Reading Reflection 2

    In The Radical Egalitarian Case for Animal Rights by Tom Regan, Regan presents his view on why animal rights should be protected as aggressively as human rights. He presents empathy for animals and argues that if they can feel as much as humans can, then humans should treat them as well as humans. He also states that finding better ways to interact with animals isn’t the answer, but rather completely ceasing to use animals as means for the ends of humans. He writes, “morality requires nothing less than the total elimination of commercial and sport hunting and trapping” (51). Another interesting point he makes is “we do not need to know how many individuals have inherent value before we can know that some do” (61). I interpret this as meaning that the discourse on what matters is unproductive to the mission of achieving regular humane practices with animals. 

    Regan’s view on this issue is very extreme and not something that I can fully agree with. While I do admire his empathy for animals and his dedication to completely moving away from using animals as a means, I think that he is overambitious. While I agree with his ideas at their core, I can’t support something that would have a lot of negative effects and essentially rearrange the whole way every society goes about life. I think his ambition makes the goal more difficult to achieve and less attractive for people to get on board with. I was interested in what he said at the end when he explained that every movement goes through three stages: ridicule, discussion, and adoption. I think that this is an interesting way to get people to think that they are rejecting his idea just because it is new, rather than because they genuinely don’t agree with it. He is gaslighting his audience to a degree by writing that, and to me, this mildly devalues his arguments just because I felt like he was trying to trick the audience (me).

Overall, Regan raises good points about the mistreatment of animals and how, since they feel pain and emotion, we should completely cease using them as means. However, due to the extremism of which he approaches the issue, he makes it difficult for one to agree with him.

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