What Is The Main Idea Of Tom Regan In His Article Case Of Animal Rights

The Case for Creature Rights

In PETER Vocaliser (ed), In Defense of Animals
New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985, pp. xiii-26

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I regard myself every bit an abet of animate being rights � every bit a part of the animal rights movement. That movement, as I excogitate it, is committed to a number of goals, including:

the full abolitionism of the use of animals in science;
the full dissolution of commercial animate being agronomics;
the full emptying of commercial and sport hunting and trapping.

There are, I know, people who profess to believe in animal rights but do not avow these goals. Mill farming, they say, is wrong - it violates animals' rights - only traditional beast agronomics is all right. Toxicity tests of cosmetics on animals violates their rights, but important medical research � cancer research, for case � does non. The clubbing of babe seals is abhorrent, but non the harvesting of developed seals. I used to call up I understood this reasoning. Not any more. You don't alter unjust institutions by tidying them upwardly.

What'due south incorrect � fundamentally wrong � with the manner animals are treated isn't the details that vary from instance to case. It's the whole arrangement. The forlornness of the veal calf is pathetic, heart wrenching; the pulsing hurting of the chimp with electrodes planted deep in her brain is repulsive; the ho-hum, tortuous death of the racoon caught in the leg-concord trap is agonizing. But what is wrong isn't the hurting, isn't the suffering, isn't the impecuniousness. These compound what'south wrong. Sometimes - often - they make information technology much, much worse. But they are not the fundamental wrong.

The cardinal wrong is the organisation that allows us to view animals equally our resources, hither for u.s.a. � to exist eaten, or surgically manipulated, or exploited for sport or money. One time we accept this view of animals - as our resources - the rest is as predictable as it is regrettable. Why worry about their loneliness, their pain, their decease? Since animals exist for u.s.a., to benefit u.s. in one way or another, what harms them really doesn't matter � or matters simply if it starts to carp us, makes usa feel a trifle uneasy when we eat our veal escalope, for instance. And so, yep, permit us go veal calves out of alone confinement, requite them more than space, a little straw, a few companions. Only let the states go along our veal escalope.

But a little straw, more space and a few companions won't eliminate - won't even impact - the basic wrong that attaches to our viewing and treating these animals as our resources. A veal calf killed to be eaten after living in shut confinement is viewed and treated in this manner: but then, too, is some other who is raised (equally they say) 'more than humanely'. To right the incorrect of our handling of farm animals requires more than making rearing methods 'more humane'; it requires the total dissolution of commercial animate being agriculture.

How we exercise this, whether we practice it or, as in the case of animals in science, whether and how we abolish their use - these are to a large extent political questions. People must alter their beliefs before they change their habits. Enough people, specially those elected to public office, must believe in change - must want it - before nosotros volition have laws that protect the rights of animals. This process of modify is very complicated, very demanding, very exhausting, calling for the efforts of many hands in educational activity, publicity, political system and activity, downwards to the licking of envelopes and stamps. Every bit a trained and practising philosopher, the sort of contribution I can make is express but, I like to think, of import. The currency of philosophy is ideas - their significant and rational foundation - not the nuts and bolts of the legislative procedure, say, or the mechanics of community organisation. That's what I have been exploring over the past ten years or so in my essays and talks and, most recently, in my book, The Case for Animal Rights. I believe the major conclusions I attain in the book are true considering they are supported past the weight of the best arguments. I believe the idea of animal rights has reason, not just emotion, on its side.

In the infinite I take at my disposal here I tin can only sketch, in the barest outline, some of the principal features of the book. It's main themes - and we should non be surprised by this - involve asking and answering deep, foundational moral questions about what morality is, how it should be understood and what is the best moral theory, all considered. I hope I can convey something of the shape I think this theory takes. The attempt to do this will exist (to utilize a word a friendly critic once used to describe my piece of work) cerebral, mayhap too cerebral. Only this is misleading. My feelings most how animals are sometimes treated run but as deep and just as strong as those of my more volatile compatriots. Philosophers do � to utilise the jargon of the day � take a right side to their brains. If information technology's the left side we contribute (or mainly should), that'southward because what talents we have reside there.

