Good Essay On Tom Regan's Kantian Account Of Animal Rights And Theutilitarian View Of Animal Rights.

Animal rights have always been a matter of controversy and many theories try to explain diverse concepts on animal rights in their own way. Two of the most accepted, yet contrasting concepts on animal rights are the Kantian concept of Animal rights supported by Tom Regan and the Utilitarian views on animal rights. This paper discusses the various subtle aspects of both these school of thoughts.
Considering the issue of Animal Rights, the main arguments of Tom Regan are that it is not justifiable to exploit non human living beings on an organized basis, even if it is for the benefit of human beings. Regan, based on the Kantian theory, clearly and with full strength, denounce the act of exploiting animals for foodstuff, poaching, entrapping, use of animals for research and educational purposes, using animals for testing various products including drugs and cosmetics. Regan strongly advocates the concept that whether an organism is a human or a non-human does not matter in respect to determining our behavior towards it.
All species of animals including humans are a blessed and unique life form that deserves dignity and right to existence and growth. Regan strongly support the notion that people have a specific ethical value which is intrinsic and that value is independent from the ethic codes that the person may express to his peer group members and the society. He also argues that this provenance of same inherent ethics to both ethical agents and comparatively same moral patients is needed, since all these mentioned agents as well as patients are considered to be entities that are part of life.
Regan introduces the respect principle and gives it a pivotal role for his arguments. As per the respect principle, no individual being should be considered as just a tool to enhance the required results of another individual. The Respect principle put forward by Regan has significant hypothetical resemblances and disparities with the concepts put forward by Immanuel Kant.
Kant argues that rational agents possess value within themselves not considering their code of ethics to other members. As per Kant, the fact that something is a subject of a life is an enough reason for claiming intrinsic value, at the same time it is also a decisive factor that permits the comprehensible and non-subjective provenance of identical inherent including animals.
Regan also claims that since animals are not able to comprehend agreements, they apparently cannot agree or sign as well. Since animals cannot accept and sign an agreement, theoretically, they do not have any rights too. But it can be seen that, just as in the case of very young children, it is evident that, several animals like pets are the articles of the emotional concern of other people.
An individual might have an ardent love for his pet. Even though those animals do not have any rights as such, they will be considered as if they have rights, due to the fact that they are valued possessions of an individual, who has some legal rights for his ‘property’ and ‘possessions.’
The Utilitarian theory on the other hand, is focused at selecting the deed that will fetch the furthermost good that offers its fruits to the maximum number of people. While performing these estimates to identify whether or not a deed or action is ethically accurate, the analyst needs to work out comprehensive statistics to identify the totality volume of good that ought to be the consequence of a specific set of actions.
This action is then weighed against with the comprehensive volume of damage that the action is expected to cause. This often offers some innate faults. A good example is that, if we observe animals as responsive beings competent in experiencing pain as well as delight, we need to take account of these aspects when identifying if a deed is ethically allowable. However these estimations appear to need us to possess beforehand information of the possible result of the study which we, as the researchers are totally unaware of. Conventional utilitarian concepts has been condemned since it was unable to consider and explain the innate privileges and admiration allocated to individuals which comes under human species as well as other living entities including animals, while assessing if a deed is ethically right.

References

Singer, P. (1986). The animal liberation movement: Its philosophy, its achievements, and its future. Nottingham, England: Old Hammond Press.
Tom Regan on THE CASE FOR ANIMAL RIGHTS. (n.d.). Retrieved February 27, 2015, from http://www2.webster.edu/~corbetre/philosophy/animals/regan-text.html