Ethical and political approaches to nonhuman animal issues 978-3-319-54549-3, 3319545493, 978-3-319-54548-6

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxi
Introduction (Andrew Woodhall, Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade)....Pages 1-20
Making Light of the Ethical? The Ethics and Politics of Animal Rights (Mark Rowlands)....Pages 21-38
Far-Persons (Gary Comstock)....Pages 39-71
Evolution to Liberation: Political Reflections on Morality and Nonhumans (Steve F. Sapontzis)....Pages 73-96
Robert Nozick on Nonhuman Animals: Rights, Value and the Meaning of Life (Josh Milburn)....Pages 97-120
Reinventing Left Humanism: Towards an Interspecies Emancipatory Project (Zipporah Weisberg)....Pages 121-148
Justice for Animals in a Globalising World (Angie Pepper)....Pages 149-175
Animal Rights and the Distorting Power of Anthropocentric Prejudice (Gary Steiner)....Pages 177-199
Interspecies Encounters and the Political Turn: From Dialogues to Deliberation (Eva Meijer)....Pages 201-226
Gandhian Satyagraha and Open Animal Rescue (Tony Milligan)....Pages 227-246
Shame: From Defensive Fury to Epistemological Shifts and Political Change (Elisa Aaltola)....Pages 247-273
Are We Smart Enough to Know When to Take the Political Turn for Animals? (Kim Stallwood)....Pages 275-303
Interspecies Atrocities and the Politics of Memory (Guy Scotton)....Pages 305-326
Animal Research and the Political Theory of Animal Rights (Gardar Arnason)....Pages 327-345
Cross-Species Comparisons of Welfare (Tatjana Višak)....Pages 347-363
Population Dynamics Meets Animal Ethics: The Case for Aiding Animals in Nature (Oscar Horta)....Pages 365-389
Afterword (Carol J. Adams)....Pages 391-401
Back Matter ....Pages 403-410

Citation preview

Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues “This book beautifully captures where we – Animal Studies scholars – have come from, and where we are heading. Ryder, Adams and others lay the foundation stones, while a host of emerging scholars point to the future. This book is another reminder of the richness of the research field and the talent of those dedicated to conceptualising responses to the problematic nature of contemporary human/nonhuman relations.” — Siobhan O’Sullivan, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy, University of New South Wales, Australia “This book offers a great collection of essays at the cutting edge of ‘interspecies studies’. By bringing together authors with philosophical, political and activist backgrounds, it makes for an important read for all of those concerned with the plight of nonhuman animals.” — Alasdair Cochrane, Senior Lecturer in Political Theory, University of Sheffield, UK “This book represents another positive step towards the development of a genuinely political approach to nonhuman animal ethics. The scope of the volume is impressive, containing not only contributions by some of the leading figures in the field but also by some rising stars. It deserves a wide audience.” — Robert Garner, Professor of Political Theory, University of Leicester, UK

Andrew Woodhall • Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade Editors

Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues

Editors Andrew Woodhall Independent Researcher Huntly, Aberdeenshire United Kingdom

ISBN 978-3-319-54548-6 DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3

Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade Department of Philosophy University of Birmingham Birmingham, United Kingdom

ISBN 978-3-319-54549-3 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948676 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration © Ana Paula Foletto Marin Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For all the moral and political animals, nonhuman and human, and the hope of a future undivided

Foreword

-1Maybe the British and the American animal rights movements have been entirely different. Ours in the UK burst into renewed life around the late 1960s with the opposition to hunting with hounds, Brigid Brophy’s article on Animal Rights in the Sunday Times in 1965, the stopping of otter hunting, growing media publicity (this really took off in 1975), my creation of the concept of speciesism in 1970, the publication of Animals Men and Morals by the Oxford Group of philosophers in 1971, Peter Singer’s review of that book in the New York Review of Books, and his publication of Animal Liberation in 1975 where he explores the idea of speciesism. One reason why I turned down Peter’s kind invitation to be joint author of Animal Liberation was that I had by then started trying to put animals into politics. It was all trial and error, but it took up so much time in my already hectic lifestyle (I was working full time as a psychologist in an Oxford hospital) that I felt I had no time to write. Needless to say, I have always regretted my decision. But this experience nicely illustrates the clash between writing and doing, and between ethics and politics, as well as the transition between the two which Robert Garner and others have now called “the turn”.

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-2Arrogantly, I imagined in 1975 that I had completely worked out the ethical position! To me it seemed cut and dried – a “won” argument. I called my theory Painism. It went like this: 1) The only evil is pain (pain means any form of suffering, including, for example, fear, sense of injustice, lack of liberty, etc.) 2) Morality is about our treatment of others (others means all individuals capable of experiencing pain). 3) The only wrong is causing pain to others. 4) All sufferers have equal moral value, regardless of race, sex, species, or other difference. 5) So X amount of pain in a dog or a robot, for example, matters equally with X amount of pain in a human being. 6) Adding up pains or pleasures across separate individuals is meaningless. (No one suffers such totals). 7) So the wrongness of an event is measured not by the number of sufferers but by the quantity of pain felt by its maximum sufferer. Armed with this rationale, I proceeded to storm Parliament! Fairly quickly I began to discover the strange interaction between media publicity and political interest. The more publicity I got, the more the politicians showed interest and the greater the political activity, the more the media showed an interest. -3Fortunately, the media responded very well and over the next 40 years or so I had at least one hundred opportunities on radio and television around the world to stand up for nonhumans and to promote the ideas of speciesism and painism. Working with remarkable men like Lord Houghton and Brian Davies, we learned how to put animals into politics and how to achieve legislation. I set up Eurogroup in Brussels which has achieved around twelve EU laws to protect animals (farm animals, wild animals, domestic, and laboratory animals) and in the UK we got five new laws to better protect animals, most recently the Hunting Act of 2004 and the Animal Welfare Act of 2006.

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Advocacy or campaigning (as I usually called it) is about making friends with the politicians and making friends with the media. I have found there are at least four sorts of evidence that help to persuade governments: • Evidence that the voters support reforms (e.g. public opinion polls) • Evidence of suffering (e.g. photographs) • Expert evidence (especially from animal welfare science, from economics, and from lawyers) • Evidence that alternative nonanimal techniques exist -4Unfortunately, there has been a major negative spin-off from the UK ban on hunting with hounds. Thousands of well-heeled supporters of hunting (including many politicians, lawyers, and business people) now devote their time attempting to repeal the ban. They have turned a section of the media against us and against the RSPCA. Nevertheless, in other parts of the world, such as China, some animal protection legislative progress is being made. The Pope’s amazing new encyclical (Laudato Si, 2015) attacks speciesism (which he calls “tyrannical anthropocentrism”) and will affect the thinking of 2.4 billion Catholics around the world. Young people turn increasingly to veganism. -5This book, too, will assist in progress, and the editors are to be commended. The movement needs the growing help of intelligent people. We need to bridge the gap between theory and practice. All conscious beings are, by definition, persons. We must attack the prejudice of speciesism and translate nonhuman rights into legislative action, for example, at the United Nations. Nonhuman animals are political subjects too. We are all parts of the same community of suffering. My old friends Steve Sapontzis and Kim Stallwood are entirely right: our advocacy should be both moral and political. The implication of Darwinism must be taken seriously: we are related to the other animals through evolution and so all animals should be treated as our relatives. We all can suffer pain, and the prevention of pain is the moral basis for all law. Richard D. Ryder

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References Ryder, R. D., 2012. Painism. In R. Chadwick, ed., The Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, Vol. 3, 2nd Edition, London: Academic Press. Ryder, R. D., 2015. Tyrannical Anthropocentrism. The Ark: The Magazine of Catholic Concern for Animals, 231, pp. 14–17.

Acknowledgements

With a book of this scale and scope the number of people who have helped along the way, and how indebted the editors are, can never be fully – or justly – expressed. This book began as a coming together of the thoughts of the Ethics and/or Politics conference that we organised at the University of Birmingham, UK, in April 2015 and from that point has grown and developed in ways that we could never have foreseen, almost as if it had a life of its own. That process has not only been one of interest and development, both for the book and ourselves, but also one that has – quite understandably – involved the influence and input of many people in innumerable ways. We are immensely proud of the final product that you hold in your hands – a product that was shaped not just by our vision, but by those of the contributors, the guidance, inspiration, encouragement and impact of countless people along the way (in small and large ways), and by the book itself. While thanking everyone, or even knowing where to begin to thank everyone, would be an impossible quest we would like to do the best we can as we are infinitely aware of, and interminably grateful for, all that each of these people have done and the effect they have had on making this book the excellent volume we feel that it is. This book is not just the product of us as editors, but of all of you – and especially of those who contributed their time, love, and hard work. We are eternally grateful, and this book belongs to you all. xi

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In line with this, we would therefore like to express our most deep and sincere gratitude to, and acknowledge the effort, aid, and support of, all of the following people – though this list is far from exhaustive. First and foremost we would like to especially thank Grace Jackson at Palgrave Macmillan, who not only believed in this book from the very beginning but whose support, knowledge, and encouragement have been invaluable. Her incredible patience and trust, and the confidence and backing she gave us every step of the way, was fundamental to making this book what it is. This book would simply not have existed without her and her vision. Similarly, we would like to thank Sarah Blake at Palgrave Macmillan for all of her hard work in helping us; and Grace, April James, and Brendan George at Palgrave for their positivity, commitment to this book, incredible hard work, encouragement and flexibility, and for guiding this book to completion; and Palgrave Macmillan themselves for their dedication to us and the book and all they have done along the way. To the contributors of this volume we offer our most heartfelt thanks, and we want each of you to know that we are grateful and inspired to have you all involved. This book is as incredible as it is because of you. It is your hard work, time, patience, and dedication that have made this book both possible and the incredible piece of literature that it is. Thank you for you for your insights, your support, and giving us the chance to present this book to the world. Additionally, we would like to extend this thanks to Richard Ryder and Carol J. Adams for their encouragement, support, and their contributions to this volume. Your involvement only made this book, and what we set out to achieve, stronger. We would also like to acknowledge and thank all of those at our Ethics and/or Politics: Approaching the Issues Concerning Nonhuman Animals conference at the University of Birmingham in 2015, both speakers and delegates. Many of those who presented at that conference provided chapters for this book – so double thanks to you – but we would especially like to acknowledge the comments, kindness, and enthusiasm of all of those involved in that two-day conference; all of which were invaluable to this book’s creation and development. This book would not have come about without that conference, and thus without all of the interest, participation, insights, and support of all of those involved

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(speakers, delegates, and those behind the scenes). Thank you all for giving us both. Similarly, neither that conference nor this book would exist without the wonderful and immense support offered by all the funding bodies involved – whether directly with the conference or indirectly with us. And so we would like to thank the Society for Applied Philosophy, the Mind Association, the Aristotelian Society, the University of Birmingham, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). Whether through the conference or supporting us, without your financial support this project would not have come to fruition. We thank you. We would also very much like to acknowledge and thank Lisa Bortolotti and Heather Widdows for their inspiration and expertise, their support and encouragement, and for their backing both in getting the conference behind this book off the ground and with his volume. Our appreciation for you and all you have done is beyond measure, and you are both our guiding lights. Similar thanks are extended to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, especially Lauren Traczykowski, Herjeet Marway, and Iain Law, for their support and interest. To all of these, we hope to make you proud. It is beyond our ability to convey our appreciation, gratitude, and admiration for Ana Paula Foletto Marin, both in her inspirational kindness and empathy as she strives for a better world for nonhuman animals and for the compassionate and inspiring art that she has provided for this book’s cover. Our heartfelt feelings about the greatness of your talent can only be exceeded by our wonder at your inexhaustible benevolence. You are an inspiration to us all and your work has the power to leave us in awe of the nonhuman animal agency that is so often, and so wrongly, disregarded. Thank you. Our especial thanks to all of those who have stood beside us throughout the long and sometimes difficult journey inevitably involved in editing a volume of this quality, and to all of those who have offered support and encouragement which has always been deeply appreciated and valued. Your love, strength, and help have meant more to us than we can ever tell you. Our families deserve even more of that gratitude, for more than we can ever recount.

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Additional thanks are offered to Siobhan O’Sullivan, Robert Garner, Alasdair Cochrane, Jeff McMahan, Mary Midgley, John Hadley, Will Kymlicka, Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Clare Palmer, Dinesh Wadiwel, David Nibert, and Minding Animals International for kind words, support and encouragement, interest, contributing ideas, suggestions, advice, or proposing contacts that have improved this book, and generally for just being wonderful people who have aided us throughout this book’s production – whether in large or small ways. Thank you. As always, the greatest debt that we owe is to all of the other-thanhuman animals who suffer in the world whether directly or indirectly; wrongs that can never be repaid, but perhaps may in time be both redressed and eliminated in a brighter future forged by acting and living together. This book is aimed at both theory and action and at offering thoughts for the way forward for the nonhuman animal movement, and we hope that some small measure of aid for you can result from it. We have not forgotten you and never will, and with this book we are trying to do our best. Importantly, we would like to thank each of you who reads this book and who takes action for nonhuman animals – whether by becoming vegan, engaging in academic debate to push the issues, taking part in more direct action or activism, or changing yourself or the world based on insights this book offers. You can change academia, the way forward, and the world. More importantly, you can change the lives of nonhuman animals. So thank you. Finally, we would like to thank everyone else whom we may have missed. As we began, this volume has been an immense undertaking, and there are far too many people for us to ever adequately acknowledge in such a short space. Know that we do acknowledge and appreciate all of you for everything you have done. Thank you. Towards a brighter, and undivided future – academically, as a movement, and most importantly with all living beings.

Contents

1 Introduction Andrew Woodhall and Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade 2 Making Light of the Ethical? The Ethics and Politics of Animal Rights Mark Rowlands 3 Far-Persons Gary Comstock

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4 Evolution to Liberation: Political Reflections on Morality and Nonhumans Steve F. Sapontzis

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5 Robert Nozick on Nonhuman Animals: Rights, Value and the Meaning of Life Josh Milburn

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6 Reinventing Left Humanism: Towards an Interspecies Emancipatory Project Zipporah Weisberg

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7 Justice for Animals in a Globalising World Angie Pepper

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8 Animal Rights and the Distorting Power of Anthropocentric Prejudice Gary Steiner

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9 Interspecies Encounters and the Political Turn: From Dialogues to Deliberation Eva Meijer

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10 Gandhian Satyagraha and Open Animal Rescue Tony Milligan

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11 Shame: From Defensive Fury to Epistemological Shifts and Political Change Elisa Aaltola

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12 Are We Smart Enough to Know When to Take the Political Turn for Animals? Kim Stallwood

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13 Interspecies Atrocities and the Politics of Memory Guy Scotton 14 Animal Research and the Political Theory of Animal Rights Gardar Arnason 15 Cross-Species Comparisons of Welfare Tatjana Višak

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16 Population Dynamics Meets Animal Ethics: The Case for Aiding Animals in Nature 365 Oscar Horta

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17 Afterword Carol J. Adams

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Index

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List of Figures

Figure 17.1

Figure 17.2

“Yard and Coop.” Photo of the names given to “cuts” of a chicken’s body that reflects the overlapping of human women and nonhuman animals. Photo courtesy of Faridah Newman (Manchester, England, 2016) “Beauty Contest Winner.” Photo of a chicken dressed as a beauty contest winner on the back of a truck of a meat company specializing in “prime meats” that reflects the overlapping of human women and nonhuman animals. Photo courtesy of Scott Silk (New York, USA, 2016)

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 15.1 Table 15.2

Far-persons Fulfillment of needs as indicators of welfare Acceptance (✓) or rejection (X) of CCC and ECC

61 349 354

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1 Introduction Andrew Woodhall and Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade

In recent years changes have been occurring within debates, and amongst theorists, focusing on issues concerning nonhuman animals. Within the movement itself,1 despite the successes that have been made on many issues facing nonhuman animals, many are questioning the Here we refer to ‘the movement’ for nonhuman animals, however a more accurate description would be ‘movements’ as there are numerous groups with varying goals, aims, and strategies, that approach issues facing nonhuman animals; and not all agree. However, as we have argued elsewhere (Woodhall & Garmendia da Trindade, 2016) despite these differences the general focus or concern for nonhuman animals unites all of these groups. It is this loose meaning of those who consider nonhuman animals in order to aid them (in whatever way or to whatever extent) that we refer to by ‘the movement’.

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A. Woodhall (*) Independent Researcher, Huntly, Aberdeenshire, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected] G. Garmendia da Trindade Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_1

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success of the movement as a whole as more nonhuman animals suffer and are exploited than ever before.2 Further, the end that different groups aim at within the movement – be that equal consideration of welfare, rights, abolition, or integrated societies of absolutely equal beings – seems no more imminent, no more about to become a reality, than it was decades ago. Different groups vie for their conception of how nonhumans, and the issues they face, should be treated, successes are contested, and for each ‘victory’ more issues arise. This is not to say that the movement has not had an impact or achieved many positive changes; such is indisputable. However on the grand scale the movement on the whole can be seen to be divided and still far from being as successful as other social movements. This sentiment regarding the movement’s achievements, along with dissatisfaction with traditional approaches – some of which are questioned as being partly responsible for this lack of success – is reflected in the more theoretical side of the movement. As Tony Milligan has observed disputes over whether rights or interest-based theories are how nonhumans should be considered morally, disagreements regarding whether abolition or welfarism should be the end goal, and what each of these means for any action that should be engaged, in have contributed to a dissatisfaction with current approaches (Milligan, 2015). This, Milligan asserts, has resulted in the emergence of more political-based approaches being increasingly put forward within the literature largely in contrast to the traditional ethical approaches. These two aspects then have led to what Milligan terms a ‘political turn’ in the theoretical side of the nonhuman animal movement, and the theories put forward have offered new and alternative means to how nonhumans ought to be considered and the issues they face should be confronted. In short, many within the movement have begun to consider whether the traditional ethical approach to nonhuman issues is adequate. As a result, some have begun to turn to political theory in

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See, for instance, Milligan, 2015; Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011; Woodhall & Garmendia da Trindade, 2016; Garmendia da Trindade & Woodhall, 2016, and the chapters in the present volume for just a few examples.

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order to provide traction for the movement and better aid for nonhumans.3 While debates in the literature on nonhuman animals have always had multiple disciplines contributing to them the rise of political works does seem to have significantly grown over the last few years, especially the last six, with politically-focused accounts and contributions being put forward by Garner (2013), Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011, 2013), Cochrane (2010, 2012, 2013a, 2013b), O’Sullivan (2011), Cooke (2014), Hadley (2015), Nussbaum (2006), and Smith (2012), to name but a few. Ethical approaches still largely dominate as theories though clearly not as unimpeded as they perhaps once did. This turn has also increasingly seen positions raising questions regarding practical implementation of positions and thus debates over whether ideal or nonideal theories should be endorsed have also grown in significance. It is within this climate that this book emerges and within which it attempts to fill a gap. Many works have been written in ethics regarding theories and specific issues facing nonhuman animals; however, until very recently most of the literature that Milligan notes as characterising the political turn has focused largely on general positions rather than specific issues that nonhuman animals face. Thus the turn has largely been in the vein of proposing alternatives to ethical theories of liberation and rights, such as those put forward by Peter Singer and Tom Regan. Moreover, most of the larger known texts approach nonhumans from relatively mainstream thoughts, in contrast to political approaches such as anarchism or communism. At the same time individual issues in interspecies studies continue to be debated and increase in both social and political importance; yet the connection between the recent turn and these issues, and what the effects may be, remains largely untapped within the literature.

3 Those who have made an observation regarding a political turn, for instance, include not only ourselves but Milligan, 2015; Wissenburg & Schlosberg, 2014; Wyckoff, 2014; Donaldson & Kymlicka, forthcoming; Kapembwa & Wells, 2016; Meijer, 2016; Tuider 2016; Woodhall, 2016, as well as Gardar Arnason, Josh Milburn, Guy Scotton, Kim Stallwood, and Eva Meijer’s chapters in the present volume. Others have recognised this claim though question whether such a turn is actually a marked difference from previous work in the field, e.g. Garner & O’Sullivan, 2016, and Cochrane, Garner & O’Sullivan, 2016.

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The aim of this book, then, is fourfold. First, to present both ethical and political approaches to issues that nonhuman animals face. Second, to present new ideas from both disciplines that have not currently been given in the literature. Third, to offer thoughts on the political turn from both ethicists and political theorists. Fourth, to consider how ethical and political approaches can work together on issues, and to do so in a way that is both theoretical, practicable, and has real-world impact for nonhuman animals and the movement. In addition to the benefit for the debates and the real-world impacts, this fourfold aim also has the advantage of demonstrating that, despite nonhuman issues in current academia (at least in the United Kingdom) often being swept aside under current ‘practical/economic concerns’, interspecies studies (and each discipline involved) has practical impact, interdisciplinary reach, is a genuine field of study that should be represented within universities, and has realworld relevance for humans and, most importantly, nonhuman animals. To fulfil this aim we have included new work from both important established theorists and key, experienced activists. While including all such possible contributors within one single volume is beyond the scope of this book, having this mix of practical experience and theory, and important established and upcoming people, not only strengthens the offerings of this book but also provides a more well-rounded set of thoughts. This, we propose, fits well with the political turn and offers a good means to address nonhuman issues and the concerns within, and regarding, the movement and its success. We do not assert that this is an exhaustive list of contributions – after all, there are many fine theorists and activists who have not been able to be included within this book, and important approaches (most notably feminist, post-colonial, and Queer Theory, amongst others) that we would have liked to include – however, we hope that the excellent chapters within this volume will not only be appreciated for their important contributions themselves, but also that the book and its approach will aid with the inclusion of more varied and often unheard approaches, and take their contributions as significant as they are. For this reason this book provides an unconventional style by offering several different approaches to the political turn and issues nonhumans face rather than a single, unified focus. We believe that this is both fertile

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and delivers a more rounded approach to the divergent approaches within a movement (and debates) that is both changing and looking for solutions to the problems being faced. Even so, the chapters within this book fall under a central theme: approaches to nonhuman animals and the issues that they face in light of a shift from ethics to politics. This theme is touched on in various ways by the chapters that follow. Some offer thoughts on, or in relation to, the political turn – from ethical or political viewpoints. Others present new political or ethical insights regarding issues or how the movement can best go forward. Still others present claims that are both ethical and political, while others draw on all of these intentions. Thus the book contains political and ethical approaches to issues, chapters that draw on both disciplines, consideration of the political turn and contributions to this turn, and ideas that interspecies ethics, politics, and the political turn would benefit from considering in order to move forward. Our intent is not only to present new and interesting ideas, but also to offer a deeper ‘turn’ to the political turn with the goal of being practical and theoretically well-grounded while aiding in resolving divisions and the question of success for the movement. Most importantly, and always, this book is offered with the objective of aiding nonhuman animals as effectively and ethically as possible. A brief overview of some of the central issues discussed within the book are: • Bridging the gap between theory and practice, and the difficulties this holds • Whether notions of personhood are useful in considering nonhuman moral status • Whether the idea of nonhuman rights is coherent • Duties of veganism • Anthropocentrism • Sentimentalism, moral emotions, and shame • Open rescue, satyagraha, and civil disobedience • Cross-species comparisons, how to do them, problems that arise, and the variety of answers they produce • Intervention in the more-than-human world

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• • • • • • • • •

Libertarianism, Robert Nozick, and nonhuman animals Interspecies intersubjectivity Nonhuman animals as political subjects Memory, atrocity, and nonhuman animals Experimentation Cosmopolitanism and nonhumans Left humanism as a political approach towards nonhuman animals The problems with taking a political, rather than ethical, approach The moral and political aims and actions of the nonhuman animal movement and how the movement can better succeed given the political turn’s criticisms • The impact of evolution on morality, political thought, and the treatment of nonhuman animals

When reading the present volume this theme, the aim, and the current political turn ought to be kept in mind. Each chapter offers new and unique insights with varying focuses, yet each are linked and not only impact specific issues and the debate regarding the political turn but also have a bearing on each other. For instance, claims that Gary Steiner makes in his chapter regarding anthropocentrism may offer food for thought for those offered in Tony Milligan’s chapter regarding the use of spirituality. Ideas that Josh Milburn relies on in his political-based chapter, such as how nonhuman animals are considered politically, may be considered in light of claims that Eva Meijer makes. Steiner and Meijer’s chapters bear on Gary Comstock’s claims, while Mark Rowland’s and both Meijer’s and Milburn’s chapters may impact or complement each other. Similarly, Guy Scotton’s chapter and his focus on the political turn may fit well with claims about moral emotions and shame that Elisa Aaltola offers, and both may link to Meijer’s claims regarding nonhuman discourse as well as Steve Sapontzis’ claims regarding evolution and morality and the impact these have on ethical and political approaches to nonhumans. Zipporah Weisberg and Angie Pepper’s chapters offer new political insights on their own, but also may work well in relation to Milburn or Rowlands’ claims and insights that Horta puts forward, whereas Sapontzis and

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Comstock’s claims have an interesting impact and relation when read together. These are just some of the possible ways the chapters, while distinct approaches that offer their own unique positions and claims, relate to each other and impact other positions within the debate – as well as providing ideas that are important to consider for the movement (both practical and theoretical) and that the movement would benefit from considering. Thus the book can be read not only as providing separate approaches to specific issues, and as contributing original ideas to the current literature, but also as a whole, unified by a theme, and in a way that each chapter provides insights regarding other chapters and thus for consideration by theorists and activists in other areas. In short, the volume you hold in your hands is both diverse and unified, political and ethical, focused on larger theories and specific issues, approaches the political turn in several ways, is both theoretically and practically aimed, and presents new and alternative approaches from both disciplines that have heretofore been unconsidered or underrepresented in the current climate. The chapters within this book, from their content to how they have been structured and linked, therefore offer insight into how the political turn and the movement as a whole – both the theoretical and practical aspects – may go forward. Most significantly, they provide signposts towards how humans and nonhumans may be unified rather than separated. In all of these senses the chapters and the book as a whole aim at an undivided future; for nonhumans and humans, and for the means of approaching issues to help them. In line with the book’s theme and aim, and how the chapters can relate to each other, the volume has been structured to group chapters together by general theme and possible impact on surrounding chapters. While each chapter is a distinct approach, chapters 2 to 4 generally focus on broad ethical reflections regarding nonhumans in light of the political. Chapters 5 to 7 offer direct political approaches, either via specific political theories or questioning the scope of political consideration of nonhuman animals. Chapters 8 to 13 generally focus on aspects that impact the movement (both theoretical and practical), in light of ethical and political insights, and draw conclusions for how improvements can

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be made. Chapters 14 to 16 address specific issues – whether for nonhuman animals themselves or how nonhuman animals can be considered – and argue for implications that impact both ethical and political reflections, and the implementation of positions of either discipline. Finally, the afterword in chapter 17 offers a brief critique of both the political turn’s claim and current interspecies studies from a feminist perspective and offers insight into how both should be considered and proceed based on this critique. In the first contribution to this volume Mark Rowlands offers thoughts on the political turn and how, in light of this, we may go forward for nonhuman animals. Rowlands argues that the political turn is motivated by perceived problems with the traditional theories of nonhuman animal rights or liberation. As such, he claims, political positions advance new ways of thinking about other animals and our obligations to them. Rowlands contends that the shift from the ethical to political consists in a switch of focus from the intrinsic capacities of nonhuman animals (sentience, capacity to suffer, rationality, etc.) to the varied ways in which nonhuman animals relate to human societies and institutions. The prospects for success of this political turn, Rowlands argues, are guarded at best for two reasons. First, many of the considerations in favour of the turn, he argues, are at least inconclusive. Second, even if acceptable there is no reason for thinking that the political approach will do any better than the standard rights approach – either because it will fare just as badly or because the latter has the conceptual resources to do better than the political approach assumes. Providing an ethical rather than political approach to nonhuman animals, Gary Comstock argues in his chapter that to understand how we should treat nonhuman animals – especially those used within the food industry – we must consider whether such beings are persons, or at least in what way they relate to persons. From this, he contends, we can consider nonhumans’ moral status and our resultant moral duties towards them. Comstock begins by considering what nonhuman animals’ mental lives are like and asks two questions: what are persons and do only persons have rights? Considering both, Comstock argues that while nonhumans are not persons they are what he terms ‘far-persons’. As many humans can also be shown to be far-persons, and such humans

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require consideration, Comstock contends that justice requires that we treat the interests of these nonhumans in the same way that we treat the interests of human far-persons. In his chapter, Steve Sapontzis ruminates on the political turn and asks whether the shift has occurred, at least in part, due to setting aside the attempt to construct an ideal, encompassing, deductive morality in favour of an attempt to understand what has led to our current treatment of nonhumans and what resources may be currently available to effectively aid nonhumans. From this idea, Sapontzis aims to consider morality in light of evolution. He argues that this reveals that moral concern about nonhuman animals is located within a historic struggle of expanding evolved moral values and practices, and moreover that this, given how this has occurred with fellow humans, provides a means from which to draw encouragement for aiding nonhumans. Sapontzis then describes the practical inferences that follow from his claims in regard to theory, action, specific issues facing nonhuman animals, the divisions within the movement (both theoretical and practical), and the political turn’s concerns. Although the course for the movement, Sapontzis concludes, is difficult, he argues that his insights provide encouragement and a change of outlook that offers new paths for aiding other animals. Offering a more political approach to nonhuman animals, Josh Milburn notes that the political turn has largely been liberal in character. In his chapter, Milburn therefore presents a libertarian position, in the form of Robert Nozick’s views on nonhuman animals. Through this, Milburn aims to address the core concerns of ethical and political extentionism, the tension between ethics and politics, and the search for wider consensus on the status of nonhuman animals. Milburn does this by arguing that despite traditional considerations, Nozick’s position is more open to nonhuman animal rights than is usually thought and that on such a position nonhumans are valuable in-and-of-themselves and, despite our political obligations, qua Nozick’s ethics, we have strong moral obligations to them. Milburn argues that this provides an alternative political approach to nonhuman animals, one that shows that theories other than liberal may also require interspecies consideration. This shows, he concludes, that the political turn would benefit from considering positions beyond liberal thought, that right libertarian

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political philosophy contains tools which all interspecies ethicists – even those hostile to right libertarian thought – can use to further the interests of nonhuman animals, and that Nozick’s political theory also has ethical obligations regarding nonhumans. Continuing the theme of alternative political thought, but in the opposite direction, Zipporah Weisberg also proposes an alternative to liberal positions in her chapter by arguing for a Left Humanist approach to nonhuman animals. Weisberg argues that Left humanism offers a potent theoretical grounding of resistance to the dehumanisation (and de-animalisation) of the subject in late capitalist society. Weisberg notes that while humanism is one of the major ideological culprits in the history of violence against nonhuman animals, Left humanism’s core principles and aims can be reformulated to be species-inclusive (as can some of the core principles and aims of other forms of humanism from which it draws). Cleared of its bias and anthropocentrism, Weisberg argues that Left humanism would offer several attractive features for nonhuman animal liberation. Weisberg contends that although they are imperfect and incomplete, there are a number of productive tensions within Marxist humanism-as-naturalism, and recent ecological humanisms it has inspired, that point the way towards expanding humanism beyond the human, and towards a politics of reconciliation without any residual power imbalances. Weisberg concludes that Left humanism can – once free of anthropocentrism – offer not only an alternative approach for considering nonhuman animals, but one that is both powerful and nonhuman animal-inclusive and which the movement would benefit from embracing. The scope of political thought on nonhuman animals, and a third alternative to liberal theories in the form of a global cosmopolitan approach, is the focus of Angie Pepper’s chapter. In her chapter Pepper makes the case that, rather than addressing nonhuman animal issues only domestically we must think about justice for nonhuman animals via a cosmopolitan lens. By means of an exploration of global justice, cosmopolitanism, and a consideration of how the current global order maintains and aggravates systems of violence and oppression that target nonhuman animals, Pepper argues that contrary to initial conceptions cosmopolitanism is not hostile to a nonhuman animal rights agenda. In fact, Pepper claims, the theoretical foundations of

