Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? - Hardcover

Francione, Gary L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1566396913 ISBN 13: 9781566396912

Publisher: Temple Univ Pr, 2001

Synopsis

Argues that the way humans treat animals results from the contradiction between the ideas that animals have some rights, but that they are also property, and offers ways to resolve the conflict.

About this title

About the Author

Gary L. Francione is Professor of Law and Nicholas de B. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University Law School, Newark. He is the author of Animals, Property, and the Law and Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (both Temple).

From the Back Cover

Two-thirds of Americans polled by the Associated Press agree with the following statement: "An animal's right to live free of suffering should be just as important as a person's right to live free of suffering." More than 50 percent of Americans believe that it is wrong to kill animals to make fur coats or to hunt them for sport. But these same Americans eat hamburgers, take their children to circuses and rodeos, and use products developed with animal testing. How do we justify our inconsistency?

In this easy-to-read introduction, animal rights advocate Gary Francione looks at our conventional moral thinking about animals. Using examples, analogies, and thought-experiments, he reveals the dramatic inconsistency between what we say we believe about animals and how we actually treat them.

Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? provides a guidebook to examining our social and personal ethical beliefs. It takes us through concepts of property and equal consideration to arrive at the basic contention of animal rights: that everyone—human and non-human—has the right not to be treated as a means to an end. Along the way, it illuminates concepts and theories that all of us use but few of us understand—the nature of "rights" and "interests," for example, and the theories of Locke, Descartes, and Bentham.

Filled with fascinating information and cogent arguments, this is a book that you may love or hate, but that will never fail to inform, enlighten, and educate.

Reviews

Francione, law professor and author of two previous books on animal rights, presents a moral introduction to the concept of animal interests. Departing from an ethical situation (you arrive home to find your house burning so fiercely that you can only save your child or your dog), the author expands on the precept that choosing to save the child does not ascribe a lack of value to the dog. Speaking of "our moral schizophrenia" in the fact that we recognize that animals have some interests that humans are morally and legally obligated to respect, but that we still treat them as our property, the author expands on this schizophrenia with a well-thought out, logical discussion of the way animals should be treated--as fellow, sentient occupants of the planet. Francione's well-crafted arguments are supported by extensive notes and by a clear writing style that continually builds upon his previous points. This scholarly work will appeal to thinking animal-rights activists and is recommended for libraries with large collections in the field. Nancy Bent

Well written, passionately argued, and clearly reasoned, this book still suffers from one major flaw: na?vet?. While no one can argue that there are problems with the way our society views and treats animals, specifically the status of animals as property, Francione expresses the common animal-rights position that every use of animalsAwhether for medical testing, entertainment, or even consumptionAis immoral or inherently wrong. Taking on Descartes, Locke, Jeremy Bentham, and even Peter Singer (known by many for Animal Liberation, long considered a foundation text for the animal-rights movement), Francione argues that animals can only be considered as having moral status or as being thingsAthere is no other choice. While his argument may well have some validity, the status of animals in our society (and beyond) is more like a compromise between the two. Recommended for larger animal-rights collections.AAlicia Graybill, Lincoln City Libs., NE
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Temple Univ Pr
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1566396913
• ISBN 13: 9781566396912
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 229