The Happy the elephant case ended not with a legal victory, but with a moral education. The judges did not free her, but they admitted that the question of animal personhood was "profound and difficult." That admission, decades ago, would have been impossible.
animal-welfare-vs-rights-guide
If welfare is about how we treat animals, rights is about why we treat them at all. The modern animal rights movement is largely rooted in the 1975 book Animal Liberation by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, though Singer is technically a preference utilitarian. The purist rights view comes from Tom Regan, who argued in The Case for Animal Rights (1983) that animals are "subjects-of-a-life." The Happy the elephant case ended not with
The core of animal rights is the rejection of "speciesism"—the assumption of human superiority. From this viewpoint, no amount of "humane" treatment justifies the use of an animal for a circus, a laboratory experiment, or a leather jacket. The goal is not a larger cage, but an empty one. The Science of Sentience The modern animal rights movement is largely rooted
The Happy the elephant case ended not with a legal victory, but with a moral education. The judges did not free her, but they admitted that the question of animal personhood was "profound and difficult." That admission, decades ago, would have been impossible.
animal-welfare-vs-rights-guide
If welfare is about how we treat animals, rights is about why we treat them at all. The modern animal rights movement is largely rooted in the 1975 book Animal Liberation by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, though Singer is technically a preference utilitarian. The purist rights view comes from Tom Regan, who argued in The Case for Animal Rights (1983) that animals are "subjects-of-a-life."
The core of animal rights is the rejection of "speciesism"—the assumption of human superiority. From this viewpoint, no amount of "humane" treatment justifies the use of an animal for a circus, a laboratory experiment, or a leather jacket. The goal is not a larger cage, but an empty one. The Science of Sentience