Human Duties and Animal Rights

Abstract

Our duties to animals are of both kinds. Some are correlated with valid moral claims of the animals themselves against us and thus require that we respect animal rights; others do not have that kind of support but are based on other reasons that are no less stringent. In respect to having rights, animals are more like pebbles and sunbeams than they are like full-fledged human beings. Claims can be made on behalf of specific animals to goods that belong to them as a result of agreements made between human beings. Human beings can and do make promises to one another of which animals are the intended beneficiaries. There is no difference in principle between these arrangements and contractual agreements that confer rights on third-party human beneficiaries. It is clear that animals have no general claim against humans to the protection of their lives in the state of nature where they must hunt, kill, and eat one another.

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