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cosmopolitanism require the inclusion of many sentient nonhuman animals. Thus, Pepper argues that those who advocate rights for nonhuman animals should be cosmopolitans about global justice and further that both defenders of cosmopolitanism in general and those who promote political justice for nonhuman animals should unite in developing genuinely inclusive theories of justice. Shifting the focus from political approaches to insights that interspecies ethics, politics, and the movement as a whole, should consider, Gary Steiner considers the impact of anthropocentrism on the ideas of personhood and rights for nonhuman animals. Steiner reflects on the importance of this influence and provides suggestions on how we – both in theory and practice – can move forward. In his chapter Steiner proceeds by offering an overview of some of the most widely discussed and hotly contested questions in contemporary interspecies studies, before remarking on three controversial questions: (1) whether notions such as personhood are useful in the endeavour to rethink the moral status of nonhuman animals, (2) whether the very idea of rights for nonhuman animals is coherent, and (3) whether a robust theory of the moral status of nonhumans animals should (or should not) entail specific human duties such as veganism. Steiner’s discussion revolves around the tendency of anthropocentric prejudice to exercise an influence over the theoretical claims made in answer to each question, and he proceeds to consider each of these areas in light of this prejudice before arguing for what this means for both theory and practice. Offering both a political insight and food for thought for ethical and political approaches, Eva Meijer notes that the political turn seeks the reconsideration of current institutions, democratic procedures, rights, and what is traditionally thought of as human; the realm of politics. From this, Meijer considers problems in accounts put forward in the political turn, and regarding nonhuman animal communication, and considers how the latter, in light of the political turn, translates into nonhuman agency that is politically significant. Meijer contributes to the political turn by arguing for a deliberative model of democracy which can include and promote the political voices of nonhuman animals and form a basis for political interactions via dialogue between humans and nonhumans. Meijer proceeds by investigating the concept

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of deliberation in an interspecies context, discusses how interspecies deliberation between humans and nonhuman animals already occurs, and then offers insights into how this can be improved. From this, Meijer turns to consider a political account of dialogues and deliberative democracy, reflects on the relation between democratic inclusion and different forms of speech (in which she focuses on nonhuman languages), then applies her findings to current democratic mechanisms by focusing on the systemic approach to deliberative democracy. This, Meijer argues, enables nonhuman animal agency and interspecies encounters to be incorporated into existing democratic structures and provides both a new, and less anthropocentric, political approach – one that has significant impacts on real-world issues for nonhuman animals. Finally, Meijer illustrates her claims in real-world nonhuman-human relations in the Netherlands before providing suggestions for how this practical action can be improved. In his chapter Tony Milligan approaches how the movement (theoretically, but most especially practically) can be improved by considering how action should proceed in light of another political and moral ideology; Gandhian Satyagraha. Milligan begins by considering nonviolent civil disobedience and reflecting on how the open rescue of nonhuman animals has been compared to Gandhian Satyagraha. From this, he raises a dilemma for this comparison, claiming that as Satyagraha is ambiguous as a concept either its application to open rescue is unclear and uninformative or simply inappropriate due to spiritual, definitional, and practical dissimilarities. Milligan argues however that the first problem is far from intractable. Not only are there plausible reasons for at least sometimes tolerating conceptual ambiguity but there is also a more case-specific consideration that may be brought into play; in that if we adopt a sufficiently open-textured understanding of civil disobedience there is a rationale for comparing open rescue with Satyagraha as a way of strengthening open rescue’s association with non-violence by suggesting that it goes beyond the more minimal requirements of mere civility and/or civil disobedience. From this, Milligan goes on to argue that the second problem, while more troubling, may not be intractably so. The suggestion is not, he contends, that activism of this sort is best regarded as Satyagraha but more simply that comparison with Satyagraha may be

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informative and well-placed. Milligan concludes by offering considerations for what may be gained, and what may be obscured, by associating open rescue with Satyagraha. In chapter 11 Elisa Aaltola explores the moral emotion of shame and its moral, political, and every day uses. Aaltola notes that shame – especially in political instances – implies both moral and political culpability and further that shame is often used regarding, and at the epicentre of, advocacy for nonhuman animals. The importance of shame for these spheres provides motivation for asking what shame comprises of and whether evoking shame is an effective means to seek moral and political change, especially in regard to nonhuman animals. In her chapter, Aaltola explores these questions regarding advocacy for nonhuman animals – most notably, nonhuman animal liberation – and argues that shame is often under-considered as a moral factor in nonhuman advocacy (both in the literature and action). Aaltola argues that shame should be seen as a pivotal moral emotion, one that has the effect of both deterring people from supporting nonhuman animal advocacy and veganism while also being a means that invites others to embrace both. This understanding of shame and how the movement works, Aaltola contends, provides insight into how advocacy (in theory and practice) has suffered because of shame while also revealing why understanding shame is important to improve where we go from here. As with Steiner, Meijer, and Milligan’s chapters, Aaltola thus offers insight that is not only theoretically new and as to how the movement should proceed but also presents something that the political turn, and its originating concerns, would benefit from considering. This similar focus on how the movement can be improved via a moral and a political lens is the subject of Kim Stallwood’s chapter. Drawing on his four decades of influential involvement with, and impact on, the nonhuman animal movement, Stallwood considers why the movement has not succeeded as well as it should (or could), and offers a thought on how this can be improved by arguing that advocacy should be both moral and political in aim, outlook, and action, and draw ideas from other social movements for aid. Stallwood’s unique perspective offers not only a well-reasoned critique of the limitations of current advocacy, but also a practical

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evaluation and insight that is grounded in forty years of experience and action. In his chapter, Stallwood argues that two of the concerns of the political turn – i.e. the lack of the movement’s success and the divided strategies used – are due to the movement being conceived largely as a moral crusade. Stallwood contends that while this is important advocacy must also be politically involved – for which he offers practicable advice and suggestions – and a balance between both must be found. Only when this is done, he concludes, can a real political turn in the movement itself (rather than just theory) actually begin and strides forward to dramatic change be made. In chapter 13 Guy Scotton offers another insight for ethical and political approaches that brings interspecies ethics into what he terms an overdue conversation with the politics of memory. Scotton’s chapter develops a framework for thinking about interspecies atrocities in a way that brings interspecies ethics and the politics of memory into a shared discussion. Formulating an account of interspecies atrocity, Scotton applies this framework to existing practices of interspecies mourning and memorialisation. These cases, he argues, illustrate the contested nature of collective memory, with various practices of remembrance disrupting or stabilising different perspectives and attitudes towards interspecies justice. Scotton considers how the themes of remembrance and atonement might develop a broader conversation within the political turn in interspecies ethics about the role of political emotions and narratives in advancing interspecies justice. Scotton also raises the question of how interspecies atrocities might be accommodated in Nussbaum’s account of public art, spaces and festivals as vital to civic reflection on tragedy and injustice. Thus Scotton considers what atrocities and the themes of remembrance and atonement might mean for advancing (not replacing) interspecies justice, due to nonhuman atrocities and the moral and political emotions we have towards them, in light of the political turn. Gardar Arnason’s focus in chapter 14 shifts from lessons to be learned by the movement as a whole from ethical and political ideas to addressing the specific issue of nonhuman animal experimentation through the ethical and political lens. Arnason considers how abolitionist nonhuman animal rights theorists, and some contemporary

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political theorists, reject all human use of nonhuman animals before arguing that this rejection of all nonhuman animal experimentation is too quick. First, Arnason contends, the discussion is restricted to invasive medical research in a way which is too narrow and morally prejudiced. Second, the claim that nonhumans have a right not to be experimented upon, without any reference to harm or autonomy and with a neutral understanding of experimentation, has no plausible basis in political or ethical nonhuman rights theory, nor a parallel in human rights. Third, political nonhuman animal rights theories can allow some domestic nonhuman experimentation. Fourth, on a political theory, the implications of nonhuman participation within science is unclear. Finally, Arnason considers duties of justice to free-roaming nonhuman animals, and what sort of research on them may be necessary and justified in order to meet these duties. Thus, Arnason contends that from the political and the ethical perspectives not all nonhuman animal experimentation is wrong. The topic of how we can compare the welfare of individuals from different species and the impact this has on nonhuman animal advocacy and action is the focus of chapter 15. In this chapter Tatjana Višak considers cross-species comparisons of welfare of individuals from different species and notes that these comparisons are based on the assumptions that sentient animals (nonhuman and human) have a welfare level, that an animal’s welfare level can in principle be measured on a (semi) qualitative scale, and that the welfare of animals from different species can be measured on the same scale. Višak illustrates that cross-species comparisons are of practical importance for policy makers, consumers, and activists and explains that how these comparisons are conducted is fundamentally an ethical question, more specifically a question concerning value theory. Višak considers three ways that such comparisons may be undertaken – via hedonism, the objective list account, and the self-fulfilment account – each of which, she contends, lead to fundamentally different verdicts about which of two or more individuals of different species is better off and why. Višak offers a defence of the self-fulfilment account as the most plausible account of welfare and illustrates how cross-species comparisons can be made in practice on the basis of this account. Finally, Višak briefly notes the importance of this for nonhuman animals and

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human-nonhuman interactions, and thus provides insight into an issue that is important for both ethical and political approaches to take into consideration when putting forward theories and of especial significance for a practically-aimed movement as a whole. In chapter 16, Oscar Horta – in light of both ethical and political stances on the issue – addresses the subject of nonhuman animal suffering in the more-than-human world, specifically in relation to the question of whether we should aid free-roaming nonhuman animals and, if we should, how this can be practically achieved. Horta argues that despite the relatively widespread view that the lives of nonhuman animals in the more-than-human world are pleasurable and good, overall, their lives are in fact very short and filled with significant suffering. This, Horta contends, gives us compelling reasons to conclude that the majority of nonhuman animals have lives that include more suffering than wellbeing. Horta notes how current policies affecting free-roaming nonhuman animals rarely take this into account, that intervention in the more-thanhuman world usually occurs for human reasons, and that most policies are commonly informed by anthropocentric and environmentalist aims alone. These aims need not promote what is good for free-roaming nonhuman animals and may actually be harmful for them. Horta argues, on the other hand, that it is possible to design policies that aim at reducing the harms nonhuman animals suffer in the more-than-human world. From this, Horta provides responses to several of the important objections against such intervention and offers both practical policy solutions and real-world examples to underpin his conclusion that normative arguments against intervention must be rejected if nonhuman animals are morally considerable. Finally, in her afterword Carol J. Adams offers a closing thought on the question of the success or failure of the nonhuman animal movement, the political turn, interspecies studies in general, and the movement overall. Adams critiques each of these from a feminist, antiracist perspective and argues that the movement – and thus the political turn – has not only under-considered female and feminist voices and their impact, but also that the questions that have given rise to the political turn demonstrate this lack of consideration, given both how a feminist ethic of care is both political and ethical and how this exemplifies

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logocentric, linear thinking. More importantly, Adams contends that the political turn raises the wrong question for the movement (both in terms of theory and action). The question should not so much be whether the movement has failed and if so why, Adams proposes, but rather whether we have understood the underlying worldview which influences the movement and is connected to all forms of oppression. This question, and challenging this worldview, Adams argues, is imperative for those who consider nonhuman animals, the political turn, the questions it raises, and the positions they propose as a result to bear in mind when going forward. While the chapters cover a wide range of topics, relate to and impact upon each other, provide insight into the political turn and new thoughts and approaches, and are aimed at both informing theory and in many cases practice, the book has been put together with more than just interesting academic contributions in mind. Thus the chapters are written and have been selected both for their academic appeal and also to provide insight for non-academics and the movement as a whole, and to have both a theoretical impact and a bearing on practicable action. Given the aim of the field of interspecies ethics, politics, and studies, i.e. to reflect on how to aid or interact with (in whatever way and to whatever extent) nonhuman animals, this focus is important. Unlike many other academic fields, those that consider interspecies interactions and justice must be both wellgrounded yet practical and work well with other social movements – especially given how the current movement began by analogy with race and gender social justice movements. Given the concerns of the political turn, this importance only becomes even more vital. The book, while focused on interspecies studies, has intentionally been formed to be interdisciplinary in nature and content and thus it has a reach beyond the field of interspecies studies to include ethics, evolutionary biology/studies, political studies, sociology, psychology, law, and a wider general readership. It therefore offers a resource not only for the debates and movement but also for courses, research, activists, organisations, and policy makers. For all of these reasons throughout this book we have endeavoured to remove prejudicial and centric terminology, phrasing, and examples. Anthropocentric, speciesist, chauvinistic, androcentric,

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sexist, ethnocentric, and racist language has thus been avoided. As such, terms such as ‘animal’ have been replaced with ‘nonhuman animal’, ‘other animals’, and so on. Similarly, ‘wild animals’ has been replaced as much as possible with ‘free-roaming’ or ‘free-living’ nonhuman animals, at the contributors’ discretion. At certain points the ‘more-than-human’ world has replaced the term ‘nature’, ‘interspecies ethics/studies’ has replaced ‘animal ethics/studies’, and every effort has been made to remove object-based language when applied to nonhuman animals in favour of the personal ‘she’. Similar substitutions have been made in reference to humans in regard to sexand race-based norms. In short, every effort has been made to ensure that nonhuman animals are represented as important, unique, and individual subjects that are to be treated and considered as such and with moral respect and dignity. Similarly with reference to women and all people of colour. We hope that you find this book as enlightening and intellectually stimulating as we do.

For the Reader’s Use Cochrane, A., 2010. An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Cochrane, A., 2012. Animal Rights without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations. New York: Columbia University Press. Cochrane, A., 2013a. Cosmozoopolis: The Case against Group-Differentiated Animal Rights. Law, Ethics and Philosophy, 1(1), pp. 113–125. Cochrane, A., 2013b. From Human Rights to Sentient Rights. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 16(5), pp. 655–675. Cochrane, A., Garner, R. & O’Sullivan, S., 2016. Animal Ethics and the Political. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, pp. 1–17. Cooke, S., 2014. Perpetual Strangers: Animals and the Cosmopolitan Right. Political Studies, 62(4), pp. 930–944. Donaldson, S. & Kymlicka, W., 2011. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Donaldson, S. & Kymlicka, W., 2013. A Defence of Animal Citizens and Sovereigns. Law, Ethics and Philosophy, 1, pp. 143–160. Donaldson, S. & Kymlicka, W., Forthcoming. Animals in Political Theory. In L. Kalof, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garmendia da Trindade, G. & Woodhall, A., 2016. Intervention or Protest: Acting for Nonhuman Animals. Wilmington: Vernon Press. Garner, R., 2013. A Theory of Justice for Animals. New York: Oxford University Press. Garner, R. & O’Sullivan, S., 2016. The Political Turn in Animal Ethics. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Hadley, J., 2015. Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals. Lanham: Lexington Books. Kapembwa, J. & Wells, J. 2016. Climate Justice for Wildlife: A Rights-Based Account. In G. Garmendia da Trindade & A. Woodhall, eds., Intervention or Protest: Acting for Nonhuman Animals. Wilmington: Vernon Press. Meijer, E. 2016. Animal Activism and Interspecies Change. In G. Garmendia da Trindade & A. Woodhall, eds., Intervention or Protest: Acting for Nonhuman Animals. Wilmington: Vernon Press. Milligan, T., 2015. The Political Turn in Animal Rights. Politics and Animals, 1, pp. 6–15. Nussbaum, M., 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. O’Sullivan, S., 2011. Animals, Equality and Democracy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, K., 2012. Governing Animals: Animal Welfare and the Liberal State. New York: Oxford University Press. Tuider, J. 2016. Putting Nonhuman Animals First: A Call for a Pragmatic and Nonideal Turn in Normative Theorising. In G. Garmendia da Trindade & A. Woodhall, eds., Intervention or Protest: Acting for Nonhuman Animals. Wilmington: Vernon Press. Wissenberg, M. & Schlosberg, D., eds., 2014. Political Animals and Animal Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Woodhall, A. 2016. Anthropocentrism and the Issues Facing Nonhuman Animals. In D. Moorehead, ed., Animals in Human Society: Amazing Creatures who Share our Planet. Lanham: University Press of America. Woodhall, A. & Garmendia da Trindade, G., 2016. Saving Nonhumans: Drawing the Threads of a Movement Together. In G. Garmendia da

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Trindade & A. Woodhall, eds., Intervention or Protest: Acting for Nonhuman Animals. Wilmington: Vernon Press. Wyckoff, J., 2014. Toward Justice for Animals. Journal of Social Philosophy, 45 (4), pp. 539–553. Andrew Woodhall works on anthropocentrism and global interspecies ethics, and has presented on such subjects at Minding Animals 3 in New Delhi and at MANCEPT Political Workshops. He co-wrote a chapter entitled ‘Saving Nonhumans: Drawing the Threads of a Movement Together’ for, and coedited, the book Intervention or Protest: Acting for Nonhuman Animals (Vernon Press, 2016) with Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade, has published in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and has a chapter entitled ‘Anthropocentrism and the Issues facing Nonhuman Animals’ in Animals in Human Society, edited by Daniel Moorehead. He has organised several conferences in interspecies studies. Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade works on the intersection between interspecies ethics and the ethics of war and self-defence. He is the author of Animais como Pessoas: A Abordagem Abolicionista de Gary L. Francione (Animals as Persons: Gary L. Francione’s Abolitionist Approach), co-wrote a chapter entitled ‘Saving Nonhumans: Drawing the Threads of a Movement Together’ for, and co-edited, the book Intervention or Protest: Acting for Nonhuman Animals (Vernon Press, 2016) with Andrew Woodhall, and is author/co-author of more than 30 peer-reviewed papers and book reviews in Brazilian Philosophy Journals.

2 Making Light of the Ethical? The Ethics and Politics of Animal Rights Mark Rowlands

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Introduction

This chapter examines the claim that our moral commitments to nonhuman animals are best captured in terms of a framework of political, rather than ethical, theory – or, at the very least, that the former provides an essential antidote to the failings of the latter. In particular, I shall focus on what I take to be a canonical statement of this view: Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s book, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. In this book, Donaldson and Kymlicka (henceforth, D&K) argue that standard ethical animal rights theory (henceforth, following them, ART) is importantly incomplete, and requires supplementation with (as the subtitle suggests) a political theory of animal rights (henceforth, PTAR). Thus, they defend a framework for thinking about animals that employs central concepts of political theory – specifically the concepts of citizenship, denizenship, and sovereignty. They M. Rowlands (*) Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_2

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argue that ART has (i) focused unduly on the intrinsic properties of individual nonhuman animals (sentience, capacity to suffer and enjoy, rationality or lack thereof, etc.) and (ii) concerned itself with delineation of a set of negative duties we owe to nonhuman animals. PTAR shifts the focus from the ethical to the political. That is, rather than being trained on intrinsic capacities of nonhuman animals, the focus switches to the multifarious ways in which such animals interact with and relate to human societies and institutions. They motivate this switch of focus, at least in part, by way of certain perceived shortcomings of ART. By way of full disclosure, I should begin with observations. First, I am a great admirer of this book. I am going to disagree with D&K at several junctures, but these are the sorts of disagreement one can have only with someone with whom you antecedently agree on very much. Second, I have never been persuaded of the rigidity of the ethical/political distinction – seeing each category as shading by degrees into the other. This provides a clue to the sorts of disagreements I am going to have with D&K. Essentially, I am going to argue that while Zoopolis is a notable achievement, D&K have not quite understood what it is they have achieved. I agree that ART, as it has standardly been perceived, has shortcomings, but these are more perception than reality, and are certainly not intrinsic or essential features of ART. Consequently, the supplementation of ART with PTAR is not necessary. The distinction between ART and PTAR is a disguised and somewhat misleading way of talking about another distinction: the distinction between nonhuman animals as (1) objects of moral concern and as (2) subjects of motivation and action. That is the crucial distinction, I shall argue, and the ART/ PTAR distinction tracks it only imperfectly.

2.2

Ethical Theory and Human Nature

D&K, adopting common practice, distinguish ART from alternative “welfarist” and ecological approaches, preferring ART to these alternatives. A welfarist view, “accepts that animal welfare matters, morally speaking, but . . . subordinates animal welfare to the interests of human beings” (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2012, p.3). An ecological view, on the

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other hand, “focuses on the health of ecosystems, of which animals are a vital component, rather than on the fate of individual animals themselves” (Ibid). ART, on the other hand, at least in its strong form, regards animals “as possessing certain inviolable rights” (Ibid, p.4) and “with respect to these basic moral rights to life and liberty, animals and humans are equals” (Ibid). D&K “fully accept this core premise of the animal rights approach” (Ibid), and thus regard PTAR as building upon the insights of ART. Nevertheless ART, they think, has serious problems. “The animal advocacy movement is at an impasse” (Ibid, p.1). I do not think one can really disagree with this, but I do think that two issues need to be clearly distinguished. Is the impasse the result of (i) theoretical flaws with ART, or (ii) infelicitous matters of fact beyond the control of ART? The initial suggestion is that D&K’s concern is with the former: “the built in limits of these strategies have increasingly become clear, leaving us unable to address, or even to identify, some of our most serious ethical challenges in our relations with animals” (Ibid). However, the sorts of evidence D&K cite for the existence of the impasse all seem to be versions of (ii). First, there is the “relentless expansion in human population” that takes away habitat for wild nonhuman animals. There is the fact that our “population has doubled” since the 1960s, and that “world meat production has tripled since 1980” (and is expected to double again by 2050). I agree with D&K that these “global trends are truly catastrophic” (Ibid, p.2). I agree also that ameliorist reforms, “may help or hinder at the margins, but they do not challenge – indeed, do not even address – the social, legal, and political underpinnings of Eternal Treblinka” (Ibid, p.3). So far so good – but my skepticism begins to kick in at this point: “In our view, this failure is a predictable result of the flawed terms in which animal issues are publicly debated” (Ibid). Existing approaches (either welfarist, ecological or ART) have proven incapable of “generating fundamental change in the system of animal exploitation.” This change will be possible only if we develop a new moral framework: “one that connects the treatment of animals more directly to fundamental principles of liberal democratic justice and human rights” (Ibid). The evidence for the impasse, therefore, consists in a

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set of infelicitous matters of fact (population growth, ever increasing demand for meat), but the solution is supposed to lie in theoretical innovation. The infelicitous matters of fact, it seems, are traceable to theoretical deficiencies in the ART model. This idea, I think, strains credibility. Consider, for example, D&K’s remarks on the political marginalization of ART. They are surely correct when they say that the ART view remains “politically marginal” (Ibid, p.5). They identify two reasons for this – but neither of them seems to involve theoretical deficiencies in ART. First, there is our cultural inheritance: “Western (and most nonWestern) cultures have for centuries operated on the premise that animals are lower than humans on some cosmic moral hierarchy” (Ibid). Second, there are various self-interested reasons why we would want to resist the idea that nonhuman animals make moral claims on us: “While citizens may be willing to pay a few cents extra for more ‘humane’ foods or products, they are not yet willing to give up entirely on animal-based foods, clothes or medicines. Moreover, there are powerful vested interests in the system of animal exploitation” (Ibid). However, if these are the reasons for the political marginalization of ART, they count also (and equally) as reasons for politically marginalizing PTAR. These reasons have nothing to do with any theoretical deficiencies in ART. They pertain merely to certain unfortunate but tenacious characteristics of human nature and culture. Furthermore, as we have seen, D&K understand PTAR as an extension of ART. The basic case for ART is accepted, but this case is perceived to be unduly restricted. As a result, we are being asked to accept not just the sorts of negative duties insisted upon by ART but, in addition, a new range of positive duties that emerge from supplementation with PTAR, and resulting incorporation of nonhuman animals into a political framework. D&K’s position is far more demanding than a simple list of proscriptions. It also involves positive duties to nonhuman animals that result from their political status – the sorts of positive duties one has toward citizens and denizens of a society (in the case of sovereigns, our duties are largely, although not exclusively negative). Thus, if the marginalization of ART is the result of certain features of human nature and culture, then this would apply a fortiori to D&K’s

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new framework. Generally, if people, because of the vicissitudes of nature and culture, have a hard time accepting a set of requirements or demands P then, logically and psychologically speaking, they should have at least as hard a time – and almost certainly a harder time – accepting set P&Q, where “Q” denotes an additional set of requirements. Of course, if it could be shown that the problem they had in accepting P derived from some deficiency in the theory that underwrites P, a deficiency that could be rectified via some new theory that entails P&Q, matters might be different. That is undoubtedly D&K’s position. But I do not think enough has been said to support the claim that the general populace’s refusal to embrace ART stems from a perceived deficiency in this theory rather than (a-theoretical) characteristics of human nature and culture. Therefore, contrary to D&K’s claim, it is not clear to me that, “part of the problem lies in the way ART has been articulated” (Ibid) – not if we understand the problem to be political marginalization or ineffectiveness.

2.3

The Failure of ART?

This brings us to the next issue: D&K’s diagnosis of the theoretical failure of ART. According to D&K, “ART to date has been formulated in a very narrow way: it has typically taken the form of specifying a limited list of negative rights – particularly the right not to be owned, killed, tortured or separated from one’s family . . . By contrast ART has said little about what positive obligations we may owe to animals” (Ibid, pp.5–6). Moreover, “Relatedly, ART has had little to say about our relational duties – that is duties arising not just from the intrinsic characteristics of animals (such as their consciousness) but from the more geographically and historically specific relationships that have developed between particular groups of humans and particular groups of animals” (Ibid, p.6). These claims can be assessed independently of whether they explain the political marginalization of ART. Are these claims, in fact, true? D&K link these two claims using the term, “relatedly.” But it is not entirely clear in what sense they are related. One way of distinguishing

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the ethical domain from the political is in terms of the distinction between intrinsic and relational features of individuals: ethical obligation is a function of the former, whereas its political counterpart is, at least in part, a function of the latter. As a general way of distinguishing the ethical from the political, I do not think this will work. It seems to be a distinction formulated with certain traditional, universalistic versions of normative ethical theory in mind. But these are, of course, not the only game on town. Try telling a care ethicist, for example, that her account ignores “geographically and historically specific relationships that have developed between particular groups of humans and particular groups of animals.” My primary focus, however, will be on the claim that ART is limited to, or has overly concerned itself with, delineation of a set of negative duties we owe to nonhuman animals. First of all, I have some concerns about the expression, “been formulated in a very narrow way,” especially when combined with “typically.” I have similar concerns about Clare Palmer’s language, at least as it is quoted by D&K, when she writes: “Utilitarianism or rights theories . . . tend to the view that ethical prescriptions are invariant among urban, rural, oceanic, and wilderness environments” (Ibid, p.12). Theories do not formulate themselves. People formulate them. Nor do theories, in fact, “tend” to any view. People tend to views, or tend to adopt views, sometimes on the basis of the theories they hold. Similarly, moral theories can certainly entail various obligations, but they don’t, in fact, say little (or much) about obligations – whether positive or negative. People say such things, sometimes on the basis of theories they hold. This may seem pedantic – and perhaps it is. But we do need to be clear on whether we are talking about the logical commitments of a theory or the psychological tendencies of people who hold those theories. In D&K’s case, we might frame the concern as follows: Do they mean that ART does not have the theoretical resources to underwrite anything more than negative duties? Or, do they mean that there is a persistent tendency, among those who articulate and apply ART, to focus on negative duties at the expense of positive counterparts? Here, I think, D&K face a dilemma.

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D&K’s language sometimes seems to indicate they have the second claim in mind. ART has “typically taken the form of” a limited list of negative rights. On this interpretation, focusing on negative rights and duties at the expense of their positive counterparts is a persistent theme in the way people have articulated and applied ART. The problem with this claim, however, is that it is not strong enough to support the claim that D&K need: viz. that we need a theoretical restructuring of the terms of the debate, specifically, a shift from an ethical to a political conception of nonhuman animals. For, if it is merely a question of emphasis or application, then the required solution, it would seem, is simply to change the emphasis or application. If ART does have the resources to accommodate positive duties as well as negative ones, but the former have, for whatever reason, been insufficiently accentuated in recent discourse, then all that is required is that we appropriately accentuate them. Moreover, there is a ready explanation of the accentuation of the negative. In fact, there are two of them. First, so much clear and obvious damage is done by the failure of humans to live up to their negative duties toward nonhuman animals: if only we would not eat them, not experiment on them, then soon the world would be dramatically transformed for the better. Second, fulfilling positive duties takes time and effort. Fulfilling their negative counterparts does not – or takes far less time and effort. It is, typically, easier to persuade someone to fulfill their negative duties, and so it makes good tactical sense to focus on those. Most importantly, in all of this, we are dealing with details of human psychology and strategies for best mobilizing that psychology. But no major theoretical revisions of ART are required. Therefore, if D&K want to justify their claim that theoretical revision and/or extension of ART is required, the claim they need to establish is that ART does not have the theoretical resources to underwrite anything more than negative duties or obligations. I do not think they have established this claim. In fact, I suspect the claim is not, in general, true. A brief perusal of various ethical theories, as they have been applied to nonhuman animals, should make this clear.

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Utilitarianism and Nonhuman Animals

Consider, first, the utilitarian position. It is not clear whether D&K would wish to classify this as a version of ART – perhaps because of the unfortunate “nonsense/nonsense on stilts” comments of Bentham. Nevertheless, one of the most influential and, in the eyes of many, persuasive cases for the moral claims of nonhuman animals is a utilitarian one – developed, in the first instance, by Peter Singer (1975). And there is no reason for thinking that utilitarianism is logically committed to the view that our duties to nonhuman animals are purely negative ones. There is no reason, that is, for regarding this restriction as an entailment of utilitarian theory. Consider, for example, preference utilitarianism – the form of the theory usually associated with Singer (at least until recently). Our fundamental obligation or duty is to increase the overall amount of satisfied preferences in the world. It might well be that one highly effective way – perhaps the most effective way – of doing this is to refrain from doing certain things, or to get other people to refrain from doing them. But we must distinguish the tactical issue of how best to achieve a given outcome from the outcome itself. The outcome itself is the maximization of satisfied preferences – and this outcome says nothing about restricting ourselves to only negative duties. So, there is nothing in preference utilitarianism, per se, that commits us to conceiving of our duties to nonhuman animals as purely negative ones. If embracing certain positive obligations vis-à-vis other animals does, in fact, maximize utility, then that is what we are required to do on utilitarian grounds. It is true – indeed, as Kymlicka has himself pointed out in earlier work – that to the extent the utilitarian employs a notion of duty at all, it is a strange one (Kymlicka, 1990). The duty in question is not one we owe to any particular individual – and it is difficult to understand how we can have duties to things that are not individuals. But this is a problem with the coherence of utilitarianism itself. If we accept utilitarianism and its notion of duty or obligation, then we have no reason for thinking that our duties to nonhuman animals are purely negative ones.

