美文分享：Animals have rights（下）

Machan (2012) argues that animal rights are different from human rights. Rights of animal are invented by human beings and they do not belong to animal themselves (Machan, 2012). Although human rights belong to human beings, human beings put this concept such as Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and The Declaration of Independence. Government also establishes lists of law to maintain the human rights. Machan (2012) underscores that governments only protect the human rights because people have rights which started from they are born. (Machan, 2012). But why are animal rights invented by government and human rights not invented by governments? Animals are different from inanimate objects. They are animate and exist in the world like human beings. Dog?an (2010) says that animals do not belong to human beings since we do not give them lives. They actually exist in nature. (Dog?an, 2010). As animals do not belong to human beings, their rights also belong to themselves. It is not given by governments even human beings. Therefore, governments do not invent rights for animals and animals undoubtedly have rights.

Some people feel that animal have no value like human beings. The rights should not be assigned to them. In the fact, Jena (2015) explained that many philosophers argue that animals have inner value and he cites the opinion of Paul Taylor. (Jena,2015) Taylor thinks that living things have inner value, because every organism has its own way to pursue the self-value of life. (Taylor 1986). Some birds nest, female dogs or cats would protect their baby in the dangerous situations, and the deer would migrate to south in the fall. They have their own lives and different life styles and these behaviors prove that animals have “unique individual pursuing”(Taylor 1986) which implies that animals have inherent value. Therefore, animals should be admitted to have rights.

I argue that animal have rights because of the three reasons. Firstly, they are sentient and intelligent. Secondly, human beings and government do not give rights to animal since they are alive in the world depend on themselves. Finally, animals have their own inherent value. There are the reasons why people should treat them equally.