WHO IS THIS OLD WHITE GUY WHO BELIEVED IN ANIMAL RIGHTS ?
“The day may come when the non-human part of the animal creation will acquire the rights that never could have been withheld from them except by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the whims of a tormentor. Perhaps it will someday be recognised that the number of legs, the hairiness of the skin, or the possession of a tail, are equally insufficient reasons for abandoning to the same fate a creature that can feel? What else could be used to draw the line? Is it the faculty of reason or the possession of language? But a full-grown horse or dog is incomparably more rational and conversable than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. Even if that were not so, what difference would that make? The question is not Can they reason? Or Can they talk? but Can they suffer.”
The foregoing was written not in the 20th century nor the 19th century, but in 1789 by someone who at that time believed in women’s rights, the abolition of slavery, decriminalizing homosexuality, abolishing the death penalty and yes, animal welfare. At the time, women had no rights, slavery was commonplace, homosexuality was a serious crime, the death penalty was in common use, and well, animals only existed for human benefit however they may provide it.
Jeremy Bentham, a child prodigy who glided through Oxford University in London beginning at age 12, became a philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism, which believes “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” Bentham was a leading theorist in the Anglo-American philosophy of law, a political radical and indeed ahead of his time. Someday, humanity will marvel (and shake its head) at how we treated the animals we shared this earth with for so long. Someday.
