Is Killing Nonhuman Animals Wrong and the branch topic is Regan and His Critics - Essay Example

Is Killing Nonhuman Animals Wrong? Killing of nonhuman animals is one of the issues frequently discussed by contemporary philosophers and defenders of animals’ rights. Tom Regan, in his book The Case for Animal Rights, defense animals’ rights and proves validity of his philosophical position. The bigger portion of Regan’s logic is based on the moral beliefs of human beings that set certain boundaries and pointers of what is right and wrong. Regan makes a comparison between retarded people and animals leading to a conclusion that animals can be also regarded as “beings” which deserve their right being respected.

Regan’s book and article on issue was written some time ago and since then there have been several critics disagreeing with the philosopher. First of all, Regan claims that the whole system of exploitation and killing animals is fundamentally wrong (in any area by any means). To change such fundamental wrongness and exploitation of animals requires drastic changes in people’s beliefs and habits. Furthermore, killing animals is causing pain and harm to them. Even though animals are not human beings, they feel pain and they suffer.

Causing pain and suffering is wrong, so the very idea of killing animals is wrong too. Morality is a certain set of rules. A person agreeing to abide to those rules is as if signing a contract. Children are taught to abide to the rules almost from their birth. Keeping this idea in mind we have to remember that we have certain duties to animals as we have some duties to each other. Such thinking reflects contractarian position. From utilitarian perspective one has to look for equality of rights.

Animals which live together with us in neighboring environment have to be counted. Humans and animals are very different. And yet, they have a lot in common. Animals like humans have inherent values and, thus, should not be killed: “All who have inherent value have it equally, whether they be human animals or not” (p. 116). Human beings are not some kind of gods to decide destiny of nonhuman animals. Jan Narveson’s criticizes Regan in his article On a Case for Animal Rights. He criticizes Regan’s usage of morality implying that the notion is too broad, universalized, and decentralized.

Thus, there is no on universal morality, because it is informal. So, there is no point follow one’s moral beliefs and protest against killing animals. Narveson agrees that people have to put certain restrictions on the way animals are treated. However, generally the philosopher is not against killing nonhuman animals when it is needed for some reasonable purposes. Personally, I think that killing nonhuman animals is wrong. At the same time, however, I think that there are exceptional cases when killing animals can be justified; for example, and animal is seriously ill or contaminated with some serious disease; or using an animal for tests needed to save lives of human beings.

I agree with Narveson that Regan’s notion of morality is too universal while in reality each individual has his/her own set of rules to follow. Therefore, I think Narveson’s argumentation is more realistic and, thus, more persuasive. Works Cited Whats Wrong? Applied Ethicists and Their Critics, 2nd ed., David Boonin & Graham Oddie, eds., Oxford U. Press 2010.