How to go along? We brainstorm by asking how the moral status of animals has been understood by thinkers who deny that animals take rights. And then we exam the mettle of their ideas past seeing how well they stand up under the heat of fair criticism. If we kickoff our thinking in this way, we presently find that some people believe that we have no duties directly to animals, that nosotros owe naught to them, that we can practise nothing that wrongs them. Rather, we can do incorrect acts that involve animals, and then we have duties regarding them, though none to them. Such views may be chosen indirect duty views. By way of illustration: suppose your neighbor kicks your canis familiaris. Then your neighbor has done something wrong. Merely not to your dog. The wrong that has been washed is a wrong to you lot. Later all, it is incorrect to upset people, and your neighbour's kicking your dog upsets you lot. So you are the one who is wronged, not your dog. Or over again: past kicking your canis familiaris your neighbour damages your property. And since it is wrong to harm another person'due south holding, your neighbour has done something wrong - to you, of class, not to your dog. Your neighbor no more wrongs your dog than your motorcar would exist wronged if the windshield were smashed. Your neighbour's duties involving your canis familiaris are indirect duties to you. More generally, all of our duties regarding animals are indirect duties to 1 some other � to humanity.

How could someone endeavour to justify such a view? Someone might say that your canis familiaris doesn't feel anything and so isn't hurt by your neighbour's kick, doesn't intendance near the hurting since none is felt, is every bit unaware of anything as is your windshield. Someone might say this, but no rational person volition, since, among other considerations, such a view will commit anyone who holds it to the position that no human being being feels pain either - that human beings as well don't care about what happens to them. A second possibility is that though both humans and your domestic dog are hurt when kicked, it is only human pain that matters. But, again, no rational person can believe this. Pain is pain wherever it occurs. If your neighbour's causing you hurting is wrong because of the pain that is caused, we cannot rationally ignore or dismiss the moral relevance of the pain that your dog feels.

Philosophers who hold indirect duty views � and many still practice � accept come to understand that they must avoid the two defects just noted: that is, both the view that animals don't experience annihilation too as the idea that only man pain can be morally relevant. Amid such thinkers the sort of view now favoured is one or other course of what is called contractarianism.

Here, very crudely, is the root idea: morality consists of a set up of rules that individuals voluntarily agree to abide by, as we do when we sign a contract (hence the proper noun contractarianism). Those who understand and take the terms of the contract are covered straight; they have rights created and recognized by, and protected in, the contract. And these contractors can likewise have protection spelled out for others who, though they lack the ability to empathize morality and so cannot sign the contract themselves, are loved or cherished by those who can. Thus young children, for case, are unable to sign contracts and lack rights. But they are protected by the contract none the less because of the sentimental interests of others, nigh notably their parents. So we take, then, duties involving these children, duties regarding them, simply no duties to them. Our duties in their case are indirect duties to other human being beings, usually their parents.

As for animals, since they cannot understand contracts, they patently cannot sign; and since they cannot sign, they take no rights. Like children, nonetheless, some animals are the objects of the sentimental involvement of others. Y'all, for example, honey your canis familiaris or true cat. So those animals that enough people care about (companion animals, whales, baby seals, the American bald eagle), though they lack rights themselves, will be protected because of the sentimental interests of people. I have, and then, according to contractarianism, no duty straight to your domestic dog or any other brute, not even the duty not to cause them pain or suffering; my duty not to hurt them is a duty I have to those people who care well-nigh what happens to them. Every bit for other animals, where no or trivial sentimental interest is nowadays - in the example of farm animals, for instance, or laboratory rats - what duties we accept grow weaker and weaker, perchance to vanishing point. The hurting and death they suffer, though real, are not wrong if no one cares about them.

When it comes to the moral status of animals' contractarianism could be a hard view to abnegate if it were an adequate theoretical arroyo to the moral status of human beings. It is not adequate in this latter respect, all the same, which makes the question of its adequacy in the one-time case, regarding animals, utterly moot. For consider: morality, according to the (rough) contractarian position before us, consists of rules that people agree to bide by. What people? Well, enough to make a difference - enough, that is, collectively to have the ability to enforce the rules that are fatigued upward in the contract. That is very well and good for the signatories but not and so good for anyone who is not asked to sign. And in that location is nothing in contractarianism of the sort we are discussing that guarantees or requires that anybody will have a chance to participate equally in framing the rules of morality. The result is that this approach to ethics could sanction the most blatant forms of social, economic, moral and political injustice, ranging from a repressive caste organisation to systematic racial or sexual bigotry. Might, according to this theory, does brand right. Let those who are the victims of injustice suffer every bit they will. It matters not and then long as no i else � no contractor, or too few of them � cares about it. Such a theory takes ane's moral breath away ... as if, for example, at that place would be aught incorrect with apartheid in South Africa if few white South Africans were upset past information technology. A theory with so little to recommend it at the level of the ethics of our treatment of our swain humans cannot have annihilation more to recommend it when it comes to the ethics of how we treat our fellow animals.