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Regan’s Case for Animal Rights

Consider, now, another famous case for the moral claims of nonhuman animals: that developed by Tom Regan (1983). According to Regan, many nonhuman animals are subjects-of-a-life. That is, they “have beliefs and desires, perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain, preference and welfare interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; and an individual welfare in the sense that their life fares well or ill for them” (Regan, 1983, p.243). All creatures that are subjects-of-a-life in this sense have inherent value – at least this is the explanation that makes most sense of a panoply of moral intuitions that we, in fact, endorse. This engenders various moral principles. One of these is the harm principle: we have a direct prima facie duty not to harm individuals. This is a negative duty, and thus fits well with D&K’s view of ART. However, the harm principle is not a basic moral principle, but derives from the more basic respect principle: we are to treat those individuals who have inherent value in ways that respect their inherent value. This, according to Regan, is the basic principle that governs our moral relations with nonhuman animals (at least, the ones that have such value). Is there any reason for supposing that this principle entails only negative duties toward nonhuman animals? On the contrary, it entails both negative and positive duties. It is true that some of the more obvious ways of flouting the respect principle can be rectified by way of a specification of certain crucial negative duties. Prima facie, one cannot respect a possessor of inherent value by killing it, torturing it, imprisoning it, and so on. And this entails a list of corresponding negative duties: don’t do these things. But the basic idea of respecting a possessor of inherent value as a possessor of inherent value also entails a list of positive duties: for example, I do not respect a possessor of inherent value as a possessor of such value if I decline to save them when they are drowning in a shallow ornamental pond (to purloin an example made famous by Singer). I do not respect the possessor of inherent value that is my dog, if I do not provide him with outlets or

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activities that are required to satisfy his basic needs for exercise and socialization. This might require, for example, taking him for a run or walk – even if it is raining, or even if I don’t feel like it. There is nothing in Regan’s case for animal rights that entails that my duties to nonhuman animals are restricted to negative ones.

2.6

Contractualism

The case of contractualism is an interesting one, and I shall spend correspondingly more time on it. It is interesting for at least two reasons. First, it is generally thought that contractualism is incompatible with the idea that nonhuman animals can have rights, or any sort of direct moral status. For precisely this reason I have spent considerable time and effort, over the years (Rowlands, 1997, 1998, 2009), to developing a contractualist case for animal rights – and not because I am a contractualist (my tastes in moral theory are eclectic but, these days, generally veer in the direction of a form of sentimentalism). Second, following Rawls (1971), contractualism is often employed in the service of a goal in political philosophy: to delineate the basic structures and institutions of a just society. I pressed it into somewhat different – and, actually, more traditional – service: as a way of identifying the moral claims or entitlements of nonhuman animals. Suppose it can be used in the latter way. Suppose also then it can license not just negative but also positive duties toward nonhuman animals. If this were the case, then the contractualist framework would be utilizable as part of a political account and an ethical account, and in both cases it underwrites negative and positive duties. If so, it would be clear that the ethical/political distinction would not track the negative/positive distinction. This is not, to be clear, to detract from the importance of positive duties. Along with D&K, I am happy to insist that no complete account of our moral obligations to nonhuman animals can afford to ignore these. But the importance of positive duties cannot be captured simply by way of the distinction between ART and PTAR, together with an insistence on supplementing the former with the latter.

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Somewhat ironically, the contractualist case I develop is indebted to the work of Kymlicka – although he might disagree with the use to which I have put his work. The logical point of departure for my account, in effect, lies in Kymlicka’s (1989) distinction between two forms of contractualism: Kantian and Hobbesian. Both forms think that the content of our moral obligations can be determined by way of the idea of a hypothetical agreement or contract. Their primary differences lie in their conceptions of the authority of the contract. According to Hobbesian contractualism, the basis of morality can be understood as a hypothetical contract consisting of mutually advantageous rules of conduct. The content of such conventions is fixed by bargaining: each contractor wants the resulting agreement to protect their interests as much as possible while restricting their freedom as little as possible. The source of the contract’s authority derives from our implicit assent to it: the contract embodies the rules that we either have endorsed or would endorse if they had been put to us. Our implicit assent to a hypothetical contract is dependent on whether or not it is in our rational self-interest to endorse its rules. The principal benefits secured are protection from those who might harm us and assistance from those who might help us. Therefore, there is no direct (Hobbesian) rationale for contracting with those individuals sufficiently weaker than you are, for they would be in a position neither to help nor hinder you. We can refer to this as the equality of power condition. Neither is it in your interest to contract with those who are unable to understand the contract and so reciprocate in the ways it requires. We can call this the rationality condition. Thus, the authority of the contract is explained in terms of our tacit agreement to it; and our tacit agreement to the contract is explained in terms of our rational self-interest. But, in this context, rational selfinterest makes sense only if those with whom we contract satisfy the equality of power and rationality conditions. Since animals satisfy neither of these conditions, Hobbesian contractualism precludes their possession of rights.

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Kantian contractualism uses the idea of a contract in a very different way. The contract is not, as it is for the Hobbesian, a device that constitutes moral right or wrong but, rather, is a heuristic device whose function is to help us identify the content of the moral principles that we, in fact, (antecedently) endorse. Whereas the Hobbesian contractualist understands the contract as an account of how people come to have equal moral standing, the Kantian contractualist antecedently assumes that people have equal moral standing and uses the contractualist apparatus to elucidate precisely what this means. Rawls’s contractualism, I argued (Rowlands, 1998, 2009) comprises an unstable mixture of Kantian and Hobbesian elements. My contractualist case is built on a Rawlsian framework purged of these Hobbesian elements. The project is emphatically not to develop a contractualist case for nonhuman animals that would have been endorsed by or acceptable to John Rawls. Rather, the project is to show how a contractualist apparatus that contains recognizably Rawlsian elements can be used to underwrite a case for the moral claims of nonhuman animals. First, the Rawlsian elements. At the core of Rawls’s contractualism are the idea of the original position and the associated idea of the veil of ignorance. Properties such as sex, race, wealth, intellect, conception of the good, and so on are bracketed behind the veil. This bracketing is not plucked from thin air. Underlying it (and located in the pages immediately preceding his development of the social contract argument) is an intuitive equality argument: roughly, if a property is undeserved in the sense that its possessor is not responsible for its possession, then its possessor is not morally entitled to, or deserving of, whatever benefits (or penalties) accrue from that possession. The intuitive equality argument, for Rawls, underlies the ideal of equality of opportunity. Being born into a certain position in society is generally taken to be an undeserved – hence morally arbitrary – property. And so one should be neither benefited nor penalized by such a property. Rawls’ use of the intuitive equality argument is deployed to show that the ideal of equality of opportunity overlooks

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other significant sources of inequality: inequalities in natural talents and abilities are undeserved in precisely the same way as social, racial, and economic properties. If it is unjust for someone to benefit from possession of undeserved social, racial, economic, or gender properties, then it is equally unjust for them to benefit from possession of undeserved natural talents. From this idea, there is a strikingly simple neo-Rawlsian case for the moral claims of nonhuman animals: both rationality and species membership are undeserved properties. In the original position, therefore, one should not know whether one is a rational agent, and one should not know one’s species. That this argument is such an obvious one engenders an equally obvious puzzle: why should it be almost universally assumed that Rawlsian contractualism is incompatible with assigning direct moral status to nonhuman animals? The answer lies in a combination of (i) Rawls’ pronouncements, (ii) unexpurgated Hobbesian remnants in his theory, and a (iii) few assorted red herrings. Rawls is widely thought to reject the idea that animals can fall under the scope of a theory of justice. In fact, while this may be true of his later work, in A Theory of Justice this rejection is far more equivocal than is generally acknowledged. The small numbers of references to nonhuman animals are replete with qualifications: “Presumably,” “or so it is generally believed,” “it does seem,” and so on. And while Rawls is explicit that moral persons – persons having a “conception of the good, expressed in a rational plan of life . . . and capable of having a sense of justice” – are entitled to justice, he is equally explicit that being a moral person is only a sufficient, and not a necessary, condition of inclusion under the scope of a theory of justice (1971, pp.505–506). More important than what Rawls would or would not wish to claim about nonhuman animals is, of course, what his theory requires him to say. This is not a simple matter. I argued that his account comprises both Kantian and Hobbesian elements. Some of the commitments of his theory have a Kantian basis; the basis of others is Hobbesian. The reason Rawls was unwilling to recognize that rationality and species membership are undeserved properties and so should, by the

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intuitive equality argument, be excluded behind the veil of ignorance, is a residual Hobbesianism. One Hobbesian principle that Rawls never rejected was the idea that the contractual situation involves at least rough equality of power between contractors: the equality of power condition. This rough equality of power is part of the circumstances of justice. However, this condition is no part of a Kantian form of contractualism and, in other respects, Rawls’ theory takes the sort of Kantian turn that makes the equality of power condition difficult to sustain. The original position is sometimes envisaged as the coming together of a group of unencumbered individuals who then thrash out the terms of their association under the requisite conditions of ignorance. However, this hyperrealist conception of the original position is unwarranted (1971, p.138). To “enter” the original position is simply to reason in accordance with the appropriate restrictions (i.e., conditions of ignorance delimited by the intuitive equality argument). Accordingly, there is no requirement that the original position contain more than one contractor: “one or more persons can at any time enter the original position” (Ibid). If the original position need not contain more than one contractor, then the equality of power condition makes little sense in this (Kantian) context. So why does Rawls adhere to it? This seems to be an incongruous remnant of the Hobbesian vision of the contract as a means of securing personal advantage. It is there because we tacitly assume the contract makes no sense – and cannot be binding – unless we get out of it at least as much as we put in. This conception of the authority of the contract is a Hobbesian, rather than a Kantian, one. According to the rationality condition, only a creature capable of framing a contract can be a recipient of the protection offered by that contract. This too is a Hobbesian, rather than Kantian, idea. To be “in” the original position is merely to permit one’s means-end reasoning to be restricted by a certain form of (feigned) ignorance. To be rational in the contractual situation is no guarantee of subsequent rationality. I can “enter” the original position on Monday simply by subjecting my means-end reasoning to the appropriate conditions of ignorance. By Tuesday, having suffered some unfortunate misadventure, I might be incapable of doing this (ever) again. Thus, it is perfectly rational, when “in” the original position, to make arrangements for a future possible

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situation in which one is not rational. The idea that only creatures capable of framing a contract can be recipients of the protection afforded by the contract is one that has no place in a Kantian version of contractarianism. The idea is predicated on a conception of the authority of the contract as deriving from our tacit acceptance of it, and our tacit acceptance of it as grounded in prudential reasons. This is a Hobbesian idea, not a Kantian one. I have focused at length on the contractualist case since it is an especially interesting one: it can be – and has been – employed in the service of both political and ethical theory. D&K think the ethical/political distinction tracks the distinction between merely negative and positive obligations toward nonhuman animals. But if contractualism in its political guise can underwrite positive obligations toward nonhuman animals – that, we have seen, is the import of the shift of focus from the ethical to the political – then what possible reason could there be for thinking it cannot do this in its moral guise also? I suspect there is no such reason. In its moral form, the rights possessed by an individual – and therefore the obligations we have toward them – are a function of the choices that would be made by a rational agent under appropriate conditions of ignorance. There is no principled reason for supposing that such an agent will – still less must – restrict themselves to listing a set of negative obligations. (Indeed, in my 2002 book, employing a Kantian contractualist apparatus, I argued for the existence of several positive obligations with respect to companion animals in particular. See also my 2013 book).

2.7

Nonhuman Animals as Objects and Subjects

I agree with D&K that the distinction between positive and negative duties is an important one. No account of our moral commitments to nonhuman animals can afford to avoid our positive obligations. However, I don’t accept that this distinction is equivalent to, or adequately captured by the ethical/political distinction. It is true that many defenders of ART have emphasized negative duties at the expense of

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their positive counterparts. This, I have argued, is more a question of strategic emphasis rather than theoretical commitment. The ethical/political distinction does not lie at the heart of the change D&K are calling for. Ultimately, I suspect, neither does distinction between positive and negative duties. What is really at issue, I think, is a distinction between two conceptions of nonhuman animals. The first of these sees such animals as, first and foremost, objects of moral concern. Thought of in this way, nonhuman animals are the recipients of moral duties or obligations. They are things toward which we have obligations or duties – whether these are negative or positive. There is nothing incorrect about this view, of course: the arguments for ART are compelling. But this conception of nonhuman animals is, in an important way, incomplete. This incompleteness infects my version of contractualism. This was developed with the explicit goal of safeguarding the moral status of nonhuman animals even though – the assumption was – they are incapable of the sort of reciprocity that we generally take to go with being a moral and political subject: incapable, that is, of the sort of reciprocity that, many think, is a necessary condition of falling under the scope of the contract. The strategy was, therefore, to take reciprocity out of the equation: showing that the ability to reciprocate – in the sense of understanding and adhering to the terms of the contract – is not, in fact, required to fall under the scope or protection of the contract. The argument focused on what nonhuman animals lack and tried to show that, despite this lack, they still count morally. This focusing on lack is why the implicated view of nonhuman animals is incomplete. Crucially, this incompleteness is present even though the version of contractualism I defend is capable of underwriting positive duties to nonhuman animals as well as negative ones. This indicates that the distinction between positive and negative duties does not lie at the heart of the issue. D&K’s shift from the moral to the political and, in particular, the deployment of the concepts of citizenship, denizenship, and sovereignty – concepts central to some branches of political theory – is, in fact, a shift away from thinking of nonhuman animals as merely objects of moral concern to thinking of them as something more than this: to thinking of them as active members of society and as active participants in its shaping.

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That is, nonhuman animals are more than merely moral or political objects – objects of moral concern or political action – they are also moral and political subjects. Working out what it means for nonhuman animals to be moral and political subjects is, of course, far from a straightforward matter. A huge amount of work needs to be done in clarifying the concepts involved. What, for example, is the connection between the idea of a moral (or political) subject – in the sense in which that might be applicable to nonhuman animals – and more familiar concepts such as that of a moral (or political) agent? (Rowlands, 2012) There are serious problems with the idea that nonhuman animals can be moral agents, but what is left of the idea that they are moral actors or participants if they are not also agents? I think there is something important that is left – but working out what is no easy matter. In addition, there is the task of amassing and identifying the relevant empirical data that bears on the issue of under which concepts nonhuman animals can be thought of as falling (Bekoff & Pierce, 2009; de Waal, 2006). There are also formidable objections to be overcome to the very idea that nonhuman animals can be thought of as moral or political actors. (See Dixon, 2008, for some objections). This is a protracted project, and one still in its infancy. But the task is clear. How do we conceive of nonhuman animals as moral and political subjects – actors and participants in society, whether human or otherwise? One also, although it may be wishful thinking on my part, suspects that this is an idea whose time has come. If so, its advent will have almost certainly been hastened by D&K’s important book.

Bibliography Bekoff, M. & Pierce, J., 2009. Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. de Waal, F., 2006. Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dixon, B. A., 2008. Animals, Emotion and Morality. New York: Prometheus Books. Donaldson, S. & Kymlicka, W., 2012. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Kymlicka, W., 1989. Contractarianism. In P. Singer, ed., A Companion to Ethics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kymlicka, W., 1990. Contemporary Political Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Rawls, J., 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Regan, T., 1983. The Case for Animal Rights. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Rowlands, M., 1997. Contractarianism and Animal Rights. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 14(3), pp. 235–47. Rowlands, M., 1998. Animal Rights: A Philosophical Defense. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rowlands, M., 2002. Animals Like Us. London: Verso. Rowlands, M., 2009. Animal Rights: Moral Theory and Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Second, heavily revised, Paperback Edition of Rowlands (1998). Rowlands, M., 2012. Can Animals Be Moral?. New York: Oxford University Press. Rowlands, M., 2013. Animal Rights: All That Matters. London: Hodder. Singer, P., 1975. Animal Liberation. New York: Harper Collins. Mark Rowlands (D.Phil., Oxford University) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami. He is the author of eighteen books, translated into more than twenty languages, and over a hundred journal articles, book chapters, and reviews. His work in the philosophy of mind comprises several books, including The Body in Mind (Cambridge University Press, 1999), The Nature of Consciousness (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Externalism (Acumen, 2003), Body Language (MIT Press, 2006), The New Science of the Mind (MIT Press 2010), and Memory and the Self (Oxford University Press, 2016). His work in ethics and moral psychology includes Animal Rights (Macmillan, 1998), The Environmental Crisis (Macmillan, 2000), Animals Like Us (Verso, 2002), Can Animals Be Moral? (Oxford University Press, 2012), and A Good Life (Granta, 2015). His memoir, The Philosopher and the Wolf (Granta, 2008), became an international bestseller.

3 Far-Persons Gary Comstock

[At the London zoo] the keeper showed [Jenny, an orangutan] an apple, but would not give it her, whereupon she threw herself on her back, kicked & cried, precisely like a naughty child.–She then looked very sulky & after two or three fits of pashion, the keeper said, “Jenny if you will stop bawling & be a good girl, I will give you the apple.”– She certainly understood every word of this, &, though like a child, she had great work to stop whining, she at last succeeded, & then got the apple, with which she jumped into an arm chair & began eating it, with the most contented countenance imaginable.

Charles Darwin, letter to Miss Susan Darwin, March 1838 (Darwin & Barlow, 1946)

G. Comstock (*) Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_3

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Introduction: What’s It Like to Be a Pig?

Is Darwin right? Is Jenny the orangutan “precisely like” a naughty child? Can a nonhuman animal sulk, understand admonishments, and learn to control her emotions? Some biologists (Bateson, 2003) and philosophers (Griffiths, 1997) hypothesize that the behaviors of great apes have homologies with the behaviors of Homo sapiens, but this seems not to be Darwin’s claim. Darwin’s claim seems more radical: the mental, experiential, states of the orangutan and the child are the same. Should we believe Darwin about orangutans? And, if we should, what should we think about the mental states of our so-called food animals? Intuitively, Jenny seems to have more of what it takes to be a person than does, say, a pig. Even if Darwin is right about orangutans—they are like children— what about hogs and cows? Are the nonhuman animals we eat like children? To answer these questions we must define persons, see to what extent the great apes qualify, and ask to what extent other mammals qualify. What are persons? Do rights attach only to persons? Might individuals with less-than-personhood status deserve the special protections rights afford? In his book, Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition, Gary Varner provides nuanced and scientifically informed answers to these questions (Varner, 2012). I find his interpretations of the range and diversity of nonhuman animal consciousness compelling and will lean heavily on them in what follows. Varner understands and successfully eludes the two main interpretive mistakes: anthropomorphism, or ascribing human characteristics to nonhuman animals who lack them, and anthropodenial (de Waal, 1999), not ascribing human characteristics to beings who have them.1

1 Over- and under-interpreting the data are only two of the most visible pitfalls. Science itself can be misleading if we naively assume that it will tell us all we need to know. As Tom Nagel famously observed, reductive physicalist accounts of, say, bat consciousness may explain and predict bat behavior but they may not be of any help whatsoever with our question, that is, what is a bat’s internal subjective experience like (Nagel, 1974)? That said, science is critical for our task, in which we must triangulate three sources of information: systematic accounts of animal anatomical structures and neurological processes, neutral observations of animal behavior, and imaginative

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Here is my strategy in this chapter. I intend to show that it is not difficult to enter other mammals’ minds if we select the right kinds of human experiences as analogues. For nearly all humans have some of the same experiences as some other mammals. As my test case of other mammals I select pigs because they are the mammalian species slaughtered in the United States in the largest numbers.2 I wager that if fairminded observers come to understand what pig consciousness is like, they will also come to acknowledge the rights not only of pigs but of all individuals I call “far-persons.” It is beyond the scope of this chapter to mount a thorough defense of my claim. Here, I will only describe what a human far-person is and suggest that their mental states are a stepping stone to the mental states of other animals. I agree with Temple Grandin, the Colorado State University animal science professor, when she writes that humans with mental limitations such as autism—a disorder with which she copes— are “a kind of way station on the road from animals to humans” (Grandin, 2005).

3.2

Persons

Varner defines a person as an individual with a biographical sense of self and, following a well-developed philosophical tradition, argues that individuals of this sort deserve special treatment. The concept of a person, then, has two components, normative and descriptive. Normatively, persons are individuals who have achieved a certain kind of status and, for this reason, they must be treated in particular ways. In ordinary moral discourse, we express a person’s status by saying that she has rights, valid claims to protection from being used by others,

renditions of how it may feel to be the animal in question (cf. Akins, 1993). This is the project I pursue here, however sketchily. 2 According to the United States Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, US slaughterhouses killed 38,399,000 hogs in 2015. Of other mammals, cattle were the species killed in the greatest numbers, at 9,350,000. http://www.humanesociety.org/news/ resources/research/stats_slaughter_totals.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

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claims that should rarely be denied. According to two-level utilitarianism, the ethical theory Varner defends, “rights” are important concepts in ordinary moral discourse and indispensable to what Varner calls the Intuitive Level System (ILS).3 What capacities must someone have to be a person? Descriptively, a person is an autobiographical being, an individual who understands the serial progression of her experiences as a temporal whole. This narrative self-understanding is active as well as passive, for persons can shape their lives into the kind of life they want it to be. To have a biological sense of self, an individual must be “rational and self-conscious, autonomous in the sense of having second-order desires, and a moral agent” (Varner, 2012). Varner argues that existing evidence from animal studies suggests that no nonhuman animals have these capacities. He cautions us that not all of the evidence is in yet, and that we should not be surprised if future scientific discoveries cause us to change our minds. In the meantime, he continues, there are reasons to be skeptical that any nonhuman animals will be found to have “narrative self-constitution” (Schechtman, 1996). For being a person means not only that I have desires and understand myself as having a story I am living out in pursuit of those desires. It also means that I have desires about my desires and understand myself to be crafting a story—my story— for myself. In this way I am not what Harry Frankfurt calls a “wanton”, a cognitively limited human being without preferences about one’s preferences and, so, no ability to rank them (Frankfurt, 1971). Unlike wantons, persons care about what sort of person they are, and about what others think of them. Persons perceive gaps between their present selves and their ideal selves, and we occasionally try to elevate our wants and desires to match our ideal wants and desires. To live as an active “narrating” self I must be rational, autonomous, and self-conscious. One way to understand this claim, a way not 3

ILS rules are the rules we ought to adopt to govern our everyday behavior. The ILS system differs from what Varner, following R. M. Hare, calls the critical level, the set of rules and principles we adopt when we have the time and resources actually to try to maximize the good. When thinking critically, we may realize that, in extremely rare situations, achieving the overall good might require us to violate rights. The details of two-level utilitarianism are beyond the scope of our focus here, but I note that the utilitarian rules needed to protect persons have, as Varner puts it, “a deontological flavor.”

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inconsistent with Varner’s view, I think, is to focus on the relationship between narrative, language, and time. Narratives are made of propositions and propositions are made of words. It takes more time to form and understand a proposition than it takes to form or understand a word, and more time still to understand a narrative. Words can be used to name objects, and such nouns can in turn be conjoined with verbs to form phrases. The order of the words can be changed to change the meaning of the phrase, and new phrases can be inserted into other phrases to form sentences. Sentences can be strung together into narratives which invariably have plots. Without the ability to think in plots, I arguably do not have sufficiently developed linguistic tools to understand the nuanced interplay of temporal sequences necessary for another capacity. The capacity to be a moral agent requires that I understand the plot in which my decisions conflict with other characters’ decisions in scenes that involve our mutual entitlements and responsibilities. Plots emerge when persons threaten each other and when we must respond to such threats—cooperatively or agonistically. Suppose, as seems true, that children take many years to acquire the complex linguistic skills necessary for narrative self-constitution. Suppose that only animals with large brains living in complex social networks are capable of evolving to the point where language teachers will devote years of their lives to developing the ability of the young narratively to constitute themselves. If these are the facts about what it takes to produce a person, it is unlikely that we will discover any nonhuman animals outside the sphere of human culture with a biographical sense of self. So neither orangutans nor pigs, it seems, can be persons if persons come into being only as individuals grasp the fact that other individuals are, like them, conscious moral agents capable of shaping their own biographies. For to grasp this fact, a person needs a theory of their own mind that provides the story by which they form the desire to have correct, just, right desires, desires that properly guide their treatment of others. Persons are oriented, therefore, by the past, that is, by their conscious memories of how they have acted, morally and immorally. Such memories imbue a person’s present with a valence that orients them to the future.

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Without a conscious past, an individual has no impetus. But without a conscious future, one has no trajectory. If pigs have only procedural, habitual, memories, they do not have the kinds of cognitive resources necessary to understand where they are, psychologically speaking, much less form a picture of where they want to go. If pigs do not consciously remember where and when specific events occurred or what and why they behaved in certain ways toward other pigs, they cannot access their past in the way required to adjust their behaviors to their ideals in the future. They cannot, if this account is correct, deliberate, for example, about the implications of their past conflicts with other pigs. Nor can they try out alternative hypotheses about how they should act toward an agonistic conspecific in the future in order to rectify past wrongs or prevent future trouble. If pigs lack episodic memory and executive control of desires, they do not have the kind of agency necessary to have a future of their own. How would we know if a nonhuman animal were an autonomous agent capable of reflecting on her past, examining her motives and intentions, and making future decisions in line with her values and ideals? Varner suggests some empirical measures; the mark test as a way of assessing self-recognition, story-telling about one’s past as a test for episodic memory, caching food for future use as a sign of future planning, and deception of conspecifics as a harbinger of theory of mind. Before we look at the evidence in each of these areas, let us say a further word about theory of mind, the ability to understand others’ behaviors as motivated by their mental states. Having an understanding of my own mind goes hand in hand with having a theory of others’ minds, especially if the ability to understand the behavior of others as motivated by their mental states is a corequisite for understanding my own behavior as motivated by my mental states (cf. Carruthers, 2011). If a person’s life has a narrative trajectory that gets its direction from conscious awareness of one’s past and future, and this self-conscious narrative trajectory is itself dependent upon understanding the lives of others as having a similar narrative structure, then the self-conscious capacity to think of oneself as a character in a story, made possible by the mind-reading capacity to think of others as characters in their stories, has important ethical implications.

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The normative features of personhood arise with the appearance of theory of mind. For the trajectory of a person’s life is aimed by them at goals they establish. It is the basis, too, of their personal understanding of what a good life is for them. To this extent, we are in control of our own behavior—or, at least, it certainly feels that we are. Whether we in fact have free will is immaterial to the pain we feel when others interfere with our plans or in other ways frustrate us in our pursuit of our goals. Being bound physically or psychologically against our will is, all else equal, a form of enslavement. Enslaving someone is prima facie wrong for many reasons, including that it violates their autonomy. To live a good life, agents who feel they are free should be allowed to think freely and to make decisions for themselves. For when others seek to control my thoughts and actions, they diminish my happiness and violate my right to liberty. Individuals who do not experience the kind of freedom that comes with a biographical sense of self cannot be disrespected in the same way that persons can be disrespected. For if one never has the feeling of freedom, how can one feel its loss? If pigs do not aspire to live according to certain ideals the reason may be that they do not have the capacity to exercise executive control over their behavior. If pigs cannot choose to inhibit lesser desires in order to satisfy more important desires, they cannot choose, either, to govern their behavior according to their ideals. In sum, persons have a biographical sense of self. They are rational and self-conscious, have desires about desires, and feel that they can act freely as moral agents. The mental tools necessary to constitute oneself narratively are concepts and words, phrases, and propositions used to describe good and bad characters and desirable and undesirable plots. Because persons have the feelings of freedom, they are morally responsible for their actions. For all of these reasons, persons are entitled to special protections.

3.3

Near-Persons

Individuals who lack a biographical sense of self but have what Varner calls a “robust autonoetic consciousness” cannot narratively self-constitute because they lack the requisite long-term episodic memories, long-term

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personal goals, and the feelings of being free to shape their narrative. However, because they have a rich, deep sense of the recent past and because they have procedural memories and facial recognition, they can become conscious of themselves and others. They are capable of learning how to perform new tasks, of taking pleasure in their successes in this area, and capable of making plans for the intermediate future. By “intermediate future” I mean, roughly, the rest of today and, a bit more precisely, a future that stretches out as long as a few dozen minutes and perhaps a few hours, but not beyond the onset of the next sleep-cycle. Robust autonoetic consciousness requires that an individual possess some of a person’s cognitive capacities, including the ability to understand concepts and to interpret others’ bodily gestures and vocalizations as meaningful signs, that is, words or directives. Words are sounds emitted by a sender who uses the representation to designate objects to a receiver. Directives are sounds used to request or demand specific responses. Near-persons understand representation and causality. What they do not understand are propositional attitudes, the linking of nouns and verbs to form grammatical phrases. Grammar allows us to form novel propositions by doing nothing more than recursively changing the order of words and phrases. Recursion allows us to embed phrases within phrases, and other phrases within those phrases—and so on, and so on—almost without end. With words, phrases, and propositions, one can create narrative plots full of characters enacting what Aristotle called “drama.” Plots, moral agency, and characters all become possible with narrative, but only with narrative. Without plots and characters, with only the lower-level cognitive resources of words and rudimentary grammar, the possibility of an animal narratively constituting itself disappears. Only autonoetic consciousness remains. Varner reviews the evidence about nonhuman animals’ use of language and concludes that no nonhuman animals have the ability to understand propositions, much less conjoin them into narratives. It is clear, however, to me at least, that many pigs as well as orangutans understand gestures and vocalizations as full-blown representations, that is, concepts and, further, as words and directives. I employ those two words intentionally without any ambiguity in their meaning. Nor do

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I commit any anthropomorphizing mistake in using them. For while nonhuman animals apparently lack a full-blown biographical sense of self and are not characters, they need not have narrative in order to have exactly the same semantic resources possessed by human near-persons. When a vervet monkey vocally signals to another the presence of a specific predator, such as a leopard (or eagle, or snake), the monkey is using a word with pragmatic force (Seyfarth & Cheney, 2012). She is, literally, issuing a warning using a word that, translated into English, would be something like “leopard!” (or eagle! or snake!). Some nonhuman animals also seem to perceive, understand, and represent their bodies as their own and so to be self-conscious. Individuals who pass the mark test (by wiping away a mark on their face when seen in a mirror) seemingly must have a memory of what their body looks like and the thought, “that image in the mirror is my face.” For if they see a strange mark on their forehead and try to remove it, they must have not only a procedural, habitual memory of how to wipe their forehead but an episodic memory as well of how their face is supposed to appear. “My face is not supposed to look like that face.” And it would seem they must further have some anticipation about how their face will look again in the near-term future after they have wiped the mark away. “Soon the image in the mirror will look like me again.” All of these claims about the capacities of some mammals (in this case, great apes) are consistent with the claim those animals have a robust proprioceptive sense of their bodies, an intermediate past, and an intermediate future. But these capacities are a far cry from propositional knowledge, long-term temporal horizons extending beyond the next few hours, executive control of one’s behavior, narrative understanding and creativity, and moral agency. A chimp may desire to wash her face now but she does not want, for all we know, to clean up her social image starting first thing next week. Orangutan Jenny doubtless has several stories that could be told about her life, but every such story will be the creation of a human person. Her life goes well or poorly for her and she has a welfare that can be promoted or undermined. But if, as I assume, orangutans lack second-order desires, Jenny does not have desires about which of various life-stories open to her

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she would prefer to pursue. Nor does she have preferences about which sort of reputation she would like to have among her peers if she cannot entertain various visions of the good life or freely choose to pursue one ideal self over another. Consequently, Jenny does not and cannot tell herself or others the story of her life. Which nonhuman animals may be near-persons like Jenny? Reviewing the evidence, Varner argues that the category includes great apes, cetaceans, elephants, and, perhaps, corvids and parrots. To defend his claim that great apes do not have the kind of episodic memory required to have a biographical sense of one’s past, he examines the evidence provided for believing that Koko, the gorilla, has narrative and uses it to communicate deeply emotional personal memories from the distant past. Koko was five years old in July, 1976. According to Francine “Penny” Patterson, who worked more closely with Koko than anyone, in 1976 Koko narrated an event that had happened three days prior: (P = Patterson; K = Koko) P: What did you do to Penny? K: BITE. P: You admit it? (Koko had earlier called the bite a SCRATCH.) K: SORRY BITE SCRATCH. (Penny shows the mark on her hand; it does resemble a scratch.) K: WRONG BITE. P: Why bite? K: BECAUSE MAD. P: Why mad? K: DON’T KNOW (Patterson & Cohn, 1994, p.282)

Koko’s one and two word responses here, drawn from her knowledge of more than a thousand American Sign Language (ASL) signs, clearly show an understanding of concepts, words, and causal relations (What did you do to Penny? BITE). However, as Varner notes, there is no evidence here of episodic memory, in which one remembers oneself at a particular place at a particular time. Koko is using ASL which, Varner tells us, does not include tenses. Consequently, he observes, “temporal references must

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generally be inferred from the context, and in these studies, that context is provided by the English sentences uttered by the human trainers” (Varner, 2012, p.155). Varner has his doubts about whether Koko is here communicating a conscious memory of what happened three days ago. Rather, Koko may simply be making signs she knows will succeed in eliciting the responses Koko desires from Patterson. But if Koko is not capable of expressing memories of events three days in the past, she is able to communicate her emotions. When asked, “How do you feel?” she will respond appropriately, for example, with FINE, or HUNGRY, or SAD. In children, internal immediate-state language reporting one’s mood emerges in the third and fourth years. We are on firm ground, then, in thinking Koko has words and concepts, social communication, rationality in the sense of cause and effect thinking, emotions, awareness, and beliefs and desires. But she does not seem to have the second-order desires, executive control, or autonomy required for a biographical sense of self. Varner is similarly cautious about long-term memories allegedly recounted by a gorilla, Michael, who was captured by poachers as an infant. Patterson made a video of Michael allegedly recounting this memory of the incident in which Michael’s mother was killed. In the recording we see Michael’s signings rendered in the following captions provided by Patterson: “SQUASH MEAT GORILLA. MOUTH TOOTH. CRY SHARP-NOISE LOUD. BAD THINK-TROUBLE LOCK-FACE. CUT/NECK LIP(GIRL) HOLD” (The Gorilla Foundation, n.d.). Varner, noting the ambiguity of the string of words, observes that “even Patterson’s sympathetic co-author Eugene Linden doubts her claim that Michael was telling the story about his mother’s death” (Ibid, pp.155–156). Varner concludes that in spite of such anecdotes and Patterson’s claim that Michael told her this story on several occasions, there is “no good evidence that apes understand or use language to express thoughts about the non-immediate past” (Ibid, pp.156). If Varner is wrong and Michael is recounting an episodic memory, Michael has an important claim to personhood. If Varner is right, perhaps Michael is just making signs he thinks Patterson is subconsciously nudging him to make, perhaps in Clever Hans fashion. In that event, Michael may not have episodic memories of the traumatic events.

