Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights.

Citation

Regan, T. (2005). Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights. Rowman & Littlefield. (Hardcover first published 2004; foreword by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.)

Chapter Summary

Context and Argument

Tom Regan, emeritus professor of philosophy at North Carolina State University, set out the rights view of animals at length in The Case for Animal Rights (1983). Empty Cages is his shorter book for a general audience. In a deliberately simple style it sets out to correct the image of animal rights advocates in the mass media, to expose the language of "humane treatment" used by those who use animals, and to explain why existing laws legitimise institutional cruelty. Regan's position is that animals are the subjects of a life with value of their own, so the aim is the abolition of their use as resources, not better cages. He confines his discussion to the situation in the United States.

Prologue: The Cat

The book opens with a story about a cat, which returns in the epilogue. It poses the question the book goes on to answer: what is wrong with the way animals are treated, and does making it less cruel meet the objection?

Part I: Norman Rockwell Americans

Chapter 1: Who Are You Animal Rights Advocates Anyway? Regan challenges the stereotype of animal rights advocates as extremists. He discusses how media coverage shapes public perception and distinguishes advocacy of rights from advocacy of welfare.

Chapter 2: How Did You Get That Way? The chapter looks at the different ways people come to care about animals. Regan uses a three-part classification, naming the "DaVincians," the "Damascans" and the "muddlers," the last of whom change gradually through experience.

Part II: Moral Rights: What They Are and Why They Matter

Chapter 3: Human Rights. To make sense of animal rights, Regan first asks why human beings have rights. This is where the book introduces the idea of the subject of a life, and he uses it to ask where the line should be drawn across the biological spectrum.

Chapter 4: Animal Rights. The argument is extended to animals: if what grounds human rights is being the subject of a life, then animals who share that feature have rights too, and using them as resources violates them.

Part III: Saying and Doing

Chapter 5: What We Learn from Alice. The single chapter of this part concerns the gap between what people profess and what they do.

Part IV: The Metamorphoses

Regan examines the ways animals are turned into things for human use.

Chapter 6: Turning Animals into Food. The treatment of animals raised for food, including factory farming.

Chapter 7: Turning Animals into Clothes. The fur, leather and wool industries.

Chapter 8: Turning Animals into Performers. Circuses and similar entertainments.

Chapter 9: Turning Animals into Competitors. Animals used in sport and racing.

Chapter 10: Turning Animals into Tools. Animals in scientific research and product testing.

Part V: Many Hands on Many Oars

Chapter 11: "Yes . . . but . . ." The closing chapter answers the objections people typically raise, about human need, scientific progress and the difference between humans and animals, and asks what readers can do.

Epilogue: The Cat

The epilogue returns to the opening story.

Key Concepts

Prologue and Part I

• Animal rights versus animal welfare: the difference between ending the use of animals and making that use less cruel.
• "Humane treatment": the rhetoric Regan describes as covering up institutional cruelty.
• DaVincians, Damascans and muddlers: his three types of route to caring about animals.

Parts II and III

• Subject of a life: the criterion for having inherent value, applied to humans and to animals.
• Inherent value and rights: the claim that those with inherent value must not be treated as mere resources.
• Disconnect between saying and doing: the habits of mind that allow people to hold values and violate them.

Parts IV and V

• Metamorphoses: the process by which animals are turned into food, clothing, performers, competitors and tools.
• Abolition rather than reform: the demand to end the practice, not merely regulate it.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Accessible and well organised. Eleven short chapters, grouped into five parts with a prologue and epilogue, make a clear path from advocates, through the theory, to the practices and objections. Reviewers highlight its lucid and simple style; J. M. Coetzee, Martha Nussbaum and Jane Goodall all endorsed it.
• A concise statement of the rights position. Readers can take in the core of Regan's view without reading the 1983 book, and the later chapters show the position applied to food, clothing, entertainment, sport and research.
• It addresses its own critics. Part I deals with the image of advocates and Chapter 11 with objections, which makes the book useful for debate.
• Wide coverage of practices. It includes less-discussed areas such as greyhound racing and circus performance alongside farming and laboratories.

Limitations

• Written for advocacy and a general readership. The book aims to persuade; readers wanting the full philosophical defence, with objections, qualifications and replies, will need Regan's earlier academic work.
• Confined to the United States. Regan deliberately limits the discussion to the American situation, and a reviewer in Animal People noted that issues such as hunting and livestock farming have additional dimensions elsewhere.
• One line of argument. The book presents the rights view as the answer to the challenge of animal rights, and gives less attention to rival positions, such as the utilitarian case in Singer or the interest-based rights view in Cochrane.
• Strong rhetoric. The description of existing practices and of those who defend them is forceful, which is part of the book's purpose but may not suit readers seeking a neutral survey.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is the rights-based counterpart to Singer's Animal Liberation and an accessible entry to the abolitionist position. Read it after Singer to see the difference between arguing from equal consideration of interests and arguing from inherent value; the rival routes arrive at similar practical conclusions. Cochrane's Animal Rights Without Liberation is a more demanding sequel that accepts rights for animals but rejects the abolitionist demand for liberation. Cora Diamond's article questions the type of reasoning on which both Singer and Regan rely. Carol Adams's Neither Man nor Beast gives a feminist critique of the movement and its theory, and Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass offers a relational alternative. Singer's essay "All Animals Are Equal" in the anthology Applied Ethics gives the short version of the utilitarian case for comparison.

How to Use This Book

This book can be read without philosophical training and suits a first course, including as a gentler introduction to the abolitionist view. Read straight through; the chapters build on each other and are short. Pay particular attention to Part II, where the argument is made, and to Chapter 11, where objections are answered.

Parts I and IV contain graphic description of the treatment of animals, and readers may want to read them in stages. For the philosophical theory in full, follow up with Regan's The Case for Animal Rights. Use the book alongside Singer and Cochrane, listing for each author the premise that does the main work.