ABSTRACT
Organizations devoted to the promotion of animal welfare and the protection of animal rights argue that the use of elephants in circuses should be banned for various reasons. The capabilities approach as applied to elephants entails that circuses should not use elephants, that circuses are unsuited to elephants. It is a separate, and perhaps more difficult question, whether the people have a duty to go out of our way to promote the well-being or protect the rights of elephants by more active means, for example, by working to preserve elephant habitat. After describing the main features of the approach, the author then applies it to animals in general and elephants in particular. Utilitarianism is the moral theory that most commonly grounds arguments about our moral responsibilities to animals, as is exemplified by the arguments about the use of elephants in circuses.
