Obligation as the Basis of Rights: A Critique of Peter Singer.

ABSTRACT

Concerning the desire of the state to achieve public order, are there rights without the symmetry of obligations? In other words, is duty or obligation (except for children and the very aged), not the basis for one’s rights? Articulating this typical and critical feature of modern state private and social interaction would seem an issue requiring little stress to achieve, and, in fact could be shrugged off as paltry since the vulnerable (children, lunatics, and the senile, who, even though may not have obligation, do have rights too); but that complacency or likelihood diminishes as soon as one takes seriously Peter Singer’s passion and sue for animal rights. The essence of Singer’s quest for “animal liberation” is embedded in his “demand for a complete change in our attitudes to nonhumans…to extend the great principles of liberty, equality and fraternity over the lives of animals.” Singer’s sue for animal liberation obviously denigrates the place of rationality in humans’ superiority to other animals. Accordingly and adopting the phenomenological/analytical tool,this article critically assesses Singer’s sue for animal liberation. The work discovers that Singer’s presuppositions take for granted humans’ rationality in disdain of the place of consciousness in the theory of value; it stretches the frontiers of ethic and calls for a new one that obviously disregards the essence of amorality. The work concludes that abiding by Singer would open the shackles of responsibility to children, lunatics, the senile, and artificial intelligences. Hence the work suggests that obligation is necessarily the plinth or base of rights.