The version of contractarianism only examined is, as I have noted, a crude variety, and in fairness to those of a contractarian persuasion it must be noted that much more refined, subtle and ingenious varieties are possible. For example, John Rawls, in his A Theory of Justice, sets along a version of contractarianism that forces contractors to ignore the accidental features of being a man beingness - for example, whether i is white or blackness, male or female, a genius or of small-scale intellect. Only by ignoring such features, Rawls believes, can we ensure that the principles of justice that contractors would agree upon are not based on bias or prejudice. Despite the improvement a view such as Rawls's represents over the cruder forms of contractarianism, it remains deficient: it systematically denies that we have direct duties to those homo beings who do not have a sense of justice - young children, for instance, and many mentally retarded humans. And yet it seems reasonably certain that, were we to torture a young kid or a retarded elder, we would be doing something that wronged him or her, not something that would be wrong if (and only if) other humans with a sense ofjustice were upset. And since this is true in the case of these humans, we cannot rationally deny the same in the instance of animals.

Indirect duty views, then, including the best among them, neglect to command our rational assent. Whatever ethical theory we should take rationally, therefore, it must at least recognize that we have some duties directly to animals, simply as we have some duties directly to each other. The adjacent ii theories I'll sketch attempt to run across this requirement.

The first I call the cruelty-kindness view. But stated, this says that we have a directly duty to be kind to animals and a straight duty non to be cruel to them. Despite the familiar, reassuring ring of these ideas, I do non believe that this view offers an acceptable theory. To make this clearer, consider kindness. A kind person acts from a certain kind of motive - compassion or concern, for example. And that is a virtue. Simply in that location is no guarantee that a kind act is a right act. If I am a generous racist, for case, I volition be inclined to act kindly towards members of my ain race, favouring their interests higher up those of others. My kindness would be real and, so far every bit it goes, good. But I trust it is too obvious to require statement that my kind acts may non exist above moral reproach - may, in fact, exist positively incorrect considering rooted in injustice. So kindness, notwithstanding its status as a virtue to exist encouraged, simply will not carry the weight of a theory of right activeness.

Cruelty fares no improve. People or their acts are roughshod if they display either a lack of sympathy for or, worse, the presence of enjoyment in another'due south suffering. Cruelty in all its guises is a bad matter, a tragic human being declining. But only as a person's beingness motivated past kindness does not guarantee that he or she does what is right, and so the absence of cruelty does not ensure that he or she avoids doing what is wrong. Many people who perform abortions, for case, are not fell, sadistic people. Simply that fact lone does not settle the terribly difficult question of the morality of ballgame. The case is no different when nosotros examine the ethics of our treatment of animals. And then, yes, let us be for kindness and against cruelty. Just let us not suppose that being for the one and confronting the other answers questions nigh moral correct and wrong.

Some people recall that the theory we are looking for is utilitarianism. A utilitarian accepts ii moral principles. The first is that of equality: anybody'due south interests count, and like interests must be counted as having like weight or importance. White or black, American or Iranian, human or animate being - everyone's pain or frustration matter, and matter just as much as the equivalent pain or frustration of anyone else. The second principle a commonsensical accepts is that of utility: do the deed that will bring about the best balance between satisfaction and frustration for anybody affected by the outcome.

As a utilitarian, then, here is how I am to arroyo the job of deciding what I morally ought to do: I must ask who will be affected if I choose to do one affair rather than another, how much each individual volition exist affected, and where the best results are most probable to lie - which selection, in other words, is most probable to bring about the best results, the best balance between satisfaction and frustration. That option, whatever it may be, is the one I ought to cull. That is where my moral duty lies.

The great appeal of utilitarianism rests with its uncompromising egalitarianism: everyone'due south interests count and count as much every bit the like interests of anybody else. The kind of odious discrimination that some forms of contractarianism can justify - discrimination based on race or sex, for example - seems disallowed in principle by utilitarianism, as is speciesism, systematic discrimination based on species membership.

The equality we detect in utilitarianism, however, is not the sort an advocate of animate being or human rights should have in mind. Utilitarianism has no room for the equal moral rights of different individuals because information technology has no room for their equal inherent value or worth. What has value for the utilitarian is the satisfaction of an private's interests, not the individual whose interests they are. A universe in which you satisfy your want for water, food and warmth is, other things being equal, improve than a universe in which these desires are frustrated. And the same is truthful in the case of an animal with similar desires. Only neither you nor the animal have whatever value in your own right. Simply your feelings do.

