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Tom Regan

File:TomRegan2.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

EntityQ314146· pop 41· linked from 1,024 articles

American philosopher (1938–2017)

OverviewAI-generated

Tom Regan (1938–2017) was an American philosopher, university teacher, and writer. Born in Pittsburgh, he was educated at the University of Virginia and served as an employee at North Carolina State University, where his archives are held. His fields of work included philosophy, ethics, animal rights, and environmental ethics. Regan was a vegetarian and spoke English. He died of pneumonia in Raleigh from natural causes.

His notable works include *Animals and Christianity*, *Case for Animal Rights*, and *Animal Sacrifices*. He authored 57 works according to Open Library records. A quote attributed to him states, "The task facing ARAs is daunting: we must empty the cages, not make them larger."

Synthesized by Vinony from 39 facts across 9 sources: Wikidata, OpenAlex, Open Library, Crossref, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, Firecrawl, Wikiquote, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Works
57

Top works

  • Animals and Christianity
  • Case for Animal Rights
  • Animal Sacrifices
  • En defensa de los derechos de los animales
  • En defensa de los derechos de los animales

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
6
Total plays
42

<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Tom+Regan">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Tom Regan

Academic profile · OpenAlex

27h-index
Works
134
Cited by
4,585

Research areas

EpistemologyPhilosophyLawPolitical scienceSociology

Most cited works

via OpenAlex · CC0

Quotes

  • People like me, people who believe in animal rights, feel the same way about eagles and elephants, pigs and porpoises, as most people feel about cats and dogs. Don't get me wrong. Animal Rights Advocates (ARAs) don't want pigs sleeping in our beds or elephants riding in our cars. We don't want to make “pets” of these animals. What we want is something simpler: we just want people to stop doing terrible things to them.
  • I would never have become an animal rights advocate if I had not first been a human rights advocate, especially for those humans (the very young and the very old, for example) who lack the understanding or power to assert their rights for themselves.
  • From my reading of Gandhi I had learned how some people in India regard eating cow as unspeakably repulsive. I realized I felt the same way about cats and dogs: I could never eat them. Were cows so different from cats and dogs that there were two moral standards, one that applies to cows, another that applies to cats and dogs? Were pigs so different? Were any of the animals I ate so different?
  • The less gifted do not exist to serve the interests of the more gifted. The former are not mere things when compared to the latter, to be used as means to the latter's ends. From the moral point of view, each of us is equal because each of us is equally a somebody, not a something, the subject-of-a-life, not a life without a subject.
  • What I had learned about human rights proved to be directly relevant to my thinking about animal rights. Whether any animals have rights depends on the true answer to one question: Are any animals subjects-of-a-life? This is the question that needs to be asked about animals because this is the question we need to ask about us.
  • The task facing ARAs is daunting: we must empty the cages, not make them larger.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Born
( 1938-11-28 ) November 28, 1938, Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , U.S.
Died
February 17, 2017 (2017-02-17) (aged 78), Raleigh , North Carolina , U.S.
Spouse
Nancy Tirk
Education
Thiel College ( B.A. ), University of Virginia ( M.A. , PhD )
Era
Contemporary philosophy
Region
Western philosophy
School
Analytic philosophy
Institutions
North Carolina State University
Main interests
Animal rights theory and advocacy
Notable works
The Case for Animal Rights (1983)
Notable ideas
Concept of "subject-of-a-life"
Website
regan .animalsvoice .com

via Wikipedia infobox

Official website

Regan – Voices I Have Heard

regan.animalsvoice.com

Link to the official site · 34,277 chars · not written by Vinony

~8 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Tom Regan (/ˈreɪɡən/; November 28, 1938 – February 17, 2017) was an American philosopher who specialized in animal rights theory. He was professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University, where he had taught from 1967 until his retirement in 2001.

Regan was the author of numerous books on the philosophy of animal rights, including The Case for Animal Rights (1983), one of a handful of studies that have significantly influenced the modern animal rights movement. In these, he argued that non-human animals are what he called the "subjects-of-a-life", just as humans are, and that, if we want to ascribe value to all human beings regardless of their ability to be rational agents, then to be consistent, we must similarly ascribe it to non-humans.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Tom Regan” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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