cat. So those animals that enough people intendance about (companion animals, whales, baby seals, the American bald eagle), though they lack rights themselves, will be protected because of the sentimental interests of people. I have, and so, according to contractarianism, no duty straight to your dog or any other fauna, non even the duty not to cause them pain or suffering; my duty not to hurt them is a duty I have to those people who care nearly what happens to them. Every bit for other animals, where no or piddling sentimental interest is nowadays - in the case of farm animals, for case, or laboratory rats - what duties nosotros have grow weaker and weaker, perchance to vanishing point. The pain and death they endure, though real, are not wrong if no one cares about them.

When information technology comes to the moral condition of animals' contractarianism could exist a hard view to refute if it were an adequate theoretical approach to the moral status of human being beings. It is not adequate in this latter respect, however, which makes the question of its adequacy in the sometime case, regarding animals, utterly moot. For consider: morality, according to the (crude) contractarian position before us, consists of rules that people hold to abide by. What people? Well, enough to make a difference - plenty, that is, collectively to have the ability to enforce the rules that are drawn up in the contract. That is very well and skilful for the signatories simply not so good for anyone who is not asked to sign. And there is nothing in contractarianism of the sort we are discussing that guarantees or requires that everyone volition take a take chances to participate equally in framing the rules of morality. The effect is that this arroyo to ethics could sanction the most blatant forms of social, economic, moral and political injustice, ranging from a repressive caste system to systematic racial or sexual discrimination. Might, according to this theory, does make correct. Allow those who are the victims of injustice endure every bit they will. It matters not so long equally no one else — no contractor, or too few of them — cares about information technology. Such a theory takes one's moral breath abroad ... as if, for example, in that location would be nothing wrong with apartheid in South Africa if few white S Africans were upset by information technology. A theory with so picayune to recommend it at the level of the ethics of our handling of our fellow humans cannot take anything more to recommend it when information technology comes to the ethics of how we care for our fellow animals.

The version of contractarianism just examined is, as I have noted, a rough multifariousness, and in fairness to those of a contractarian persuasion it must be noted that much more refined, subtle and ingenious varieties are possible. For example, John Rawls, in his A Theory of Justice, sets forth a version of contractarianism that forces contractors to ignore the accidental features of being a human being - for instance, whether i is white or blackness, male or female person, a genius or of minor intellect. But by ignoring such features, Rawls believes, can we ensure that the principles of justice that contractors would concur upon are not based on bias or prejudice. Despite the comeback a view such as Rawls's represents over the cruder forms of contractarianism, it remains deficient: it systematically denies that nosotros have directly duties to those human beings who practice not have a sense of justice - young children, for instance, and many mentally retarded humans. And yet information technology seems reasonably certain that, were we to torture a young kid or a retarded elderberry, we would be doing something that wronged him or her, non something that would be wrong if (and only if) other humans with a sense of justice were upset. And since this is true in the case of these humans, we cannot rationally deny the same in the case of animals.

Indirect duty views, so, including the best among them, fail to control our rational assent. Whatever ethical theory we should accept rationally, therefore, it must at to the lowest degree recognize that we have some duties directly to animals, just every bit we accept some duties direct to each other. The side by side 2 theories I'll sketch endeavor to meet this requirement.

The beginning I phone call the cruelty-kindness view. But stated, this says that we have a direct duty to be kind to animals and a direct duty not to be cruel to them. Despite the familiar, reassuring ring of these ideas, I do not believe that this view offers an adequate theory. To make this clearer, consider kindness. A kind person acts from a sure kind of motive - pity or concern, for case. And that is a virtue. Simply there is no guarantee that a kind human activity is a right act. If I am a generous racist, for case, I will exist inclined to act kindly towards members of my own race, favoring their interests to a higher place those of others. My kindness would be real and, so far every bit it goes, good. But I trust it is too obvious to require argument that my kind acts may not be higher up moral reproach - may, in fact, be positively incorrect because rooted in injustice. So kindness, nevertheless its status as a virtue to be encouraged, simply will not deport the weight of a theory of correct action.

