Comparison of Animal Rights & Animal Ethics
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Animal Rights
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Animal Ethics
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| A practical pursuit of applying morality to every day situations. |
An academic field of study that seeks to determine how we should behave to animals. |
| Concentrates only on rights, a sub-set of animal ethics. |
Includes animal rights but has broader scope, eg overlaps with environmental ethics and utilitarianism. |
| Asserts that using animals for human gain is morally wrong. |
Asks how we should treat animals and provides a number of approaches. |
| Is a doctrine about how we should treat animals. |
Is impartial and does not offer any particular moral viewpoint about animals. |
| Asserts that we have a duty to give animals rights and we should respect those rights. |
Attempts to resolve moral animal-human issues using a number of schemes. |
| Concentrates on sentient animals. |
Applies to all animals.
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How do animal rights and animal ethics compare with each other? A primary difference is that animal ethics is a theoretical academic pursuit and does not advocate any particular ideology. Animal rights is an element of animal ethics and is partly academic theory and partly a practical doctrine. A musical analogy is appropriate: animal ethics is like exploring musical theory whereas animal rights is like playing a specific musical instrument.