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Rather, he may only be signing in sequences he has learned satisfy Patterson’s promptings. In sum, near-persons are sentient, rational beings with a clear sense of the world around them. They learn from their experiences and are conscious of events in the intermediate past. They can make plans concerning the intermediate future. But they lack what persons have, a full-featured biographical sense of self. Near-persons do not have second-order desires about their desires, episodic memories, or plans for tomorrow. They do not have a theory of mind, cannot tell others stories about themselves, and cannot shape their lives in accordance with their values.

3.4

The Merely Sentient

Varner’s “merely sentient” nonhuman animals are individuals who live entirely in the moment. Attracted to favorable stimuli and repulsed from aversive stimuli, the merely sentient are neither able to exercise control over the external forces that move them around in the world nor are they conscious of those forces. The merely sentient do not have emotions, rationality, or a robust sense of the world around them. They do not learn from their experiences, recognize the faces of conspecifics, or engage in social communication. Which nonhuman animals are merely sentient? Whether fish feel pains and pleasures is a matter of some dispute but assuming that fish are sentient, this capacity may be the full extent of their mental powers. In his earlier book, In Nature’s Interests?, Varner observes that fish fail tests of conscious problem solving, such as multiple reversal trials, and suggests that if they learn from memories at all they learn only implicitly and subconsciously (Varner, 1998). If fish feel pain but have only the vaguest sense of immediate past events and an even less explicit and shorter view of the future, fish are merely sentient. What is it like to be merely sentient? Can one think about one’s future at all? Here is what Varner writes: The merely sentient may experience a sense of ease based on what psychologists call ‘implicit memory’ or anxiety based on what we might

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call ‘implicit anticipation.’ An implicit memory is one that affects one’s choices, but without being available for conscious recall. (Varner, 2012, p.162)

Squirrels, Varner claims, do not plan for the future, have episodic memories, narrative autobiographies, or theory of mind. They are not persons. But neither, Varner surmises, are they near-persons because there is no evidence that they recognize themselves in mirrors, have personally indexed memories, or plan for the future. They have implicit memories and implicit anticipations, but these capacities are not sufficient to form conscious plans for the future. A squirrel hoarding acorns consciously desires “to get each acorn into its stash” but “is completely unconscious of the purpose of its hoarding behavior” (Ibid, p.164). Since, Varner continues, the squirrel is not aware of the reason for its behavior, or of the long-term benefits of stashing, the animal consequently: …can achieve no sense of satisfaction when it has stashed enough acorns. It cannot, in effect, say “There, I’ve accomplished that! Since that (the goal of laying up enough acorns for the winter) is something of which it is not conscious.” (Ibid)

Varner allows that the squirrel can “achieve a sense of satisfaction” from getting an acorn into her stash. Squirrels have simple desires (“get this acorn into that hole”) and simple beliefs about cause and effect (“dropping this object into that gash will get this acorn into that hole”). But Varner does not allow, nor does it seem true, that the squirrel can get satisfaction from having put in an honest day’s labor, as it were. If the squirrel does not possess the intermediate-level concepts of “a day’s work” or “the cold season”—much less the higher-level concepts and grammar necessary to form propositions (“If I fail to put in a sufficient number of good days of work I will run out of acorns and face catastrophe in the cold season to come”)—the squirrel cannot have the narrative knowledge required to constitute herself as a subject who endures across a series of temporally discrete events. Given what we now know about squirrels, it seems right to say that they are not capable of the kind of experiences had by Jenny and Koko.

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To summarize, the merely sentient feel pain and pleasure but lack the ability to reflect on them. Their temporal horizons stretch outward from the present, but no further into the past than a few seconds and hardly, if at all, into the future. They lack a robust autonoetic consciousness.

3.5

The Problem, Restated: Are Pigs Merely Sentient?

Varner suggests that while we presently do not have evidence for autonoetic consciousness in any nonhumans other than the candidates for near-personhood, such evidence may be forthcoming as we become more skilled at testing for the target capacities. Meanwhile, he points out, we must make policies regarding the so-called food animals. He suggests that we adopt what he calls the “Rumsfeld response,” namely, that we do the best we can, forming regulations based on the evidence we have rather than the evidence we wish we had. By implication, then, since there are only two categories available, near-persons and merely sentient, Varner’s framework would categorize pigs as merely sentient. At least for the moment. And, at least for the moment, this understanding of pig consciousness would allow the killing of pigs for food since the value of a pig would, in Peter Singer’s word, be replaceable (Singer, 1993). As long as one merely sentient animal is brought into the world every time one like her is dispatched, overall value is conserved. Varner does not claim that pigs are merely sentient, but he finds no experimental evidence to date that pigs pass the mark test, attribute false beliefs to conspecifics, communicate to each other about their plans, and so on. A positive case for the conclusion that pigs are merely sentient and replaceable can be found in the kinds of arguments made by Donald Davidson and R. G. Frey, arguments that coincide with Varner’s assumptions about squirrels, that the animals lack intermediate- and higher-level concepts such as “a day’s work”, “the young ones to be born tomorrow”, and “putting in a good day’s work preparing for the births to come” (Davidson, 2001; Frey, 1980). If pigs lack intermediate-level

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concepts it is probably because they lack the linguistic capacity to form the phrases necessary to have the concepts in question. Lacking grammar and propositions, a sow cannot have a sense of satisfaction in reviewing her day’s activities. Nor can she take pleasure in the fact that she has, for example, “built an enviable nest in preparation for the piglets”, even though this is precisely what she has done. Why can’t she take such pleasure? Because her implicit memories and implicit anticipations are neither temporally extended in the way required nor is she capable of hooking them consciously together into a narrative. Neither are they pegged by the pig to herself. Consider a free-range sow, Oreo, building her nest (HeatherF27, 2007). Oreo apparently does not consciously plan for the future birth of her offspring even as she aims to get this mouthful of straw into the place she thinks it ought to go. For she is not conscious of the purpose of her movements in serially taking mouthful after mouthful of straw and placing them in a large pile. If this is the right description of how it feels to be a pig making a nest, as I believe it is, the sow is conscious of goals she aims to achieve in the next few dozen minutes but not conscious of any overarching goal she may achieve by successfully completing a series of such acts. Oreo can achieve satisfaction from successful completion of the proper placement of this mouthful of straw but not from successful completion of behaviors we would call, were they performed by a woman, maternal activities in preparation for tomorrow’s births. To paraphrase Varner, a sow cannot, in effect, say, “There, I’ve accomplished that!” since that (the goal of preparing a warm nest in preparation for partuition) is something of which the sow is not conscious (cf. Varner, 2012, p.164). If all of this is correct, how it feels to be a squirrel or pig would be the same as how it feels to be a fish. But is this correct? Isn’t the nest building behavior itself evidence that Oreo has intermediate-term beliefs and desires? For it is essential to our description of her behavior that she is building a nest, an activity that takes hours to complete. Given her behavior, mustn’t we allow that the sow has temporal horizons of a sufficient length and complexity to achieve this end? Her fussing with various configurations of the straw, hour after hour, strongly suggests she is making judgments about how well she is achieving the overall end. She does not serially grasp mouthful

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after mouthful of straw and randomly place one here and another there. Nor does she suspend operations after a few minutes, turning her attention to other matters. If she behaved in this way, we might think she was not building a nest. Were she to spend every waking hour moving straw hither and yon, all day long whether pregnant or not, we might think her a wanton who knows not what she does. But these are not proper descriptions of Oreo’s behavior. First, she is pregnant; there is a reason for her behavior. Second, she pursues her straw moving behavior all morning. Third, she is free to stop and start as she wishes; she is neither playing around aimlessly nor anxiously pacing stereotypically. Fourth, she does not cease what she is doing until a structure sufficient to warm her coming offspring is in place. The evidence is that Oreo has in mind a project that will take her many minutes, perhaps hours, to finish. And this is evidence that points to an important difference between porcine and fish consciousness. I can think of no clearer way to put the difference than in temporal terms. Whereas the “temporal window” of some fish is, according to some observers, confined to a few seconds, the temporal window of the pig stretches out for many minutes, perhaps as far as an hour. At the beginning of her work, Oreo initiates a project that she cannot accomplish now. And to make good decisions about which step to take next, she must represent what she has built so that she can compare it with the image of what she intends to build. The structure she foresees will require for its completion dozens of minutes of activity on her part, activity of which she is conscious. Or so the evidence would suggest. Hold on, one may object. The argument thus far has been based on anecdotal evidence and arm-chair philosophy. Fair enough. Let us consider a controlled experiment. In a maze test conducted with two sows who forage together on a daily basis, researchers placed two buckets behind a series of barriers (Mendl, et al., 2010). Only one bucket contained food. One pig, whom I will call Informed, was allowed to search the arena to find which bucket had the goods. She was then removed from the pen. Soon thereafter the arena was reopened and Informed was allowed back in. This time, however, she was accompanied by her larger mate, call the

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mate Uninformed. The researchers’ first question was, Can Uninformed figure out that Informed knows where the food is and exploit that knowledge in her attempt to eat? The answer is yes. The naïve animal followed the smaller animal, apparently intuiting both that (a) Informed was hungry, and (b) Informed knew where the reward was located. The researchers discovered something else. After several iterations of the trial, Informed began to exhibit behaviors suggesting that she was reading Uninformed’s mind. Upon entering the arena, Informed resisted the impulse to head straight for the food. She took a meandering path and did not head straightaway for the bucket. Was she trying to throw off her heavier mate? There is no other plausible explanation. Whereas Informed would initially go straight to the food, soon she began secretive maneuvers. She’d move first behind a barrier and, keeping a steady eye on her mate, wait until Uninformed was out of sight. She would then, and only then, dart for the food. Does Informed have the discriminative ability to see the world from Uninformed’s perspective? Are her deceptive movements’ evidence that she can shift her point of view to another pig’s point of view? Clearly Informed is inquisitive and attentive, conscious of her surroundings, and able to learn the locations of objects. But she may also be suppressing a strong desire to eat believing that doing so will allow her, in the long run, to get more food. If this is what she is doing, then Informed is consciously foreseeing the future, traveling mentally forward in time, imagining herself alone at the trough. She is also rank ordering her preferences, exercising executive control of the desires on which she chooses to act. If she has these capacities, she may be thinking the equivalent of “I must move my body over in this direction, watch for my opportunity, and then run quickly to the bucket”. And if she has these capacities, she is capable of seeing two possible future scenarios— one in which she is alone with the reward, one in which she is accompanied by Uninformed. She is also capable of consciously choosing the future scenario she most desires, and she is capable of purposely controlling her emotions in order to achieve it. On this interpretation, Informed has the abilities to form hypotheses about how to achieve her goals, consciously to decide on the path she thinks most likely to help her achieve her chosen end, rank order her preferences, read

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another pig’s mind, and act on the preference she has given highest priority. Can Informed think these thoughts? I doubt it. The current evidence does not support such a conclusion. While we might understand a person’s analogous behavior as motivated by the kinds of cognitive states just described, we have little evidence at present to think that Informed has the ability to understand other pigs’ behaviors as motivated by mental states. In the absence of such evidence, the anthropomorphizing dimensions of the interpretation are unwarranted. If we assume Morgan’s Canon, as we should, we must prefer simpler, lower-level explanations over more complicated explanations. The rule is only to attribute additional, higher-level, second-order psychological capacities when no sufficient lower-level explanations are available (Karin-D’Arcy, 2005; Morgan, 1903). However, in the food-seeking behavior, one can explain the pig’s movements in terms of first-order weak and strong beliefs and desires (Carruthers, 2008). For Informed has two conflicting desires: a desire to eat now while sharing with a mate, and a stronger desire to eat later while not sharing with a mate. Informed has two consistent beliefs: a strong belief that if she runs directly to the food she will have to share it, and a strong belief that if she first deceives her mate she will not have to share it. So, given her beliefs and her strongest desire, she acts on the stronger desire. We need not attribute a theory of mind to Informed to explain her behaviors because her behaviors can each be explained in terms of “world-directed” beliefs. World-directed beliefs are beliefs about objects in the world as opposed to subject-directed beliefs, which are beliefs about subjects—other minds or persons. Nor need we postulate that Informed has the capacity for executive control of her preferences because the first-order, world-directed interpretation just offered will suffice to explain her movements. Informed forms one association over the course of several trials that if food is in location X and no other pigs are in the arena, the best course of action is Y, to run straight to the food. She forms a second association that if food is in location X and other pigs are in the arena, the best course of action is Z, to meander away from the food, to monitor the other pig’s location and when its head is positioned in a certain way, to run straight to the food. If so, Uninformed’s

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behavior is causally determined by whichever set of environmental conditions obtains. A deflationary interpretation of Informed’s behavior inspired by Morgan’s Canon undermines the claim that she has all of the psychological capacities of a near-person. But it does not undermine the claim that she has some of a near-person’s cognitive skills. To the contrary, it is accurate to say that Informed feels hungry, desires to try to lose her mate, and believes that moving away from the food will buy her precious competitor-free seconds at the trough. While the sow does not have robust autonoetic consciousness, however, she has more than mere sentience. She is able to formulate hypotheses, hold them in mind, and choose among them. She is able to defer acting on immediate desires to make possible the satisfaction of longer-term desires. With respect to its duration, mammalian consciousness is unlike fish consciousness. First, unlike fish, pigs and squirrels have conceptual representations of objects such as acorns and sheaves of straw. Second, they have the short-term projects of getting this acorn into her stash and placing this sheaf of straw in an advantageous position. Third, they can recognize faces and respond to others. They have basic social emotions such as happiness and sadness. Fourth, they have basic communicative mechanisms they can consciously deploy to alert and inform conspecifics of dangers and opportunities. Fifth, they can use their communicative mechanisms to deceive others. Sixth, they can learn to maximize rewards by systematically mirroring the choice that was rewarded on the just-completed trial (Varner, 1998). As these capacities are not available to the merely sentient, we need a new category to represent these nonhuman animals.

3.6

Far-Persons

A far-person is an individual with non-narrative experience, or what I will call “lyrical” experience. A lyrical experience has a short duration with a “minute” temporal horizon stretching no more than an hour or two into the past and several minutes into the future. Lyrical experiences are simple and often relaxed, or diluted. That said, these short simple

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experiences can also be intense, concentrated, powerful. The “of the moment” experiences of far-persons can be profoundly pleasurable and horrifyingly painful. But they are not foreseen and their after-effects do not persist in conscious memory. Far-persons cannot recall their experiences later. They cannot organize their lives so as to produce more pleasurable experiences or fewer painful experiences. Lyrical experiences do not involve episodic memories or episodic anticipations. They do require the ability to become habituated to new circumstances, to learn new skills, and to develop novel beliefs and desires based on implicit memories. On the basis of such unconscious psychological capacities, individuals can form conscious hypotheses and set goals for the short-term future. Lyrical experiences are laden with value and often involve the so-called four basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, and fear or surprise (Jack, et al., 2014). Finally, lyrical experiences involve awareness of one’s achievement; far-persons can take pride in their successes and be frustrated by their failures. Like near-persons, far-persons are sentient and conscious. They have beliefs, desires, and emotions. They understand causal relations and can reason about the best ways to achieve their objectives. They have a point of view; they can remember the faces of their conspecifics and what those conspecifics were doing a minute or two ago. However, unlike near-persons, far-persons lack a robust autonoetic consciousness. They cannot see their bodies from another’s perspective, do not have desires about their desires, and lack temporal horizons stretching beyond the present hour or two. A far-person’s memory cannot index one’s self to yesterday, placing one’s body in relation to temporally-ordered events or use the past as the basis for tomorrow’s plans. The individual a far-person is today has few if any conscious psychological connections with the individual they were yesterday or will be when they next awake. Before we proceed I must clarify an important issue. Far-persons are not non-persons.4 Non-persons are nonconscious organisms whose

I depart here from the way Varner uses this term. He uses “non-persons” to describe any individual who is not a person. I use it, instead, to refer more narrowly to that set of sentient individuals that lack consciousness altogether and, therefore, any traits of far-persons. 4

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autonomic systems maintain homeostasis and respond to environmental changes by moving toward attractive stimuli and away from aversive stimuli. Non-persons may be sentient but their lack of consciousness means that their pains and pleasures are not accessible to them. There is, in short, no “them” there, as it were, no central information gathering and processing system to integrate across time the organism’s mental states, if it has any. Non-persons, as I say, may or may not be sentient, but they utterly lack concepts, words, beliefs, desires, and emotions. Their ability to respond to environmental signals is to be explained as blind movement determined by physical forces. Humans who exist from birth to death in permanently vegetative states are non-persons for, apart from their physical resemblance to us, they are not recognizable as the kind of beings we are. Allow me one example. JD was born in 1959 unable to swallow, move, or vocalize. By her twenty-third birthday she had made no progress. She lay in bed, permanently comatose until she died at age 27. She learned one lesson when the nurses who cared for her decided to train her to signal them when she eliminated urine or feces. Under their tutelage, JD “learned” to squeeze a button when she was wet. Apart from this one accomplishment, however, JD showed no signs of habituation, procedural memory, or short-term desires. She never reached out to others, spoke, or held objects. She did not swallow when prompted, cry when poked, or laugh when tickled. She did not try to adjust herself in bed, turn away from light or toward a voice. She did not try to make the room temperature warmer or cooler. The nurses who trained her to signal them when she needed changing did not regard her button-pushing movements as conscious or intentional. Rather, they thought of them as Pavlovian automatic reflexes, conditioned responses to a stimulus. JD died in 1986 of complications related to pneumonia, never having exhibited any of the most rudimentary signs of being a farperson (Comstock, 2009, 2010). Apparently, human organisms can exist for decades not only without becoming far-persons but without ever having the potential to become one.

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We must be very careful before deciding an individual is a nonperson for we know of many cases of persons unable to communicate or move because of physical limitations. In cases involving neurological damage, such as “locked-in” syndrome and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, persons are unable to let others know they are psychologically intact. These cases are not the cases I have in mind when referring to non-persons. Far-persons, as I say, are neither merely sentient nor non-persons. They have beliefs and desires, and can act rationally. They understand cause and effect and can recognize faces. They have lyrical experiences and temporal horizons, however minute. Table 3.1 summarizes their relationship to persons, near-persons, and non-persons. I turn now to a normative question.

3.7

What Is the Value of Lyrical Experience?

To answer this question let us briefly survey three human cases that, I suggest, are candidates for far-person status. Brooke Greenberg was born in 1993 with an unknown neurological condition diagnosed only as “Syndrome X”. She died at twenty years old, never having weighed more than sixteen pounds or having attained the mental capacities of more than a one-year-old (Walker, et al., 2009). The seventeen-year-old Brooke recognized family members and demonstrated object constancy by, for example, tracking the dress she preferred when her mother would playfully hide it behind another dress. She enjoyed watching television with her sisters, gave appropriate if child-like responses to their simple commands and requests, and vocalized her displeasure at faces and events that displeased her (Bethge, 2010). She produced few sounds, if any, recognizable as words (Brown, 2009), but could vocally express to others an emotional repertoire that included affection, fear, and anger. To try to understand how it feels to be a far-person, imaginatively recreate the point of view of a one-year-old. Just now, for example, picture Brooke trying to answer her mother’s question about which outfit she likes best. Her mother holds up two dresses. Brooke nods in the general direction

SIMPLE MINDS Unified perspectives consisting of first-order beliefs and desires Have words: Understand concepts, obey commands, issue warnings Facial recognition Six basic emotions Form hypotheses and choose rationally among them to satisfy desires COMPLEX MINDS Selves exercising executive control over shortterm beliefs and desires Have propositions: Understand sentences Executive conscious control over short-term desires Self-consciousness PERSONS Morally responsible agents Have narratives: Understand plot, character, mood Have moral agency and responsibility Have categorical desires, long-term desires to make something of one’s lifetime

Table 3.1 Far-persons Near-Persons Autonoetic consciousness Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes No No No No

Persons Biographical sense of self Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

No No No

No No No

No No No No

No

No

No No No No

No No No

No

No

No consciousness

Non-Persons

Yes Yes Yes

Yes

Yes

Lyrical consciousness

Far-Persons

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of the objects, and her mother smiles at Brooke’s apparent choice. Brooke in turn grins. I call attention to her smile, an intense lyrical expression of contentment. The feeling is confined to the moment, it is not available to Brooke for reflection or revision, and minutes later Brooke will not remember it. And yet, at the moment it is deeply pleasurable for her. The second case is Susan Wiley, known in the literature as Genie, a girl locked in her bedroom by her father from the time she was twenty months old until she was freed at thirteen years of age. Let us try to go inside the confined girl’s head. She is, at the moment, responding to her brother, whom she trusts. He has poked his head in her door because he has a new toy for her. How does she feel? She recognizes her brother’s face and distinguishes it both from her father’s face and from her mother’s face. Her brother puts her at ease. She is able to track the hand that contains the toy as he hides it playfully behind his back. It has been a few minutes. She has heard her neighbor practicing piano, pleasant sounds that compete with the songs of a waxwing that also waft through her open window. She gives appropriate if child-like responses to her brother’s whispered assurances that her having the toy will be ok with Father. Clearly she is capable of fear, anxiety, anger, and affection. She can understand that words express speakers’ intentions and that words can be used pragmatically to issue assertions, requests, promises, and warnings. When freed, she will understand a dozen or so words (e.g., mother, father, door, bunny), and react appropriately when they are used to refer to their objects. However, she will only be able to generate and verbalize two ideas, each idea pronounced as a single word, “/stäpit/” and “/nōmôr/”. She will not be able to learn to use grammar to string words together into sentences, use phrases recursively, or tell stories (Brown, 2009). Forget all that. Just now, focus on Susan’s fascination with what her brother produces from behind his back: her old familiar ragdoll in one hand and, in the other, a shiny new yellow duck. Curious, she is reaching eagerly for the unfamiliar object. She is smiling. What is happening in this girl’s consciousness as she examines each toy and turns away from the familiar one? She is having implicit memories, conditioned responses or habituations activated by situations requiring the exercise of practical skills or habits

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(Tulving, 2002, 1984, 1983). She is not having an episodic memory, explicit replaying a tape, as it were, in which she sees herself dragging around the ragdoll yesterday. She does not watch any episodes in her mind or place herself in the frame as the subject of experiences who must choose between two objects. Her memories are not indexed to specific place or time. And yet she smiles, and there is no doubt she feels happy. During the years spent in captivity, Susan Wiley lacked secondorder desires, the ability to form propositions, and the capacity to understand or produce narratives. She did not use the first-person pronoun and, in the judgment of Susan Curtiss, a sympathetic researcher who probably knew Susan Wiley better than anyone else, Wiley probably did not have a concept of herself when she was found (Curtiss, 1981, 1977; Fromkin, et al., 1974). After years of intensive language therapy, Susan was able to use the pronoun “I” and engage in simple conversational back-and-forth. Here is one of the conversations Curtiss recorded: (A = adult; G = Genie) A: G: A: G: A: G: A: G: A: G: A: G: A: G: A: G:

Do you want me to play the piano for you a little bit? Long time. How’s the neck? Feel better. I told you it would feel better when you got to school. Hurt. It hurts? I thought it felt better. Little hurt. How should I reach it? Get ladder. Why aren’t you singing? Very sad. Why are you feeling sad? Lisa sick. How many sides does a triangle have? Three.

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A: G:

How many sides does a circle have? Round.

(Curtiss, 1981)

Notice that Susan’s responses are all one or two words, and always in the present tense. Are her temporal horizons confined to the “minute” present? It would seem so. She is clearly aware of the passing of time, and of the fact that time comes in units of variable length. If this were not true we could not offer a decent interpretation of her “long time” response to the piano playing offer. Nevertheless, there is no evidence here of episodic memory or use of tenses. Whatever narrative structure is present must be inferred from the context, context provided by the questions proffered by Curtiss. Wiley has the ability to learn new words and skills but she does not, for all we know, have episodic memories she can manipulate that extend more than a few dozen minutes into the past. Despite years of specialized therapy, she would never attain the linguistic competence of a three-year-old, the kind of competence required to begin narratively to constitute oneself. We come now to a third case. Clive Wearing (born 1938) is a British former choir director and pianist who, having contracted herpesviral encephalitis in 1985, suffered profound declines in cognitive function. Mr. Wearing retains procedural, implicit, memories for playing the piano and singing. However, he lacks almost all episodic memories, unable to remember his wife’s name or even the flavor of the food he is in the act of swallowing. He cannot consciously plan his behaviors for more than a few seconds into the future nor remember what he is thinking seconds prior to his being prompted. Suffering from total anterograde and severe retrograde amnesia, Mr. Wearing lives, as Oliver Sacks put it, entirely in the present (Sacks, 2007). What does it feel like to be Brooke, Susan, or Clive Wearing? First, it feels like something. Theirs are not mental states like JD’s which, to be precise, are no mental states at all. Second, each individual faces different circumstances and no doubt has different feelings from the other two. We must be sensitive to these differences. Third, each one feels, at their best, intensely happy. They feel the way we feel when we are most joyful,

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when we are giddy to be alive, fully present and content in the moment. They feel, at their worst, the way we feel when we are suicidally depressed, desiring death now to whatever the future would bring were we forced against our will to endure it. As Clive Wearing’s wife, Deborah, puts it in her memoir: It was as if every waking moment was the first waking moment. Clive was under the constant impression that he had just emerged from unconsciousness because he had no evidence in his own mind of ever being awake before . . . “I haven’t heard anything, seen anything, touched anything, smelled anything”, he would say. “It’s like being dead”. (Wearing, 2006)

Wearing’s memory, if we believe him, as I think we must, extends no further than a minute or two into the past. He frequently reports being in a living hell in which he has no memories at all, as if he has just come out of a devastating coma. On the other hand, far-persons feel at their best the immense satisfactions of consuming a great meal or drowsing off into napping bliss. After eating, if a far-person senses that a companion may be hungry, they may communicate the location of food with warm, low pitched grunts. Satiated, they may relay their sense of ease and contentment to familiars by laying down, or making other invitational body movements, welcoming trusted friendly faces to stretch out beside them. I call these nonnarrative experiences lyrical because they do not involve what Aristotle called the two central elements of narrative: plot, the temporal arrangement of episodes, and character, the place of personal agency in connecting the causes and effects of actions (Aristotle, 1997). All of the value of lyrical experience is packed into the present moment and none of it derives from the subject’s knowledge of the distant past or anticipation of the distant future. Neither does it depend on the subject’s being able to mind read. Since lyrical experience can be intense, it can be fully informed by the immediate past and directive with respect to the immediate future. Here is the way Oliver Sacks describes the value of Clive Wearing’s music making. When Wearing plays or sings, he “is not, in the usual sense, remembering at all . . . [he is] wholly in the present” (Sacks, 2007).

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Lyrical experiences have natural sounds and scenes as their objects. In such experiences, the present moment “fills consciousness entirely”. The present, not joined to the distant past or future, has no characters in it, no plot to it, and can be absolute bliss or pure terror. Here are three humans who may be far-persons, sentient moral patients with extremely attenuated temporal bounds, each living, as it were, with a past of no more than a few hours and a future of no more than a few dozen minutes. They have procedural memories encoded in habits that allow them to follow familiar melodies and move their bodies and fingers in rhythm. Perhaps they will have a lucid, vibrant musical experience in the morning in which they help to produce the melodies using piano “know-how” skills. But the experiences will be evanescent, not available to them for recall later that evening. Hours later, they will not “know-that” they had the earlier pleasure, will not be able to reflect upon their know-how or draw on their memory to inspire them to try to plan a way to have similar experiences in the future. Far-person experience is lyrical but not autonoetic. While far-persons are aware of pleasures and pains they cannot assess these experiences, recognize that they have not had as many pleasurable musical experiences as they would wish, or regret that the past week has been one of unyielding anxiety. Neither can they form beliefs about, much less specific plans for, the future in the hope, perhaps, that it will bring stimulating days. If the foregoing analysis is correct, there is no reason to think that you and I have not had, or at least could have, lyrical experiences that are exactly the same as the experiences of human far-persons. Can we then claim that our lyrical experiences are exactly the same as those of nonhuman far-persons? I can see no philosophical impediment to our reaching this conclusion. So, how does Informed feel when she evades her companion and buys herself a few moments of solitude with her food? She feels exactly the same way Susan Wiley might feel were she pursuing a similar goal: initial curiosity about whether she can successfully deceive her companion, surprise upon learning that she has achieved the ruse, peace upon her awareness that she can luxuriate in a slower paced meal. On the other hand,

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when confronted with an animal whose face she does not recognize, Informed may feel exactly the same sort of anxiety, fear, or anger that Susan might feel under similar circumstances. Informed may vocalize her displeasure, try to scare the stranger away with desperate high pitched screams. Once either far-person has eaten her fill, she may enjoy communicating the location of the food to her mate with low pitched warm grunts. After she has eaten her fill, she may look forward to lying down with her mate, making it clear that she welcomes nuzzling and grooming. And she may envision herself, dozens of seconds hence, stretched out beside a familiar.

