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On the Right not to be Made to Suffer Gratuitously
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 1978
Extract
Donald VanDeVeer has again forwarded the debate over the morality of our treatment of animals, this time by focusing attention on certain arguments used in defense of vegetarianism. Since I am identified as the principal, though not alway the sole perpetrator of these arguments (see my “The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, October 1975) I would like to respond to VanDeVeer's most important remarks. For while I readily concede that there is at least much that is incomplete in my arguments for vegetarianism and for the more humane treatment of animals generally, it is not clear to me that VanDeVeer quite puts his finger on where my arguments are open to this objection or, if and when he does, that he draws the correct conclusion from this.
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- Copyright © The Authors 1980
References
1 See his earlier contribution to this debate, “Defending Animals by Appeal to Rights” in Animal Rights and Human Obligations. Edited by Tom Regan and Peter Singer (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall) 1976, pp. 224–29.
2 Peter Singer also is identified as holding some views subject to some of the same criticisms VanDeVeer raises against some of mine. See in particular his Animal Liberation (New York: Random House) 1975.
3 I concentrate on the morality of a practice, rather than an individual action, throughout this note and in my essay on vegetarianism. It is unclear to me whether the same or different principles and conditions should be used to assess the morality of both practices and individual actions.
4 I do not mean to imply that causing factually gratuitous suffering is not wrong. It is. I use the expressions “factually” and “morally gratuitous suffering” merely to mark a difference in how or why suffering might be gratuitous.
5 It is perhaps not inappropriate to re-emphasize the fact that my own view of how consequences are relevant differs markedly from the “for instance” VanDeVeer here mentions. On my view, again, the fact that “gains” (good) outweigh “losses” (evil), if it is a fact, would not Justify causing avoidable evil. We are not to do evil that good may come.