Fodder for thought
Peter Levi
The Case for Animal Rights Tom Regan (RKP £17.95)
What historians talk about is history; mathematicians are condemned to communicate only in numbers and therefore mostly with one another. Philosophers talk almost exclusively about the opinions of other philosophers, even When they address the rest of us. Their touches of the plain man are pathetic. R. Yle's example of a sense of purpose was lighting his pipe, and Gosling's example of a Plain man's pleasure was sitting in a deck chair doing nothing. Philosophers are an inbred community, like animals in a factory term, and more like chickens than beef cat- tle. There are at least 20,000 — possibly 40,000 — philosophers drawing generous Professional salaries in the English- speaking world. I agree with Socrates that they ought not to be paid and it ought not to be a profession. Free-range philosophers are best.
It is only fair to state these prejudices, which arise not from philosophy but from experience of life, before delving into Tom Regan's Case for Animal Rights. He speaks plainly and argues lucidly, but his involve- ment with other philosophers and their views, and his clinical patience are mind- crushing all the same. And yet here is an at- tempt to introduce new subject matter to the philosophers' magic circle, and a seriously considered book intended to con- \Ince the public against their prejudices about a real issue. Because animals can suf- fer, and have a value in themselves, he maintains they have an absolute right to be respected. Vegetarianism becomes an obligation, farming and shooting wicked, and scientific experiments with animals Wrong. He is attempting to extend ethics and absolute duties, as if animal rights were Just a logical step beyond human rights. Personally, I would rather concentrate on human rights until we get those better established.
The common sense attitude still seems secure, and quite undisturbed by these ur- ban, over-civilised and logically vulnerable theories. Rights are a purely human inven- tion with a specific history. We apply it to animals by choice, if at all, and only by analogy with the ways we treat human be- ings. We used to be taught that rights could arise only from duties, but that always seemed too neat to be true. Tom Regan makes little or no distinction between domestic and wild animals. Our dog, Mozart, has rights as a member of our ex- tended family. That is not because it pleases us, but by living on friendly terms with any living creature one incurs quite an intimate set of obligations. One cannot morally neglect feeding the birds that come to be fed, even if it means locking up the cat, let alone if one had a budgerigar in a cage. The same goes for working horses, and all farm animals in their various degrees. Tom Regan lives in North Carolina, but he ap- pears to think all modern farms are factory farms. In a human environment more familiar to most readers, people are kind even to slugs and woodlice and spiders, but they shoot and fish and eat meat, and they take sheep to market.
Of the philosophic arguments he discusses, the one that rang a bell was Ben- tham's — that animals suffer. But the analogy between how humans and how animals have been treated at different stages in history is more compelling. A black man was once thought to be a lower cousin of a white and treated with amuse- ment, severe discipline and ruthless force. A fox-hunting squire as an officer in 1917 treated his men roughly like his hounds, and no doubt a German, if he caught one, much like a fox. The only convincing argu- ment against fox-hunting is aesthetic, but so is the only convincing argument for it. If only Adam and Eve had been less innocent they would have knocked the serpent on the head at once, and prevented all that trou- ble. With moral evolution and the acquisi- tion of wealth, with all its choices, things can get exaggerated. I remember Michael Astor discovering to his considerable sur- prise that the Japanese carp in his pond were always fed on hot buttered toast. Mozart sings like a bagpipe if you ask him to.
Philosophy is constantly trying to over- throw common sense, and quite often seems to succeed, but common sense will reassert itself. Tom Regan thinks wild animals should be left alone, but protected from man. Does he mean they should live in diminishing reservations, like Aborigines and Red Indians? We would have to make an exception of plague-carrying rats and baby-eating tigers. Which animals make happy pets? My father had a most affec- tionate pet elephant. Or is domestication a sort of enslavement? Our cat adopted us. She is the most perfect of all possible cats, and her demands are great. But she has her wild side. One is delighted when she clears the barn next door of rats — one disregards their right to life and the pursuit of hap- piness. But the small field-mice stir a moral qualm. She has taken tail-feathers from a diving swallow and on Christmas Eve she left a dead robin on the mat. We are not go- ing to put her down.
One does not like to hear of domestic animals used for scientific experiment. One does not like the Oxford scientist who train- ed rats to wriggle round a maze to find cheese, with their legs and even their heads cut off — an experiment widely regarded as a contribution to the study of animal behaviour. If there must be experiments, let them be done on some poor beast for which we feel less sympathy. Personally, I dislike Alsatians, though I admit this to be a social prejudice, like disliking policemen or Ger- mans. I would not contemplate genocide, even against Alsatians. I like Tom Regan's quotation from good old common-sense Kant. 'By doing our duties to animals... we indirectly do our duties to humanity', because we see in them certain analogies with human nature, and they teach us to be humane.
In fact the ideal attitude is the puzzled one of Thomas Hardy, who 'strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm, but he could do little for them, and now he is gone.' Tom Regan professes an inhuman rigour, and in practice his pro- gramme would be full of contradictions. The more humane we become, the better the world will be, for all animals, not for mankind alone. The Chief Rabbi recently said that dead human bones had a right not to be disturbed. I agree with what he means. I would not let Mozart have a human bone; but bones do not have rights any more than cut hair or old nail clippings. The word 'rights' is being too far extended. It is human rights, and the quality of humaneness, that we need to develop.
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