Customer Reviews

Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation

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I am the author of this book.

A reviewer, "Lataavi" claims that I maintain that vivisection is acceptable if it is necessary.

This claim is false.

In Chapter 2 of the book, I make quite clear that even if animal use were necessary to find cures for human illness (a position that I criticize), such use could not be justified as a moral matter.

"Lataavi" has for whatever reason blatantly and explicitly misrepresented the content of the book.

Gary L. Francione
Professor, Rutgers University

(Originally published at ananimalfriendlylife.com)

Working Animals as Persons: Essays on on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation into my ridiculous schedule was relatively easy, in part because the book is comprised of individual, self-contained essays that allowed me to conveniently break my reading up into manageable sessions as time permitted. You might find this helpful as well. While the essays range in length, none of them are terribly long (particularly after the first two), and together they all provide an excellent and highly readable introduction to Professor Francione's abolitionist theory of animal rights. If you are one of those people who have put off reading his earlier books due to time constraints or for any other reason, this might be an ideal place to start.

I recommend not skipping over the introduction, particularly if you've never read Francione before. In it, he gets right to the pivotal assertion that the animal advocacy movement is, in effect, two very different movements: one that seeks to abolish animal exploitation by eradicating the property status of animals, and the other a movement that seeks the regulation of animal-using industries while failing to effectively challenge the property status of animals.

He expands on the core concepts of abolitionism in the first chapter, "Animals as Persons." That essay is itself a relatively brief but thorough presentation of Francione's theory as developed more fully in Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? (ITAR) While it is not a substitute for reading that book, "Animals as Persons" is a very clear essay that will quickly have you up to speed on the basic concepts.

The next chapter is an essay called "Reflections on Animals Property & The Law (Ethics And Action) and Rain Without Thunder Pb." In it, Francione responds to various critics who have argued that the property status of animals does not necessarily prevent advocates from improving animal welfare, and that animal welfare regulation is an effective way of moving incrementally toward recognition that animals have more than the value that we assign to them.

You don't necessarily need to have read the two books to appreciate "Reflections," though I'm sure I got more out of it because I had. I found the essay particularly interesting because Francione deconstructs real-world legislation such as Florida's gestation crate ban and California's foie gras ban. While he frequently deconstructs current events on his blog, as he did with the announcement that KFC Canada would adopt a controlled-atmosphere killing policy, these case studies offer new readers relevant and useful applications of his abolitionist theory.

In his third essay, "Taking Sentience Seriously," Francione focuses on flaws in the "similar-minds" theory, a critical analysis all the more relevant in light of news that Spain's parliament plans to extend legal rights to life and freedom for great apes. Based as it is on cognitive abilities rather than sentience, this pending legislation is a case in point for Francione, so you'll definitely want to read chapter 3 if you don't know why this seemingly good news is a bad precedent for animal rights.

Returning to his critics, chapter four's essay, "Equal Consideration," focuses specifically on Cass Sunstein's review of ITAR, in which he claims that Francione fails to justify why animal advocates should not focus on regulating human treatment of animals rather than abolishing animal use. This gives Francione an excellent opportunity to point out some fatal flaws in Sunstein's thinking, along with that of Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer, who seem to believe that some sentient beings have no interest in continuing to live, despite the logical implication that their very sentience gives these animals an interest in continued existence.

Francione's fifth essay examines the justifications for vivisection, which he also covers in IATR (along with descriptions of numerous specific experiments). Here, too, he observes that even if there is some plausible empirical claim for necessity, this form of animal use cannot be morally justified. "The Use of Nonhuman Animals" is one of the clearest, most concise critiques of vivisection I have read, from both the empirical and moral points of view. While the empirical section should be sufficient in and of itself to clear up any confusion as to whether vivisection is as valuable as is usually claimed, Francione footnotes our way to additional resources, and of course he follows this up with a moral critique that is impossible to refute without engaging in hypocrisy.

