The history of animal rights traces evolving attitudes toward the moral and legal status of nonhuman animals. Across cultures and time periods, individuals and movements have questioned the ethical legitimacy of using animals for food, labor, entertainment, and experimentation. While some traditions have emphasized human dominion over animals, others have advocated for compassion, restraint, and protection from harm.
In ancient India, the principle of ahimsa, non-violence toward all living beings, was central to Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, encouraging vegetarianism and opposition to animal sacrifice. Similar ideals appeared in ancient China and Japan, where religious teachings and imperial edicts discouraged meat consumption. In the Western world, figures such as Pythagoras, Plutarch, and Porphyry argued against animal killing on ethical and philosophical grounds, sometimes linking animal welfare to personal virtue or metaphysical beliefs about the soul.
During the Enlightenment, European philosophers began to systematically examine animal sentience and moral status. While René Descartes maintained that animals were unfeeling machines, others, such as John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Jeremy Bentham, acknowledged their capacity to suffer. Bentham's utilitarian principle that "the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" became a foundational idea for later animal rights thought.
By the 19th and 20th centuries, formal animal protection laws and societies were established in Britain, the United States, and elsewhere. The modern animal rights movement took shape with the publication of Peter Singer's Animal Liberation (1975) and Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights (1983). These works helped shift the debate from animal welfare to rights, sparking activism, academic inquiry, and legal challenges. In the 21st century, efforts to recognize animals as legal persons, limit industrial animal use, and end practices like fur farming and animal testing reflect ongoing developments in the global struggle over animals' moral and legal standing.
In the East
The belief in and promotion of animal rights has had a long history in East and South Asia. It has its roots in traditional Eastern religious and philosophical beliefs and concepts such as ahimsa, the doctrine of non-violence. The earliest reference to the idea of non-violence to animals (pashu-ahimsa), apparently in a moral sense, is in the Kapisthala Katha Samhita of the Yajurveda (KapS 31.11), written about the 8th century BCE.
Ancient era Parshwanatha, the 23rd Tirthankara, revived Jainism and ahimsa in the 9th century BCE, which led to a radical animal-rights movement in South Asia. His successor, Mahavira, is best remembered in the Indian traditions for his teaching that ahimsa is the supreme moral virtue. He taught that ahimsa covers all living beings, and injuring any being in any form creates bad karma (which affects one's rebirth, future well-being, and suffering). According to Mahatma Gandhi, Mahavira was the greatest authority on ahimsa.
Numerous works of the classical Indian literature that speaks against animal cruelties exist in many Indian languages. For example, the Tirukkural, likely a Hindu or Jain work written between 450 and 500 CE, dedicates verses 251–260 and 321–330 of its first volume to the virtue of ahimsa, emphasizing on moral vegetarianism and non-killing (kollamai) as personal virtues. According to George Uglow Pope, verses 121 to 123 of the Naladiyar, another ancient Tamil work, speak against cruelty to animals, including feeding on them and imprisoning them in cages.
Several kings in India built hospitals for animals, and the emperor Ashoka (304–232 BCE) issued orders against hunting and animal slaughter, in line with ahimsa, the doctrine of non-violence.Garner (2005), pp. 21–22.
In Japan in 675, the Emperor Tenmu prohibited the killing and the eating of meat during the busy farming period between April and September but excluded the eating of wild birds and animals. This ban and several others that followed over the centuries were overturned in the nineteenth century during the Meiji restoration.
The 12th-century Indian social reformer Basava insisted on ahimsa or non-violence and vehemently condemned all forms of sacrifices, human or animal.
Modern era Between late 18th century and early 19th century, Swaminarayan brought a revival of central Hindu practices of dharma, ahimsa and brahmacarya. He was against, among other vices, the consumption of meat, animal sacrifices, and the appeasement of ghosts and tantric rituals. Swaminarayan was successful in reinstating ahimsa, performing non-violent yajñas (fire sacrifices) on a large scale. Through the mid-19th century, 'Vallalar' Ramalinga Swamigal promoted ahimsa and compassion, emphasizing on non-killing and meatless way of life.
The Hindu reform movement of the Arya Samaj, which was formed in 1875, condemned several evil practices of several different religions and communities, including animal sacrifice and meat eating. According to its founder Dayananda Saraswati, all of these practices ran contrary to good sense and the wisdom of the Vedas."Punjab" Imperial Gazetteer of India 1909. vol. 20 p. 291. Accessed 2 October 2014.
In 2000, the High Court in Kerala, India used the language of "rights" in relation to circus animals, ruling that they are "beings entitled to dignified existence" under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The ruling said that if human beings are entitled to these rights, animals should be too. The court went beyond the requirements of the Constitution that all living beings should be shown compassion, and said: "It is not only our fundamental duty to show compassion to our animal friends, but also to recognize and protect their rights." Waldau wrote that other courts in India and one court in Sri Lanka have used similar language.Waldau (2011), p. 108.
