THE USE OF FEAR IN ANIMAL RIGHTS DISCOURSE: AN ETHICAL PRAGMATIST APPROACH

Abstract

The debate on animal rights has been encouraging in the last decade since Peter Singer published his book. Various arguments have been advanced to show that animals have distinct rights when compared to human rights. Later the notion of equal rights was advanced in the accusation of speciesm leveled against human beings. In all, philosophers and activists have theorized about ethical, legal and religious issues on animal rights. Recently I read a paper that adopts language change and I think such is commendable. However, it is not out of place if one says these approaches had yielded little result. To my mind, this is the case because the debate has adopted the strategy of persuasion, respect and love; appealing to human conscience and rationality. In this paper, I argue that a better result will be achieved if there is a change of strategy from persuasion to fearfulness. This paper is in agreement with Karl Marx's argument that it is time philosophers changed the world rather than analyse it. The finding in this work is that fear deters humans than love. Many religious and nutritional literatures that encourage killing and eating of animals elucidate on the benefits to humans, therefore, to change the narratives, animal rights activists need to adopt the strategy of espousing the disadvantages of eating or killing animals to humans rather than to espouse how disadvantaged animals will be when killed. An exposition of literatures that adopted this strategy of fear will be done to show their pragmatic import. It shall then be seen that fear repels or makes humans to be cautious.