Animal Wrongs and Rights - Antennae The Journal of Nature in ...

T
om Regan has often been called the
philosophical leader of the animal rights
movement in the United States. That is an
understatement, both historically and
geographically. Regan’s 1975 article “The Moral
Basis of Vegetarianism” in The Canadian Journal of
Philosophy, linked the practice of not eating meat
with animals’ right to life. While vegetarianism and its
foundations in the desire not to eat other animals
has had an enduring universal history, Regan’s
arguments linking animal rights to vegetarianism
were the first to be argued well enough to be
published in a peer-reviewed philosophical
publication. In doing so, Regan changed the world.
A second article “McCloskey on Why Animals
Cannot Have Rights,” published in The Philosophical
Quarterly in 1976, together with the earlier essay,
held the origins of Regan’s seminal book, The Case
for Animal Rights, published in 1983.
The Case for Animal Rights offered an
extended, meticulously detailed, and closely
reasoned argument for the rights of animals.
Globally, philosophers and animal activists alike
recognize it as ground breaking in its ability not only
to extend the rights of humans to animals but also
to defend and clarify the rights view itself. The rights
view, as Regan (2004) outlines it, is “the
philosophical basis for principled objections to the
worst forms of moral prejudice-- such as racism”
(331). This visionary approach to moral thinking has
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THE CASE FOR
ANIMAL RIGHTS
In this exclusive interview with Antennae, Tom and Nancy Regan discuss animal activism and cognitive ethology.
Questions by Carol Gigliotti
influenced generations of thinkers around the globe
since the book has been translated into Italian,
Swedish, Dutch, and Chinese, and a second
edition, with a new Introduction, was published by
the University of California Press in 2004.
Tom Regan is now Emeritus Professor of
Philosophy, North Carolina State University, Raleigh,
North Carolina (USA). During his more than 30 years
on the faculty, he received numerous awards for
excellence in undergraduate and graduate
teaching; was named University Alumni
Distinguished Professor; published hundreds of
professional papers and more than twenty books;
won major international awards for film writing and
direction; and presented hundreds of lectures
throughout the world. In 2000, he received the
William Quarles Holliday Medal, the highest honor
NC State University can bestow upon one of its
faculty. He is universally recognized as a pioneering
spokesperson for the philosophy of animal rights. In
2009, he was included in the UTNE Reader’s list of 50
Visionaries Who Are Changing the World.
Tom Regan’s other books that explore and
defend animal rights are All That Dwell Therein:
Essays on Animal Rights and Environmental Ethics
(1982); Animal Sacrifices: Religious Perspectives on
the Use of Animals in Science (1986); The Struggle
for Animal Rights (1987); The Thee Generation:
Reflections on the Coming Revolution (1991);
Defending Animal Rights (2001); The Animal Rights