3.8

The Moral Status of Far-Persons

When Jenny in the London zoo is getting herself under control and beginning to look past her frustrations, she may well realize that she has it within herself to stop crying. If she does, she exercises the same selfcontrol we praise in our two-year-olds. When Oreo is satisfied with the shape of her nest in the barn and content that she has done what she can with the design, she is enjoying the kind of pleasure we appreciate in two-year-olds making forts out of blankets in the living room. When Informed figures out that Uninformed is watching her and schemes to mislead her, she is exhibiting the kind of cleverness and forethought we admire in our pre-kindergarteners. When a calf skips down a chute having improved the speed of her puzzle solving, she is showing a satisfaction in her ability to learn that we hope to see in our toddlers (Hagen & Broom, 2004). To the extent that all lyrical experiences can be thought of as the satisfactions of desires, they display a common trait. There is a phenomenal state the subject is in, that state is oriented toward the future, and for the subject’s current desire to be satisfied, others must not interfere with the subject. To the extent that these desires are harmless to those potentially affected by them, moral agents should adopt rules that protect the individuals with these desires. In Hare’s and Varner’s two-level utilitarian theory, this special status is expressed in the

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deontological language of moral rights. As a negative right to liberty entails as a condition of its satisfaction a negative right to life, far-persons in two-level utilitarianism possess both a right to life and to freedom. Exactly what scope and strength such rights have, and how and when they may be over-ridden, is a complex matter for another day (see McMahan, 2002; Singer, 1993; Varner, 2012, 1998). We have no evidence to date that pigs have a robust autonoetic consciousness. But we do have evidence that they are more than merely sentient. Varner writes that “having autonoetic consciousness doesn’t give one a biographical sense of self and make one a person, [and yet] good ILS rules will incorporate some kind of special respect for near-persons” (Varner, 2012). Similarly, having lyrical experiences doesn’t give one a robust autonoetic sense of self and make one a near-person, and yet good ILS rules will incorporate some kind of special consideration for farpersons. Such special consideration must recognize that probably all mammals are far-persons insofar as they are subjects of a life of lyrical experience. Because lyrical experiences are good in themselves, we should adopt ILS rules that, all else equal, prohibit raising, killing, and eating mammals. Such rules would also establish a strong presumption that, extraordinary circumstances aside, harming mammals in scientific research is also seriously wrong. The everyday rules must be formulated to help us form habits of respect for quasi-persons’ ILS rights to life and liberty.

3.9

Conclusion

Darwin’s suggestion, that orangutans have minds like children’s minds, may be true not only of the great apes but of all mammals. Pigs, for example, use concepts, understand words, sulk, and respond emotionally to admonishments. They can learn to deceive others, to defer acting on their immediate desires, and form hypotheses that require several minutes of sustained action to achieve the desired end. As a representative of the class of nonprimate nonhuman mammals, pigs probably lack robust autonoetic consciousness but this fact, if it is a fact, does not mean their experiences have no overlap with human experiences. For at least some

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pigs’ experiences seem exactly like at least some experiences of children. Exactly like them because while it is true that pigs lack the potential to develop into persons, children with radical congenital cognitive limitations lack that potential, too. The purpose of this chapter has not been to mount a full defense of this claim. It has been more modest, to extend Darwin’s claim from the great apes to all mammals while providing some evidence that all mammals are like humans in morally significant ways. I have argued that if we select the right target human experiences, namely, the lyrical experiences of human far-persons, then some mental states of some nonhuman mammals may be precisely like some of our mental states.

Bibliography Akins, K., 1993. A Bat without Qualities. In M. Davies & G. W. Humphreys, eds., Consciousness: Psychological and Philosophical Essays. New York: Basil Blackwell. Aristotle, 1997. Aristotle’s Poetics. McGill-Queen’s Press – McGill-Queen’s University Press. Bateson, P., 2003. The Promise of Behavioural Biology. Animal Behaviour, 65(1), pp. 11–17. Bethge, P., 2010. Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to Aging. Spiegel Online. Brown, B., 2009. Doctors Baffled, Intrigued by Girl Who Doesn’t Age. 20/20. Carruthers, P., 2008. Meta-Cognition in Animals: A Skeptical Look. Mind & Language, 23(1), pp. 58–89. Carruthers, P., 2011. The Opacity of Mind: An Integrative Theory of SelfKnowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Comstock, G., 2009. Far-persons [WWW Document]. OpenSeminar: On the Human. URL: openseminar.org/hn/modules/44/index/screen.do Comstock, G., 2010. JD [unpublished manuscript]. Originally appeared in 2010 on OpenSeminar: On the Human. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina State University. Curtiss, S., 1977. Genie: A Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern-Day “Wild Child”. New York: Academic Press. Curtiss, S., 1981. Dissociations between Language and Cognition: Cases and Implications. Journal of Autism Development Disorders, 11(1), pp. 15–30.

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Darwin, C. & Barlow, N., 1946. Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle. New York: Philosophical Library. Davidson, D., 2001. Rational Animals. In D. Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective: Philosophical Essays, Vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press. de Waal, F. B. M., 1999. Anthropomorphism and Anthropodenial: Consistency in Our Thinking about Humans and Other Animals. Philosophical Topics, 27(1), pp. 255–280. Frankfurt, H. G., 1971. Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person. The Journal of Philosophy, 68(1), pp. 5–20. Frey, R. G., 1980. Interests and Rights: The Case against Animals. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fromkin, V., Krashen, S., Curtiss, S., Rigler, D. & Rigler, M., 1974. The Development of Language in Genie: A Case of Language Acquisition beyond the “Critical Period”. Brain and Language, 1(1), pp. 81–107. Grandin, T., 2005. Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior. New York: Scribner. Griffiths, P., 1997. What Emotions really are: The Problem of Psychological Categories. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hagen, K. & Broom, D. M., 2004. Emotional reactions to learning in cattle. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 85, pp. 203–213. HeatherF27, 2007. Oreo Making a Nest, YouTube. URL: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=pTQHVJ10UrE Jack, R. E., Garrod, O. G. B. & Schyns, P. G., 2014. Dynamic Facial Expressions of Emotion Transmit an Evolving Hierarchy of Signals over Time. Current Biology, 24(2), pp. 187–192. Karin-D’Arcy, M. R., 2005. The Modern Role of Morgan’s Canon in Comparative Psychology. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 18(3), pp. 179–201. McMahan, J., 2002. The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mendl, M., Held, S. & Byrne, R. W., 2010. Pig Cognition. Current Biology, 20, pp. 796–798. Morgan, C. L., 1903. An Introduction to Comparative Psychology. 2nd Edition. London: Walter Scott. Nagel, T., 1974. What is it Like to Be a Bat?. Philosophical Review, 83(4), pp. 435–450. Patterson, F. G. P. & Cohn, R. H., 1994. Self-Recognition and Self-Awareness in Lowland Gorillas. In S. T. Parker, R. W. Mitchell & M. L. Boccia, eds.,

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Self-Awareness in Animals and Humans: Developmental Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, O., 2007. The Abyss: A Neurologist’s Notebook. The New Yorker, 83(28), p. 100. Schechtman, M., 1996. The Constitution of Selves. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Seyfarth, R. M. & Cheney, D. L., 2012. Animal Cognition: Chimpanzee Alarm Calls Depend On What Others Know. Current Biology, 22(2), pp. 51–52. Singer, P., 1993. Practical Ethics. 2nd Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The Gorilla Foundation, Michael’s Story. URL: www.koko.org/michaels-story Tulving, E., 1983. Elements of Episodic Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tulving, E., 1984. Précis of Elements of Episodic Memory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7, pp. 223–268. Tulving, E., 2002. Episodic Memory: From Mind to Brain. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, pp. 1–25. Varner, G. E., 1998. In Nature’s Interests?: Interests, Animal Rights, and Environmental Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press. Varner, G. E., 2012. Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare’s Two-Level Utilitarianism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Walker, R. F., Pakula, L. C., Sutcliffe, M. J., Kruk, P. A., Graakjaer, J. & Shay, J. W., 2009. A Case Study of “Disorganized Development” and its Possible Relevance to Genetic Determinants of Aging. Mechanisms of Ageing and Development, 130(5), pp. 350–356. Wearing, D., 2006. Forever Today. Unabridged Edition. Whitley Bay: Ulverscroft Large Print Books. Gary Comstock, PhD, is professor of philosophy at North Carolina State University where he conducts research on ethical questions in the biological sciences. He is the author of Research Ethics: A Philosophical Guide to the Responsible Conduct of Research (Cambridge, 2013), Vexing Nature? On the Ethical Case Against Agricultural Biotechnology (Kluwer, 2000), and coeditor of The Moral Rights of Animals (Lexington, 2016).

4 Evolution to Liberation: Political Reflections on Morality and Nonhumans Steve F. Sapontzis

4.1

My Goal

Philosophers have sought to play God. They have tried to start with the view from nowhere—that is, to begin with transparent propositions whose truth is without presumption or dubitability—and then by tight logical deductions construct a network of dependent but irrefutable propositions. Perhaps we have Euclid to thank—or blame—for this guiding ideal of much philosophy. However, that philosophers who thought they had attained it have been mistaken has been all too easy to demonstrate. The supposed view from nowhere has been readily shown to be the view shaped by a contingent history, expressed in one of many differently structured languages, addressed to this problem

S.F. Sapontzis (*) Department of Philosophy, California State University-East Bay, Hayward, California, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_4

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rather than to some other, and so forth. The indubitability of Descartes’ famous “I think, therefore I am” depends on our thinking of dubitability in terms of what a malin genie could trick us into believing, and the library of analyses unpacking “I,” “think,” and “am” testifies to the instability of Descartes’ fulcrum and what can be balanced on it. Debates in moral philosophy frequently proceed in ways that seem to presume this ideal of philosophy. For example, an advocate may identify a proposition as the basic moral principle, one which applies to all situations, then defend the moral evaluation she is advocating by deducing it on that basis. Similarly, the position advocated by an opponent is frequently refuted by deducing from it, when applied to some extreme or even imaginary situation, an obviously unacceptable evaluation. Such arguments frequently convince morally concerned people who are not pursuing the philosophical dream that moral philosophy is merely an academic game irrelevant to solving actual moral problems. Perhaps turning from ethics to politics in thinking about how humans ought to treat nonhumans refers, at least in part, to setting aside the ideal of constructing an encompassive, deductive system of moral right and wrong in favor of trying to understand what has led to our morally (in some everyday sense of the word) questionable treatment of other animals and what resources currently available to us may be effective in improving that treatment. So, in developing an idea of morality here, I freely admit that it is neither based on propositions that are self-evident nor aims at providing eternal verities. However, this idea is recommended by being commonsensical, according with evolutionary biology, and not requiring the existence of values resembling “nonsense on stilts.”1 After developing that idea of morality, I will argue that although this idea acknowledges that morality is a product of human evolution, recognizing that origin does not support restricting direct moral values, such as moral rights, to human beings. However, that idea does locate moral concern about nonhuman animals in a long

1

The mocking description of natural rights in Bentham (1816).

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struggle where there have been and still are vast forces aligned against expanding moral respect, empathy, values, obligations, and similar protections and where there is a history of only difficult, limited, insecure victories over cruelty, exploitation, injustice, and the like treatment of even our fellow human beings from which to draw encouragement

4.2

Beginning Points

The following propositions provide the context for this chapter. Most of these seem to me noncontroversial. Others might be challenged, but I am confident all challenges to them can be met. So, although I am presenting them without argument here, I think they form much more than a merely hypothetical context. They will be accompanied here by very brief comments on their significance for morality; some will be discussed at greater length in sections 4.3 and 4.4. 1. There is no super-natural being who cares about what happens to animals, human or not. Consequently, moral questions cannot be answered by discovering what such a being wants people to do. 2. Moral values, principles, teachings, practices, and institutions (“morality”) are created by and for people. Consequently, the principles governing physical, chemical, biological, or environmental entities and their interactions (“nature”) are not moral principles and cannot by themselves provide a sufficient basis for deriving moral principles or values.2 3. Morality is what it is because people are what they are. To start with, if people did not have felt needs and wants (“interests”) in a world that does not automatically fulfill them, there would be no morality. If people did not act to fulfill their interests, there would be no morality. If human actions could not be influenced by teaching values and principles to act on, there would be no morality.

2

For a discussion of the relation of morality to natural principles, see Sapontzis (1995).

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4. Not all of a person’s interests can be fulfilled, nor can all those of a group of people. Partly this is due to our living in a world where “there’s not enough to go around,” and partly it is due to incompatible interests, for example, as Sartre emphasizes, the desire to be both in control of and freely chosen by another.3 5. Human interests and actions to fulfill them are not all self-centered. Interests and actions are self-centered or “selfish” when, if the existence, lives, health, happiness, or other interests of other beings are affected, they are of no concern to the agent except insofar as they pose an obstacle to or provide a means to the fulfillment of her own interests. 6. Sometimes the object of a person’s interest and action is that others stay well, become better-off, or do not become worse-off than they are. Feeling good or bad about another’s condition, and being motivated directly by that, differs from trying to maintain, improve, or degrade another’s condition as a means to fulfilling one’s own interest. The latter is self-centered; the former is not. The former feelings, interests, and actions will be called “other-centered.” 7. Human beings imagine things being different than they are, value some of these conditions as being better than what is, and are sometimes motivated to pursue these better conditions. Some of these actions are self-centered, such as exploiting the collapse of housing values for one’s own profit; some are not, for example, voluntary public service. 8. Humans are not the only animals who feel pain, where “pain” refers to a wide range of noxious feelings from annoyance to torment. And humans are also not the only animals who feel pleasure, where “pleasure” refers to a similarly wide range of non-noxious to positively enjoyable, stimulating, or satisfying feelings. Humans are not the only animals who prefer pleasure to pain. Humans are not the only animals whose ways of life include different balances of pleasure and pain. Humans are not the only animals who suffer the loss of further pleasures when they die.

3

See Sartre (1956), Part 3, Chapter 3: Concrete Relations with Others.

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What Is Morality for?

Taking my cues from Aristotle’s emphasis on understanding things in terms of what they are for and from the Pragmatists’ insistence that things are what they do, I understand morality in terms of what it is intended to accomplish. I think the definitive purpose of morality is to counter human selfishness. Moral values such as honesty, fairness, charity, helpfulness, compassion, decency, truthfulness, courage, honor, duty, keeping promises, and taking responsibility have different descriptions and apply to different situations, but they are all intended to interfere with people pursuing their own interests with little to no regard for how their actions will impact the interests of others. The clearest cases of immorality are cases of selfishness: the priest who abuses children, the trustee who embezzles funds, the husband who cheats on his wife, the strong man who tortures the weak, the store clerk who takes advantage of the blind, the landlord who evicts the elderly, the judge who takes bribes, the terrorist who blows up innocent people, the boy who torches kittens, and so forth. Moral principles direct us not to favor our interests above those of others, and sometimes even to sacrifice ours for theirs. For example, The Golden Rule to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” directs us to set aside our perspective as agents and adopt that of the recipients of our actions. The Principle of Utility, “seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” requires that we weigh interests without regard to whose they are. The Categorical Imperative to “do only that which you can will as a universal law” requires that we not treat others as merely a means to our own ends. “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”4 calls on us to set aside pursuing self-centered interests in favor of working for the good of a group of which we are but one member. The charitable principle that “you should help those less fortunate than yourself” directs us to expend our resources to fulfill the interests of

4 From John F. Kennedy’s moralistic Inaugural Address as President of the United States, January 20, 1961.

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others. The principle of honor that “your word is your bond” teaches us that we must do what others are counting on us doing even when letting them down would serve us better. And so forth. The purpose of moral instruction is to instill in people a commitment to values which will motivate them not to do selfish things. This is not to say that the purpose of morality is to prevent us from pursuing our own interests. Rather, the purpose of morality is to inhibit the selfish pursuit of those interests. Some moral teachings are not so obviously focused on obstructing us from pursuing our own interest without regard to the interests of others. There are moral principles which direct us to pursue ideals for ourselves, such as Kant’s imperative that we should strive toward becoming fully rational beings and the Christian ideal of devoting one’s life to honoring God. However, what we must overcome in order to attain or even just better approximate such ideals are the feelings, urges, wants, drives, etc., which motivate us to act selfishly. Self-improvement in morality refers to overcoming selfishness. Human psychology is strongly self-centered, meaning people commonly, aggressively pursue fulfilling their own interests, are ready to sacrifice the well-being of others to fulfill those interests, and are much less motivated by the interests of others. Human psychology is also other-centered. We understand the interests of others, sympathetically feel their pleasures, pains, wants, desires, fulfillments, and frustrations, have feelings about the well-being of others, and are motivated by such feelings to help others fulfill their interests. However, our self-centered feelings tend to be much stronger motivators than our other-centered feelings. Still, our other-centered feelings can motivate us to act contrary to our own interests, as when someone risks her life to grab a stray kitten out of the path of an on-coming truck. Morality works to strengthen the motivating force of these other-centered feelings. This work can take a variety of forms. One of the most effective is promising self-interested rewards for having and acting on othercentered feelings—and threatening punishment for the opposite. For example, religious moralities commonly promote belief in an afterlife where our other-centered feelings and actions will be rewarded with particularly gratifying satisfactions and where our having failed to

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have had and acted on other-centered feelings in this world is punished by being tormented in the next. Again, both religious and secular moralities teach that people can fulfill more of their own interests by cooperating with others fulfilling theirs than by disregarding the interests of others. The most common moral teaching of this sort may be that to the extent that we act on our other-centered feelings we will create a world that will benefit us all. In both of these ways, morality bridges the divide between self-interest and other-centered feelings and borrows some of the strong motivating force of the former to augment the weaker motivating force of the latter.5 A third way morality accomplishes such a coupling is by making other-centered feelings and actions objects of approval, and failing to have or act on other-centered feelings objects of disapproval. Sometimes the approval or disapproval is subsequent to an other-centered or selfish action and is used to encourage or discourage repeating such actions. Sometimes, the coupling is of a more immediate sort, where the feelings of approval or disapproval become dimensions of acting (or not acting) other-centeredly. This is notably the case when the moral criteria for approval and disapproval have become components of the agent’s selfevaluating conscience. Fourth, another non-self-centered, motivating dimension of human psychology utilized by morality to counter human selfishness is our ability to feel and act out of respect. Respect-feelings are emphasized by moralists like Kant, who insists they are not sentiments but components of the intellect capable of motivating action.6 Those less committed to the anti-sentiment ideals of the Enlightenment may see respect-feelings as elements of the feelings of approval and disapproval known as conscience. Be that as it may, it is non-controversial that people can project ideals, such as the philosophical ideal mentioned at

5

As noted in section 4.2, this coupling differs from prudence, which might direct someone to tend to others’ well-being not for their sake but as a means to his, as when a pimp keeps his girls healthy in order for them to work profitably for him. In such prudential cases, other-centered feelings are not being bolstered by self-interest; rather, the agent’s actions are motivated entirely by selfcentered feelings, while other-centered feelings are absent. 6 See Kant (1959), footnote beginning on page 16.

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the beginning of this chapter, and can be motivated to work toward the condition extolled as ideal precisely because it is felt to be such. Some ideals are selfish (like being rich), but conditions not tied to our selfcentered interests can also be portrayed as ideal, and this portrayal can itself help motivate us to pursue that condition instead of some selfish goal. For example, respecting an ideal of honesty can motivate us, against financial self-interest, to describe accurately the condition of a car we are selling. Fifth, presuming that all human interests are self-centered, some philosophers advocate being moral in order to make self-interest more successful. They contend that by inhibiting immediate gratification people can secure a greater quantity or superior quality of fulfillments in the long run. Such theories make of morality a component of prudence. Acknowledging that we may have self-interested reasons for inhibiting our immediate, uncritical, short-sighted selfishness in accordance with a morality can obviously reinforce the motivating strength of our non-self-centered feelings—even if advocates of enlightened self-interest eschew such feelings. So, professing the enlightenment of self-interest is yet another way for morality to accomplish its purpose. However—if I may be permitted a brief aside—that is very different than prudence being the foundation of and instructor for morality. Enlightened self-interest interpretations of morality start with equally powerful, rational, well-informed, vulnerable, self-centered, prudent adults in an imaginary situation, such as a state of nature where everyone is at liberty to do whatever they can or behind a veil of ignorance about all things individual. The philosopher then deduces the principles which these smart but cautious people would reason it is in their interest to live by. These principles conform to the morality of the philosopher in charge of the thought experiment.7

7 This outcome is neither surprising nor a criticism. These imaginative scenarios are not intended to discover moral principles but to defend the moral principles of the philosopher’s community by demonstrating their “rationality,” that is, their deducibility without recourse to sentimentality. However, as we shall see, the starting point for such deductive moralities includes more than logic and a tough-minded view of human nature.

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Such constructions ingeniously support morality by showing that prudence can direct self-interested agents to act in ways similar to what morality would prescribe and proscribe. However, they fail to include a great deal of what morality is about—which is to be expected, since the defining purpose of morality is not to satisfy individual selfinterest but to counter-balance human selfishness. For example, a great deal of morality has to do with tempering the treatment of the weak by the strong, in spite of the strong knowing they are able to exploit the weak with impunity. Perhaps the majority of moral teaching is devoted to coping with inequalities of power (e.g., by teaching that noblesse oblige), rather than to counseling equally powerful beings how they should deal with each other in order to avoid mutual destruction. Prudential theories also fail to account for the high regard in morality of striving for a demanding, perhaps even ultimately unattainable ideal condition, for example, becoming a purely rational being or a Christian saint. As already noted, these moral ideals always involve overcoming selfishness, and the seeming attainment of them is compromised if that is not the case. For example, in order to become a saint, someone must love God for His sake, not in hope of gaining salvation. Again, prudential constructions of morality fail to account for the high regard of motivation in actual moral practice, for example, prescribing not just doing the right thing but doing it for the right reason, and mitigating blame for doing the wrong thing because it was done for a good, if misguided, reason. Finally, in the real world, what prudence dictates is not being moral but cultivating the appearance of being moral. As Thrasymachus says in Plato’s Republic, prudence directs us to pursue not honesty but a reputation for being honest, and to do what is right only when we are unlikely to get away with doing what is wrong.8 So, in actual moral practice, prudence is not the foundation of morality. Rather, enlightening self-interest is an effective strategy morality can employ to reinforce our other-centered feelings—although it can also undermine morality when those feelings are absent, derided, or even just ignored.

8 For an extensive discussion of the inadequacy of enlightened self-interest as a theory of morality, see Sapontzis (2012), Chapter 4, “A Phenomenology of Morals.”

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Returning to our contra-selfishness interpretation of the purpose of morality, it has a significant consequence for theories of moral obligation, particularly where the moral status of nonhuman animals is the issue. Frequently, moral theorists—Aquinas and Kant are classic examples— argue that nonhumans cannot be direct (i.e., independent) objects of moral concern. Their interests can be morally protected indirectly, depending on their relation to humans, for example, by being people’s property or teaching devices for stimulating compassion for other humans, but that is all. This limit to our moral obligation derives from nonhuman animals not being rational, lacking souls, not forming a community with humans, or some such. The idea is that being an object of moral concern on one’s own is a special dignity or extra-high status that one must earn, at least by having some exalted characteristic. Nonhuman animals lack that dignifying characteristic, so cannot enjoy moral rights, that is, cannot merit direct moral limits on human selfishness. This sort of reasoning starts with the idea that rights derive from special relationships—as when we promise to repay a loan to someone or when someone holds title to a piece of property—and then generalizes this special rights perspective to cover more extensive moral obligations, such as human rights arising from the unique relation we have to members of our own species. This special-criteria approach to general rights is a form of pushback against morality; it is intended to limit the restrictions morality can logically impose on our freedom to be selfish. However, since the purpose which defines morality is to counter-balance humans being strongly motivated by self-centered interest, a being need only be vulnerable to human selfishness that can be counter-balanced by morality in order to be a logically possible object of direct moral obligation—that is, to have moral rights. Another strategy for denying moral rights to nonhumans focuses on a specific need possessing these rights addresses. Since having moral rights helps fulfill the human desire to feel the equal of other people9 and since there is no reason to believe nonhumans desire this, nonhumans logically cannot have moral rights. Or so it may seem. However, that a group

9

Joel Feinberg (1970) emphasizes this function of rights.

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cannot benefit from all the functions of a moral category does not entail that they cannot benefit from any of those functions. Though sheep have no interest in feeling the equal of humans, they do have an interest in the protection a right to life could provide them. Understanding moral rights on the basis of morality’s contra-selfishness purpose has several immediate consequences for the debate over animal rights of the last few decades. First, it does not follow from nonhuman animals having moral rights that natural predation violates those rights. Where humans are not involved there can be no moral wrong. So, animal rights activists are not being inconsistent when they contend that humans sport hunting deer is wrong, because it is selfish, while wolves preying on deer is not something they are morally obligated to prevent (ceteris paribus, of course).10 Second, since the purpose of morality is to inhibit human selfishness and since human interests and actions are selfish only when the interests of others (for their own sake) are of no concern to the agent, only beings with felt needs and wants can logically have direct moral value. Individual nonhuman animals, such as goats and coyotes, clearly have felt needs and wants which are vulnerable to human selfishness. Other beings or “entities,” from trees to species to wetlands can be recognized as doing well (or not), meaning growing, increasing their numbers, maintaining a balanced condition, etc., but since these entities lack feelings, what we think of as their well-being is likely not theirs but a reflection of our feelings about their condition, or maybe an animistic projection by us. Consequently, while individual chickens and elk are clearly the sort of entity that have interests of their own which are vulnerable to human selfishness and, consequently, are the sort of entity that can logically be protected by moral rights, redwood trees, species of monkeys, and San Francisco Bay are not that sort of entity. Moving in the other direction, sometimes defenders of the human use of nonhumans contend that having interests requires greater intellectual ability than that possessed by any nonhuman. From this they conclude that the sentient nonhumans who seem to qualify as objects of our

10

For an extensive discussion of this common attempt at a reductio ad absurdum of animal liberation, see Sapontzis (1987), Chapter 13, “Saving the Rabbit from the Fox.”

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other-centered feelings and moral reinforcement of those feelings really belong with the non-sentient entities. They are all beings whose supposed interests are only a reflection of our uninformed sentimentality and which, therefore, logically cannot be entitled on their own to our moral concern. However, attempting to restrict interests to feelings of which the individual experiencing them takes reflective notice is merely manipulating the meaning of “interests” in order once again to push back against morality by limiting the restrictions morality can logically impose on our freedom to be selfish. Since morality is locked in a struggle with selfishness, it is not inappropriate to understand contentions about the domain of morality in terms of strategies for prevailing in that struggle.11

4.4

The Origin of Morality

That the purpose of morality is strengthening our non-self-centered feelings raises the following three questions: 1. Why do we have non-self-centered feelings? 2. Why do we seek to strengthen these feelings? 3. What do answers to those two questions tell us about morality? I do not have full answers to these questions but will offer here my current reflections on them.

4.4.1 Why Do We Have Non-Self-Centered Feelings? The make-up of human psychology is the product of millions of years of natural selection. If we take an evolutionary approach to our question, the answer has to be that those who have other-centered interests and 11

For an extensive discussion of this common attempt at a reductio ad absurdum of animal liberation, see Sapontzis (1987), Chapter 7, “Can Animals Have Interests?” and Chapter 9, “The Misfortune of Death.”

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respect-feelings have been more likely to survive to reproduce than those who do not. Since humans are among those whose young are born in a highly dependent condition, it seems non-controversial that parents empathizing with the needs and wants of their young will make it more likely that those young will survive to reproduce.12 “Empathy” here refers to a sensitivity to signs of distress or well-being in others that can motivate us to aid them in fulfilling their needs and wants, even when this requires setting aside our own needs or wants. Some other, more focused parenting instinct would do, too; so empathy is not the only way to meet this human need. However, it is the way that has developed in our species, and what is important about this for our discussion here is that empathy is a general sensitivity. Although it may have proliferated because of its role in natural selection, this sensitivity is not restricted to the interests of our own infants. Our ability to be moved by the suffering and well-being of others extends far beyond our own children. We sympathize with other family members, both close and distant, as well as with human strangers and members of other species. We even feel for other entities, such as trees and rivers, where our empathy is led by our animistic imagination. Nor is our ability to empathize expanded according to some evolutionary logic where we move step-by-step from those who are genetically closest to us to those who are progressively more removed. Not only are there poodle-loving misanthropic individuals like Schopenhauer; there are peoples who exploit and mistreat human slaves and untouchables while protecting nonhuman animals and geographical features.

12

Controversy seems to arise when people are committed to the idea that natural selection requires that all human motivation be self-centered. However, biological scientists disagree about the level where selfishness reigns supreme; it could be genes or species rather than individual organisms. Also, if evolution through natural selection refers to change through natural mechanisms without supernatural purpose, then it is logically compatible with our having other-centered interests. Acknowledging such interests may violate some sort of biological nominalist imperative against multiplying basic motivations beyond necessity, but it does accord with everyday experience and provide for less convoluted explanations of many of our actions than does trying to trace everything we do back to self-centered motivations. See Dawkins (1976) for examples of convoluted “explanation” of altruistic behavior by tracing it back to a “ruthlessly selfish,” genetic élan vital.

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Another part of a biological answer to our question stems from our being herd animals. We require other humans to help us survive and reproduce. Other-centered feelings contribute to social bonding, and this may be at least part of the reason we have inherited the general ability to empathize rather than more focused parenting instincts. Feelings of respect can also support living in communities. Knowing what is expected of us and what we can expect of others is comforting. Being able to count on all members of the group respecting the same set of rules and authorities can facilitate group action for security, gathering or producing food, constructing and maintaining living areas, etc. Also, developing such feelings in the young provides handles for bringing them and their abilities into society. It also helps control those of their selfish interests that could tear society apart. The natural selection theory of evolution is frequently understood as requiring that an adequate explanation of human psychological abilities and behavior must show how they contribute to enhancing the chances of our passing along what we have inherited genetically to another generation. However, psychological capacities do not work in such a focused manner. An ability may have become common because those who possess it survive to reproduce more than those who do not possess it, but what the ability produces may also include other, even contrary consequences. For example, the human ability to make tools contributes to our being able to survive to reproduce more than other mammals, but it also produces aesthetic pleasures unrelated to reproduction and may ultimately lead to our destroying ourselves through pollution or warfare.13 So, even though their evolutionary value can explain why we have other-centered and respect feelings, their origin does not set logical limits on the domain where these feelings work, for example, does not support arguing that since morality works with such feelings to counterbalance our self-centered interests, morality is limited to promoting human survival. 13 Morality can be similarly used to accomplish the opposite of its purpose. As Nietzsche (1956) contends, priests and other moralists who are unable to satisfy their selfish interests forthrightly have craftily pursued the fulfillment of those interests by convincing other people to inhibit their selfishness in ways that help the priests and moralists to satisfy theirs.

