Even Nicholas Kristof is acknowledging animal rights as a legitimate, opposed to ‘absurd’ or ‘radical’, cause. He even muses over the historical nature of what we happen to consider a self-evident, obvious ‘right’.
For most of history, all of this would have been unimaginable even to people of the most refined ethical sensibility (granted, for many centuries those refined ethicists were also untroubled by slavery). A distinguished philosopher, Thomas Taylor, reacted to Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 call for “the rights of woman” by writing a mocking call for “the rights of brutes.” To him, it seemed as absurd that women should have rights as that animals should have rights. (via, April 13th)
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