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How to Confront Cruelty

Critter News

I came across this 2005 book from the Society & Animals Journal titled Confronting Cruelty Moral Orthodoxy and the Challenge of the Animal Rights Movement. Readership: This book will be of interest to anyone who wishes to understand the animal rights movement in England, the United States and Australia.

Cruelty 100
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John Passmore (1914-2004) on the Moral Status of Animals

Animal Ethics

One restriction on the absolutism of man's rule over Nature is now generally accepted: moral philosophers and public opinion agree that it is morally impermissible to be cruel to animals. That, on the whole, is the Christian tradition. Controversies no doubt remain.

Morals 40
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R. G. Frey on Animal Suffering

Animal Ethics

But animals lack that reflective awareness which enables us to see our experiences and acts as our own (and thereby, of course, unlike animals, to be responsible for our acts). ( Animals are moral patients, but not moral agents. There are two types of rights: autonomy-rights and welfare-rights.

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H. B. Acton (1908-1974) on Animal Rights

Animal Ethics

I will conclude with some remarks about the rights of animals. When it is asked whether animals have rights, and whether human beings have duties to them, the question, I think, is partly moral and partly verbal. Let us consider the moral question first. Hominum causa omne ius constitutum.)

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Philip E. Devine on the Overflow Principle

Animal Ethics

I propose that the moral significance of the suffering, mutilation, and death of non-human animals rests on the following, which may be called the overflow principle: Act towards that which, while not itself a person, is closely associated with personhood in a way coherent with an attitude of respect for persons.

Morals 40
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From Today's New York Times

Animal Ethics

I’m tired of hearing people who enjoy killing justify it with specious moral platitudes. Animals suffer when killed. But whether with a flintlock or a modern rifle, hunting cruelly takes the life of a living, sentient being that has as much right to live as any hunter or writer. May I recommend a trip to a slaughterhouse?

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John Passmore (1914-2004) on the History of Animal Cruelty

Animal Ethics

Once a definite social movement got under way in the West with its objective the restricting of man's treatment of animals, it moved with relative rapidity. Moral philosophers began to regard it as an obvious truth that it is wrong to treat animals cruelly.