Here is an analogy to help make the philosophical indicate clearer: a cup contains unlike liquids, sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter, sometimes a mix of the two. What has value are the liquids: the sweeter the better, the bitterer the worse. The cup, the container, has no value. It is what goes into it, not what they go into, that has value. For the commonsensical you and I are similar the cup; we have no value equally individuals and thus no equal value. What has value is what goes into us, what we serve as receptacles for; our feelings of satisfaction have positive value, our feelings of frustration negative value.

Serious bug arise for utilitarianism when we remind ourselves that it enjoins u.s.a. to bring about the best consequences. What does this hateful? Information technology doesn't mean the best consequences for me solitary, or for my family or friends, or whatever other person taken individually. No, what we must exercise is, roughly, every bit follows: we must add up (somehow!) the separate satisfactions and frustrations of anybody likely to exist affected by our pick, the satisfactions in 1 column, the frustrations in the other. We must total each column for each of the options before us. That is what it ways to say the theory is aggregative. And and so nosotros must choose that option which is most likely to bring almost the all-time balance of totalled satisfactions over totalled frustrations. Whatever act would lead to this outcome is the ane we ought morally to perform � it is where our moral duty lies. And that act quite clearly might not be the same 1 that would bring about the best results for me personally, or for my family or friends, or for a lab animal. The best aggregated consequences for anybody concerned are non necessarily the best for each private.

That utilitarianism is an aggregative theory � different individuals' satisfactions or frustrations are added, or summed, or totalled - is the cardinal objection to this theory. My Aunt Bea is quondam, inactive, a cranky, sour person, though not physically ill. She prefers to get on living. She is also rather rich. I could make a fortune if I could get my hands on her money, coin she intends to requite me in any event, after she dies, only which she refuses to requite me now. In gild to avoid a huge tax bite, I program to donate a handsome sum of my profits to a local children's infirmary. Many, many children will benefit from my generosity, and much joy volition be brought to their parents, relatives and friends. If I don't go the money rather soon, all these ambitions volition come to naught. The one time-in-a-lifetime opportunity to brand a real killing volition be gone. Why, and then, not kill my Aunt Bea? Oh, of course I might become caught. Simply I'grand no fool and, as well, her medico can be counted on to co-operate (he has an eye for the aforementioned investment and I happen to know a good deal about his shady past). The human activity tin exist done . . . professionally, shall we say. There is very picayune risk of getting caught. And as for my conscience existence guilt-ridden, I am a resourceful sort of fellow and volition accept more than sufficient comfort - every bit I lie on the beach at Acapulco - in contemplating the joy and health I have brought to so many others. Suppose Aunt Bea is killed and the residue of the story comes out as told. Would I have done anything wrong? Anything immoral? One would have thought that I had. Not according to utilitarianism. Since what I have done has brought virtually the best balance betwixt totalled satisfaction and frustration for all those afflicted by the issue, my activity is not wrong. Indeed, in killing Aunt Bea the physician and I did what duty required.

This same kind of argument can exist repeated in all sorts of cases, illustrating, time after time, how the utilitarian's position leads to results that impartial people find morally draconian. It is wrong to kill my Aunt Bea in the name of bringing nigh the best results for others. A skilful cease does not justify an evil means. Any acceptable moral theory will have to explain why this is so. Utilitarianism fails in this respect and and then cannot be the theory nosotros seek.

What to do? Where to begin anew? The identify to begin, I think, is with the commonsensical's view of the value of the individual � or, rather, lack of value. In its place, suppose we consider that you and I, for example, do have value as individuals � what we'll call inherent value. To say we have such value is to say that we are something more than, something dissimilar from, mere receptacles. Moreover, to ensure that we exercise not pave the way for such injustices as slavery or sexual discrimination, nosotros must believe that all who take inherent value have it equally, regardless of their sex, race, religion, birthplace and then on. Similarly to be discarded as irrelevant are one's talents or skills, intelligence and wealth, personality or pathology, whether one is loved and admired or despised and loathed. The genius and the retarded kid, the prince and the pauper, the brain surgeon and the fruit vendor, Female parent Teresa and the most unscrupulous used-auto salesman � all have inherent value, all possess it equally, and all have an equal right to exist treated with respect, to be treated in ways that do not reduce them to the status of things, equally if they existed as resources for others. My value every bit an private is independent of my usefulness to yous. Yours is non dependent on your usefulness to me. For either of united states to treat the other in ways that fail to show respect for the other's independent value is to human action immorally, to violate the individual's rights.

