Philosophy

Animal Rights and Utilitarianism

How Tom Regan destroyed Peter Singer’s position in under three minutes

Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash

Peter Singer’s classic book ‘Animal Liberation’ was one of the main reasons I went vegan. That book has changed the way countless people think about our relationship with other animals. For that reason, Singer has been dubbed the ‘Godfather’ of the animal rights movement. But despite his historic influence on so many people, his philosophy of utilitarianism leaves a lot to be desired.

Nowadays, many animal liberationists distance themselves from Singer, and it’s not only due to the fact that he stopped being vegan several years ago.

It’s not just that he has claimed that the meat industry might be justifiable if farms were to really give the animals good lives, and then ‘humanely’ kill them (as if there was such a thing as humane exploitation or humane murder).

It’s the entire utilitarian basis of his philosophy, a philosophy based on the premise that the ethics of our behaviour should be weighed and measured in terms of “the greatest good of the greatest number”.

Fundamentally, this involves looking at any given situation and weighing up all the pros and all the cons, all the pleasures and all the pain, all the costs and all…