Animals and Rights: Political Theories of Animal Liberation
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Abstract
A critical prejudice is embedded in the history of political philosophy and theory. It is the prejudice that overexaggerates the capacities of humans, conceptualizes politics as the activities exclusively preserved for humans, considers animal issues as politically irrelevant, and neglects the human exploitation of animals. Today, however, cruelty to animals, animal rights, and animal liberation have become the crucial and popular topics among social movements and academic circles. This research article employs a method of reading, interpreting, analyzing, and criticizing some political theories that are related to the relations between humans and animals, animal rights, and animal liberation. Those theories can be divided into three major schools of thought: liberalism, socialism, and feminism. These three schools, as this article points out, have their own strength and weakness, share some similarities but hold substantial differences, and see both progresses and setbacks of their development. Although they cannot find a common solution, those theories make significant contributions. They not only provide some alternatives to the mainstream political theories. They also inspire and influence many social movements today that aim to liberate animals and set them free from the human control and exploitation.
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