- Hardcover: 206 pages
- Publisher: Claridge Press; 3rd Revised edition edition (1 Jan 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1900512815
- ISBN-13: 978-1900512817
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
278,425 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #57 in Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Social Issues > Animals & Society
- #74 in Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Animal Sciences > Animal Rights
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Product Description
Book Description
Roger Scruton sets out a compelling account of how we should think about the morality of our relationships to other animals. He argues that it is wrong to believe that animals automatically have rights, but suggests we owe them duties depending on whether we are treating them as pets, for laboratory experiments or for meat. This is essential reading in the light of the recent public concern over issues such as veal calf exportation and the BSE crisis
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
mildly challenging, fatally deluded,
By
This review is from: Animal Rights and Wrongs (Hardcover)
As an advocate of animal rights I expected to be challenged by this book. Instead I ended up feeling a bit sorry for old Roger Scruton. He seems to inhabit an imaginary rural paradise, where Daisy the cow and Porky the pig live happy lives until they are painlessly killed for the Sunday roast. Then we play cricket, go to church, kill a pesky fox, have a jolly pint of local ale, etc.
He states that non-human animals have no rights because they are incapable of participating in the moral community, which consists solely of those who can negotiate (in English, preferably.) Carnivores, he says, would starve if they had to respect the rights of their prey, therefore to confer rights to carnivores would "constitute a gross and callous abuse of them." Scruton fails to address the broader definition of rights, as first (I think) proposed by Peter Singer, as the right of a being to pursue its interests. He dismisses Benthams famous question (the question is not can they speak? can they reason? but can they suffer?) as simplistic. To reduce morality to a simple equation of suffering is beneath human capability, it is mere utilitarianism. Morality is a purely human domain, Homo Sapiens alone has the intellect, the virtue, the equanimity, the broad view, the piety, wisdom, quasi-divinity, to judge. We are, in Scruton's world, the stewards of nature. We own it. We are, therefore, allowed to use crude utilitarian principles in our treatment of non-human animals. It's ok for us to behave like Hitler or Stalin so long as its not with humans. Roger Scruton is a blatant speciesist (I bet he doesn't allow that term) and some of his arguments are more like weak apologies - ritual slaughter, for example, "can be carried out by decent people, who neither welcome nor enjoy the pain and who believe that there is no legitimate alternative, short of vegetarianism." And vegetarianism is, I dare say, for Roger, unthinkable. Many animals, he points out, "exist only because they are eaten". To be fair, in his imaginary world, there would be no factory farming, and animal experiments might not happen as often. Given that over 90% of the world's meat is factory farmed, that means we'd have to reduce the human population by about the same amount to achieve Roger's rural idyll. There is no alternative, short of vegetarianism.
15 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting arguments,
By A Customer
This review is from: Animal Rights and Wrongs (Hardcover)
Do animals have rights? This is the question that Roger Scruton sets out to investigate in his updated and controversial book Animal Rights and Wrongs. Controversial being the operative word, with many of Scrutons arguments quite sensational. However, that being said he does have some salient points on an issue which has become increasingly one sided. If nothing else it is a book that will keep you thinking, keep you arguing, tutting and muttering to yourself.
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