Do Animals Have Rights? - Essay Sample

Introduction

When animals have the types of moral rights reticent for humans, then it means that the animals enjoy the possessions which inspire those rights. In the case that animal have rights, I argue that it has not established the claims and there is a good reason that the claim is false. The most principal protest to the idea that animals have rights is that lone human beings have the essentially moral nature for attributing to them fundamental rights. Animals have no rights and should not be treated as human beings. This is not a matter of laws of human societies but ethics that animals should be treated kindly and compassionately by an individual because they sympathize with their pain but not because animals have rights.

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The instance of moral capacity which are characteristics of human beings has been depicted by numerous rationalists. Holy person Augustine showed that humans have inward consciousness of unrestrained choice, Saint Thomas additionally ascribed that it is by human reason that they are bound by moral law and likewise Hegel recognized that the unsure inclusion of human beings in an objective moral request (Joseph, 3-14). According to this philosophers, human beings confront choices based or moral ethics, lay down their moral laws for others and themselves but certainly not cows or dogs. This means that human beings are different from animals making the morally autonomous and self-legislative. Animals do not possess the capacity for free moral judgment and neither do they have the capability of responding or exercising moral claims. In this case, animals cannot have rights. One who deserves rights must have the capacity to govern themselves and also comprehend rules of duty.

Having rights means one is able to recognize the possible conflict between what is just and in their own interest. It is only in a network of beings fit for self-limiting moral judgments can the idea of a privilege be accurately summoned. It is only the humans that have moral capabilities meaning they are governed by moral rules, are self-legislative and possess rights. Animals, on the other hand, are not self-legislative, not members of moral communities and so they cannot possess rights (Joseph, 12). In this case, there are not animal rights violated because they do not possess any. The moral limitations forced by humans on themselves are therefore exceptionally conceptual and are frequently in a struggle with the self-enthusiasm of the operator. Mutual conduct among animals, even when most endearing and intelligent, does not approach self-sufficient morality in this essential sense.

In the book 'Christianity and the Rights of Animals' by Linzey Andrew, for Catholic theology, animals have no moral status. If human being shares many duties to them, then they are backhanded attributable to some human intrigue included. Animals are not as rational as human beings and hence can't have immoral spirits. Indeed, even the most hard-bubbled educational would not likely concede that animals feel some torment but rather assuming this is the case, their agony as indicated by Linzey (68) isn't viewed as morally important or genuinely practically equivalent to human torment. In consequence, animals have no rights. Linzey (68) assert that the Catholic moral principle instructs that animals have no rights on the piece of man. Considering the abundance of positive understanding and prescription inside the Christina tradition about animals, it is without a doubt disconcerting that these negative impacts ought to have held and continue to hold such noticeable quality. Linzey (96) additionally contends that, recognizing that animal has rights includes tolerating that they have an essential moral status. On the off chance that they have no such status, they can't make claims, and on the off chance that they have no cases they have nor rights.

Cohen (322) indicates that humans owe each other a degree of moral regard that does not extend to animals. This is the reason why other humans have taken the responsibility to heal and support others both animals and humans and it has become their principle right. In order to fulfill such promises, they may require the sacrifice of many animals. Cohen (324) insists that it biomedical researchers abandon their duties just because they are tied to animal rights then they will fail. The refusal to recognize moral difference among species is a path to calamity. In the area of the medical field, any vaccine developed, any disease eliminated, any surgical procedure invented and virtually any modern medical therapy is as a result of the experimentation using animals.

Conclusion

Moral acts have an external and internal dimension. By virtue of law, the criminal act is committed when the guilty deed is done with a guilty mind. In this case, animals can never commit a crime and bringing them to a criminal trial is a mark of primitive ignorance. This is the reason why the claims of moral rights are never applicable to them. Does a lion have a right to eat an antelope or does a gazelle have a right not to be eaten? This question does not make good sense but rather invokes the concept of right where it does not belong. In philosophy, it is referred to as a category mistake where the way of thinking of animal is misguided in that it is a confusion of one kind of being with another but both are totally different.

Works Cited

Cohen, Carl. "The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research." Animal Rights. (2008): 321-326. Print.

Joseph, Margolis. "Animals Have No Rights and Are Not the Equal of Humans." Philosophic Exchange. 5.1 (n.d.). Print.

Linzey, Andrew. Christianity and the Rights of Animals. , 2016. Print.