DaVinci, Damascus, and Moral Rights
Just came across this lecture by Tom Regan, ”Animal Rights: An Introduction” at the Interdisciplinary Lectures on Animal Rights at Heidelberg in 2006. Tom Regan taught philosophy at NC State until 2001. A timely find after the last post on the issue of dog meat. He opens with a similar story from the prologue of one of his recent books, Empty Cages. He goes on to talk broadly about what animal rights are, about different types of animal rights advocates – or how people come to be animal rights advocates, and about the terminology of moral rights in general. Here’s part one of five, click through to youtube to watch the rest.
The only thing that needs updating is the percent of the population in the US that’s vegetarian … currently it’s more like 3% (of adults). If that’s accurate then there are nearly twice as many vegetarian adults in the US (@ 7 million) as there are members of the NRA (@ 4 million). Interesting.
He was speaking at an event called “Interdisciplinary Lectures on Animal Rights” in 2006. Check out the other videos in English while you’re there. Unless you speak German, then you can listen to any of them. Note to self, learn German.
I also like Mylan Engels talk “Do Animals Have Rights and Does it Matter if They Don’t?” (video below) In my opinion, Engel’s talk serves as a decent summary of the relevant contemporary philosophical work being done around animals – both pro and con. Towards the end of his lecture he works through the premise in this essay which says essentially …
Unlike other ethical arguments for vegetarianism, the argument advanced is not predicated on the wrongness of speciesism, nor does it depend on your believing that all animals are equal or that all animals have a right to life, nor is it predicated on some highly contentious metaethical theory which you reject. Rather, it is predicated on your beliefs. Simply put, the argument shows that even those of you who are steadfastly committed to valuing humans over nonhumans are nevertheless committed to the immorality of eating meat, given your other beliefs.
What does philosophy have to do with Christianity? It has everything to do with the eternal parsing of what that one thing that the “Bible says” makes us different from animals, that is the idea of being uniquely made “in the image of God”. The problem is that the Bible itself doesn’t provide any definitive definition of what that actually means. Take a look at the long history of filling those words with any kind of meaning and you’ll be looking predominantly at the work of philosophers.
