On this day in vegan history · February 17, 2017
Tom Regan Dies at 78
The philosopher who insisted animals were 'subjects-of-a-life,' not resources, died in Raleigh at 78, three decades after he made the case in a single 400-page book.
The facts
- Died
- February 17, 2017, in Raleigh, North Carolina, of pneumonia, at age 78
- Key work
- The Case for Animal Rights (University of California Press, 1983)
- Career
- Taught philosophy at North Carolina State University from 1967 until retiring in 2002
- Recognition
- Named by Utne Reader, December 2009, as one of '50 visionaries who are changing your view of the world'
Tom Regan, a philosophy professor at North Carolina State University for 34 years, died of pneumonia at his home in Raleigh, North Carolina, on February 17, 2017. He was 78. In 1983 he published The Case for Animal Rights with the University of California Press, arguing that any being that is a 'subject-of-a-life' has inherent value and cannot be treated as a mere means to human ends, whether or not the law recognizes it. The book was translated into several languages and, alongside Peter Singer's utilitarian arguments, gave the modern animal rights movement its second major philosophical pillar: a rights-based case that did not depend on weighing pleasure against pain. Regan joined NC State's faculty in 1967, chaired its Department of Philosophy and Religion, and kept writing and directing the Culture and Animals Foundation with his wife Nancy after retiring in 2002.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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individuals are subjects-of-a-life if they have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain
Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (1983), as quoted on Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia -
one of the 50 visionaries who are changing your view of the world
Utne Reader, December 2009, on Tom Regan
Source: NC State College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Why it still matters
Regan gave animal rights a foundation that did not depend on tallying pleasure and pain: if a being has a life that can go better or worse for it, that alone makes it wrong to use that being as property. That argument still underwrites rights-based (rather than purely welfare-based) advocacy today.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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