Coetzee's Project

(E&A) A commonplace yet accurate slogan associated with the effort to draw sympathetic attention to our basic moral obligations to nonhuman others has been "animal rights are human rights" (because, obviously enough, humans are animals). In a recent editorial, Nobel prize-winning author J. M. Coetzee offers an intriguing twist on that idea: "The animal rights campaign remains a human project." He writes:

"The campaign of human beings for animal rights is curious in one respect: the creatures on whose behalf human beings are acting are unaware of what their benefactors are up to and, if they succeed, are unlikely to thank them. There is even a sense in which animals do not know what is wrong - they do certainly not know what is wrong in the same way that humans do.

Thus, however close the well-meaning benefactor may feel to animals, the animal rights campaign remains a human project from beginning to end."