Choos a topic - Research Paper Example

At present relations of people and animals are influenced by peoples intellectual values, their moral characteristics, eagerness to take care of another living being, feeling of responsibility for those, who are weaker etc. All these factors show the ethic relations of the human beings and animals, and govern the main issues of a mans behavior towards animals. Bernard E. Rollin states that the problems and issues of animal ethics are often ignored, though the theory, which deals with human-animal relations, has developed significantly (Rollin Animal Rights as a Mainstream Phenomenon).

The issues, which deal with animal ethics, are really controversial. Some of the important questions are (Palmer and Sandøe): The animal ethics issues and controversies deal with the rights of animals, animal welfare, animals need in protection, killing animals for obtaining certain goods (food for people, leather, decorations, fur, medicine, cosmetics, food for other animals), killing animals for entertainment (hunting, safari, cockfighting, corrida), performing euthanasia, using animals for testing new medicine or holding other experiments, using animals for entertainment (keeping pets, circus, zoos) ("Animal ethics", Rollin Ethics and euthanasia).

There are several theories, which describe a persons ethical behavior in his day-to-day and working life (utilitarianism, deontology, ethical intuitionism, virtue ethics, ethical noncognitivism, ethical contractarians by M. Boylan (Boylan) or personal virtue, religious injunctions, utilitarian benefits, universal rules, distributive justice, contributive theory by L. Hosmer (Hosmer)), which can be also applied to their behavior towards animals. C. Palmer and P. Sandøe (Palmer and Sandøe) suggest the following theories, which correlate with the general ethics theories, mentioned above: contractarianism, utilitarianism, an animal rights view, contextual views, and a respect for nature