Bentham: Animal Rights

Jeremy Bentham is best known for his contributions to utilitarianism as an ethical theory. Utilitarianism deems that the action that produces the most happiness for the greatest number is the most morally valuable.  Bentham then applies this theory to animal rights by arguing that animals must be treated equally since they too have the ability to be happy, and therefore also have the ability to suffer.  With this reasoning, any sentient being deserved to be incorporated into the utilitarian calculation, as long as they are capable of suffering.  

This argument is one of the first instances of a widespread regard for animal rights.  Bentham denies the popular viewpoint that reason should play a role in the allocation of rights by relating the ability to reason of a human child to that of an animal.  Obviously the ability to reason cannot be the only indicator of who or what deserves rights, since young children and the mentally handicapped both have arguably inferior reasoning ability compared to some animals.  However, Bentham doesn't account for the different forms of mental capacity and the many ways in which human thought process and feelings are very different than those of animals. 

Finally, Bentham relates the current treatment of animals to that of slaves.  That is to say, he sees both classes as subjugated  beings that are able to suffer and therefore should be able to have equal rights in a society under utilitarianism.  Although this argument is sensible, it also seems quite wrong to compare slaves to animals.  Although surely both deserve rights, slaves were denied those rights purely based on appearance, while animals are different from humans in a variety of ways that would lead to the classification as lesser or at least different.