Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence holds these rights to be self-evident, unalienable. In the eighteenth century, when the words were written, they were called natural rights; today we call them human rights.
Whatever we call these rights, it has long seemed obvious to most people that only human beings have them. But now a group of human beings-- headed by philosopher Peter Singer and backed by a number of prominent anthropologists, biologists, lawyers, psychologists, and ethicists--has challenged our basic assumptions on the subject, insisting that we reconsider this limitation. In the preface to their book, The Great Ape Project, they set forth a Declaration on Great Apes. "We demand the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes: human beings, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans," they write. " 'The community of equals' is the moral community within which we accept certain basic moral principles or rights as governing our relations with each other and enforceable at law."
The moral principles or rights they mean are life, liberty, and the necessary precursor to the pursuit of happiness: freedom from torture. Their demand will undoubtedly ignite a hot debate. Some people will protest that rights should not be extended to apes when most human beings do not enjoy them. But denying rights to apes will not help oppressed people in their struggle to achieve them, Singer and his colleagues contend. And that argument assumes that apes have a lesser worth than humans--an assumption they strenuously dispute throughout the book.
