Bentham is celebrated by modern animal liberation philosophers for his brief but impassioned defense of animals in the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Yet the details of Bentham's position are seldom discussed today. It is quite a complex position, comprising half a dozen arguments scattered across several texts. While Bentham claims that we have some moral obligations to animals, he also defends many traditional practices---including eating animals, making them work for us, even hunting them. ;This dissertation aims (...) to explicate, and then evaluate, all of Bentham's writings on animals. In support of these goals, it also includes a large amount of background material---both on the historical context in which Bentham wrote, and on his broader ethical position. ;Chapter One describes the treatment of animals in Bentham's day, and how people's ideas about the status of animals were evolving. It also includes some biographical material on Bentham, including his personal fondness for animals. ;Chapter Two provides a different kind of background. It explains the main lines of Bentham's utilitarianism, focusing on his Greatest Happiness Principle. This principle, which enjoins us to maximize net pleasure, is the basis for Bentham's claim that animals should be protected from abuse. Chapter Three is a detailed exegesis of each of Bentham's writings about animals. The best-known text is the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, but there are three others. One is a manuscript called "Cruelty to Animals". Another is a letter he wrote to the editor of a newspaper . The third is the Traites de Legislation Civile et Penale , a French work that Bentham wrote with the assistance of an editor/translator. ;Finally, Chapters Four and Five evaluate the arguments described in Chapter Three. Chapter Four focuses on what he says about causing pain to animals, while Chapter Five is concerned with what he says about killing. (shrink)

What does the idea of taking 'the point of view of the universe' tell us about ethics? Lazari-Radek and Singer defend objectivism in ethics, and hedonistic utilitarianism, following Henry Sidgwick's lead. They explore how to justify an ethical theory; conflicts of self-interest and universal benevolence; and whether we should discount the future.

IntroductionIn this paper I would like to compare two forms of utilitarianism: the late eighteenth-century doctrine systematized by Jeremy Bentham and the philosophy advocated by its most visible contemporary proponent, Peter Singer . Here is how the latter introduces the former in the headword “Ethics” of the Encyclopaedia Britannica:[…] Jeremy Bentham is properly considered the father of modern Utilitarianism. It was he who made the Utilitarian principle serv..

In replying to my review of The Case for Animal Rights in The New York Review of Books, Tom Regan notes that whereas I use the term ‘the animal liberation movement’ to refer to the many people and organizations around the world advocating a complete change in the moral status of animals, he prefers the label ‘animal rights movement’. There is, he says, ‘more than a verbal difference here’. For immediate practical purposes the difference may not matter very much—Regan and (...) I are plainly at one in our attempts to eliminate the atrocities now inflicted on animals in factory farms, laboratories and in the wild. I am even prepared to speak of ‘animal rights’—just as I am prepared to speak of ‘human rights’—as a shorthand reference to the way in which the needs and desires of animals give rise to moral obligations on our part. But the philosophical difference between those who, like Regan, ground their case for animals on claims about rights, and those who, like me, do not, is fundamental. In the long run it may also have practical implications. This essay explains why I do not, philosophically, accept the animal rights approach. (shrink)