His next essay, "Ecofeminism and Animal Rights," is actually a 1996 review of Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals, in which he examines arguments made against animal rights and for an "ethic of care." Like Cass Sunstein's review of IATR, essays in Beyond Animal Rights suggest that we do not need to end the institutionalized exploitation of nonhuman animals in order to include them within the moral community, and even go as far as to actually legitimize that exploitation, ironically perpetuating speciesist hierarchy at the same time that they condemn the rights view as hierarchical. Francione swiftly and effectively counters these views.

Finally, Francione turns his attention to perhaps the world's best-known animal rights author and philosopher, Tom Regan, who in his seminal The Case for Animal Rights made a sustained, comprehensive, and complex philosophical argument for animal rights. In it, he presents the "lifeboat case," a hypothetical scenario he resolves in part by claiming that death is a greater harm to humans than it is to nonhumans such as dogs. Francione critiques this view with "Comparable Harm and Equal Inherent Value," a 1995 essay updated with a 2008 postscript to respond to the new preface Regan wrote in 2004 for the second edition of The Case for Animal Rights, in which he responded to critics of his lifeboat example.

One of the few drawbacks of gathering together all these different essays is that, even though the case studies and responses to specific criticisms may prompt you to understand Francione's abolitionist theory more clearly, you frequently end up reading the same thing you've read elsewhere in his work, including other essays in this book, and sometimes nearly even verbatim. However, it is that very deja vu experience that reminds you how so many supposedly different debates always come back to the fundamentals, which we would do well to learn... and that may just be the reason Francione keeps repeating them.

In recapping his abolitionist animal rights theory and defending it with such precision, clarity, and authority, Gary Francione successfully reasserts the view that nonhuman animals will not be meaningfully protected from unnecessary harm so long as they are considered human property, and that welfare reforms or variations on the theme are incapable of leading to their emancipation. Animals as Persons is a must-read for anyone claiming to support or to even simply be interested in animal rights.

In Animals as Persons -- which is composed of seven separate essays, given thematic unity by an introductory section -- Francione explains, clarifies, and elaborates on the major themes of the abolitionist approach to animal rights, which are as follows:

-- The abolitionist approach to animal rights is based on veganism as the rejection of the commodity status of nonhumans and a recognition of their inherent value;

-- as long as animals are property, they can never be members of the moral community;

-- sentience is all that is rationally required for membership in the moral community;

-- animal welfare fails to provide significant protection for animal interests and because it allows the use of animals in circumstances in which we use no humans, it necessarily deprives animals of equal consideration.

The latter point is demonstrated by a number of so-called ''major victories'' of animal advocacy in the past dozen years (and before) which Francione criticizes, among other things PETA's (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) agreement with McDonald's on higher slaughter standards for its meat suppliers and on providing increased space for hens in egg batteries.

Francione also tackles the ecofeminist approach to animal ethics, responds to some objections to his theory of the property status of animals, analyses the use of animals in biomedical research, and refutes the argument made in Tom Regan's book The Case for Animal Rights (1983) that throwing a dog out of a lifeboat in order to save a human would be required by rights theory.

Francione shows the objections with which the abolitionist approach continually has to contend to be invalid; indeed, the clarity, soundness, and consistency of abolitionism make its being dismissed, especially by self-identifying animal rights advocates, difficult to explain. Excellently written and easy to read, this book is a significant part of a work which, as I hope, will reach an increasingly wide audience and obtain due recognition worldwide as by far the most important contribution to animal rights theory to date.

If the right of animals to not be treated as `things' and used as property is ever taken seriously by future generations, Professor Gary Francione will very likely be seen as the most important thinker to write on the topic.

Gary Francione's ideas are indispensible if animal rights or any meaningful protection of animals is ever to come about. There are various reasons why this judgment is not widely shared today in our society.

First and foremost of those reasons are the deep cultural prejudice, anthropocentrism, and speciesism of society-at-large, including prejudices within the so-called animal 'rights' movement. Professor Francione is an iconoclast who employs careful reasoning from moral principles that most of us already accept to destroy the prejudice and dogma infecting our thoughts, habits, and behavior as they impact sentient nonhuman beings.

