The animalistic turn in philosophy and bioethics and the Kantian line in the protection of animal rights

Abstract

The article considers the influence of I. Kant’s ideas on the development of philosophical and bioethical discourse on animal rights. The doctrine of I. Kant, with its inherent anthropocentric attitude, is usually regarded as opposed to the spirit of the biocentric po­sition that has been characteristic of Anglo-Saxon utilitarianism since the time of I. Ben­tham. The Kantian approach is supposed to ignore the issue of animal rights. In the arti­cle, the author argues that the teachings of I. Kant had a significant impact on the for­mation of the discourse on animal rights not only in the sense that animal rights activists perceived the ideas of I. Kant as arguments of their ideological opponent, which should be questioned, but also in the sense that they were accepted and developed in the 20th cen­tury as part of the biocentric discourse and were used to protect animal rights.