Since I’ve been a vegetarian from the age of ten, the animal rights movement has been near and dear to my heart. But, in looking through the trends of the rhetoric of freedom in America, it was difficult to find our philosophical place among other rights activists. The theme of equality and equal application of natural rights has been essential to nearly every other rights movement in the United States, all the way from abolitionism to the LGBTQ movement. The tactic of arguing for equality and invoking the words of the Founding Fathers has a hugely successful track record. So, why aren’t animal rights activists following the same template?
To better understand the rhetoric of the movement, I first looked to Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, the so-called Bible for animal rights activists. I had always revered Singer, but a closer look at his argumentation showed that his advocacy is incompatible with rights theories in general. That doesn’t make his arguments weak, but it does make it a strange choice for animal rights activists to praise him as their forefather, given that he doesn’t actually support the concept of “rights” for either humans or animals. This cognitive dissonance inspired me to dig deeper.
This essay was a good exercise in remaining impartial. As a strong supporter of the movement, I wanted to make sure I didn’t stray too far from an objective analysis of the argumentation. As a supporter of Singer’s framework of preference utilitarianism, I didn’t want to make excuses or allowances for his arguments and their potential to create large-scale social change.
LAURA COUGHLIN is a linguistics major in the College of Arts and Sciences class of 2016. She is the president of the Boston University Debate Society, and competes proudly for BU every weekend at college tournaments around the country. This paper is partially dedicated to her team, both for helping her to strengthen her argumentation skills and for all of those late-night conversations wondering, “What are rights anyway?” and “Do animals even exist?”. The other part is dedicated to Thomas Underwood, who helped her to translate strong argumentation into good writing.