Abstract/Summary

Calls to recognise animal rights and to abandon anthropocentrism are now virtually ubiquitous in pro-animal literature. However, these calls are plagued by conceptual confusion and theoretical misapprehensions. I recommend distinguishing between two meanings of anthropocentrism: epistemic anthropocentrism (the truism that we can only know the world as humans) and normative anthropocentrism (the idea that humans hold a special place in ethics). Anthropocentrism, in both these senses, is unavoidable. But this conclusion is without prejudice to the question of whether animals have (moral) rights. Animals have such rights because their well-being matters independently of our own; and yet we can only affirm animal rights anthropocentrically. The fact that animals have moral rights, however, does not entail that making animals holders of fundamental legal rights is the unmitigated good it has been recently assumed to be. Not only would introducing legally protected fundamental animal rights risk compromising human rights practice and prove divisive; there is also little reason to think it would constitute the solution it is touted to be for the shortcomings of underinclusive and underenforced animal welfare laws.