Abstract: What we call moral progress can for the most part be seen as the history of the replacement of hierarchical visions in favor of equality. Yet, we currently use nonhuman animals as means to our ends – in fact, we treat them in ways that we would deem profoundly immoral were they human beings. Is such a position warranted? This book's aim is to show that it is not. I argue that, just like the past justifications of intra-human discrimination, the justifications of discrimination against nonhumans are indefensible. I first discuss the problem of moral status in the context of rational, nonreligious ethics; then, after criticizing the philosophical sources of the present double standards, I challenge both the appeal to species membership and the appeal to mental complexity as defenses of humanism – the limiting of equal basic moral protection to human beings. I then turn to the task of redefining the moral community without inconsistency or prejudice. The argument I put forward is not a freestanding one, but rather is derived from the most universally accepted of contemporary ethical doctrines – human rights theory. What I claim is that, if we take the egalitarianism of such theory seriously, we cannot but extend the institutionalized protection of the basic interests in life, freedom, and welfare, to (most) nonhuman animals. I conclude that, at the social level, such a reform would require the constitutional abolition of the mere property status of nonhuman animals, and the prohibition of all the practices that are today made possible by such status.

Keywords: animal rights, applied ethics, Paola Cavalieri, discrimination, equality, ethics, human rights, humanism, moral status, nonhuman animals, philosophy, speciesism