Animal Liberation Movement
Ethics and the New Animal Liberation Movement*
PETER SINGER
This book provides a platform for the new animal liberation movement. A diverse group of people share this platform: university philosophers, a zoologist, a lawyer, militant activists who are ready to break the law to further their cause, and respected political lobbyists who are entirely at home in parliamentary offices. Their common ground is that they are all, in their very different ways, taking part in the struggle for animal liberation. This struggle is a new phenomenon. It marks an expansion of our moral horizons beyond our own species and is thus a significant stage in the development of human ethics. The aim of this introduction is to show why the movement is so significant, …show more content…
I think we will emerge from the present decade with a significantly different attitude towards the sanctity of human life, an attitude which considers the quality of the life at stake rather than the simple matter of whether the life is or is not that of a member of the species Homo sapiens. Once this happens, we shall be ready to take a much broader view of the wrongness of killing, one in which the capacities of the being in question will play a central role. Such a view will not discriminate on the basis of species alone but will still draw a distinction between the seriousness of killing beings with the mental capacities of normal human adults and killing beings who do not possess, and never have possessed, these mental capacities. It is not a bias in favour of our own species that leads us to think that there is greater moral significance in taking the life of a normal human than there is in taking the life of, for example, a fish. To give just one reason for this distinction, a normal human has hopes and plans for the future: to take the life of a normal human is therefore to cut off these plans and to prevent them from …show more content…
In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased.
Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America and sold. In
Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. The essays which follow show how this can be done, both in theory and in
PETER SINGER
This book provides a platform for the new animal liberation movement. A diverse group of people share this platform: university philosophers, a zoologist, a lawyer, militant activists who are ready to break the law to further their cause, and respected political lobbyists who are entirely at home in parliamentary offices. Their common ground is that they are all, in their very different ways, taking part in the struggle for animal liberation. This struggle is a new phenomenon. It marks an expansion of our moral horizons beyond our own species and is thus a significant stage in the development of human ethics. The aim of this introduction is to show why the movement is so significant, …show more content…
I think we will emerge from the present decade with a significantly different attitude towards the sanctity of human life, an attitude which considers the quality of the life at stake rather than the simple matter of whether the life is or is not that of a member of the species Homo sapiens. Once this happens, we shall be ready to take a much broader view of the wrongness of killing, one in which the capacities of the being in question will play a central role. Such a view will not discriminate on the basis of species alone but will still draw a distinction between the seriousness of killing beings with the mental capacities of normal human adults and killing beings who do not possess, and never have possessed, these mental capacities. It is not a bias in favour of our own species that leads us to think that there is greater moral significance in taking the life of a normal human than there is in taking the life of, for example, a fish. To give just one reason for this distinction, a normal human has hopes and plans for the future: to take the life of a normal human is therefore to cut off these plans and to prevent them from …show more content…
In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased.
Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America and sold. In
Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. The essays which follow show how this can be done, both in theory and in