Cruelty fares no better. People or their acts are cruel if they display either a lack of sympathy for or, worse, the presence of enjoyment in another'south suffering. Cruelty in all its guises is a bad affair, a tragic human failing. Merely just as a person's being motivated by kindness does not guarantee that he or she does what is right, so the absenteeism of cruelty does non ensure that he or she avoids doing what is incorrect. Many people who perform abortions, for instance, are not vicious, sadistic people. Merely that fact alone does not settle the terribly difficult question of the morality of abortion. The case is no dissimilar when we examine the ideals of our treatment of animals. And so, yes, allow us be for kindness and against cruelty. Just let united states of america not suppose that being for the one and against the other answers questions about moral right and wrong.

Some people think that the theory we are looking for is utilitarianism. A utilitarian accepts two moral principles. The first is that of equality: everyone's interests count, and similar interests must be counted every bit having similar weight or importance. White or black, American or Iranian, human or animal - anybody's pain or frustration matter, and matter only as much as the equivalent pain or frustration of anyone else. The second principle a utilitarian accepts is that of utility: do the deed that will bring virtually the best balance between satisfaction and frustration for everyone affected by the outcome.

As a commonsensical, then, hither is how I am to approach the job of deciding what I morally ought to do: I must ask who volition be affected if I choose to do ane matter rather than another, how much each individual volition exist affected, and where the best results are almost probable to prevarication - which option, in other words, is most likely to bring near the best results, the best balance between satisfaction and frustration. That pick, any it may be, is the one I ought to choose. That is where my moral duty lies.

The neat appeal of utilitarianism rests with its uncompromising egalitarianism: anybody's interests count and count every bit much as the like interests of everyone else. The kind of odious bigotry that some forms of contractarianism can justify - bigotry based on race or sexual activity, for example - seems disallowed in principle past utilitarianism, every bit is speciesism, systematic discrimination based on species membership.

The equality we notice in utilitarianism, however, is non the sort an abet of animal or human being rights should have in mind. Utilitarianism has no room for the equal moral rights of different individuals because it has no room for their equal inherent value or worth. What has value for the utilitarian is the satisfaction of an individual's interests, not the private whose interests they are. A universe in which you satisfy your desire for water, food and warmth is, other things being equal, better than a universe in which these desires are frustrated. And the same is truthful in the instance of an brute with similar desires. But neither you nor the animate being have any value in your ain right. Only your feelings do.

Here is an analogy to help make the philosophical point clearer: a cup contains different liquids, sometimes sugariness, sometimes bitter, sometimes a mix of the two. What has value are the liquids: the sweeter the better, the bitterer the worse. The cup, the container, has no value. It is what goes into information technology, non what they go into, that has value. For the commonsensical you and I are like the cup; we accept no value as individuals and thus no equal value. What has value is what goes into us, what we serve as receptacles for; our feelings of satisfaction have positive value, our feelings of frustration negative value.

Serious problems arise for utilitarianism when we remind ourselves that information technology enjoins united states of america to bring about the all-time consequences. What does this hateful? It doesn't mean the best consequences for me alone, or for my family or friends, or any other person taken individually. No, what we must practice is, roughly, as follows: nosotros must add upwardly (somehow!) the divide satisfactions and frustrations of everyone probable to be affected by our pick, the satisfactions in one column, the frustrations in the other. We must full each column for each of the options before the states. That is what it means to say the theory is aggregative. So nosotros must choose that option which is nigh likely to bring about the best residue of totaled satisfactions over totaled frustrations. Whatsoever act would lead to this outcome is the one nosotros ought morally to perform — information technology is where our moral duty lies. And that act quite clearly might not be the same one that would bring about the best results for me personally, or for my family or friends, or for a lab animal. The all-time aggregated consequences for everyone concerned are not necessarily the best for each private.

