The analytic philosophers: Peter Singer's Animal Liberation and Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights

Philosophical consideration of animals constitutes an important building block of vegan studies, with the work of Peter Singer and Tom Regan forming a part of the “prehistory” of vegan studies. However, contemporary work in “animal ethics” remains of value to vegan studies scholars, who frequently address questions with a philosophical character. This chapter serves as an introduction to animal ethics for the vegan studies scholars. While it begins with Singer and Regan, it does not end with them, and instead introduces readers to a range of questions in the ethics of veganism and contemporary animal rights theory. In these debates, scholars of vegan studies will, if they scratch the surface, find a great deal of value for their own work. It is the contention of this chapter that analytic philosophy and animal ethics should be more than a stopping-off point on the way to vegan studies. Indeed, animal ethics may be able to provide the kind of vegan theory that vegan studies scholars seek—or, at least, the normative dimension of such a theory. Thus, though vegan studies and animal ethics are different disciplines, they can be closely allied.