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4.4.2 Why Do We Seek to Strengthen Our Other-Centered Feelings? The obvious evolutionary answer to that question is that since our selfcentered motivations are commonly so much stronger than are our other-centered motivations, we need to reinforce the latter in order to secure the benefits of inhibiting the former. Also, since our young are born so dependent, ensuring the care they need to survive to reproduce is an important need for preserving the genetic community they contain, which includes the genetic basis of humanity. Again, since communal living is so important for human survival, reinforcing the non-selfcentered feelings and behavior needed for living with each other is important for perpetuating our species and its genes. Moral philosophies standardly begin by presuming that moral is what we ought to be. It is a given that when we have to choose between being honest or dishonest, fair or unfair, caring or uncaring, and so forth, we should choose being honest, fair, caring, etc., and the job of the moral philosopher is to show us why. If she can convince us that being moral is approximating to some ideal for humanity dictated by a supernaturally good being or existing in some pristine, Platonic world that defines all that is good, this imperative to be moral becomes self-evident.14 However, since morality does not originate in either of those ways but in the strengthening of our other-centered interests, “Why should I be moral?” becomes a more challenging question. Why should someone whose self-centered feelings are much stronger than her other-centered feelings undertake to strengthen the latter as a counter-balance to the former or act on the latter instead of the former? To avoid punishment, either from others or from one’s own conscience, may be the most obvious answer. However, this response refers

14 Actually, not self-evident for everyone. Immoralists like Nietzsche challenge whether we should do what God directs on the grounds that it is what God directs. “Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven,” says Lucifer in Paradise Lost. The human need to dominate—or will to power—has motivated a small but persistent philosophical and literary, proudly immoralist tradition pushing back at moral limitations on selfishness by portraying selfishness as rare and heroic, rather than adolescent and pervasive.

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to weakening selfishness, rather than to strengthening other-centered motivation. For example, the allure of eating the whole plate of cookies is reduced by coupling it with imagining the punishment one will get for doing so; the satisfaction one would get from seeing the other children get their share of cookies remains unchanged. So, although threatening punishment does direct strongly self-centered people toward acting in ways which benefit or respect others, such punishments make of following weak other-centered feelings merely one among several means to avoiding punishment. Other means are planning how not to get caught and practicing how to charm one’s way out of being punished. A second answer to “Why should I—a person strong enough to get away with being selfish—be moral?” is that working against our selfishness can help us feel satisfied with, confident in, even proud of ourselves, and do so in a way which does not lead to communitydestroying conflict with others seeking to feel the same. We have evolved in a world where we were prey as well as predator, struggled with others for food, water, and shelter, and sought to assuage our fears and guarantee fulfillment of our lusts and the survival of our young by competing with, defeating, dominating, and controlling others of our kind. As a result, part of our inherited psychology is a need to compete, win, and feel accomplished, superior, dominant, in charge, and the like. One person’s efforts to satisfy such needs can obviously conflict with those of another person seeking to do the same. However, if these kinds of needs are turned inward, so that the individual seeks to dominate herself, take charge of her feelings and actions, rise above her common urges, and achieve an uncommon good, such as being motivated by generous sentiments over selfish ones, this can help members of a community all fulfill their needs to feel superior, etc., without struggling to subdue and control each other. A weakness with this answer is that it presumes a lack of self-confidence or an already strong concern with the well-being of others. A person can satisfy her need to feel superior by subjugating others. If she can succeed at this and does not care that much about the well-being of those she subjugates, then tyrannizing others will satisfy her need for achievement—presumably as much as frustrating her common urges. And if she and her progeny are sufficiently strong and

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ruthless, the tyranny she establishes over others can be a stable, longenduring society. So, confident tyrants will not find the Socratic teaching that secure peace and contentment is to be found within oneself a compelling answer to why they should switch to being moral. Such Socratic reasoning shares the presumption of enlightened selfinterest that morality’s audience is a bunch of equally powerful and vulnerable adults who are worried about that vulnerability and are willing to limit their power to subjugate others in exchange for those others agreeing to do the same. Actual human communities are not bunches of equally powerful individuals, and many people are confident that they are sufficiently stronger than at least some others that they can get away with subjugating them. In order to be more than just moves in an academic game, answers to “Why should I be moral?” need to predicate real human communities, not fanciful situations. A third response—not exactly an answer—to our question can be gleaned from the goal of moral training. Freed from the presumption that humans are thoroughly selfish, this goal is that the individual’s other-centered and respect feelings be so greatly strengthened that her self-centered feelings are not that much stronger and, consequently, that the self-centered “Why should I be moral?” question does not arise. For such a person, doing what benefits or respects others is sufficiently satisfying to readily outweigh the satisfaction of being selfish. So, to the extent that this “What will I get from being moral?” question seriously arises for someone, that is an indicator that her character development has fallen short of morality’s goal. From this point of view, that there may be no compelling, self-centered answer to why we should act unselfishly is not surprising and does not indicate a fault with morality. Rather, that the question is asked indicates a fault with the person who needs it answered.

4.4.3 What Does This Evolutionary Analysis Tell Us About Morality? It might be thought that understanding morality in terms of its role in human psychology and evolution logically must limit direct moral concern to relations among human beings. The above analysis does

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indicate that morality is constructed by humans for the purpose of influencing human psychology in order to inhibit what humans do. However, this sort of anthropocentrism of morality does not limit direct moral concern to the well-being of humans. As already discussed, the well-being of nonhumans can be of moral concern for their sakes, since our other-centered feelings—even if evolutionarily selected by human needs for child rearing and group living—are not limited to other humans. Expanding our empathy beyond our family or tribe is not easy for us, and, consequently, throughout most of human existence empathy appears to have been thus limited. However, the pull of the suffering of others on us extends beyond such limits, so that now we routinely sacrifice self-interest in order to help others whose well-being does not affect our young’s survival to reproduce. Examples are White Californians contributing to defense funds for African-American victims of police brutality in South Carolina and childless Americans contributing to Operation Smile so that Bolivian children with cleft palates can have plastic surgery. We have also learned to care about others outside our species, such as companion nonhuman animals. Our caring about others constantly pushes to expand, though its success at this is far from constant. Rather, its course resembles the way liberal political principles have unfolded relentlessly though unevenly through history—for example, the idea that “all men are created equal” expanding slowly and with considerable difficulty and numerous setbacks but still marching on from applying to all but only free, white, American males who own property to covering women, members of other races, people without property, and even people who are not citizens of the United States. Morality is at work on one side of a struggle of conflicting motivations where both sides are constantly pushing to secure what they have accomplished and to expand their reach. Both its purpose and history indicate that pushing to expand is definitive of morality, and questions about where applying moral categories makes logical sense must presuppose a dynamic force at work in a context of struggle. A not insignificant amount of moral philosophy has been devoted to justifying limiting the scope of moral restrictions on the pursuit of our self-centered feelings. Such limits have ranged from insisting on the

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moral significance of the inability of women and barbarians to do philosophy to the inability of cattle and sheep to acknowledge social contracts. The preceding analysis suggests that these parts of “moral” philosophies are pushback, co-opting strategies of our self-centered interests in their resistance to other-centered limitations on them. This sort of pushback also seems at work even when limiting morality is not the focus of discussion, as when advocating respect for the glory of reason or the presence of divinity in the world carries with it the limitation of direct moral concern to humans, leaving us free to be selfish with the rest of the world.

4.5

Practical Inferences

First, since counter-balancing human selfishness is an indefinite purpose, it is unlikely that there is a single moral rule or even a small set of these that can function like an algorithm in which one has only to replace general variables with specific constants to discover the correct answer: the moral thing to do. Being moral involves trying to understand the interests of all those involved, empathize with them, and balance them in a way which seems considerate of all. Moral reasoning is more like a physician’s thoughtful art of diagnosis, prognosis, and prescription than an accountant’s calculation of assets and liabilities, and the goal of morality is more like good health than balanced books showing a tidy profit. Perhaps the strong impulse toward having a simple, reliable formula or set of commandments to answer “What am I supposed to do?” arises from the traditional emphasis on blame and punishment for moral transgressions. In turn, this emphasis seems to arise from the confluence of morality with religious and legal traditions where punishing wrongdoers is an end in itself and having clear rules for what we should do helps us feel less vulnerable. Focusing on the origin and purpose of morality supports the Aristotelian tradition that the goal of morality is promoting good character, with punishing bad deeds being only a means toward that goal.

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Second, all moralities arise in the context not only of human psychology and a physical environment but also of then-current technology, understanding, and a history of moral teachings and institutions. To be effective, moral reformers, such as animal liberationists, need to acknowledge that they are working in such a context and organize their efforts in a way which responds effectively to the here and now. A few such practical conclusions follow from the preceding evolutionary idea of morality. 1. Though it may seem unfair, the burden of proof is on the animal liberationist. Rather than arguing in an impartial forum, the liberationist is seeking to convince an audience whose self-interests are being satisfied by sacrificing the interests of nonhuman animals and who have been taught from childhood that there is nothing wrong with thus using nonhumans. The liberationist must, therefore, undermine that teaching and motivate her audience to accept that this way of satisfying their self-interests should be abandoned. 2. The label “animal liberation” is preferable to “animal rights.” “Liberation” focuses on the goal of protecting nonhuman animals against being victims of the selfishness of humans. “Animal rights” suggests that in addition to their vulnerability to human selfishness the issue is whether, like humans, nonhuman animals possess something special which entitles them to rights, a high-value form of such protection. Decades of debate have shown that agreeing on that something is difficult and that energy which might have been used to moderate our victimizing of nonhuman animals has been diverted to arguing about the criteria for meriting rights and whether any nonhuman animals meet those criteria.15 3. Animal liberationists need not apologize for being sentimental about nonhumans nor hesitate to appeal to other people’s sentiments in order to move them to be less selfish with nonhuman animals. As Hume contended, relation to our sentiments is a necessary condition

15

For an extensive discussion of these issues, see Sapontzis (1987), Part II: “Animal Rights”?

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for things having value for us, and the function of reason is to help us attain what we value rather than to generate end values.16 The origin of nonhuman animal suffering at human hands is more a matter of absent or weak feelings about the well-being of those nonhuman animals than a matter of inconsistent or otherwise fuzzy reasoning. Consequently, awakening or strengthening those generous feelings will likely be a more effective tool for reducing that suffering than will dispassionately pointing out the animal exploiters’ logical blunders.17 4. The most effective arena for liberating animals is in educating children and adolescents. Encouraging the development of young people’s other-centered and respect feelings as a counter to their naturally strong self-centered feelings at these times when their personalities are forming will reduce the cemented weight needing to be overcome when trying to convince adults not to be selfish. Developing animal liberationist literature, programming, movies, video games, etc., which appeal to children and adolescents should be emphasized. 5. Advocating purity is likely to be ineffective. By “purity” I mean abandoning the human interests which are being satisfied by sacrificing nonhuman animal interests. Trying to convince people to be pure in this way is like trying to convince them to be saints. Many more fall short of sainthood than attain it. Accepting the continuing existence of these human interests but developing alternative ways for satisfying them and getting people to try these alternatives will likely be more successful. This likelihood will be enhanced if the alternative will also help satisfy another selfinterest. For example, researchers are more likely to switch from in vivo to in vitro experiments when the latter not only provide equally relevant data but also cost less. Again, people are more likely to reduce

16

See Hume (1740), Book II, Part III, Section iii, Of the Influencing Motives of the Will. Contexts of intellectual debate among people who are devoted to being logical are obviously exceptions to this conclusion, but those contexts are not that common. Since logic is on the side of the liberationists, increasing the frequency of such contexts can benefit nonhuman animals, though not as much as teaching children to feel disgusted by lamb chops. 17

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their consumption of nonhuman animal products when they are convinced that doing so is good for their health. 6. Animal liberation as a global crusade will be unsuccessful. Arrayed against it are all the following: (a) Human tastes, fears, wants, and other feelings have been ingrained in us through millions of years of predator/prey relations with nonhuman animals and tens of thousands of years of being domesticators of nonhumans. (b) Many people live in cultures and with technologies that cannot survive without sacrificing nonhuman animals and in environments where they cannot survive without such sacrifice. (c) Modern cultures and technologies of abundance are heavily invested in sacrificing nonhuman animals, hide the suffering of these nonhumans from consumers, and promote the consumption of nonhuman animals as a sign of prosperity. (d) The great majority of children will continue to be taught by parents who exploit nonhuman animals. The desire of parents to have their children perpetuate their values is very strong, as are the desire of children to please their parents and their fear of not doing so. Consequently, attempts to teach children new values are frequently met with great resistance not only from parents but also from their children. (e) Fear generated by self-preservation, for example, fear of diseases, is much stronger than our attachment to the nonhuman animals which suffer to preserve us. (f) As discussed earlier, the need to feel superior and dominant is a strong human self-centered interest reinforced over many years of evolution. Subjugating nonhuman animals is a way of satisfying this need that is less likely to generate dangerous conflicts for us than is trying to satisfy it by subjugating other people. (g) Human devotion to religious belief is close to unshakeable. Wellestablished religious traditions justify sacrificing nonhuman to human interests and do so on the basis of sources believed unimpeachable and so forth.

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In the face of such extensive, entrenched, and varied commitment to and justification of sacrificing nonhuman animals to human interests, victories limited both in the number of nonhumans helped and the degree to which they are helped are likely the most that animal liberationists can expect for generations to come.

4.6

Summary

Morality is a human creation motivated by the survival needs of a herd species whose young require years of help to survive and whose members have strong, selfish interests which pose an obstacle to providing that help. It might be thought that such an evolutionary origin restricts morality to inter-human relations, but that is not the case, for a two-part reason. First, morality works to fulfill these evolutionary needs by strengthening our other-centered motivations and respect-feelings as counter-balances to our self-centered interests. Second, the others whose needs can move us to act for their wellbeing, even in opposition to our own interests, are not limited to our offspring or even to other members of our species. Given these expansively generous sentiments, the limit to those who can logically be direct objects of our moral concern is the horizon of those who have interests of their own that are vulnerable to human selfishness. Claims that the logic of morality shortens that horizon to others who possess an additional trait are a form of self-centered pushback, since the trait chosen is always one possessed by the advocate of the limitation. The struggle between our strong self-centered interests and our morally reinforced but still weaker other-centered motivations and respect-feelings has been one of only difficult, limited, insecure victories for the latter, while the former are always pushing to reassert themselves. Unfortunately, there are numerous reasons to believe that animal liberation will not be able to find an easier course.

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Bibliography Bentham, J., 1816. Anarchical Fallacies. (As published in, J. Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 2, 2016. J. Bowring, ed. Edinburgh: William Tait). Dawkins, R., 1976. The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press. Feinberg, J., 1970. The Nature and Value of Rights. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 4(4), pp. 243–257. Hume, D., 1740. A Treatise of Human Nature. Kant, I., 1959. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans., L. W. Beck. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Nietzsche, F. 1956. The Genealogy of Morals. Trans., F. Golffing. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Sapontzis, S. F., 1987. Morals, Reason, and Animals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Sapontzis, S. F., 1995. The Nature of the Value of Nature. Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 3, pp. 79–94. Sapontzis, S. F., 2012. Subjective Morals. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Sartre, J-P., 1956. Being and Nothingness. Trans., H. E. Barnes. NY: Washington Square Press. Steve F. Sapontzis is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the East Bay campus of the California State University. Besides numerous articles, he is the author of Morals, Reason, and Animals and Subjective Morals, editor of Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat, and cofounder and past editor of Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics. Steve and his wife Jeanne Gocker have also been active in hands-on nonhuman animal welfare work. They formed Hayward Friends of Animals in 1983 to develop a volunteer program for their municipal nonhuman animal shelter, and they now run Second Chance, Helping the Pets of People in Need, assisting low-income nonhuman companion animal caretakers on California’s Mendocino Coast.

5 Robert Nozick on Nonhuman Animals: Rights, Value and the Meaning of Life Josh Milburn

It has been widely noted that the political turn in animal ethics has been broadly liberal in character (e.g. Milligan, 2015; Wissenburg, 2014), with the key texts (e.g. Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011; Garner, 2013; Nussbaum, 2006) all drawing, primarily and explicitly, from liberal political philosophy. Though this focus is understandable, contemporary political theory does not begin and end with liberalism, and the political turn will be intellectually impoverished if it is unable or unwilling to engage with other strands of political philosophy. One way to contribute to widening our understanding of the place of nonhuman animals

With thanks to all who have offered comments on earlier versions of this piece, including David Archard, Jeremy Watkins, Cillian McBride, Fabian Schuppert, Tom Walker, Rudmer Bijlsma and the editors of the present volume. This chapter arises from my PhD research, which was funded by Northern Ireland’s Department for Employment and Learning.

J. Milburn (*) Department of Philosophy, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_5

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(NHAs) in political theory is by looking to right libertarian (hereafter, libertarian) thought. Animal ethicists might be excused for assuming that libertarian philosophy has nothing to offer progressive thought on NHAs, as, regrettably, prominent libertarian theorists have traditionally been vocal critics of animal rights. For example, Tibor Machan (e.g. 1985, 1991, 2004), Loren Lomasky (e.g. 1987, pp.221–227; 2013) and especially Jan Narveson (e.g. 1977, 1987, 1999) have written in no uncertain terms about their opposition to prominent animal ethicists, their support for meat-eating or their conviction that NHAs are not rights-bearers. This is regrettable, not least because it serves to obscure the views of Robert Nozick, the foremost libertarian political philosopher, who was – especially when compared with some of his intellectual descendants – remarkably open to strong normative obligations towards NHAs. Nozick, the author of the widely read Anarchy, State, and Utopia (hereafter, ASU) (1974), is often cited as the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century other than John Rawls. For this reason alone, the absence of sustained consideration of the place of NHAs in Nozick’s philosophy is striking. Further, Nozick wrote a considerable amount about NHAs. Rawls wrote little about the topic, but a wide literature has arisen exploring the place of NHAs in his thought. Indeed, Nozick suggests that we owe much to NHAs – he was (at least) a vegetarian (Nozick, 1981, p.523), and many of his arguments seem to lend themselves fairly straightforwardly to veganism. The absence of Nozick in the animal ethics literature is mirrored by an absence of animal ethics in the Nozick literature; among commentators, Nozick’s thoughts on NHAs are put aside as a tangential consideration that cannot be pursued (Arneson, 2011, p.18; Bader, 2010, p.13; Lacey, 2001, p.28; Nagel, 1981, p.203; Wolff, 2003, pp.2–3), or even decried as a waste of space (Johnson, 1976, p.182). In this chapter, I will begin to correct this gap in the literature by closely examining the place of NHAs in Nozick’s thought. In addition, I will offer indications of how this ties to the broader question of NHAs in libertarian thought. Typically of Nozick, it is hard to find a single position on NHAs; however, given that consideration of NHAs can be found variously in his politics, his ethics and his axiology, this is perhaps understandable. I will begin by addressing the idea that Nozick was

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simply a speciesist, before outlining what I will suggest is the most straightforward reading of Nozick on NHAs – namely, that our obligations to NHAs are relegated to the moral sphere from the political sphere. Nonetheless, I will suggest that tensions in this position indicate that Nozick may have been more open to animal rights than has been previously appreciated. I will close by looking to Nozick’s axiology and ethics, showing how Nozick argues that NHAs are beings valuable inand-of-themselves and that we have strong moral obligations towards them, whatever our political obligations.

5.1

Nozick and Speciesism

One way that Nozick has been addressed in the animal ethics literature is as a straightforward speciesist (Dombrowski, 1997, pp.157–175; McMahan, 2002, p.218; Rachels 1990, pp.183–184). This view is based on his review of Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights (1983) written for the New York Times Book Review (1983) and later republished in his Socratic Puzzles (1997). A typical reading of this piece would suggest that Nozick dismisses Regan’s arguments on the grounds that we can ignore the problems raised by the argument from species overlap1 (Pluhar, 1995, p.71), and that, instead, we can merely assume that “the species an individual belongs to [is] morally relevant” (Nozick, 1997, p.307). Arguments for this are thin; Nozick asserts that species membership is not “on surface, blatantly irrelevant morally” (Ibid, p.308), wondering whether “the bare species characteristic of simply being human . . . will command special respect only from other humans”, as “an instance of the general principle that the members of any species may legitimately give their fellows more weight” than a “neutral view would give them” (Ibid). A second suggestion is that we view – this is a descriptive claim, not a normative one – humans and

This has been called the “argument from marginal cases”. This latter name is actually owed ultimately to Narveson – a libertarian critic of animal rights – but is problematic for a number of reasons (cf. Horta, 2014). 1

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NHAs against “a different background and texture” (Ibid), and that these backgrounds are “two rich tapestries (one richer than the other)” (Ibid, p.309). It is the total difference, Nozick suggests, between these rich tapestries that justifies a difference in treatment. These arguments in support of speciesism are poor, and Nozick recognises this (Ibid), but suggests that anti-speciesist philosophers will nonetheless not be taken seriously (Ibid) – again, a descriptive claim. While we might dismiss Nozick’s arguments as weak, it could be that speciesism is something common to libertarian positions. Machan, for instance, is avowedly and clearly speciesist (1991, p.170; 2002, pp.9–14; 2004, pp.25–54), even if he has a rather idiosyncratic account of speciesism, seemingly understanding non-speciesism as a kind ecological or environmental ethic (2004, p.2). Meanwhile, Narveson, to his credit, rejects speciesist reasoning (1987, p.43). Nozick’s challenge to Regan does not, for him, represent an attempt to wash his hands of animal ethics. He closes his article by saying that “[t]he topic” of the treatment of NHAs “is not a trivial or unimportant one” (1997, p.310). This is not an empty claim, and he elsewhere spends considerable time arguing for respectful treatment of NHAs, as will be discussed. I suggest that Nozick’s opposition to Reganite philosophy is sincere, but that his focus upon Regan’s anti-speciesism is, all things considered, ill-chosen. I say this not least because, in the review, Nozick gestures towards an alternative view about the status of NHAs that appears to be non-speciesist. He writes that NHAs “do have some inherent value and hence may not be treated any way anyone might please, but their inherent value is not equal to that of people” (Ibid, emphasis Nozick’s). Note that he here says people, not humans – one need not be a speciesist to endorse this claim, if we understand people as the plural of person. In the review, as in his earlier ASU, Nozick is explicitly open to the notion that hypothetical extra-terrestrials may be greater-than-persons (1974, p.45; 1997, p.308), and, correspondingly, may warrant different treatment/valuation. He is therefore, no doubt, open to the possibility of nonhuman persons and human non-persons. Here, Nozick is gesturing towards a non-speciesist ethic, simply one that is different from Regan’s; the valuation of personhood may well be defensible in a way that the valuation of human-ness is not. If we reject

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Nozick’s claims about species as ill-chosen, the review indicates that Nozick’s concern with Regan is with his reliance upon the argument from species overlap (Nozick, 1997, pp.306–307), with his “all animals are equal” axiology and with his use of “inherent value” to ground obligations (Ibid, pp.309–310). In addition, there is an implicit worry about the size of a state necessary to enforce Regan’s picture, or a postRegan picture (Ibid, p.309). It is striking that the former three challenges resonate closely with some of the criticism levelled at Reganite philosophy in the political turn (though, at the time, they might be more easily read as critiques of animal rights tout court) while the latter is a standard libertarian worry about animal-rights-respecting states (cf., e.g. Machan, 2004, p.23). Also striking is that Nozick reads Regan as a political, so not “merely” moral, thinker. Once we look beyond Nozick’s misdirected – and, by his own admission, weak – defence of speciesism, we see a subtle and beforeits-time critique of Regan that explicitly leaves open the possibility of alternative anti-speciesist positions.

5.2

Nozick on Vegetarianism

Nozick’s comments in the review can be fruitfully contrasted with what he says in ASU, in which NHAs are considered at some length. Nozick presents a series of compelling thought experiments to show us that NHAs “count for something” (1974, p.35), and, after developing an account of how respect is owed to NHAs directly and deftly handling some arguments in support of meat-eating, concludes that “the extra benefits Americans today can gain from eating animals do not justify doing it. So we shouldn’t” (Ibid, p.38). The extent to which Nozick’s arguments for universal Western veg(etari)anism2 were radical should not be underestimated; Nozick was writing in 1974, prior to the 2 Though Nozick writes only about flesh, it is fairly clear that his argument works better as one for veganism than vegetarianism, at least insofar as the milk and egg industries inflict death upon NHAs. Indeed, it resembles the basic argument for veganism presented by Gary Francione and Anna Charlton (2013).

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publication of Peter Singer’s 1975 Animal Liberation or Regan’s 1983 The Case for Animal Rights. However, as already mentioned, commentators on Nozick have a tendency to dismiss them as an aside of limited importance. It is as a part of this discussion that Nozick introduces his maxim of “utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people” (1974, p.39).3 We should resist taking this as his all-things-considered view of the status of NHAs. He introduces the suggestion as “too minimal” (Ibid), and almost immediately rejects it. He is clearly worried about the possibility that there may be no legal censure of violence towards NHAs (Ibid, pp.40–41), which appears to be a natural consequence of this view. Ultimately asking if “utilitarianism is at least adequate for animals”, he declares that he “think[s] not” (Ibid, p.42). “Even for animals”, he explains, “utilitarianism won’t do as the whole story, but the thicket of questions daunts us” (Ibid).4 The following can be taken from this initial discussion in ASU: Nozick is of the view that NHAs have some degree of (for want of a better term) “inherent” value or worth, and this means that we have certain duties towards them. In particular, this means that people in Western democracies (or, minimally, the United States) are obliged to not eat NHAs. Typically, this would be understood as a matter for Nozick’s moral philosophy, rather than his politics; in refusing to extend rights to NHAs, Nozick excludes NHAs from political protection. When it comes to Nozick’s political realm and questions of justice, rights are exhaustive – only they can be demanded or enforced (Nozick, 1981, pp.499 and 503; Vallentyne, 2011, p.147; Wolff, 2003, p.22). However, we can see a tension in this relegation of issues concerning NHAs to the “moral” realm. Nozick’s first discussion of NHAs takes place in the development of his political philosophy, and he is

3 Robert Garner characterises this as a succinct statement of the ethic of animal welfare (Garner, 2013, pp.26 & 78); indeed, Garner is one of the few animal ethicists to look explicitly to Nozick’s political thought on NHAs, though he rejects it as inadequate. 4 An idea similar to Nozick’s “utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people” is Jeff McMahan’s three-tiered account of the wrongness of killing (McMahan, 2008). If we were to defend Nozick’s maxim, McMahan’s account would be the right place to start.

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unhappy with the framework he proposes, not least because it seems to entail that the state cannot punish those who mistreat animals. If Nozick is to defend the possibility that the protection of NHAs is excluded from the political domain, he needs some way to separate humans and NHAs. He shows awareness of this in ASU, and is not content to rest on species difference. He is also sceptical of many of the ideas traditionally offered to separate humans and NHAs – intellect, selfconsciousness, moral agency and so on. Instead, “[a]n intervening variable M is needed for which the listed traits are individually necessary, perhaps jointly sufficient (at least we should be able to see what needs to be added to obtain M), and which has a perspicuous and convincing connection to moral constraints on behavior toward someone with M” (1974, pp.48–49). M is identified, but not adequately explained, as the ability to hold “an overall conception” of life, and “the ability to regulate and guide [one’s] life in accordance with some overall conception it chooses to accept” (Ibid, p.49). This ability to devise a picture of a whole life, the chance to act with the intention of forming a life of one’s choosing and the consequent possibility of leading a life of one’s choosing is of central importance to Nozick, undergirding his conception of rights. As to why this is so, Nozick “conjecture[s] that the answer is connected with that elusive and difficult notion: the meaning of life” (Ibid, p.50).

5.3

Grounding Rights in the Meaning of Life

It might be tempting to dismiss Nozick at this point – if his exclusion of NHAs from the political domain rests upon something as imprecise as the meaning of life, he is truly clutching at straws. However, and somewhat uncharacteristically, he does offer considerable discussion of this topic elsewhere,5 first in Philosophical Explanations (1981, chap. 6), and

5

In looking beyond ASU, I implicitly reject a now-old-fashioned view that Nozick abandoned libertarianism (see, e.g. Hailwood, 1996, Chaps. 1 & 10). He certainly later defended elements of a non-libertarian politics – especially his idea of “symbolic utility” (Nozick, 1993, chaps. I-III; cf.

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then in The Examined Life (2006).6 In these works, Nozick indicates what he understands the meaning of life to be, or, at least, what he considers a meaningful life to be. His account of meaning rests partially upon his account of value, which will be addressed later, but can nonetheless be understood in the abstract: “Value involves something’s being integrated within its own boundaries, while meaning involves its having some connection beyond these boundaries” (2006, p.166; cf. Nozick 1981, pp.594–595). Nozick applies this specifically to the meaning of life: “The value of a person’s life attaches to it within its limits, while the meaning of his life attaches to it as centered in the wider value context beyond its limits” (1981, p.611). We can deduce that Nozick’s strong negative rights derive from the meaning of life because meaningfulness depends upon one freely choosing to interact with items of value beyond themselves. This means that rights give us the space we need to make our lives meaningful. By contrast, if humans were kept unconscious in vats, their lives would be meaningless (though valuable) – appropriately, Nozick observes that our lives would be meaningless if we were merely food for aliens, even if delicious (Ibid, p.586). In order to live a meaningful life, one both needs the capacities that allow one to cultivate meaningfulness and one needs to exist in conditions in which one is free to practice them; the latter, for Nozick, is a world in which strong negative rights are recognised and respected. Assuming that Nozick endorses this possibility, he actually offers a fairly unique explanation of the exclusion of NHAs from the political domain. Alone, this indicates that he should be of interest to animal ethicists. It would be possible to take this account of Nozick’s position on NHAs as read. Indeed, the idea that NHAs are excluded from Nozick’s political domain corresponds with the reading typical among commentators and mirrors the accounts of other libertarians. Nozick, 2006, chap. 25) – but both defended something like libertarianism in his last book (2001) and professed to remaining libertarian in his last interview (Sanchez, 2001). While his thought undeniably developed, to say that he abandoned libertarianism would be a mistake. I also, partially, reject Thomas Nagel’s widely quoted claim that Nozick offers “libertarianism without foundations” (1981); Nozick does offer a grounding for his rights, but we have to look beyond ASU to find it. 6 The Examined Life was first published in 1989.