That utilitarianism is an aggregative theory — different individuals' satisfactions or frustrations are added, or summed, or totaled - is the key objection to this theory. My Aunt Bea is old, inactive, a cranky, sour person, though non physically ill. She prefers to go on living. She is too rather rich. I could make a fortune if I could get my hands on her coin, coin she intends to requite me in whatsoever event, after she dies, but which she refuses to requite me now. In lodge to avoid a huge tax seize with teeth, I plan to donate a handsome sum of my profits to a local children'southward hospital. Many, many children will benefit from my generosity, and much joy will be brought to their parents, relatives and friends. If I don't become the money rather soon, all these ambitions will come to cipher. The one time-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a real killing volition exist gone. Why, and then, not kill my Aunt Bea? Oh, of course I might get defenseless. But I'grand no fool and, besides, her dr. tin can be counted on to co-operate (he has an center for the aforementioned investment and I happen to know a good deal about his shady past). The human activity tin be done . . . professionally, shall we say. At that place is very little chance of getting caught. And as for my censor being guilt-ridden, I am a resourceful sort of boyfriend and will take more than than sufficient comfort - as I lie on the embankment at Acapulco - in contemplating the joy and health I have brought to so many others. Suppose Aunt Bea is killed and the residuum of the story comes out as told. Would I have done anything wrong? Anything immoral? One would have idea that I had. Not according to utilitarianism. Since what I have done has brought almost the best residuum between totaled satisfaction and frustration for all those affected by the issue, my action is not wrong. Indeed, in killing Aunt Bea the md and I did what duty required.

This same kind of argument can be repeated in all sorts of cases, illustrating, time after fourth dimension, how the commonsensical's position leads to results that impartial people observe morally callous. It is wrong to kill my Aunt Bea in the name of bringing virtually the best results for others. A proficient end does not justify an evil ways. Any acceptable moral theory will have to explain why this is and then. Utilitarianism fails in this respect and so cannot be the theory nosotros seek.

What to practise? Where to begin anew? The place to begin, I think, is with the utilitarian's view of the value of the individual — or, rather, lack of value. In its place, suppose we consider that y'all and I, for case, do have value as individuals — what we'll call inherent value. To say nosotros have such value is to say that we are something more than, something different from, mere receptacles. Moreover, to ensure that nosotros do not pave the way for such injustices as slavery or sexual bigotry, we must believe that all who have inherent value have it equally, regardless of their sex, race, religion, birth place and then on. Similarly to exist discarded equally irrelevant are one'southward talents or skills, intelligence and wealth, personality or pathology, whether one is loved and admired or despised and loathed. The genius and the retarded child, the prince and the pauper, the encephalon surgeon and the fruit vendor, Mother Teresa and the most unscrupulous used-car salesman — all have inherent value, all possess it equally, and all have an equal right to be treated with respect, to be treated in ways that do not reduce them to the status of things, as if they existed as resources for others. My value equally an private is independent of my usefulness to you lot. Yours is not dependent on your usefulness to me. For either of us to treat the other in ways that neglect to show respect for the other'due south independent value is to deed immorally, to violate the private's rights.

Some of the rational virtues of this view - what I call the rights view - should be evident. Different (crude) contractarianism, for instance, the rights view in principle denies the moral tolerability of any and all forms of racial, sexual or social bigotry; and unlike utilitarianism, this view in principle denies that we can justify good results past using evil means that violate an individual's rights -denies, for example, that it could be moral to kill my Aunt Bea to harvest beneficial consequences for others. That would exist to sanction the disrespectful treatment of the individual in the name of the social good, something the rights view volition non — categorically will not —ever allow.

The rights view, I believe, is rationally the well-nigh satisfactory moral theory. It surpasses all other theories in the degree to which it illuminates and explains the foundation of our duties to i another - the domain of homo morality. On this score information technology has the best reasons, the best arguments, on its side. Of class, if it were possible to show that but human beings are included within its scope, and then a person like myself, who believes in animal rights, would be obliged to expect elsewhere.