A second reason that Francione's ideas are not widely accepted, closely related to the first, is that there is very little money to be made by nonprofit animal organizations in vegan education; but there is plenty of money to be made in what Francione criticizes: welfare reform efforts.

Animals As Persons is made up of seven essays that collectively provide an excellent summary of Professor Francione's thought.

The first essay introduces the reader to his abolitionist theory.

The second essay is a response to various critics who deny that the property status of animals is an insurmountable problem.

The third essay is on how the "similar minds" approach to assessing the moral importance of animal suffering is inadequate.

The fourth essay is a reply to Professor Cass Sunstein's critique of Professor Francione's book, Introduction to Animal Rights.

The fifth essay discusses the two questions of empirical necessity and moral justification regarding the use of animals in biomedical research.

The sixth essay explains why the feminist ethic of care does not provide protection that extends beyond rights and how it is merely another form of new welfarist theory which, like Peter Singer's theory, seeks to provide greater weight to the interests of nonhumans while retaining the hierarchy of humans.

The final essay critiques Professor Emeritus Tom Regan's "lifeboat scenario" and points out how it is more of a problem for Regan's theory of animal rights than Francione originally thought.

Whether you're new to Gary Francione's thought or very familiar with it, I highly recommend this book. It includes enough of the basics in accessible language to be a good introduction to someone new to the topics, while adding sufficient new material that has not been widely published previously for those already familiar with his work to profit from reading it.

Gary L Francione will be viewed in the future as a very important historical figure. His work is extremely important

No where will you find more compelling and succinct arguments in favor of the rights of animals. Gary will leave you wishing you had his undeniable gift for communicating what is in his mind to the spoken (or written) word. In plain talk, he's fierce!

Animals, like the human animal, are living, breathing, feeling, loving, soul-filled children of God.
We are all in this together.

We all get tired, we all get wet in the rain.
We all experience loneliness, we all experience pain.
We all thirst for water, and we all thirst for love.
We are all Children of God, Who's Angels watch over us from high up above.
We all breathe, we all play, we all feel.
We all get hungry and we all appreciate a satisfying meal.
We are all born, and we all deserve to live life.
Nobody should be left behind, or be subjected to a dissecter's deadly knife.
We all die, and we are all born into everlasting love and life in Heaven.... in paradise.
Where, as one spiritual family, we all share love, and we all get treated nice.
In Heaven, we all gather together, one species, one race, one religion, and all of us have lots of fun.
In Heaven, we all realize, that we all are really ONE.

We are all one.
One life.
One Soul.
One Spiritual Family.

A great read for anyone with an interest in animal rights, in particular Francione's abolitionist philosophy. Being a collection of essays, a lot of the points are covered multiple times in slightly different contexts, which really brings out the coherence and consistency of the abolitionist position. ie For those who might have doubted a point when framed a certain way, in the next section the same point is made in a different way, confirming that Francione was right to take that position all along.

Lost a single star only because I believe it might be slightly academic and too overwhelming for people who are brand new to animal rights issues. As such, I probably wouldn't recommend it as a first introductory book to get someone interested in animal rights. I think it's more for people who are already into the issues and want a deep overview of Francione's philosophy.

With his simple yet radical notion that sentience alone is sufficient for rights protection, law professor Gary Francione revolutionized the animal-rights position. Pioneered in essays, interviews, and three preceding books, his abolitionist approach is accessibly integrated in Animals as Persons. Perhaps most compelling is his characterization of our confused attitude toward animals: We simultaneously disapprove of unnecessary suffering while maintaining a system that classifies them as property--a status which permits humans to brutally harm animals on an appallingly large scale. Examining a range of mainstream animal-protection approaches, he outlines how these may reinforce animals' property status by working with--and not radically changing--the animal-exploitation system. Francione promotes veganism, education, and other practical alternatives, and reminds readers that in failing to radically and effectively challenge--and not simply reform--our current paradigm, animals will continue to suffer.

"Animals as Persons" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Francione's book interview ran here as the cover feature on February 1, 2010.