Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights - Hardcover

Regan, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0742533522 ISBN 13: 9780742533523

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003

Synopsis

Described by Jeffrey Masson as "the single best introduction to animal rights ever written," this new book by Tom Regan will structure the animal rights debate for generations to come. In a style at once simple and elegant, Regan dispels the negative image of animal rights advocates perpetrated by the mass media, unmasks the fraudulent rhetoric of "humane treatment" favored by animal exploiters, and explains why existing laws function to legitimize institutional cruelty. Written by the leading philosophical spokesperson for animal rights, Tom Regan's shocking exposé of animal abuse makes an essential and lasting contribution that will significantly impact the history of animal rights advocacy in America.

About this title

About the Author

Tom Regan is emeritus professor of philosophy at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. The author of more than twenty books, he is universally recognized as the intellectual leader of the animal rights movement. Among his most well-known works on animal rights are The Case for Animal Rights (1983), The Struggle for Animal Rights (1987), Defending Animal Rights (2001), and, with Carl Cohen, The Animal Rights Debate (2001).

Reviews

According to this friendly but uncompromising manifesto, "being kind" and "avoiding cruelty" to animals is not enough. Regan proscribes instead a strict regime of "animal rights," forbidding any exploitation of animals whatsoever-for food, clothing, entertainment or even medical research of great benefit to humans. Regan, a leading philosopher in the animal rights movement, intends the book as a popular companion to his scholarly treatments of the subject. Animal rights activists are, he asserts, "Norman Rockwell Americans," not violent zealots, and while he describes a number of animal rights conversion experiences ("nothing else existed, just the elephant's gaze...looking through him"), his target audience is the unpersuaded "muddler" who needs step-by-step convincing to follow this path. He argues that all animals capable of caring about what happens to them-mammals, birds and (maybe) fish-are "subjects-of-a-life" and therefore on an equal moral footing with humans. The philosophical underpinnings of Regan's analysis are not overly rigorous, his treatment of counter arguments is sometimes impatient and exasperated, and his sentimentalization of animals ("our culture teaches us not to see hens like Penny and Sweet Pea as distinct individuals") can seem cloying. The real force of his appeal comes from his exposés of the heinous cruelty meted out to animals in factory farms, mink ranches, hunting preserves, dolphin shows (they're not having fun, they're desperate for fish) and research labs. Outrage sometimes gets the better of him ("is there no limit to the depths of betrayal to which we humans can sink?"), but many readers will experience equally visceral reactions.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0742533522
• ISBN 13: 9780742533523
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224