Simply attempts to limit its scope to humans merely tin exist shown to be rationally defective. Animals, it is true, lack many of the abilities humans possess. They can't read, do higher mathematics, build a bookcase or make baba ghanoush. Neither tin can many human beings, however, and however we don't (and shouldn't) say that they (these humans) therefore have less inherent value, less of a right to be treated with respect, than do others. It is the similarities between those human beings who most clearly, nearly non-controversially take such value (the people reading this, for example), non our differences, that matter most. And the really crucial, the basic similarity is only this: nosotros are each of us the experiencing field of study of a life, a witting fauna having an individual welfare that has importance to u.s. whatever our usefulness to others. We want and adopt things, believe and feel things, recall and expect things. And all these dimensions of our life, including our pleasance and pain, our enjoyment and suffering, our satisfaction and frustration, our connected existence or our untimely death - all brand a difference to the quality of our life as lived, as experienced, past united states of america as individuals. Every bit the same is true of those animals that concern the states (the ones that are eaten and trapped, for example), they too must be viewed as the experiencing subjects of a life, with inherent value of their own.

Some there are who resist the idea that animals have inherent value. 'Just humans have such value,' they profess. How might this narrow view be dedicated? Shall we say that only humans have the requisite intelligence, or autonomy, or reason? Just in that location are many, many humans who fail to meet these standards and yet are reasonably viewed every bit having value above and beyond their usefulness to others. Shall we claim that only humans belong to the right species, the species Homo sapiens? But this is breathy speciesism. Volition it exist said, then, that all - and merely - humans have immortal souls? And so our opponents have their piece of work cut out for them. I am myself not ill-disposed to the proffer that in that location are immortal souls. Personally, I greatly hope I have one. But I would not want to rest my position on a controversial ethical event on the fifty-fifty more controversial question near who or what has an immortal soul. That is to dig ane'southward hole deeper, non to climb out. Rationally, it is better to resolve moral issues without making more controversial assumptions than are needed. The question of who has inherent value is such a question, one that is resolved more rationally without the introduction of the idea of immortal souls than by its use.

Well, perhaps some will say that animals take some inherent value, only less than nosotros have. Once again, however, attempts to defend this view can be shown to lack rational justification. What could exist the basis of our having more than inherent value than animals? Their lack of reason, or autonomy, or intellect? Only if we are willing to make the same judgment in the instance of humans who are similarly deficient. But information technology is not true that such humans — the retarded child, for example, or the mentally deranged - take less inherent value than you or I. Neither, then, can we rationally sustain the view that animals similar them in being the experiencing subjects of a life have less inherent value. All who have inherent value have it equally, whether they be homo animals or not.

Inherent value, and so, belongs equally to those who are the experiencing subjects of a life, whether it belongs to others - to rocks and rivers, trees and glaciers, for example — we practice not know and may never know. Only neither do nosotros demand to know, if we are to make the example for animal rights. We do not demand to know, for example, how many people are eligible to vote in the side by side presidential ballot before we can know whether I am. Similarly, nosotros do non need to know how many individuals have inherent value earlier we can know that some do. When it comes to the case for beast rights, then, what we need to know is whether the animals that, in our culture, are routinely eaten, hunted and used in our laboratories, for example, are similar usa in being subjects of a life. And we practice know this. We do know that many - literally, billions and billions - of these animals are the subjects of a life in the sense explained so have inherent value if we do. And since, in order to arrive at the best theory of our duties to one another, nosotros must recognize our equal inherent value as individuals, reason - not sentiment, not emotion - reason compels united states to recognize the equal inherent value of these animals and, with this, their equal right to exist treated with respect.

That, very roughly, is the shape and feel of the case for beast rights. Near of the details of the supporting argument are missing. They are to be found in the book to which I alluded before. Here, the details get begging, and I must, in endmost, limit myself to 4 final points.

