Animal rights the interests of the worse off more important than those of the better off. Another approach, virtue ethics, holds that in considering how to act we should consider the character of the actor, and what kind of moral agents we should be. Rosalind Hursthouse has suggested an approach to animal rights based on virtue ethics. Mark Rowlands has proposed a contractarian approach. Nussbaum (2004) writes that utilitarianism, starting with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, has contributed more to the recognition of the moral status of animals than any other ethical theory. The utilitarian philosopher most associated with animal rights
Transcribe Bentham available, via a transcription interface based on a customised MediaWiki, high-quality digital images of UCL's vast collection of unpublished manuscripts written and composed by the philosopher and reformer, Jeremy Bentham, which runs to some 60,000 manuscript folios (an estimated 30,000,000 words). Under the Mellon Foundation grant, almost all of the UCL Bentham Papers will be digitised, along with all of the British Library's own collection of Bentham manuscripts, some 12,500 manuscript folios (or an estimated 6,000,000 words). The project recruits volunteers to assist in transcribing the material, and thereby contribute to the Bentham Project's production of the new edition of