Some of the rational virtues of this view - what I call the rights view - should be evident. Unlike (crude) contractarianism, for example, the rights view in principle denies the moral tolerability of any and all forms of racial, sexual or social discrimination; and unlike utilitarianism, this view in principle denies that we can justify good results by using evil means that violate an individual's rights -denies, for case, that it could be moral to kill my Aunt Bea to harvest beneficial consequences for others. That would be to sanction the disrespectful handling of the individual in the name of the social proficient, something the rights view will not � categorically volition non �ever allow.

The rights view, I believe, is rationally the most satisfactory moral theory. It surpasses all other theories in the degree to which information technology illuminates and explains the foundation of our duties to 1 some other - the domain of human being morality. On this score information technology has the all-time reasons, the best arguments, on its side. Of form, if it were possible to prove that simply homo beings are included inside its scope, so a person like myself, who believes in creature rights, would be obliged to look elsewhere.

But attempts to limit its scope to humans only can be shown to be rationally lacking. Animals, it is true, lack many of the abilities humans possess. They tin't read, practice higher mathematics, build a bookcase or make baba ghanoush. Neither tin can many human beings, still, and yet nosotros don't (and shouldn't) say that they (these humans) therefore have less inherent value, less of a right to be treated with respect, than do others. It is the similarities betwixt those human beings who most clearly, most non-controversially have such value (the people reading this, for example), not our differences, that matter well-nigh. And the really crucial, the basic similarity is only this: we are each of the states the experiencing subject of a life, a conscious creature having an individual welfare that has importance to us whatever our usefulness to others. Nosotros want and prefer things, believe and feel things, recall and await things. And all these dimensions of our life, including our pleasure and pain, our enjoyment and suffering, our satisfaction and frustration, our continued existence or our untimely death - all brand a difference to the quality of our life as lived, as experienced, by usa equally individuals. As the same is true of those animals that business concern us (the ones that are eaten and trapped, for example), they besides must exist viewed as the experiencing subjects of a life, with inherent value of their ain.

Some there are who resist the thought that animals have inherent value. 'Only humans have such value,' they profess. How might this narrow view exist defended? Shall nosotros say that merely humans have the requisite intelligence, or autonomy, or reason? But there are many, many humans who fail to meet these standards and yet are reasonably viewed as having value higher up and beyond their usefulness to others. Shall we claim that only humans vest to the correct species, the species Man sapiens? But this is blatant speciesism. Will information technology be said, and then, that all - and only - humans accept immortal souls? So our opponents take their work cut out for them. I am myself not ill-disposed to the proposition that there are immortal souls. Personally, I profoundly hope I have one. But I would not want to residuum my position on a controversial upstanding issue on the even more controversial question nigh who or what has an immortal soul. That is to dig i's hole deeper, non to climb out. Rationally, it is better to resolve moral issues without making more controversial assumptions than are needed. The question of who has inherent value is such a question, one that is resolved more rationally without the introduction of the idea of immortal souls than past its use.

Well, possibly some volition say that animals have some inherent value, but less than we take. Once again, however, attempts to defend this view can be shown to lack rational justification. What could be the basis of our having more inherent value than animals? Their lack of reason, or autonomy, or intellect? Merely if we are willing to make the same judgment in the case of humans who are similarly deficient. Simply it is not true that such humans � the retarded kid, for example, or the mentally deranged - take less inherent value than you or I. Neither, then, tin can we rationally sustain the view that animals like them in being the experiencing subjects of a life accept less inherent value. All who have inherent value accept it equally, whether they be human animals or not.

Inherent value, then, belongs equally to those who are the experiencing subjects of a life/Whether it belongs to others - to rocks and rivers, copse and glaciers, for example � we do non know and may never know. Simply neither practise we demand to know, if we are to make the example for animal rights. We exercise not demand to know, for case, how many people are eligible to vote in the next presidential election before we can know whether I am. Similarly, we do non demand to know how many individuals have inherent value before we can know that some do. When information technology comes to the case for beast rights, then, what we need to know is whether the animals that, in our culture, are routinely eaten, hunted and used in our laboratories, for example, are like u.s. in existence subjects of a life. And we do know this. We do know that many - literally, billions and billions - of these animals are the subjects of a life in the sense explained and then have inherent value if we do. And since, in club to arrive at the best theory of our duties to 1 another, we must recognize our equal inherent value as individuals, reason - non sentiment, non emotion - reason compels u.s.a. to recognize the equal inherent value of these animals and, with this, their equal correct to be treated with respect.