The first is how the theory that underlies the case for brute rights shows that the animal rights movement is a role of, non antagonistic to, the human being rights motility. The theory that rationally grounds the rights of animals besides grounds the rights of humans. Thus those involved in the animal rights movement are partners in the struggle to secure respect for human rights - the rights of women, for example, or minorities, or workers. The animal rights move is cut from the same moral textile as these.

2nd, having set out the broad outlines of the rights view, I tin can now say why its implications for farming and scientific discipline, among other fields, are both clear and uncompromising. In the instance of the utilise of animals in scientific discipline, the rights view is categorically abolitionist. Lab animals are not our tasters; we are not their kings. Considering these animals are treated routinely, systematically as if their value were reducible to their usefulness to others, they are routinely, systematically treated with a lack of respect, and thus are their rights routinely, systematically violated. This is simply as true when they are used in lilliputian, duplicative, unnecessary or unwise enquiry as it is when they are used in studies that agree out real promise of man benefits. We tin can't justify harming or killing a human being existence (my Aunt Bea, for example) only for these sorts of reason. Neither can we do so even in the instance of and then lowly a creature as a laboratory rat. It is not only refinement or reduction that is called for, not just larger, cleaner cages, non just more than generous utilise of anesthetic or the elimination of multiple surgery, non but tidying up the organisation. It is complete replacement. The best we tin can practice when it comes to using animals in science is - not to apply them. That is where our duty lies, according to the rights view.

As for commercial animate being agriculture, the rights view takes a similar abolitionist position. The fundamental moral incorrect here is not that animals are kept in stressful close confinement or in isolation, or that their pain and suffering, their needs and preferences are ignored or discounted. All these are wrong, of course, but they are non the fundamental wrong. They are symptoms and effects of the deeper, systematic wrong that allows these animals to be viewed and treated as lacking independent value, as resource for the states - equally, indeed, a renewable resource. Giving farm animals more than space, more natural environments, more companions does not correct the fundamental wrong, any more than giving lab animals more anesthesia or bigger, cleaner cages would right the central incorrect in their case. Zippo less than the total dissolution of commercial beast agriculture volition do this, simply as, for similar reasons I won't develop at length hither, morality requires cipher less than the total emptying of hunting and trapping for commercial and sporting ends. The rights view's implications, then, as I have said, are articulate and uncompromising.

My last two points are about philosophy, my profession. It is, most obviously, no substitute for political action. The words I take written here and in other places past themselves don't change a affair. It is what we practise with the thoughts that the words express — our acts, our deeds - that changes things. All that philosophy can practice, and all I have attempted, is to offering a vision of what our deeds should aim at. And the why. Merely not the how.

Finally, I am reminded of my thoughtful critic, the one I mentioned earlier, who chastised me for being also cerebral. Well, cognitive I have been: indirect duty views, utilitarianism, contractarianism - hardly the stuff deep passions are made of. I am as well reminded, however, of the epitome another friend in one case set before me — the epitome of the ballerina as expressive of disciplined passion. Long hours of sweat and toil, of loneliness and exercise, of doubt and fatigue: those are the discipline of her craft. But the passion is at that place too, the fierce drive to excel, to speak through her torso, to exercise it right, to pierce our minds. That is the image of philosophy I would leave with you lot, not 'too cognitive' merely disciplined passion. Of the discipline enough has been seen. As for the passion: there are times, and these not infrequent, when tears come to my optics when I see, or read, or hear of the wretched plight of animals in the hands of humans. Their pain, their suffering, their loneliness, their innocence, their death. Anger. Rage. Pity. Sorrow. Cloy. The whole creation groans under the weight of the evil we humans visit upon these mute, powerless creatures. It is our hearts, not just our heads, that call for an stop to information technology all, that demand of us that nosotros overcome, for them, the habits and forces behind their systematic oppression. All great movements, information technology is written, go through 3 stages: ridicule, word, adoption. It is the realization of this third phase, adoption, that requires both our passion and our discipline, our hearts and our heads. The fate of animals is in our hands. God grant we are equal to the task.

Source: https://famous-trials.com/animalrights/2599-philosopher-tom-regan-on-animal-rights

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