35 pages • 1 hour read
Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals
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Preface-Chapter 1 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Preface to the 2009 Edition Summary
The Preface to the 2009 edition of Animal Liberation begins with an update from author Peter Singer on the current state of the animal liberation movement. He addresses footage of cattle being tortured, “pushed around with a forklift,” and ultimately led to a “kill box,” which received widespread media coverage in 2008 (10). Singer argues that the public outrage in response to these videos highlights the thesis of Animal Liberation: that it is “ignorance, rather than indifference to animals, that keeps massive, institutional cruelty to animals in place in the U.S.” (10).
Singer believes that since the initial publication of the book in 1975, animal rights activists have won several victories, including getting the media to take animal issues more seriously. In 1980, activists succeeded in convincing cosmetics corporations to research alternative methods to animal testing. Fur sales have continued to decline, kill numbers in shelters have gone down, and there have also been significant breakthroughs to improve the quality of life for farm animals abroad. In Switzerland, forcing hens into battery cage systems, often where the cage is too small for the birds to even spread their wings, became illegal in 1991. Swiss egg producers have adapted and moved the birds to sheds that are more suited to their needs. While veal crates have been banned in Britain, the same cannot be said for the US, though numerous states have voted on the issue and the public’s response pressured producers into getting rid of veal crates. Colorado and Oregon banned veal crates in 2007.
In response to public outcry against animal abuse, many US chefs, retailers, and caterers have shifted away from the cruelest forms of animal confinement. In 2008 California voted on a ballot initiative to give farm animals more room to “stretch their limbs and turn around without touching other animals or the sides of their enclosures,” proving that most Americans would indeed choose to improve farming practices (13). In 2008, the Spanish parliament gave basic rights—life, liberty, and protection from torture—to primates. The end of the preface states that the first step toward animal liberation comes in the form of humans fighting against the notion that “animals are rightly our slaves” (15).
Chapter 1 Summary: “All Animals Are Equal”
Chapter 1 of Animal Liberation is the foundational basis of Peter Singer’s argument. He uses ethical and philosophical principles to convince the reader that “speciesism” exists. Singer argues that the ethical code that human equality is based on must be extended to animals as well. Singer first examines the question of egalitarianism among human beings in order to demonstrate the definition of equality.
Firstly, Singer attests that despite the assertion that all humans are equal, there are differences between people. For example, people have different moral capacities and intellectual abilities, among many other things. Singer thus argues that the imagined equality—in other words, the uniformity—of human beings cannot be the basis upon which humans gain equal treatment.
Singer emphasizes that differences are a vital component that must be kept in mind. He uses the feminist movement to say that equality should not be defined by sameness. For example, the feminist movement does not work to gain men the right to abortion because men are unable to become pregnant. Differences must therefore be embraced, and “equal consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment and different rights” (23). Likewise, as animals are unable to vote, they should not be given the right to do so. Singer insists “the extension of the basic principle of equality from one group to another does not imply that we must treat both groups in exactly the same way, or grant exactly the same rights to both groups” (23).
Singer anticipates that the question of difference will be used as an argument against equality. He posits that if an individual with greater intellect could not gain sovereignty and rights over someone less intelligent, then this logic should also apply to animals. Singer believes that the question of equality should not be qualified by an organism’s ability to reason, talk, or intellectualize but by its capacity for pain and suffering. An animal’s inability to speak to the pain that it feels does not eradicate its capacity for feeling it; Singer compares an animal to a crying baby. Both organisms will vocalize their discomfort should they be in pain, and both are unable to give words to what they are feeling. In the same vein, Singer states that this argument would also deprive individuals with severe mental and developmental disabilities the right to life.
The chapter concludes with a list of ways in which individuals exploit and torture animals for their fur, meat, or convenience. Peter Singer thus establishes his foundational argument: the existence of speciesism and the need for systematic change to prevent rampant cruelty to animals.
Preface-Chapter 1 Analysis
Singer uses a combination of the three artistic proofs, ethos, pathos, and logos, in order to convince his readers of the existence of “speciesism.”Of the three, Singer uses logos, or logic, the most Chapter 1. He demonstrates this numerous times throughout the chapter, and it is the primary way he establishes the foundation of his argument for speciesism.
Singer first dismantles the concept of equality, the realistic impossibility of identical sameness. Simply put, “[t]he 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” (27). Though humans might have different traits, such as intellectual ability, gender, or skin color, the ideology behind equality speaks not to their literal sameness but to the fair and equal treatment that they deserve. Thus, Singer establishes that equality exists in spite of difference.
Singer continues to use logos by comparing “speciesism” to the feminist movement and animals to infants. The former example establishes the notion that equal consideration, not equal treatment, is vital in combating speciesism. Another core tenet to Singer’s point is that animals are capable of feeling pain and, just like infants, are simply unable to vocalize it. The reader’s instinctive gut reaction to contest a comparison between the two, especially when Singer begins discussing hitting or experimenting on the infant and the animal, proves the existence of “speciesism.”
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