Comment & Debate
Tom Regan, an American animal right philosopher. “The Philosophy of Animal Rights”. Retrieved May 6th, 2008 – “The philosophy of animal rights is compassionate. Explanation: A full human life demands feelings of empathy and sympathy — in a word, compassion — for the victims of injustice — whether the victims are humans or other animals. The philosophy of animal rights calls for, and its acceptance fosters the growth of, the virtue of compassion. This philosophy is, in Lincoln’s workds, ‘the way of a whole human being.'”
Victoria Moran, an American spiritualist, naturalist, and author. – “Compassion in action may be the glorious possibility that could protect our crowded, polluted planet …”
Albert Schweitzer. Novel Peace Prize address. “The Problem of Peace in the World Today” – “The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret…. It has come to believe that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.”[1]
Schopenhauer – “The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”[2]