Natural Relations? : Animal Rights, Human Rights and the Environment

In this challenging book, Ted Benton takes recent debates about the moral status of animals as a basis for reviewing the discourse of 'human rights'. Liberal-individualist views of human rights and the advocates of animal rights tend to think of individuals, whether humans or animals, in isolation from their social position. This makes them vulnerable to criticisms from the left which emphasise the importance of social relationships to individual well-being. Benton's argument supports the important assumption, underpinning the cause for animal rights, that humans and other species of animal have much in common, both in the conditions for their well-being and their vulnerability and harm. Both liberal rights theory and it socialist critique fail adequately to theorize these aspects of human vulnerability. Nevertheless, it is argued that, enriched by feminist and ecological insights, a socialist view of rights has much to offer. Lucid and wide-ranging in its argument, Natural Relations enables the outline of an ecological socialist view of rights and justice to begin to take their shape.