That, very roughly, is the shape and feel of the case for animal rights. Almost of the details of the supporting argument are missing. They are to be found in the book to which I alluded earlier. Here, the details go begging, and I must, in closing, limit myself to four terminal points.

The commencement is how the theory that underlies the example for animal rights shows that the brute rights movement is a role of, not combative to, the human rights motility. The theory that rationally grounds the rights of animals also grounds the rights of humans. Thus those involved in the animal rights motion are partners in the struggle to secure respect for man rights - the rights of women, for example, or minorities, or workers. The fauna rights motility is cut from the aforementioned moral fabric as these.

Second, having fix out the broad outlines of the rights view, I can now say why its implications for farming and science, among other fields, are both clear and uncompromising. In the case of the use of animals in science, the rights view is categorically abolitionist. Lab animals are not our tasters; we are non their kings. Considering these animals are treated routinely, systematically as if their value were reducible to their usefulness to others, they are routinely, systematically treated with a lack of respect, and thus are their rights routinely, systematically violated. This is just as true when they are used in footling, duplicative, unnecessary or unwise inquiry as it is when they are used in studies that hold out existent hope of human being benefits. We tin't justify harming or killing a human being (my Aunt Bea, for example) just for these sorts of reason. Neither tin can we do so even in the instance of so lowly a fauna every bit a laboratory rat. It is non just refinement or reduction that is called for, not just larger, cleaner cages, non only more generous use of anaesthetic or the elimination of multiple surgery, not just tidying up the system. It is complete replacement. The best we tin can do when it comes to using animals in scientific discipline is - non to apply them. That is where our duty lies, co-ordinate to the rights view.

As for commercial animal agriculture, the rights view takes a like abolitionist position. The key moral wrong here is non that animals are kept in stressful close confinement or in isolation, or that their pain and suffering, their needs and preferences are ignored or discounted. All these are incorrect, of course, but they are not the fundamental incorrect. They are symptoms and furnishings of the deeper, systematic incorrect that allows these animals to be viewed and treated as defective independent value, as resources for usa - equally, indeed, a renewable resource. Giving subcontract animals more infinite, more natural environments, more companions does not right the cardinal wrong, any more giving lab animals more anaesthesia or bigger, cleaner cages would right the fundamental wrong in their case. Nothing less than the total dissolution of commercial animal agriculture will do this, just as, for similar reasons I won't develop at length hither, morality requires nothing less than the full elimination of hunting and trapping for commercial and sporting ends. The rights view'south implications, then, as I have said, are clear and uncompromising.

My concluding two points are about philosophy, my profession. It is, most evidently, no substitute for political action. The words I have written here and in other places past themselves don't modify a thing. It is what nosotros do with the thoughts that the words limited � our acts, our deeds - that changes things. All that philosophy can do, and all I have attempted, is to offering a vision of what our deeds should aim at. And the why. But not the how.

Finally, I am reminded of my thoughtful critic, the ane I mentioned earlier, who chastised me for being too cerebral. Well, cerebral I have been: indirect duty views, utilitarianism, contractarianism - hardly the stuff deep passions are fabricated of. I am also reminded, however, of the paradigm another friend once set earlier me � the prototype of the ballerina as expressive of disciplined passion. Long hours of sweat and toil, of loneliness and practice, of doubtfulness and fatigue: those are the field of study of her craft. But the passion is there also, the tearing bulldoze to excel, to speak through her body, to do information technology correct, to pierce our minds. That is the image of philosophy I would leave with you, non 'also cerebral' but disciplined passion. Of the discipline plenty has been seen. As for the passion: there are times, and these not infrequent, when tears come to my eyes when I see, or read, or hear of the wretched plight of animals in the hands of humans. Their pain, their suffering, their loneliness, their innocence, their death. Anger. Rage. Pity. Sorrow. Disgust. The whole creation groans under the weight of the evil we humans visit upon these mute, powerless creatures. It is our hearts, non just our heads, that call for an end to it all, that demand of us that nosotros overcome, for them, the habits and forces behind their systematic oppression. All great movements, it is written, go through three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption. Information technology is the realization of this 3rd stage, adoption, that requires both our passion and our discipline, our hearts and our heads. The fate of animals is in our hands. God grant we are equal to the job.

Source: http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/regan03.htm

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