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Thinkers

Tom Regan

Analytic · North America · 1938 to 2017

American philosopher who held that animals, like humans, are subjects of a life and have rights.

What it is

Tom Regan (1938 to 2017) was an American philosopher who argued that animals have rights. His best-known book, The Case for Animal Rights (1983), is described as one of a handful of studies that significantly influenced the modern animal rights movement. His central claim was that many animals are what he called subjects of a life.

He taught philosophy at North Carolina State University from 1967 until his retirement. With his wife Nancy he also co-founded the Culture and Animals Foundation, an organisation concerned with how animals are treated. He died of pneumonia in 2017, aged 78.

The main ideas

  • Subjects of a life. Regan argued that non-human animals are, just as humans are, subjects of a life. Beings of this kind, he held, deserve moral consideration, and the ability to reason is not what decides it.
  • Inherent value. Because they are subjects of a life, such animals have a value of their own.
  • The argument from consistency. If we give value to every human being, including those who cannot reason in the way adults do, then to be consistent we should give value to animals who share the traits that really matter. The similarities count for more than the differences.

What it looks like in practice

Imagine a person deciding what to do about a laboratory that wants to test a product on rabbits. A cost-and-benefit view asks whether the gain to many people outweighs the suffering of a few animals. Regan's view asks first whether each rabbit is a subject of a life, and if so, treats it as someone who may not be used up for the gain of others. This is an illustration of the idea, not an example from his writing.

Books and moments

  • Joining North Carolina State University (1967) began a career there that lasted more than three decades.
  • The Case for Animal Rights (1983) is his most famous book.
  • The Culture and Animals Foundation was set up by him and his wife Nancy, and he directed it in his later years.

Questions and criticism

  • Which animals count? If rights belong to subjects of a life, readers can ask where the line falls, and who decides which animals have the memory, feelings and preferences it needs.
  • What if rights collide? If animals have rights, readers can ask what should happen in hard cases, where the rights of one being conflict with those of another.
  • Is consistency enough? His argument rests on consistency, on treating like cases alike. Readers can ask whether the cases really are alike, and who gets to say.

Close neighbours

The page on Peter Singer covers another philosopher whose writing helped shape the animal movement, and the page on Immanuel Kant covers a thinker whose moral philosophy is often discussed alongside questions about rights. The page on Christine Korsgaard covers a recent thinker who has written about how we should treat animals.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced by

  • Immanuel Kant · He extended Kant's idea that persons must not be treated as mere means to animals. (scholars disagree about this link)

Runs parallel to

  • Peter Singer · Both made the case for the moral standing of animals in the same years, from different grounds.

Other Analytic thinkers

Sources we used

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