Equal Rights

I have been outlining a history of the animal liberation movement; I’d like now to turn to the idea of equal rights that underpins it.

The idea that animals could be said to have rights at all was once used to parody the case for women’s rights. When in 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft published her ‘Vindication of the Rights of Woman’, her views were widely regarded as absurd. They were ridiculed in an anonymous publication entitled 'A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes'. The author of this satire, Thomas Taylor, a distinguished Cambridge philosopher, challenged Wollstonecraft's arguments by showing that they could be carried one stage further. If they could be applied to women, why should they not also be applied to dogs, cats, and horses? And given that the idea that such creatures should have rights was obviously ridiculous, the idea of women’s rights must plainly be just as silly.

Now on the face of it the case for equality between men and women cannot validly be extended to nonhuman animals. Take, for instance, the right to vote. It obviously applies to women, because, it can be argued, women are just as capable of making rational decisions as men are. Dogs, on the other hand, are incapable of making sense of voting, so they cannot have the right to vote. There are many other obvious ways in which men and women resemble each other closely, while humans and other animals differ greatly. So, it might be said, men and women are similar beings and should have equal rights, while humans and non humans are different and should not have equal rights.

But, as well as similarities, their are differences between men and women that are equally undeniable, and the most strident supporters of Women's Liberation are prepared to admit that these differences may give rise to different rights. Many feminists, for example, hold that women have the right to an abortion on request. It does not follow that since these same people are campaigning for equality between men and women they must support the right of men to have abortions too. Since a man cannot have an abortion, it is meaningless to talk of his right to have one. Since a pig can't vote, it is meaningless to talk of its right to vote. There is no reason why either Women's Liberation or Animal Liberation should get involved in such nonsense. The extension of the basic principle of equality from one group to another does not imply that we must treat both groups in exactly the same way, or grant exactly the same rights to both groups

When we say that all human beings, whatever their race, creed, or sex, are equal, what then is it that we are asserting? Those who wish to defend an unequal society have often pointed out that by whatever test we choose, it simply is not true that all humans are equal. Like it or not, we must face the fact that humans come in different shapes and sizes; they come with differing moral capacities, differing intellectual abilities, differing amounts of benevolent feeling and sensitivity to the needs of others, differing abilities to communicate effectively, and differing capacities to experience pleasure and pain. In short, if the demand for equal treatment were based on the actual equality of all human beings, we would have to stop demanding equality. It would be an unjustifiable demand.

The claim to equality that I am making here does not depend on intelligence, moral capacity, physical strength, or any such factual matters. Equality is not an assertion of fact, but a moral ideal. There is no logically compelling reason for assuming that a factual difference in ability between two people justifies any difference in the amount of consideration we give to satisfying their needs and interests. The principle of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat people.

Jeremy Bentham incorporated the essential basis of moral equality into his utilitarian system of ethics in the formula: "Each to count for one and none for more than one." In other words, the interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as the like interests of any other being. A later utilitarian, Henry Sidgwick, put the point in this way: "The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other.'' More recently, the leading figures in contemporary moral philosophy have shown a great deal of agreement in specifying as a fundamental presupposition of their moral theories some similar requirement which operates so as to give everyone's interests equal consideration—although they can’t seem to agree on how this requirement is best formulated.

It is an implication of this principle of equality that our concern for others ought not to depend on what they are like, or what abilities they possess—although precisely what this concern requires us to do may vary according to the characteristics of those affected by what we do. It is on this basis that the case against racism and the case against sexism must both ultimately rest; and it is in accordance with this principle that discrimination against non-humans is also to be condemned. If we agree that possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his own ends, should we not also agree that the superior intelligence of humans does not entitle them to exploit non humans?