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Summary Singer - All Animals are Equal
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Summary of the paper 'All Animals are Equal' by Peter Singer
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In order to explain the basis of the case for the equality of animals, it will be helpful to start withan examination of the case for equality of women. There are many obvious ways in which men
and women resemble each other closely, while humans and animals differ greatly. It might be
said, men and women are similar beings and should have similar rights, while humans and non-
humans are different and should not have equal rights. There are obviously important
differences between humans and other animals, and these differences must give rise to some
differences in the rights that each have. The basic principle of equality does not require equal or
identical treatment; it requires equal consideration. Equal consideration for different beings may
lead to different treatments and different rights.
We need to make clear exactly why racism and sexism are wrong. We must face the fact that
humans come in different shapes and sizes; they come with different moral capacities, different
intellectual abilities, different amounts of benevolent feeding and sensitivity to needs of others,
etc. If the demand for equality were based on the actual equality of all human beings, we would
have to stop demanding equality. Although humans differ as individuals, there are no
differences between the races and sexes. A person's race or sex is no guide to his or her
abilities,a nd this is why it is unjustifiable to discriminate on the bases of race and sex. We can
have no absolute guarantee that these capacities and abilities are distributed evenly, without
regard to race or sex, among human beings. Equality is a moral idea. The principle of the
equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans; it is
a prescription of how we should treat human beings.
Jeremy Bentham incorporated the essential basis of moral equality into his system of ethics by
means of the formula: 'Each to count for one and none for more than one'. A later utilitarian,
Henry Sidgwick, put the point in this way: 'The good of any one individual is of no more
imprantace, from the point of view of the Universe, than the good of any other.' It is an
implication of this principle of equality that our concern for others and our readiness to consider
their interests ought not to depend on what they are like or on what abilities they may possess.
The basic element - the taking into account of the interest of the being, whatever those interests
may be - must, according to the principle of equality, be extended to all beings, black or white,
masculine or feminine, human or nonhuman.
Speciesism is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own
species and against those of members of other species. If possessing a higher degree of
intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle
humans to exploit nonhumans for the same purpose? Not many have recognized that this
principle of equal consideration of interests applies to members of other species as well as to
our own. Jeremy Bentham was one of the few who did realize this. Bentham points out the
capacity for suffering as the vital characteristics that gives a being the right to equal
consideration. The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is a prerequisite for having interests at
all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in a meaningful way. The
capacity for suffering and enjoyment is, however, not only necessary, but also sufficient for us to
say that a being has interests - at an absolute minimum, an interest in not suffering.
Some philosophers have gone to much trouble developing arguments to show that animals do
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