Analysis Of And Criticism On Animal Liberation Theory

Environment ethics requests people to philosophically reflect on therelationship between humans, nature and to realize their responsibilities forenvironment in which various animals and plants live. The right of animals,plants and nature is one of the main topics of environment ethics. And theright of animals is especially the breakthrough from which the environmentethics tries to break the traditional ethical system of anthropocentrism.P.Singer's Animal Liberation in 1975 is a classical work, whichadvocates expanding moral consideration to the animals. Singer's argumentfor animal's "moral standing" is based on a kind of reasoning autonomyability and illustrates the right of animals in terms of "sentience" of moralsubject to expand the moral standing of animal. Compared with the formeranthropocentric ethics of animal-protecting, Animal liberation theory isdefinitely a great progress, but compared with other contemporary theories ofEnvironment ethics, such as T.Regan's animal rights, Paul W.Taylor'sbiocentrism and A.Leopold's Land ethics, there are some apparent drawbacksand unavoidable difficulties in Singer's theory. It's also not invulnerablepractically. Just as those theories of animals' right, biocentrism and landethics. It cannot provide a clear guideline in various practical situations.Although there hasn't been any convincing evidence that natural objectexcept humans has moral standing and human have moral obligations toprotect animals, it doesn't means that people could freely abuse the animalsand give up the responsibilities to protect animals. That is to say human'sobligations to animals are not necessarily relevant to the moral standing ofanimals, and that human's good will, altruism and the humanity that cares fornature can directly generate the moral obligations to animals.