The book that changed my life

Published 29 January 2009

Peter Tatchell chooses Animal Liberation by Peter Singer

There are many books that have influenced the way I see the world. One that stands out is Animal Liberation (1975) by Peter Singer. Probably one of the most important books of the last 100 years, it expands our moral horizons beyond our own species and is thereby a major evolution in ethics. Singer was not the first philosopher to articulate the concept of animal rights. Over 200 years ago, Jeremy Bentham argued that many other species experience pain similar to human pain and that a "day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny". He proposed that the capacity to suffer, not the ability to reason, should confer on other creatures the right to be spared pain.

Nor is Singer the last or most provocative thinker to the advance the rights of animals. With a glowing preface by African-American author Alice Walker, Marjorie Spiegel's book, The Dreaded Comparison - human and animal slavery (1988), compares the enslavement of animals on farms and in medical laboratories with the enslavement of black Americans.

Even more shocking, in his essay "Can the Treatment of Animals Be Compared to the Holocaust?" (2006), David Sztybel suggests that despite some obvious differences, the mass slaughter of animals is ethically analogous to the Holocaust in the scale of suffering involved, and that there are significant similarities between the human abuse of fellow animals and the Nazi abuse of fellow humans.

It was not until 1983 that I read Animal Liberation. Singer was the first person I had come across who voiced animal rights as a coherent moral philosophy and as a liberation movement on a par with the freedom struggles of women, black and gay people. He argued that the abuse of animals was motivated and justified by speciesism - a notion of human supremacism that presupposes that the intelligence and technological mastery of our species gives us the right to oppress and exploit other species, regardless of the suffering caused. He proposed that speciesism is a form of oppression, comparable with racism, misogyny and homophobia.

Singer identified sentience, including the capacity to experience pleasure and pain, as the common bond that unites animals, human and non-human. It follows logically, as well as ethically, that if sentient human beings have a right to be spared physical and psychological suffering, then this right should be extended to sentient non-human animals that share our capacity to suffer. Their abuse in farming, sport, entertainment and medical research involves the violation of their right, as fellow sentients, not to suffer pain and distress.

Singer's philosophical framework linked together, in one seamless whole, the moral basis for both animal rights and human rights: if thinking, feeling beings have a right to be spared pain, we have a duty to oppose the abuse of both humans and other animal species. In Singer's moral universe, cruelty is barbarism, whether it is inflicted on human or non-human animals. The campaigns for animal rights and human rights therefore share the same fundamental aim: a gentler, kinder world, based on compassion and without suffering.

These ideas were eye-openers. I had previously only ever understood the issue in terms of animal welfare and the prevention of cruelty. My response? I phased out eating meat, ditched my leather jacket and began rethinking my politics. I had long been a left-wing socialist and had embraced the green agenda. Singer reminded me: socialism and environmentalism are not ends in themselves. Although progressive ideologies and social systems are valuable enablers of liberation, they are merely a means to an end, which is to maximise happiness and minimise misery.

Abuses such as factory farming and anti-Semitism are wrong because they cause suffering, not for theoretical or ideological reasons. The same is true of imperialism, war, discrimination, unemployment, vivisection, slum housing, racism, and climate destruction. They result in pain, which is why ending them is moral and necessary.

From Singer's animal rights philosophy I extracted a renewed understanding that the ultimate aim of all progressive politics should be to halt bodily and mental suffering. Losing sight of this aim has led to left-wing horrors such as Stalinism, where liberty is sacrificed, terror excused and suffering rationalised for the sake of the bigger, ideological goal of socialism. Too often, the left is consumed by grandiose abstract ideas and political objectives, forgetting what ought to be its raison d'etre: love, compassion and a world where no being, strong or weak, suffers.

For more information about Peter Tatchell's human rights campaigns: http://www.petertatchell.net

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7 comments from readers

CharlieX
29 January 2009 at 12:36

I agree ideology is the cause of many ills and I agree that animals suffer at the hands of humans- not least because many eat them! However, It's unfortunate that in the name of animal liberation, that pain has been caused. ( admitedly to a far lesser extent),. to humans.

These widely reported incidents have not helped spread the message.

The medical investigation argument also creates problems. Though some things do turn my stomach. such as the prospect of breeding of pigs for human organs. ( which I believe already happens in the US)

Overall though.. I agree. More and more It is being discovered that animals have intellect, feelings. They've even discovered that insects can count.

When I brought up on a farm, I realised that animals do have a raw deal in life with us humans. It made me very sad.

I have since stopped eating meat and eat fish very rarely.

I think it's important to encourage awareness about animals. I also think eveyone who eats meat should visit an abbatoir.

david
30 January 2009 at 02:40

Peter Singer is NOT an animal rights theorist, he is an act-utilitarian. He thinks that what is right or wrong in a situation depends only on the consequences. He explicitly rejects the notion of rights; he thinks that animals do not have an interest in continued existance and therefore our use of animals per se does not raise a moral question and that we only have an obligation to treat them humanely.

