Treating animals with respect is not an act of kindness; it is an act of justice.
Life and Thought
Tom Regan (1938–2017) was an American philosopher and one of the intellectual founders of the modern animal rights movement. With his influential book The Case for Animal Rights (1983), he argued that nonhuman animals are "subjects-of-a-life" and possess inherent value. His ideas provided a robust theoretical foundation for opposing the exploitation of animals.
Tom Howard Regan was born on November 28, 1938, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He pursued his education at Thiel College and then the University of Virginia, earning his PhD in philosophy in 1966. From 1967 until his retirement in 2001, he was a professor of philosophy at North Carolina State University.
Regan initially engaged with ethical issues under the influence of the Vietnam War and the ideas of Gandhi, and his attention turned to the condition of animals after the death of his dog. In 1975, he wrote his first article on the moral basis of vegetarianism, and in 1976, he co-edited the collection Animal Rights and Human Obligations with Peter Singer. His major work, The Case for Animal Rights (1983), is a systematic, deontological defense of animal rights. Contrary to Singer's utilitarianism, Regan argued that animals who are "subjects-of-a-life"—meaning they have beliefs, desires, memory, the capacity to feel pleasure and pain, and a psychophysical identity over time—possess inherent value and must not be used merely as a means. This criterion includes most mammals, birds, and possibly some fish.
He opposed all forms of systematic exploitation of animals in industrial agriculture, laboratories, hunting, zoos, and circuses, and promoted the slogan "Empty the cages, not make them bigger." Regan and his wife Nancy founded the Culture and Animals Foundation in 1985. He wrote more than twenty books, including works on the philosophy of G. E. Moore, and remained a prominent activist and speaker for animal rights until the end of his life. Regan died on February 17, 2017, in Raleigh, North Carolina.