In 2012, the Indian government issued a ban on the use of live animals in education and much research.
In 2014, the Jain pilgrimage destination of Palitana City in India became the first city in the world to be legally lacto-vegetarian. It has outlawed, or made illegal, the buying and selling of meat, fish and eggs, and also related jobs or work, such as fishing and penning "food animals".
In the West Moral status and animals in the ancient world
Aristotle stated that animals lacked reason (logos), and placed humans at the top of the natural world, yet the respect for animals in ancient Greece was very high. Some animals were considered divine, e.g. dolphins. In the Book of Genesis 1:26 (5th or 6th century BCE), Adam is given "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Dominion need not entail property rights, but it has been interpreted, by some, over the centuries to imply "ownership".Francione (1995), p. 36.
The philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras (c. 580–c. 500 BCE) urged respect for animals, believing that human and nonhuman souls were reincarnated from human to animal, and vice versa.Steiner (2005), p. 47; Taylor (2009), p. 37. Against this, Aristotle (384–322 BCE) said that nonhuman animals had no interests of their own, ranking them far below humans in the Great Chain of Being. He was the first to create a taxonomy of animals; he perceived some similarities between humans and other species, but stated for the most part that animals lacked reason (logos), reasoning (logismos), thought (dianoia, nous), and belief (doxa).Sorabji (1993), p. 12ff.; Wise (2007).
Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BCE), one of Aristotle's pupils, argued that animals also had reasoning (logismos) and opposed eating meat on the grounds that it robbed them of life and was therefore unjust.Taylor (2009), p. 37.Sorabji (1993) p. 45 ff. Theophrastus did not prevail; Richard Sorabji writes that current attitudes to animals can be traced to the heirs of the Western Christian tradition selecting the hierarchy that Aristotle sought to preserve.
Plutarch (1st century CE), in his Life of Cato the Elder, comments that while law and justice are applicable strictly to men only, beneficence and charity towards beasts is characteristic of a gentle heart. This is intended as a correction and advance over the merely utilitarian treatment of animals and slaves by Cato himself. The Moralia, traditionally ascribed to Plutarch, advances arguments for cognition in animals in the essays On the Cleverness of Animals and Beasts are Rational, and advocates moral vegetarianism in On the Eating of Flesh.
Tom Beauchamp (2011) writes that the most extensive account in antiquity of how animals should be treated was written by the Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry (234–c. 305 CE), in his On Abstinence from Animal Food, and On Abstinence from Killing Animals.Beauchamp (2011a), pp. 4–5. Porphyry. On Abstinence from Animal Food , translated by Thomas Taylor, Animal Rights Library. Also see Clark (2011), pp. 37–38.
17th century: Animals as automata
Early animal protection laws in Europe According to Richard D. Ryder, the first known animal protection legislation in Europe was passed in Ireland in 1635. It prohibited pulling wool off sheep, and the attaching of ploughs to horses' tails, referring to "the cruelty used to beasts."The Statutes at Large. Dublin, 1786, cited in Ryder (2000), p. 49. In 1641, the first legal code to protect domestic animals in North America was passed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colony's constitution was based on The Body of Liberties by the Reverend Nathaniel Ward (1578–1652), an English lawyer, Puritan clergyman, and University of Cambridge graduate. Ward's list of "rites" included rite 92: "No man shall exercise any Tirrany or Crueltie toward any brute Creature which are usually kept for man's use." Historian Roderick Nash (1989) writes that, at the height of René Descartes' influence in Europe—and his view that animals were simply automata—it is significant that the New Englanders created a law that implied animals were not unfeeling machines.Nash (1989), p. 19.
The Puritans passed animal protection legislation in England too. Kathleen Kete writes that animal welfare laws were passed in 1654 as part of the ordinances of the Protectorate—the government under Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), which lasted from 1653 to 1659, following the English Civil War. Cromwell disliked blood sports, which included cockfighting, cock throwing, dog fighting, bull baiting and bull running, said to tenderize the meat. These could be seen in villages and fairgrounds, and became associated with idleness, drunkenness, and gambling. Kete writes that the Puritans interpreted the biblical dominion of man over animals to mean responsible stewardship, rather than ownership. The opposition to blood sports became part of what was seen as Puritan interference in people's lives, and the animal protection laws were overturned during the Restoration, when Charles II was returned to the throne in 1660.Kete (2002), p. 19 ff.
René Descartes
The great influence of the 17th century was the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), whose Meditations (1641) informed attitudes about animals well into the 20th century. Writing during the Scientific Revolution, Descartes proposed a mechanistic theory of the universe, the aim of which was to show that the world could be mapped out without allusion to subjective experience. His mechanistic approach was extended to the issue of animal consciousness. Mind, for Descartes, was a thing apart from the physical universe, a separate substance, linking human beings to the mind of God. The nonhuman, on the other hand, were for Descartes nothing but complex automata, with no souls, minds, or reason.Midgley, Mary (May 24, 1999-2000).