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Nonetheless, taking this approach would downplay the existence of tensions within Nozick’s politics. I suggest, as an alternative to this reading, that Nozick or the Nozickian could endorse animal rights. One approach would be to take as given Nozick’s grounding of rights in the meaning of life but suggest that he was nonetheless wrong to limit rights to humans; something that neither Nozick nor his critics seem to consider. Perhaps to the extent that NHAs could freely create and sustain links to valuable entities beyond themselves (say, the affection a cow has for her calf), a NHA’s life could be made meaningful by the actions of the NHA herself, just as human lives can be made meaningful by the actions of the human herself. This would make extending rights to NHAs within Nozick’s framework coherent; though perhaps less so than paradigmatic adult humans, (at least some) NHAs have potentially meaningful lives, but this potential is denied by the way we treat them. Extending rights to NHAs to protect them from this treatment would allow them to develop meaningfulness. The argument may seem to follow quite easily: Humans require rights to freedom from human interference because their lives have potential for meaning, and the rights to freedom from interference allow them to pursue their lives’ meaningfulness. NHAs also have potential for meaning in their lives, and this potential is frequently scuppered by human interference. Consequently, they, too, should be granted rights. There is an open question, however, concerning the extent to which the potential meaningfulness of NHA lives would relate to their “ability to regulate and guide [their lives] in accordance with some overall conception [they choose] to accept” (Nozick, 1974, p.49). As this element is part, for Nozick, of how the meaning of life grounds rights for paradigmatic adults, the observation that NHAs might be able to make their lives meaningful cannot be straightforwardly used to ground animal rights. Perhaps the Nozickian who wishes to deny that NHAs are rights-bearers would say that, even if they have the potential for some level of meaningfulness in their lives, NHAs lack the ability to pursue a life of their choosing. This difference might hold some importance; even though NHAs have the capacity to cultivate meaningfulness (surely not a uniquely human capacity) they lack the capacity that really grounds the importance of human

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freedom – or so might say my interlocutor.7 Nonetheless, this approach might allow for the possibility of a distinctly Nozickian account of animal rights. If I were to pursue the argument with my imaginary interlocutor, she might suggest that in order for NHAs to achieve their limited potential for meaningfulness, they need some level of protection, but not the kind of freedom to form a full life-plan that humans require. Perhaps NHAs would require protection from the infliction of death and suffering, and maybe some degree of freedom of movement/association or access to the kinds of space they require – the kinds of rights for which contemporary interest-based animal rights theorists argue. But maybe we do not need to take this rather curious route to suggest that Nozick was concerned with the protection of the key interests of NHAs. Instead, we can see the seed of animal rights in Nozick’s own words. Recall his uneasiness at the thought that NHAs might be excluded from any and all legal protection, and not because of any indirect duty (i.e. a duty to some human that concerns the NHA), but because of their own value. Also recall the way that, in Nozickian philosophy and libertarian political theory more broadly, rights are exhaustive when it comes to questions of justice. If Nozick or the libertarian wishes to extend any protection to NHAs, then there is only one option open to them: these NHAs must have rights. This is part of what makes Nozickian politics so interesting when it comes to animal ethics. There is very little “middle ground” concerning the class of rights-bearers or the recipients of justice; a given being is either in or out.

5.4

Choices and Interests

Part of the reason that it might seem difficult for Nozick – and libertarians more broadly – to take account of animal rights is the reliance upon “choice” or “will” rights. These are rights instituted to protect the 7 Nozick tells us that “some people” understand a meaningful life to be one (1) organised according to a plan, that (2) possesses structure and is (3) lived transparently, so that (4) others can learn from it by (5) seeing as positive those features exalted (1981, p.578). This seems to assume a level of mental sophistication perhaps lacking in NHAs.

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choices or will of the individual. So, for example, a right against being sold into slavery is more accurately described as a right over whether one is sold into slavery, with Nozick explicitly allowing that an individual may choose to sell herself into slavery, if she is so inclined (1974, p.331). NHAs seem to lack the capacities for making these kinds of choices. Nozick’s focus on will rights can be understood when his rights framework is contextualised within his account of meaning, given that free choice is necessary to live a meaningful life. As Nozick’s rights are will rights and as NHAs are “either in or out”, his comments about NHAs have troubled those philosophers who have looked to them. Peter Vallentyne, though he astutely identifies the relationship between claims, rights and justice in Nozickian philosophy (2011, pp.145–148), is puzzled by Nozick’s references to the claims of NHAs, assuming that Nozick is making reference to claims that are unenforceable (Ibid, p.166). However, “claims”, like “rights”, have no place in Nozick’s unenforceable moral philosophy. Alan Lacey is also perplexed by Nozick’s discussion of NHAs. He reads Nozick’s foundation of rights in a way close to how I have presented it, before attributing faulty reasoning to him: [W]e might distinguish that some creature has a right to a certain treatment and saying that it is right so to treat and wrong not to. The latter need not entail the former. Perhaps something only has a right if it is capable of recognizing rights in general, both its own and those of others; infants have rights in virtue of what they will become later. (Lacey, 2001, p.28)

The problems with this kind of potentiality argument are notorious, and it is unfair to suggest that Nozick would endorse such a fallacious argument without reference to his work. Without irony, Lacey goes on to say, criticising Nozick’s consideration of hyper-intelligent extraterrestrials (whom Nozick suggests might have certain rights over humans), that a “mere increase in intelligence, moral insights or sensitivity, however vast, would surely not justify sacrificing us for their purposes. We do not sacrifice children or imbeciles for our own” (Ibid, p.29). Lacey is correct on this latter point, but we do

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sacrifice NHAs, and Nozick’s political philosophy as presented must – begrudgingly – permit this. More likely than Nozick endorsing flawed potentiality arguments is that, as indicated in his arguments for veg (etari)anism, he believed that NHAs and human infants are owed protection in their own right, thanks to their inherent value, the fact that they count for “something”. This, though, Nozick finds difficult to articulate. Recall how he said that the “thicket of questions” surrounding the issue of NHAs “daunts” him (1974, p.42). Vallentyne correctly observes that if Nozick holds that all rights are choice-protecting, which it seems that he does, he owes an account demonstrating that there are no interest-protecting rights. There is no attempt at such a demonstration in Nozick’s corpus (Vallentyne, 2011, p.149). Vallentyne recognises that choice-protecting rights do not and cannot extend to NHAs and infants, and accurately links the two groups (Ibid, pp.145–146 and 149). Despite this, he does not mention any exclusion of infants from Nozick’s rights-framework, though he does stress an exclusion of NHAs. Vallentyne assumes that Nozick includes babies in his system of rights, presumably because they possess interestprotecting rights, while reading him as excluding NHAs. It is not clear why Vallentyne, after recognising the parallels in the two cases, should separate them without argument. It is true that Nozick sometimes writes as if he is opposed to attributing rights to NHAs, perhaps because he does not want to come across as “extreme” or a “crank” (cf. Nozick 1981, p.523; Nozick 1997, pp.305–306), but at the same time, he seemingly wants to offer them (and infants) protection. Embracing interest rights seems to be one of the few options open to Nozick, unless he wishes to go down a rather dark path. This alternative route is taken by Narveson. He is, like Nozick, a libertarian, and takes significant influence from the latter (especially in his earlier libertarian work). However, he takes an explicitly neoHobbesian contractarian position, which contrasts with Nozick’s commitment to a political theory informed by morality. The significance of this will become clear. Narveson is of the view that those who wish to harm NHAs should not “have to submit to the self-ascribed ‘moral’ ministrations of those who want to make them charter members of the moral republic” (1999, p.135), and holds that if it is in our interests to

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treat NHAs well, then we should, but, if not, “why should we go to the trouble?” (1987, pp.41–42).8 In this sense, Narveson has advanced no further than Thomas Hobbes; both exclude NHAs from the domain of the political because of their assumed inability to enter any kind of contractual relationship.9 Martha Nussbaum is right when she observes that: [T]he urgent need to undermine the basis of monarchical and hierarchical conceptions of politics explained and to a great extent justified the decision to focus on those human beings who are roughly equal in power and resources [in Hobbes]. We do not live in the same world now; and we have no such excuse for not facing [issues of inclusion in justice] head on, in the course of designing basic political principles. (2006, p.32)

Narveson, however, does not stop at the exclusion of NHAs. Those same reasons that are used to exclude NHAs apply to many humans. Narveson writes that any “basis for the objection to cruel treatment” of NHAs “is surely sympathy, just as it is for our dealings with human infants” (1999, p.139). The capacities that grant an individual rights, Narveson claims, are “perfectly familiar to any adult, or any child beyond infancy” (Ibid, p.160), though presumably not to infants. In fact, Narveson elsewhere denies that they are familiar to all adults. Though implausibly claiming that “[e]ven very retarded human beings . . . are far in advance of even bright animals” intellectually (1987, p.32), he denies that there can be any “inherent value” in “greatly subnormal humans or infants” (Ibid, p.39). His ethico-political framework “must, of course, classify those humans who are so far below the 8

A broadly similar position is taken by Machan. He is opposed to intervention of the government into the life of humans for anything perceived as a moralistic reason; governments exist solely to protect human rights, and not for “animal welfare” (2004, pp.18, 23 & 53). Machan does seem to believe that there are moral constraints on our treatment of NHAs, but this is a separate question to whether they have rights, which, he claims, they do not (1985, p.75; 1991, p.164; 2004, pp.20–21 & 118). Consequently, and though Machan sometimes seems nervous of his own conclusion (2004, p.22), there should not be any direct legal protection of NHAs. 9 For more on Hobbesian contractarianism, see Mark Rowlands’s contribution to the present volume.

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standard for our species . . . as not inherently qualified for basic rights” (Ibid, p.46). This leaves Narveson’s state a dystopic vision. He endorses the use of NHAs – for food, entertainment, science and so forth – currently standard, and is opposed to the minimal regulation that these industries receive. However, he must also endorse the possibility that certain humans may be used in these ways. His vision is one that, surely, we must reject. Susan Okin sees Nozick’s state as similarly dystopic. She suggests that Nozick’s commitments to self-ownership and derivative property rights lead to the conclusion that humans are owned by their mothers (1989, pp.81–84). Nozick, she suggests, excludes “infants, small children, and many of the developmentally disabled” from the domain of rightsbearers (Ibid, p.85). Okin imagines a world in which a woman might produce “a child for whatever purpose she chooses”: for sale, “to keep it [sic] in a cage to amuse her . . . or even to kill it and eat it, if she were so inclined” (Ibid, p.84). It is my contention that Nozick does not want to take this path, as concerns humans or NHAs. That Nozick should be concerned with respect for all – regardless of whether beings are able to reciprocate respect – can in part be traced back to the moral foundations of his politics. The argument of ASU is motivated by Nozick’s foundational assumption that some things are deeply unjust: “Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them” (1974, p.ix). These things are wrong regardless of whether we live in the state, and regardless of whether treating them as wrong is in our interests. Narveson’s Hobbesian framework, however, is motivated by egoism and self-protection. For this reason, Nozick will always be uneasy about following the Narvesonian path – at least when he feels that there is something deeply wrong about inflicting significant, direct harms upon young children and NHAs, which he clearly does. In order to take the alternative path, in which respect for NHAs and all humans is a demand of justice, Nozick needs to extend rights to those beings who lack the capacity to meaningfully possess choice rights. The most suitable way to do this would be to endorse the extension of interest rights to these beings. Precisely how these interest rights would look is not something that can be read from Nozick’s work – as Vallentyne has

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observed, Nozick does not consider interest rights in his published material at all. Perhaps if he had, he would have been able to make greater sense of how his views of NHAs fit in with his wider political philosophy, and may have been able to offer a political animal ethics more satisfying – to him and to animal ethicists – than his “too minimal” maxim of “utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people” (1974, p.39). In suggesting that Nozick could extend interest rights to NHAs, I am essentially suggesting that Nozick could temper his libertarianism, but temper his libertarianism in a way consistent with other claims he makes. It is not uncommon for critics (e.g. Fried, 2011) to claim that Nozick dulls the edge of his libertarianism with non-libertarian elements, even in ASU. Nozick himself later accepted that his political theory as presented in ASU was “inadequate” for failing to take into account the symbolic utility of actions (1993, p.32), though he did not renounce libertarianism (Sanchez, 2001). This allows for a number of ways in which we might understand the possibility of interest rights in Nozick’s thought; first, his comments on NHAs in ASU may indicate that, even in 1974, Nozick did not buy into his own libertarianism. Second, his dissatisfaction with the full consequences of libertarianism in his more developed thought may indicate that animal rights is an aspect that he would, could or should have endorsed in his later life, even while holding fast to an (otherwise) broadly libertarian worldview. A third, unsympathetic, possibility would be that Nozick was highly inconsistent in his political commitments, and that his mixed messages on animal rights are one element of this. On this third reading, there would be no way to mediate between Nozick-the-consistent-libertarian and Nozickthe-latent-animal-rightist.

5.5

Possible Objections

I will now offer brief responses to four possible worries about my presentation of Nozickian politics as potentially sympathetic to NHAs. The first issue is the minimal state. A state with the power and mandate to enforce the rights-claims of NHAs would be larger than

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the state typically associated with Nozick. However, the requirement for a larger-than-expected state is not a reason for a Nozickian to reject animal rights. If the demands of justice require a large state, Nozick is prepared to accept this; a point not lost on commentators. In what Bernard Williams calls “a vitally important but unemphatic passage” (1981, pp.35–36) of ASU, for example, Nozick professes that he is open to a redistributive state as a means of rectifying historical injustices (1974, pp.230–231). Similarly, Joachim Wündisch (2014; cf. Waldron, 2005) has recently argued that Nozickian minarchism necessitates a welfare state – something often seen as anathema to libertarianism. The second issue is that Nozick is often presented as an advocate of unrestrained capitalism, and capitalism is frequently portrayed as a bad thing for NHAs. I do not deny that, as currently practiced, capitalism is bad for NHAs, but this does not mean that we are obliged to overthrow it. Nozickianism has tools for constraining the free market, including, but not limited to, rights. To put it simply, if NHAs have rights, then much of what is done to them under capitalism should be prevented by the state. This means that a Nozickian can condemn the rights-violations inflicted by capitalists, and those industries in which the rights-violations are inherent, without having to condemn capitalism itself. In this sense, a Nozickian picture of animal rights is not far from a liberal picture of animal rights. It is also worth remembering that the left, too, has a long history of opposition to animal rights, and real-world socialist states have hardly been utopias for NHAs (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2014). Third, though I have illustrated that Nozickian politics is potentially open to animal rights, I may have done this by showing that Nozick is not truly a libertarian.10 If the truly libertarian position is more like Narveson’s, then this leaves libertarianism undesirable for animal ethicists (and many other thinkers). Even this, however, would not mean

10

My focus has been on Nozick’s foundational question of rights-possession rather than his entitlement theory, when, arguably, it is the latter element of his thought that is “most” libertarian.

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that animal ethics and libertarianism should have only an antagonistic relationship, as there is potential for the exploration of how libertarianinspired tools might enrich animal ethics or be applicable to NHAs. Work in this area has already begun: Rainer Ebert and Tibor Machan write about “libertarianizing” rights theory as it is applied in animal ethics (2012), John Hadley explores the attribution of Lockean-inspired property rights to NHAs (2015, chap. 3) and I argue that Nozick’s “Lockean” proviso can be used to offer significant protection to NHAs (2016). It is possible that this work represents the most valuable contributions that libertarian theory can offer to animal ethics; rather than adopting a libertarian theory of animal rights wholesale, animal ethicists may be able to draw tools from libertarian theory to help deal with particular problems. This ties to a fourth problem: it is possible that animal ethicists reject Nozickian politics for reasons unrelated to its treatment of animal rights. To be clear, I have sympathy with many criticisms of Nozick, and, in exploring his work here, I do not wish to be read as endorsing libertarianism. However, once again, we can point to the normative tools that Nozickian/libertarian philosophy contains; these are ideas that could be taken from their libertarian context and applied elsewhere. In addition, there is value, especially for liberal animal ethicists, in demonstrating the possibility of a broad consensus for animal rights, even among theorists who might typically be considered hostile to the possibility.

5.6

Nozick’s Ethics

In my exploration of Nozick’s political philosophy, I have overlooked key aspects of Nozick’s animal ethics. If the possibility of Nozickian animal rights is rejected, Nozick’s arguments for Western vegetarianism would be solely moral, but this would not mean that his animal ethics should be ignored. In both The Examined Life and Philosophical Explanations, Nozick considers NHAs within his “organic unity”-based axiology (1981, pp.415–419 and 440–444; 2006, pp.162–166). He thereby offers a principled way of justifying his (intuitionistic) claim in

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ASU that NHAs count for “something”. Organic unity is an idea from aesthetics, wherein a work of art can be judged valuable based on the extent to which it unifies disparate elements (themes, media, colours), and the extent to which the unified elements were, originally, disparate. This same method, Nozick claims, can be used to judge value in any field (Nozick, 1981, pp.415–416), with more organically unified entities being more valuable. The judgement is a two-part one: “[t]he greater the diversity that gets unified, the greater the organic unity; and also the tighter the unity to which the diversity is brought, the greater the organic unity” (Nozick, 2006, p.164). When the principle is applied, “we can rank organisms roughly in accordance with their degree of organic unity, so that most plants come below most animals, with higher animals coming above the lower ones” (Nozick, 1981, p.417). Paradigmatic humans are placed above NHAs, as “[s]entience and then consciousness add new possibilities of unification over time and at a time, and self-consciousness, being an ‘I’, is an especially tight mode of unification” (1981, pp.416–417; cf. 2006, p.163). This means that “the ranking of organisms in accordance with degree of organic unity matches our value ranking of them, with people above other animals above plants above rocks” (1981, p.417), though there is potential for overlap (Ibid, p.415). NHAs are, then, of considerable value – though some are more valuable than others.11 The high value of NHAs takes on particular significance when it comes to the human desire to live a meaningful life. This is because, to repeat, human lives become meaningful by

11 Exploring this fully is beyond the scope of the present chapter. Nozick claims that the means of judging organic unity will vary in different “realms” (1981, pp.418 & 426), so in reality offers a kind of meta-axiology. When it comes, however, to the “realm” of animals – human and otherwise – he seems to think, as indicated, that organic unity is grounded primarily in mental sophistication. Mental sophistication will perhaps not always win out, however, with Nozick claiming that a redwood is more valuable than a mouse (Ibid, p.415). Simon Hailwood suggests that this could be justified by the age and size of the tree (1996, p.150); though the mouse wins on the primary measure of organic unity, the tree wins on others. Also possible is that Nozick is mistaken. The mouse could be more organically unified, or perhaps the tree and the mouse are of not of the same “realm” – Nozick problematically assumes that they are – meaning that their value could even be incomparable. Though cross-realm comparisons of value are sometimes possible, they are not always (Nozick, 1981, p.419).

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connecting with things of value. Importantly, however, individuals must respond appropriately to these entities of value (Nozick, 1981, pp.428– 433; Nozick, 2006, chap. 14). We do not, for example, make our lives more meaningful by responding with disgust to things of beauty. Instead, we might admire valuable art or protect valuable ecosystems, or we could derive some meaning from having the appropriate disvaluing attitudes towards disvaluable things;12 we can be angry at injustice, disgusted by wastefulness. The way that our lifestyles might demand the death and suffering of NHAs, or the denial of their freedom, must – at least when as transparently unnecessary as it is in the West – indicate that we have the wrong kinds of attitudes towards them qua beings of value; this, in turn, makes our lives less meaningful. It is not by killing, overpowering or hurting NHAs that we make our life meaningful, but by admiring them, respecting them, or – when appropriate – aiding them.13 Following this to its conclusion, we see that, ceteris paribus, the life of a vegan is more meaningful than the life of a non-vegan on Nozick’s picture. To reiterate, however, people must freely choose to engage appropriately with things of (dis)value. Their lives are not made meaningful if they are forced to engage appropriately with them. This picture of the place of NHAs in Nozick’s philosophy is neatly tied together in his four levels of ethics (2001, pp.260–262; 2006, pp.212–214). It is important to be moral – “being moral instances and realizes a more general kind of value, and you should be moral because it is . . . a better way to be” (2001, p.283) – but the only thing we can do with a person who refuses to behave morally is to try to appeal to their better side. “All that any society should (coercively) demand is adherence to [the first level of ethics]. The further levels should be a matter for a person’s own individual choice and development” (Ibid, pp.281–282). The first level is the ethics of respect, and ultimately 12

Disvaluable things are those entities with a destructive telos (Nozick, 1981, p.419). This need not mean – a point Lacey seems to miss (2001, p.81) – that telos is essential to Nozick’s metaphysics or applicable in all “realms”. While the concentration camp is disvaluable (Nozick, 1981, p.419), the volcano need not be. Nozick takes this disanalogy for granted (Hailwood, 1996, p.154). 13 Nozick talks of V verbs (support, respect, affirm, etc.) and anti-V verbs (neglect, dismiss, destroy, etc.). We act ethically, and give meaning to our lives, when we V those things of value and anti-V those things of disvalue.

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concerns respect for the negative rights of autonomous adults. The principles of ASU are one way to work this out, and another (a kind of naturalistic, evolutionary ethic) is offered in Nozick’s Invariances (Ibid, pp.280 and 248–278). NHAs, unless Nozickian animal rights can be grounded, are excluded. Nozick’s second level is the ethics of responsiveness, described variously as an ethic that “mandates acting in a way that is responsive to other people’s reality and value, a way that takes account of their reality and is intricately contoured to it” (2006, p.212) and as about “acting in a way that is responsive to people’s value, enhancing and supporting it, and enabling it to flourish” (2001, p.280). Why Nozick here specifies only the value of people is unclear; he certainly does not justify it. Given that – as established – many NHAs are beings of considerable value in Nozick’s axiology, there is no reason that they should be excluded from the ethics of responsiveness. When Nozick speaks of his own vegetarianism, it is the language of responsiveness (or even, tellingly, respect) that he uses: “A respect for and valuing of animal life leads me not to eat meat or fish and to try to avoid wearing animal products” (1981, p.523). I suggest that a fully worked-out ethics of respect would include not merely people, but NHAs.14 In Nozick’s own description of the four levels of ethics, it is in the third level that NHAs explicitly enter. The ethics of caring, when fully developed, mandate “nonharm, ahimsa and love to all people, perhaps to all living creatures” (2001, p.280). The ethics of caring is a long way from any kind of political prescription. In its demand for positive attitudes, the ethic speaks to individuals about how they should feel; even the actions of the individual seem secondary. (The fourth layer of ethics, the ethics of light, is reached only by great spiritual leaders; Socrates, Buddha, Jesus. What it mandates, if anything in particular, is unclear.) Nozick, then, is able to offer coherent, original arguments for the value of NHAs, and present both an ethical framework and an

Nozick writes that he is concerned with exploring “the fullest moral basis” for our treatment of other beings, meaning that, in practice, he focuses on humans. He is explicit, though, that this focus does not mean that he denies that NHAs might be owed certain kinds of respectful treatment (1981, p.451). This may be the reason that even those commentators who look to Nozick’s ethics (e.g. Hailwood, 1996, chaps. 11–13) downplay his comments on NHAs. 14

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account of the meaning of life in which respect for NHAs finds a comfortable place. This should perhaps not be surprising. Nozick, as well as being one of the most original philosophers of the twentieth century, was a vegetarian, and devoted several pages in his first and most important book to explaining (with simple, intuitive, compelling arguments) that all in the West should be too. Even if – which I deny – his politics must be hostile to NHAs, perhaps it is time that Nozick is recognised as deserving of a place in our minds among the morally focussed animal ethicists of the twentieth century.

5.7

Concluding Remarks

The political turn in animal ethics should expand its reach and potential by looking to political philosophy beyond liberalism. Right libertarianism has been almost entirely ignored by animal ethicists, and right libertarian philosophers have been highly critical of animal rights. Nonetheless, Robert Nozick, the most prominent right libertarian, should be recognised as a novel and interesting, if cautious, animal ethicist. Even if we might have reason to not endorse Nozick’s philosophy, it would be a mistake to simply ignore it. It is my hope that the political turn in animal ethics will allow not just new and novel approaches to animal ethics, but reassessments of existing political theories and influential thinkers. Nozick’s reassessment is, in my view, long overdue.

Bibliography Arneson, R., 2011. Side Constraints, Lockean Individual Rights, and the Moral Basis of Libertarianism. In R. Bader & J. Meadowcroft, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bader, R., 2010. Robert Nozick. London: Continuum. Dombrowski, D., 1997. Babies and Beasts. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Donaldson, S. & Kymlicka, W., 2011. Zoopolis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Donaldson, S. & Kymlicka, W., 2014. Animal Rights, Multiculturalism, and the Left. Journal of Social Philosophy, 45(1), pp. 116–35. Ebert, R. & Machan, T., 2012. Innocent Threats and the Moral Problem of Carnivorous Animals. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 29(2), pp. 146–59. Francione, G. & Charlton, A., 2013. Eat Like You Care. Logan, UT: Exempla Press. Fried, B., 2011. Does Nozick Have a Theory of Property Rights?. In R. Bader & J. Meadowcroft, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garner, R., 2013. A Theory of Justice for Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hadley, J., 2015. Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Hailwood, S., 1996. Exploring Nozick. Aldershot, England: Avebury. Horta, O., 2014. The Scope of the Argument from Species Overlap. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 31(2), pp. 142–54. Johnson, K., 1976. Government by Insurance Company: The Antipolitical Philosophy of Robert Nozick. Western Political Quarterly, 29(2), pp. 177–88. Lacey, A. R., 2001. Robert Nozick. Durham, England: Acumen. Lomasky, L., 1987. Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lomasky, L., 2013. Is It Wrong to Eat Animals?. Social Philosophy and Policy, 30(1–2), pp. 177–200. Machan, T., 1985. Some Doubts about Animal Rights. Journal of Value Enquiry, 19(1), pp. 73–5. Machan, T., 1991. Do Animals Have Rights?. Public Affairs Quarterly, 5(2), pp. 163–73. Machan, T., 2004. Putting Humans First. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. McMahan, J., 2002. The Ethics of Killing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McMahan, J., 2008. Challenges to Human Equality. Journal of Ethics, 12(1), pp. 81–104. Milligan, T., 2015. The Political Turn in Animal Rights. Politics and Animals, 1, pp. 6–15. Milburn, J., 2016. The Demandingness of Nozick’s “Lockean” Proviso. European Journal of Political Theory, 15(3), pp. 276–92. Nagel, T., 1981. Libertarianism without Foundations. In J. Paul, ed., Reading Nozick. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

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Narveson, J., 1977. Animal Rights. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 7(1), pp. 161–78. Narveson, J., 1987. On a Case for Animal Rights. The Monist, 70(1), pp. 31–49. Narveson, J., 1999. Moral Matters. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview. Nozick, R., 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books. Nozick, R., 1981. Philosophical Explanations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nozick, R., 1983. About Mammals and People. New York Times Book Review, p. 11. Nozick, R., 1993. The Nature of Rationality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nozick, R., 1997. Socratic Puzzles. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nozick, R., 2001. Invariances. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nozick, R., 2006. The Examined Life. New York: Simon & Schuster. Nussbaum, M., 2006. Frontiers of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Okin, S., 1989. Justice, Gender, and the Family. New York: Basic Books. Pluhar, E., 1995. Beyond Prejudice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rachels, J., 1990. Created From Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Regan, T., 1983. The Case for Animal Rights. Oakland: University of California Press. Sanchez, J., 2001. An Interview with Robert Nozick. URL: www.juliansanchez. com/an-interview-with-robert-nozick-july-26-2001/ Singer, P., 1975. Animal Liberation. New York: HarperCollins. Vallentyne, P., 2011. Nozick’s Libertarian Theory of Justice. In R. Bader & J. Meadowcroft, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waldron, J., 2005. Nozick and Locke: Filling the Space of Rights. Social Philosophy and Policy, 22(1), pp. 81–110. Williams, B., 1981. The Minimal State. In J. Paul, ed., Reading Nozick. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wissenburg, M., 2014. An Agenda for Animal Political Theory. In M. Wissenburg & D. Schlosberg, eds., Animal Politics and Political Animals. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan. Wolff, J., 2003. Robert Nozick. Cambridge: Polity. Wündisch, J., 2014. Towards a Right-Libertarian Welfare State. Münster, Germany: Mentis.

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Josh Milburn is a philosopher who is interested in moral and political philosophy, especially animal ethics and the philosophy of food. He read for a doctorate in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, Queen’s University Belfast from 2013 to 2016, with a thesis on the political turn in animal ethics. From 2016 to 2017, he held the Postdoctoral Fellowship in Animal Studies at Queen’s University, Canada. His research has been published variously in the Journal of Social Philosophy, the European Journal of Political Theory, Res Publica, Environmental Values and several edited collections. He won Res Publica’s postgraduate essay prize in 2016 for a paper on the ethics and politics of in vitro meat.

6 Reinventing Left Humanism: Towards an Interspecies Emancipatory Project Zipporah Weisberg

While the problem of humanization has always . . . been humankind’s central problem, it now takes on the character of an inescapable concern. Paolo Freire (2011, p.43)

The urgency of Paolo Freire’s exhortation cited in the epigraph above has increased exponentially since he first penned it in 1970. The savage and systematic inhumanity towards other creatures of which our species is guilty has arguably come to be our defining feature. An estimated 56 billion pigs, cows, chickens, and other animals are brutally exterminated in the global factory farming industry every year, a figure that does not include the tens of thousands of tonnes of fish and sea creatures whose deaths are not even documented due to the sheer scale of the slaughter.1 1

Animal Equality 2016, Food. Available from: http://www.animalequality.net/food

Z. Weisberg (*) Independent Scholar, Granada, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_6

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Nor does the statistic include the millions of animals that are too sick or injured upon arrival at the slaughterhouse to be profitable, and so are left to die in agony in so-called dead piles. Nor does it encompass the hundreds of millions of cats, dogs, birds, mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, primates, and other animals who are tortured and killed in research laboratories around the world,2 not to mention the horses, ponies, bulls, calves, elephants, bears, tigers, lions, and countless other animals who are subjected to endless torment for the sake of human entertainment in rodeos, circuses, bullfights, zoos, and other barbaric institutions.3 The list of atrocities human beings commit daily against our fellow animals goes on and on, seemingly without end. In light of our ever-growing inhumanity towards other animals, the Left humanist project of “humanization” – by which Freire means the coming into consciousness and “completion” of the human being, for whom oppressing others and being oppressed are necessarily obsolete – that Freire proposes is as urgent as ever (Freire, 2011, pp.46–48, 54). With this in mind, I argue in what follows that animal liberation ought to reinvent rather than abandon Left humanism as envisaged by Freire, and other prominent voices in the movement, including Erich Fromm, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Karl Marx, among others.4 Animal advocates and scholars have long regarded humanism as “public enemy number one.” This is not surprising due to the human supremacist and human exceptionalist bent of virtually all strands of humanism (from Renaissance to liberal to socialist humanism(s)). However, building on some initial gestures I have already made in this direction (Weisberg 2014), I argue in this chapter that, as counterintuitive as it may seem, animal liberation could be more effective in advancing its cause than it

2 Animal Equality 2016, Experimentation. Available from: http://www.animalequality.net/animalexperimentation 3 Animal Equality 2016, Entertainment. Available from: http://www.animalequality.net/ entertainment 4 For a preliminary foray into the pluses and minuses of humanism from an animal liberation perspective, see Weisberg, Z., 2014, The Trouble with Posthumanism: Bacteria are People too, in Thinking the Unthinkable: New Readings in Critical Animal Studies, ed., J. Sorenson, Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press, pp.93–116. A number of themes taken up in that earlier piece are returned to and developed here.