In an interview with magazine Sataya, Singer says: "I think people are mistaken if they think I’ve watered down that underlying ethical argument. Now, other people assume, incidentally, that in Animal Liberation I said that killing animals is always wrong, and that was somehow the argument for being vegetarian or vegan. But if they go back and look at Animal Liberation, they won’t find that argument"

Peter Singer's work has too often been mischaracterised and, as a result, the whole animal movement has become confused and debate on the issue convoluted.

Word Star
30 January 2009 at 13:16

When animal advocates maintain that animals matter in their own right, that amounts to acknowledging the possibility that something could be beneficial to us regarding our eating habits, clothing, medical research, entertainment, etc. but still morally dubious. There may be advantages we're not entitled to or that it would be wrong for us to seek out and pursue. If so, there may be hard questions about what we must be prepared to give up.

I like what Tom Regan has to say:

"...we are like one another in relevant ways...Not only are we all in the world, we all are aware of the world and aware as well of what happens to us. Moreover, what happens to us--whether to our bodies, or our freedom, or our lives themselves--matters to us because it makes a difference to the quality and duration of our lives, as experienced by us, whether anybody else cares about this or not. Whatever our differences, these are our fundamental similarities."

etbmfa
30 January 2009 at 23:33

Animal "rights" equals animal "wrongs".

Animal Welfare or Animal Rights?

Here are some of the differences:

As animal welfare advocates. . .

• We seek to improve the treatment and well-being of animals.

• We support the humane treatment of animals that ensures comfort and freedom from unnecessary pain and suffering.

• We believe we have the right to "own" animals -- they are our property.

• We believe animal owners should provide loving care for the lifetime of their animals.

As animal rights activists. . .

• They seek to end the use and ownership of animals, including the keeping of pets.

• They believe that any use of an animal is exploitation so, not only must we stop using animals for food and clothing, but pet ownership must be outlawed as well.

• They want to obtain legal rights for animals as they believe that animals and humans are equal.

• They use false and unsubstantiated allegations of animal abuse to raise funds, attract media attention and bring supporters into the movement. (The Inhumane Crusade, Daniel T. Oliver)

www.naiaonline.org

Bonnie
02 February 2009 at 14:34

It changed my life, too. When I read it, right after it was first published, first I got so angry I threw it across the room (the first book I have EVER so treated), then I picked it up and dumped it into the garbage, but then I fished it back out, saying to myself, "These people are dangerous; they're trying to trick me into being a willing victim while they take away my animals and force me to be a vegetarian against my will; I'd better put it on my bookshelf as a reminder to be on the lookout." It was hard to live with it there on the shelf, like a miasma of pure evil hovering in the corner of my livingroom. Many times I could hardly keep myself from getting rid of it, and eventually I did, but it helped me stay vigilant against such manipulators.

It has all turned out exactly as I predicted: The animal rights organizations, HSUS, PETA, ASPCA, PCRM and the whole rest of the alphabet soup, have been trying to hoodwink people ever since. The thing that amazes me is that so many people fall for it, and so few seem to see what was so glaringly obvious to me in that book and the whole Animal Rights argument. At the time I read “Animal Liberation,” I had just graduated with a degree in literature, which is mostly the study of nuances, subtleties, motivations and logic (or the lack of it) in texts and ideas – i.e., reading between the lines. Compared to the brilliant minds around me at college, I didn’t think I was that good at it, but I must have learned something after all. Politics and Animal Rights make it clear that probably the most important purpose of a liberal arts education is to teach people to think clearly and independently so they are really in control of their lives and their thoughts, not vulnerable to being manipulated and misled. Not that there aren’t some natural clear thinkers, but for many, perhaps most, education is the best way to develop it. Obviously, too few are getting that kind of education these days.

proudlyleft
03 February 2009 at 18:54

Everything matters in its own right. Not just animals but also trees and minerals. But shouldn't we start with humans first -- especially those who do not share the privileged social spaces occupied by philosophers and animal right activists? How will we ever do justice to others if we cannot do justice to our own kind?!

spencer123
24 February 2009 at 14:56

Great piece.

Human beings have become parasites. We are supposed to be morally superior to animals yet humans commit acts of wanton cruelty on other animals and human beings purely for pleasure - not necessity.

Hence the overproduction and slaughter of animals leading to meat that is often thrown in the bin. Imagine if that was how humans were farmed. Those who justify our appalling treatment of animals claim that this is reasonable because we have some god-given right or animals are apparently not sentient. Witness the trepidation of animals going to the slaughter or the depressed animals in a zoo. They feel, they fear alright.

The big lie has always been that humans are morally superior, when it is patently obvious they are morally inferior, and it is their intelligence and cunning that allows us to rule, not that we are deserving of the power nature has given us.

If we needed meat to live, this cruelty might have a justifiable root. The fact is vegetarians live longer.