An Analysis of the Animal Rights Debate from an Ethics Perspective Essay

An Analysis of the Animal Rights Debate from an Ethics Perspective - Essay ExampleRoger Scrutons The Moral Status of Animals follows a similar line of lean that defends all life forms on the face of the earth and reveals his intense convictions in ideological and environmental thought.Singers comprehensive analysis brings to light some aspects of what Richard D. Ryder has termed speciesism. Drawing comparisons to the liberations movements of the sixties and the debate around the concept of equality among human beings, Singer emphasizes on the need to take animals too into consideration in such debates. He attacks the norm that animals can be excluded from the debate on equal rights because they lack the moral, rational powers than humans possess. Singer points out that there exists an essential exit among human beings based on race, gender and demographical specifics, but the equal rights theorists overcome this by stressing on the basic human qualities. The equal rights theories also highlight the man-to-man differences among human beings on which the concept of personal rights is based. Singer uses a systematic analytical strategy to break down these arguments one by one.Singer alludes to the issue of Mary Wollstonecrafts monumental treatise, Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792 and how they were satirized in an anonymous publication entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, actually written by doubting Thomas Taylor, a Cambridge philosopher. Taylor refuted Wollstonecrafts by trivializing her demands for the equal treatment of women on moral, philosophical and social realms by proposing that in fact one should go another note further and treat dogs, cats and horses in the similar manner. This argument was an absurd one at that time, and Taylors attempt was to prove that Wollstonecrafts arguments regarding the rights of women were also absurd, as it questioned a specific order in nature. Singers overview of Taylors argument