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Animal Rights & Human Morality

Elizabeth Rosenberger '20
(book)
Animal Rights & Human Morality was written by Bernard E. Rollin with the goal to promote animals rights and the fair treatment of them by humans in a legal manner. Within this book I focused on two sections, “Do Animals Need Rights? Their Legal Status Today” and “Legal Rights of Animals Today”. Bernard E. Rollin is a Professor at Colorado State University in “philosophy, biomedical science, and animal science”. Rollins has written many influential books focused on “animal rights and the philosophy of consciousness”. Rollin’s intended audience is for researchers, students, philosophers, veterinarians, scientists, and any person who is challenging their perspective on animals rights in legal terms. While reading the section, “Do Animals Need Rights? Their Legal Status Today”, Rollins explains that animals “rights” today are for “people who own or use animals as primary objects of moral concern, rather than the animals themselves. Rollins emphasizes that the laws rarely mention the concern towards the animal themselves. As Rollin continues to writes he uses the term “Cartesian”, the seeing of animals merely as bodies and failing to take account of their psychological needs and interest, to describe the legal rights for animals today. Rollins elaborates on his ideas on how to promote humans to consider animals “psychological need and interests” in the next section, “Legal Rights of Animals Today”. Rollins claims that “if one is attempting to change social ethics, it is unlikely that one can force such a change” therefore Rollins believes legislative change is the only way to fully dismiss animal cruelty.  The two sections I read in Bernard Rollin’s book, Animal Rights & Human Morality, influence my research by providing me a legislative stance on Animals Rights which adds to my research’s variety of perspectives. Along with this, Rollin’s writing establishes the flaws in the legal rights for animals today and provides language to define it.

 Rollin, Bernard E. Animal Rights & Human Morality. Prometheus Books, 2006.
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