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has been to date by regarding itself as another expression of, and corrective to, humanism in general and Left humanism in particular. To be sure, Left humanism is not the movement du jour. Whatever ground it had gained by the early to mid-twentieth century as a theoretical foundation for the Left has given way to an entirely different, and indeed often explicitly anti-humanist theoretical framework, inspired by Michel Foucault and other poststructuralist and postmodernist thinkers. Yet, at the same time, it is fair to say that as long as the Left continues to aspire towards the emancipation of human beings from tyranny, oppression, and exploitation under capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, racism, misogyny, and other overlapping structures of domination, it is, at its core humanist. Although the scope of this chapter prevents the exploration of this particular issue, suffice it to say that my call to align animal liberation with humanism is co-constitutive with my exhortation to revive humanism as such as the leading theoretical foundation for the Left more generally. It goes without saying that reviving the Left humanist project without radically revising it would be disastrous for other animals. Left humanists are as guilty as their historical predecessors of inspiring crimes against animality by, most notably, defining human beings in contradistinction to all other animals and concomitantly asserting the former’s ontological superiority over the latter. As is well known, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Liberal, and Left humanists share the prejudicial view that humans stand over and against all other animals on the basis of arbitrary criteria such as humans’ supposedly unique possession of mind, soul, reason, and language. Karl Marx asserted that humans alone are capable of free will and (self-)consciousness, and that “nature” is nothing but an object upon which humans act and through which they create history (Marx, 1978b, p.76). Sadly, in spite of their shared commitment the toppling of structures of domination and exploitation, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paulo Freire, Murray Bookchin, and other key figures in the Left humanist tradition are no less bigoted against animals than Marx and other humanist antecedents. For example, Sartre’s existentialist humanism reinforces Cartesian dualism – perhaps the most influential and most viciously anti-animal philosophy to have shaped modern philosophy and science – and singles humans out as the only self-transcending beings (Sartre, 2007). Freire, meanwhile, maintains that “Animals live

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out their lives on an atemporal, flat, uniform ‘prop’” while “humans exist in a world which they are constantly re-creating and transforming” (Freire, 2011, p.98f). For his part, Bookchin, who introduces an ecological ethics and politics to humanism, alleges that animal rights is “misanthropic” (Bookchin, 1996, p.116; see Weisberg, 2014), while ecological Marxist Peter Staudenmaier purports that animal rights is “a specific kind of moral mistake and a symptom of political confusion,” that it is “anti-humanist and anti-ecological,” and “frequently at odds with the project of creating a free world” (Staudenmaier, 2005; see Weisberg, 2014). Not surprisingly, critical animal studies theorist Steve Best charges Left humanism in all its forms, including ecological humanisms, with being pathologically anti-animal. Indeed, as far as Best is concerned, humanism will always already be unable “to advance a truly revolutionary break with the mind-sets and institutions underpinning hierarchy, oppression, violence, species extinction, and the current global crisis” (Best, 2009; see Weisberg, 2014).5 There is no question that Best and other anti-humanist and posthumanist animal studies scholars are right to condemn humanism for its human chauvinism. However, I want to reiterate here the claim I make in my earlier critique of posthumanism that it is a mistake to reject the Left humanist project altogether and to dismiss it as inherently hostile to nonhuman animals and animal liberation. Even though human supremacism forms a core tenet of all historical humanisms, humanism is not per se reducible to the ideology of human supremacy. As I will demonstrate, Left humanism can be stripped of its anti-animal biases, while its other defining features – most notably its commitment to the historical transformation of the human into a conscious, humane, self-actualized, and life-affirming subject for whom the oppression, domination, and exploitation of all animals, human and nonhuman, are existential impossibilities – can be mobilized to inspire the formation of a project of universal freedom for all animals, human and more-than-human (Fromm, 2004, p.vii).

5 For a detailed examination of these and other animal studies theorists’ critiques of humanism, see Weisberg, 2014, pp.94–98.

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First, I suggest that as avowedly anti-capitalist, Left humanism offers a platform for unifying the struggle for human and nonhuman freedom by underscoring the primary role of capitalism in dramatically intensifying and expanding the scope of exploitation and destruction of human and nonhuman life. For this part of the discussion I turn to ecological humanisms, which have expanded the rubric of humanism to include ecological concerns. Ironically, as noted above, while laying out a program for human and earth liberation from the ravages of global capitalism, ecological humanists tend to ignore the plight of animals, who are arguably among the most cruelly impacted by the ravages of capitalism. But, I suggest, despite their failings, proponents of ecohumanisms take an important step towards the construction of a speciesinclusive emancipatory struggle. Next, I contend that Left humanism’s stated commitment to defending the subject against its alienation under capitalism is particularly pertinent to the interspecies liberatory project. Recalling Marx’s critique of alienation, Erich Fromm reminds us that, Marx’s philosophy, like much of existentialist thinking, represents a protest against man’s alienation, his loss of himself and his transformation into a thing; it is a movement against the dehumanization and automatization of man inherent in the development of Western industrialism. (Fromm, 2004, p.v; Weisberg, 2014)

Recognizing and overcoming the alienation of human beings from their own animality and from other animals is arguably one of the most important, and possibly the most challenging, tasks the Left faces. This is because the apparatus of animal extermination revolves around the dual alienation of humans from themselves as animals and from other animals as fellow conscious and sentient beings. The process of estrangement is part and parcel of the larger process of dehumanization inasmuch as it fuels systemic cruelty to other animals, who are deemed ontologically other and inferior. Relegated to the inferior side of a huge and artificial metaphysical schism that humans have constructed to serve themselves, nonhuman animals are easily reducible to objects of exploitation that can be tortured and killed with impunity. Thus, we might say

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that the de-animalization of the human is the ground of its dehumanization. In other words, by drawing such a thick line between human and nonhuman animals humans have become distorted versions of what they could be and ought to be (humane beings). I go on to suggest that Left humanism is important because it promotes a “dialectical understanding” of history, which, as Bertell Ollman reminds us, is “more indispensable now than ever before” (Ollman, 2008, p.11). By “dialectical” I mean “negative” or critical in a specifically neo-Marxian sense. In contrast to the poststructuralist tendency to deny the existence of an “outside” from which to challenge structures of power and violence, Left humanists have always insisted on the possibility of assuming a dialectical perspective, which involves reclaiming not only an ontological distance from the prevailing order, but also an epistemological one. Against posthumanist and poststructuralist thinkers who have all but dismissed dialectics as obsolete, I maintain, alongside critical theorists of the early Frankfurt School and contemporary Marxist humanists such as Terry Eagleton, that a negative standpoint is not only possible, but necessary if we are to recognize the totality of domination. Before proceeding, it should be noted that the reinvention of humanism by some of its harshest critics is not without precedent. Avowed Left humanists Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Simone de Beauvoir, and JeanPaul Sartre did just this. Scathingly critical of the hypocrisies of liberal humanism in particular, all of these thinkers were committed to reconceptualising humanism as a force with which to overcome Europe’s colonial and racist legacy (see Césaire, 2000; Fanon, 1967; de Beauvoir, 1989; Sartre, 1963, 2007). For example, while he lambasts liberal humanism for the violence and suffering it has inflicted on victims of its colonial tendencies, Fanon nevertheless urges us to move “toward a new humanism” (Fanon, 1963, p.312). Fanon, like his contemporaries, suggests that we can preserve the admirable aspects of humanist thought, such as the pursuit of universal equality, while dispensing with its more unsavoury elements, such as its hyper-individualism, its integration with capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, and its prejudicial conception of “the human” (as white, male, and European). Fanon hopes that we will rethink what it means to be a human being in radically new and revolutionary terms. To do this, we must not mimic the European liberal humanists. “Let us

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decide not to imitate Europe,” he contends, “let us combine our muscles and our brains in a new direction. Let us try to create the whole man, whom Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth” (Ibid, p.313). What or who “the whole man” is Fanon is careful not to define or prescribe, for he does not wish to “impos[e] upon the brain rhythms which very quickly obliterate and wreck it” (Ibid, p.314). In short, he does not want to define for what it means to be human per se, and so restrict the notion of the human to an arbitrary set of characteristics. He does tell us the new human will not be found in a “return to Nature” nor in colonized peoples imitating Europeans and their civilization. Both pursuits would only amount to “an obscene caricature” of the object of imitation. He simply asks that everyone, particularly people of colour, participate actively in the struggle for humankind’s reinvention beyond the toxic categories of white and black (Ibid, p.315). Why not take this a step further and reinvent the human beyond the toxic categories of human and animal, albeit without the violence Fanon regrettably advocates. Simone de Beauvoir also aims to reject liberal humanism while conceiving of a new humanism and a new conception of the human. For Beauvoir, humanism can help us to rethink subjectivity and humanity outside of the subject/Other (in the sense of universal subject vs. particular other) and the corresponding man/woman dichotomy. “In both sexes is played out the same drama of the flesh and the spirit, of finitude and transcendence; both are gnawed away by time and laid in wait for by death, they have the same essential need for one another; and they can gain from their liberty the same glory” (Beauvoir, 1989, p.728). Since Beauvoir wrote these words, we have come to realize that other animals play out the same drama as human beings: a drama that centres around the need for love, acceptance, family, joy, companionship, tranquillity, activity, safety, and fulfilment. The task is to extend these and other rearticulations of humanism into a comprehensive interspecies or animal-inclusive humanism. With the historical precedent for reorienting humanism towards true inclusivity and universalism, there is no reason why we cannot reinvent humanism and the human beyond not just the white male human, but also beyond the human as such.

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Animalizing Ecological Humanism

Within the last decade or so, Left humanism has been attached to the ecological movements in the form of ecosocialism. Ecosocialists break out of and disrupt Marx’s human isolationism and develop the naturalist bent in Marx’s thought into a full-fledged ecological socialist politics. They argue convincingly that in the twenty-first century when alienated labour, poverty, and human misery in general are magnified by climate change-related crises, which are in turn exacerbated by unapologetically exploitative neoliberal global economic policies, socialism is moot unless it adopts an ecological perspective. The 2011 Ecosocialist Manifesto, for example, states that “the crises of ecology and those of societal breakdown are profoundly interrelated and should be seen as different manifestations of the same structural forces” (Ecosocialist Manifesto, 2011). Like the industrial approach to production it favours, the authors of the Manifesto assert that capitalism as a system is “profoundly unsustainable.” It cannot solve the crises it has created. In its attempt to preserve the status quo, it has resorted to “a new and malignant variation of fascism” which, in addition to more subtle manipulations of consciousness, uses violent force to compel individuals, communities, and nations into involuntary compliance. A new system based on socialist humanist and ecological values must take its place if we want to prevent a total, irreversible ecological and social catastrophe (Ibid). Ecosocialists do not necessarily describe their project as ecohumanist, but it bears the hallmarks of the early Marx and of socialist humanism more broadly inasmuch as it holds as its principal objective “the transformation of needs, and a profound shift toward the qualitative dimension and away from the quantitative” (Ibid). Because ecosocialism rejects not only the totalitarian but also the industrial and productivist socialisms of the past, this transformation of needs from the quantitative to the qualitative would presumably involve a curtailment of the rapaciousness of humans in industrial societies, and a dismantling of the industrial machinery of production-cum-destruction to better protect the needs of both human and more-than-human animal subjects all of whom share the planet. In fact, the authors of the Manifesto explicitly state that

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ecosocialism is not concerned merely with effecting a qualitative shift in human life, but holds “the freeing of all beings as its ground and goal” (Ibid). Unfortunately, the authors of the Manifesto do not mention the freeing of nonhuman animals specifically. Indeed, other animals’ conspicuous absence from the document indicates that the authors did not necessarily consider the emancipation of nonhuman animals from exploitation to be a necessary or even desirable feature of ecosocialism. In a utopian spirit, they envisage the formation of a “world society . . . in a degree of ecological harmony unthinkable under present conditions,” but it is unclear whether nonhuman animals are members of either the world society or the nature they envision (Ibid). To be sure, many animal species would be protected under an ecosocialist mandate. However, protecting species in the name of conservation is often inimical to protecting individual animals and can often translate into the latter’s extermination if they are believed to be threats to the wider ecosystem. Under this model, both animals’ protection and destruction could be equally justifiable depending on the ecological end either means ostensibly served. An ecosocialist mandate that does not account for animals as individuals – as subject and members of a shared interspecies communities, with complex interests, needs, and entitlements that are quite distinct from those of trees, plants, water, and other non-animal life forms and entities – remains bound to the logic of domination and exploitation it is ostensibly committed to overcoming. Furthermore, with the well-being of individual animals left out of the realm of concern, there is no reason not to continue intensive animal farming, as long as less environmentally damaging processes and technologies can be developed. Nevertheless, with their stated objective to free all beings from the ravages of capitalism, ecosocialists clear the path for reconciling human and nonhuman beings. By stating that ecosocialism advances the freedom of all beings, ecosocialists assert that freedom is not a specifically human entitlement, as Marx assumed. Moreover, ecosocialists openly admit that nonhuman existence is tied up with human existence more than simply as a resource, and that the flourishing of the human depends less on its mastery of nature, than on its preservation of the nonhuman in its optimal state.

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Dialectical Naturalism Beyond Bookchin

Murray Bookchin’s hostility towards animal rights notwithstanding his “social ecology” could add another important dimension to the building of a non-anthropocentric humanism. Particularly amenable to this aim is Bookchin’s explicit refutation of hierarchical ontologies of nature and the nonhuman. Bookchin’s anarchist sensibilities notwithstanding, his theories of “dialectical naturalism” and “social ecology” are grounded in the Left Hegelian dialectical tradition, and therefore have some clear affinities with Marxist and socialist humanisms. Bookchin’s social ecology is based on the conviction that ecological devastation is a social issue, and that “ecological problems originate in [a] hierarchical, class, and today, competitive system, that reduces the world to an agglomeration of resources for human production and consumption” (Bookchin, 2005, p.16). With the social and economic roots of ecological destruction made apparent, social ecology calls for the “reconciliation of nature and human society in a new ecological sensibility and a new ecological society” (Ibid, p.76). Crucially, Bookchin emphasizes the fact that human-human harmony is inextricably linked with and depends on nature-human harmony. Only by eliminating human supremacism will human beings find social harmony amongst themselves. One way of restoring ecological and social integrity to the earth and its inhabitants would be by promoting unity in diversity, spontaneity, and complementarity (Marshall, 2008, p.611). Whereas Marx’s vision of reconciliation allowed for ongoing productive control over the natural world, Bookchin’s “radical utopian alternative” or “ecotopia” would, in theory, have no room for hierarchy of any kind. Not only hierarchical policies but the whole hierarchical “state of mind” on which they are based would be abolished. This would incite a powerful transformation in the human subject. The nonhuman would no longer be confined to a particular position on an oppressive “chain of being” (Ibid, pp.68–69). Bookchin’s rejection of hierarchy suggests that, unlike the ecosocialism examined above, his humanism is not only eco-friendly, as it were, but animal-friendly, too. Certainly, based on Bookchin’s

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repudiation of hierarchy, one would assume that the exploitation of other animals for whatever purpose would have no place in an ecotopia. If all animals are equal, and no longer defined according to the dictates of human supremacist metaphysics, which, as we know, assumes that there are ontologically lesser and greater beings, we can learn to respect animals on their own terms. Unfortunately, Bookchin ultimately betrays his stated commitment to reconciliation without domination, and flatly contradicts the tenets of his anti-hierarchical social ecology. Among other things, Bookchin egregiously misrepresents the historical development leading up to modern capitalism’s institutionalization of barbarism against humans and nonhumans by attributing it to humans’ lingering animality (Bookchin, 1996, p.xv). Worse, Bookchin reduces animals to resources, and glosses over or even denies animals’ subjectivity. According to Peter Marshall, in Bookchin’s philosophy, “Animals with distinct and complex patterns of behavior are neutralized into livestock. [Bookchin’s] eco-farms are synthetic environments; he waxes lyrically about the ‘augermatic feeding of livestock . . . in feed pens,’ without recognizing that such pens are very similar to prisons and deny the claim of every being to free movement” (Marshall, 2008, p.618). Bookchin’s social ecology is purportedly an extension of Peter Kropotkin’s theory of “mutual aid,” yet it flouts some of the very basic assumptions underlying Kropotkin’s analysis. For example, Bookchin refuses to accept the central premise of Kropotkin’s argument: that animals are eminently social beings, which is why they survive through mutuality. For Bookchin, any apparent social behaviour exhibited by other animals such as bees is really just “programmed” and therefore not truly social (Bookchin, 2005, p.24). Thus, even though he maintains that the social and ecological are inherently linked, he denies what he calls “first nature,” or nonhuman nature’s, admission into the social sphere. Only humans, he further insists, have a sense of self, which is to say, self-consciousness, which, he claims, developed only by virtue of a sharp “break with pure animalistic sensibility” (Ibid, pp.48–49). By suggesting that humans are more “advanced,” and by sanctioning the use of animals for human ends, Bookchin reproduces the ideology and system of control and domination he claims to abhor.

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As disappointing as these pitfalls of Bookchin and the ecosocialists’ respective theories are, it is possible to build on some of the basic tenets of their respective theories without resorting to their prejudicial claims and/or lack of concern for other animals. For example, an animalized social ecology would reject the instrumentalization of animals as much as it rejects the instrumentalization of other beings in nature. It would, in turn, institutionalize the mutual flourishing of human and nonhuman animals by, for example, creating opportunities for sustainable, plantbased agriculture, wherein, say, chickens living as residents and community members in a rural community helped to plant crops by dispersing the seeds of plants they eat, an activity they naturally and pleasurably engage in. A responsible, ecological veganism would necessarily follow from an ecosocialism or social ecology that remained true to the commitment for genuine historical transformation from a system of cruelty and violence to one of freedom and flourishing. In a true ecotopia, animals would, contrary to Bookchin’s prejudicial assertion, be recognized for the very social and even political beings they are by assuming their proper place as members of the political and social community, and their feelings, needs, and thoughts would count as much as those of their human counterparts. Meanwhile, instead of inventing the latest technology of violence with which to subjugate other animals, human beings would devote themselves to cultivating meaningful relationships with other animals, and creating the conditions for free and equal membership in a thriving interspecies community. An ecotopia that allows for practices and ideologies of domination and violence against some members of the population to continue unchallenged is no utopia at all. A rereading of socialist and ecological humanism makes it glaringly clear that if the Left wishes to achieve social and environmental justice it can no longer afford to marginalize other animals, nor can it continue to ignore, support, or remain complicit in their exploitation. Movements claiming to represent the oppressed cannot be true to the spirit of humanist ideals of universal social justice and freedom so long as their members remain wilfully blind to the plight of billions of sentient creatures under capitalism. Because animal exploitation, human exploitation and alienation, and ecological destruction are inextricably linked, human domination over other

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species cannot be brushed off or pushed to the margins of critical analysis, except by doing profound damage to the ethical and analytical integrity of socialist humanist praxis. Putting it another way, if violence against animals – from animals’ domestication thousands of years ago, which became increasingly violent as humans developed tools (whips, chains, branding implements, and the like) to subjugate them, to their genetic manipulation today – has helped shape human history, historical transformation depends in a large part on animal’s liberation from violence. If we continue to enslave other animals as we have over the millennia – but in especially brutal form over the past five hundred years – we cannot properly reorient history towards emancipatory ends. Despite the failure thus far of Bookchin and ecological humanists’ to incorporate the liberation of nonhuman animals into their theory and proposed practice, the reframing of socialist humanism around ecological concerns has created an opportunity for the reframing of ecological humanism around animal liberation concerns.

6.3

In Defence of the Subject

The defence of the coherent subject against its reification under capitalism is the primary goal of Marxist, socialist, and existentialist humanisms. Whereas in a suicidal and ultimately bewildering move, antihumanists aim to “get rid of the subject itself” (Foucault, 1980, p.117), Elizabeth Butterfield observes that “there is a sense that the postmodern deconstruction of the ‘human’ now requires a reconstructive moment.” She rightly maintains that Left humanism is an excellent starting point for this reconstruction (Butterfield, 2012, p.11). This is not least because Left humanism adamantly insists on the importance of restoring the subject to coherence, unity, and wholeness against its usurpation by the technological apparatus. As Fromm has noted, humanism has always been devoted to protecting the human being from threatening forces, from “religious fanaticism” in the Renaissance, to slavery and “nationalism” in the Enlightenment, and

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radical alienation resulting from rationalization, industrialization, mechanization in late modernity (Fromm, 1966, p.vii). By 1965, when Fromm joined other socialist humanists such as Raya Dunayevskaya and Ernst Bloch in calling for a revitalization of the socialist humanist project, the primary fear was that human beings would also “become the slave[s] of things” (Ibid). In short, the greatest menace in late modernity was the world capitalist system and the possibility of total, irreversible reification and alienation it introduced, and this remains its greatest threat today (alongside a global ecological catastrophe and nuclear and chemical warfare, of course). They posited that one way the subject can defend itself against its potential annihilation is through recourse to its capacity for self-creation, self-transformation, and self-development. This notion is central to all forms of humanism. Italian Renaissance humanist Pico della Mirandola, for example, insisted that, in contrast to both nonhuman animals and “higher spirits” (angels) who were pre-programmed, the human being was as an “indeterminate form” to whom God declared, Thou, like a judge appointed for being honorable, art the molder and maker of thyself; though mayest sculpt thyself into whatever shape thou dost prefer. Thou canst grow downward into the lower natures which are brutes. Thou canst again grow upward from thy soul’s reason into the higher natures which are divine. (Pico, 1956, p.5; see also Weisberg, 2014)

Enlightenment humanists reinforce this notion of self-overcoming, but purge it of its religious or theological content, and instead locate humans’ supposedly distinct capacity for self-transcendence in the powers of reason. Jean-Jacques Rousseau stood out among Enlightenment philosophers for his emphasis on the historical nature of self-transformation. According to Asher Horowitz, one of Rousseau’s principle objections to natural law theorists was their static ahistorical conception of human nature. In Rousseau’s analysis, Horowitz observes, “man in his inception and his essence is conceived to be a self-transforming creature.” But, he goes on to explain, “Human nature for Rousseau is history, is itself created within the historical process” (Horowitz, 1987, p.52).

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Marxist, socialist, and existentialist humanists build on this traditional humanist commitment to self-transcendence but frame it even more overtly within the context of the larger political, social, and historical struggle. According to Sartre, “man is nothing other than what he makes of himself … man is … a project that has a subjective existence, rather unlike that of a patch of moss, a spreading fungus, or a cauliflower,” or, we might add as “a series of nodal points in a network of circuits” as Jean-Francois Lyotard once put it (Sartre, 2007, 22–23; Lyotard, 1984, p.15). For Paolo Freire, socialist humanism is also about the “completion” of the as yet “incomplete” human being (Freire, 2011, p.43). Frantz Fanon contends that decolonization in particular would usher in a “new humanity” (Fanon, 1963, pp.36–37). Eagleton, meanwhile, observed that “Humans are determined precisely in a way which allows them a degree of self-determination (just to survive, the human animal cannot rely on instinct but must bring reflective resources into play)” (Eagleton, 1996, p.89). Unfortunately, Left humanists typically reinforce the anthropocentric dimension of the humanist concept of self-creation (/completion). As John Sanbonmatsu has noted, from Plato to Pico to Kant to the socialist humanists in Fromm’s volume, humans’ self-transformation has been presented as depending in large part upon their triumph over their animality and other animals, while self-creation is presented as a distinctly human capacity (Sanbonmatsu, 2007). However, while traditional humanists assumed self-creation was specific to humans, and therefore implicitly set human beings over and above other animals, the principle of self-creation can and, indeed, in light of our preceding analysis, must be reinterpreted in a non-speciesist framework. The humanist principle of self-creation, by its very nature, paradoxically opens up the possibility of human beings finally shedding their age-old humanist preoccupation with humans’ supposed ontological position over and above all other animals. Self-creation need not be about human beings rising above their animality but could be about re-entering it, as it were, and re-entering the world of other embodied beings more broadly. In a revised humanism, the human would become conscious of its incompletion as an animal, and the choice available to the human would be whether to continue to deny its animality and its kinship

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with other animals and maintain the prejudicial status quo, or to embrace its animality and thereby bring humanity and animality into a new, and more ethically and politically advanced stage of civilization. To elaborate, the new humanism would involve the self-creation of the human not as an animal that transcends itself and its immanence (and therefore its animality and other animals) through reason, free will, and universality, but rather would require the selfcreation of the human as an embodied being that develops itself in its immanence, that is, in its erotic and sensuous engagement with other beings-in-the-world. Only by way of embracing human animality can humans achieve the humanization that has so far eluded them. Only by way of becoming animals can humans become complete human beings. As Sanbonmatsu puts it, “True overcoming of nihilism would entail not the negation or denial of the animal, but the reverse: a reconceptualization of ourselves as subject for whom subjectivity is always-already intersubjectivity, mitsein, being-with other beings-in-the-world” (Sanbonmatsu, 2007, p.251). Seen this way, the self-creation of the human is newly associated with the selfrealization and self-discovery of the human as an animal among other animals. The fulfilment of species being or human essence as a rational, free-willing, self-conscious, and self-objectifying being becomes the fulfilment of interspecies being, as a thinking, feeling, free-willing, self-conscious, self-objectifying being-in-the-world. For Marx, human reconciliation with itself as a natural being and the objectification of its senses as sensuality are integral to its overcoming its self-alienation. For Marx this meant the difference between feeding and eating between automatic physical reactions or instincts (which he falsely claimed animals were confined to), and conscious sensuous life-activity fuelled by intention, purpose, and desire. But we can redefine the notion of reconciliation here so that it refers to human reconciliation with itself as an animal, the latter of which, no matter what species it belongs to, is never reduced to the product of instinct but is understood as being always already fuelled by desire and intentionality. The point would be to create the conditions so that no sentient being, human or nonhuman, is reduced to being a mere “animal,” which is to say, an object of exploitation (Marx, 1978b, pp.74, 84, 89).

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An argument can also be made for animals’ capacity to self-create. Animals too self-develop and self-transcend inasmuch as they strive daily and throughout their lives to fulfil their entelechy and to live in the fullness of their being. Although other animals may not be self-conscious or self-objectifying in the same way that humans are, this is by no means a deficit, and may in fact be a boon, inasmuch as their experiences are apparently unencumbered by the “baggage” of ideology or bias. They may not see themselves as part of a species, and therefore may not universalize their own experience, as Marx understood humans to do, but this is immaterial. What is important for the purposes of the project of humanization and reconciliation is that each individual animal is given the opportunity to self-actualize and self-create in the way that is most fitting to them. For humans, on the other hand, meaningful self-creation within an interspecies humanist rubric involves the development of our latent and repressed empathic tendencies into an active force for historical transformation. Humans’ unique capacity to universalize should be the very thing that enables us to empathically identify with, rather than detach ourselves from, our sense of community and kinship with and responsibility for other animals. As Melanie Joy explains, we ought to establish “an inclusive humanistic paradigm,” wherein “empathy and unconditional nonviolence are considered central to [human] psychological wellness” (Joy, 2005, p.122). Humans’ self-overcoming, in other words, is inextricably linked to our psychological well-being, which, in turn, depends upon the active cultivation of empathy for all animals. Importantly, a specifically Left humanist conception of self-creation is acutely aware of the unified subject’s vulnerability to and embeddedness in historical and socio-economic realities. According to Fromm, whereas Renaissance and Enlightenment humanism assumed that education would help the human achieve its goal of self-perfectibility, “the socialist Humanism of Karl Marx was the first to declare that theory cannot be separated from practice, knowledge from action, spiritual aims from the social system,” and that, in other words, the “selfperfectability” of the human being depended on the transformation of social and economic conditions (Fromm, 1966, p.viii). This subtle distinction allows for a small proverbial window of opportunity for

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self-overcoming that is not permitted by a theory that denies the possibility of refusal. For Herbert Marcuse, the transformation of the subject and the transformation of society are part and parcel of the same process. The qualitative change in needs and the infrastructure of the subject involve distancing the human from the technical apparatus in which it is currently entangled (Marcuse, 1969, p.4). Far from leading us further down the path of human glorification, Left humanism humbles the human subject and restores it to its animality and thereby to its empathic identification with other animals.

6.4

Universal Freedom

The specifically political dimension of the defence of the subject lies in the struggle for universal freedom. Marcuse explains that the human subject’s recognition of itself as an animal is integral to its individual and historical freedom. Human freedom is inextricably bound up with the freedom of the senses from their co-optation and depletion by technique. “Human freedom is . . . rooted in the human sensibility . . . The emancipation of the senses would make freedom what it is not yet: a sensuous need, and objective of the Life instincts (Eros)” (Marcuse, 1972, p.71). The re-eroticization and re-animalization of the subject, then, is not only an ethical move, but also a fundamentally political one. The freedom of the human being also involves the transformation of itself from another objectifying subject, to a subject that develops dynamically by stepping back, so to speak, and letting other subjects be. “The faculty of being ‘receptive,’ ‘passive,’ is a precondition of freedom: it is the ability to see things in their own right, to experience the joy enclosed in them, the erotic energy of nature – an energy which is there to be liberated; nature, too, awaits the revolution!” (Ibid, p.74). Sanbonmatsu’s metahumanism is also, at its core, a defense of the freedom of the subject, both human and nonhuman (Sanbonmatsu, 2007, p.240). Freedom is only truly universal, Sanbonmatsu rightly insists, if it involves the freedom of other animals – freedom from violence, and freedom to fulfil their entelechy (Ibid, pp.240–241,

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248–249). Thus, the self-transcendence of the human being depends upon allowing other animals to be involved in their own projects of selftransformation, whatever they might be, and however different they might be from our own. In short, the fulfilment and freedom of the individual subject is never at the expense of the fulfilment and freedom of the animal other, but rather always depends on supporting the other’s self-development and self-fulfilment. The mutually reinforcing freedom of the human and animal subject can also be understood in terms of Sartre’s conception of the particular and universal subject. For Sartre, existentialism is a humanism precisely because it insists that “in choosing for himself [man] chooses for all men,” that the responsibility of the individual “concerns mankind as a whole,” and that the subject is in an intersubjective world in which “the intimate discovery of myself is at the same time the revelation of the other as a freedom which confronts mine” (Sartre, 2007, p.26, 45). As Butterfield notes, the call for the reconciliation of the universal and the particular is among Sartre’s most important contributions. For Sartre who replaces the term “individual” with “singular universal,” “the person is universal as an incarnation of a greater social context, but the person is also singular in his or her own particularity and ‘differential’” (Butterfield, 2012, pp.67–68). Existential freedom is truly universal because, paradoxically, it requires the subject to balance its own claim to freedom with the same claim of every other particular subject. Sartre’s characterization of freedom echoes ethical phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas’ view. For Levinas, good freedom is always already responsible freedom, a freedom tempered by shame: “Shame [is] where freedom discovers itself murderous in its very exercise” (Levinas, 1969, p.84). Ethical freedom lies in the renunciation of the power to kill. He writes, “The Other, whose exceptional presence is inscribed in the ethical impossibility of killing him in which I stand, marks the end of powers” (Ibid, p.87). In Fanon’s vision, the particular subject’s freedom translates into universal “love” or the ability to “love man, wherever he may be” (Fanon, 1967, p.231). Of course, for Sartre, Levinas, and Fanon, the human species is the limit of this universal freedom and love. But, as I have been arguing, to limit universal responsibility and love to the human

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species alone is no longer tenable, for it would undermine the very project of universal freedom itself. Rather universal freedom recognizes that other animals are at once particular and universal: they are particular in their uniqueness one from the other, but they are always already universal, not only in their ethical, but also in their political and historical co-relationality with each other and with human beings. Although animals are not responsible for humans, one central component of humans’ universality is their responsibility for them. There is not only “a human universality of condition,” as Sartre suggests, but an animal universality of condition – defined from the Leviniasian vantage point by suffering, vulnerability, fragility, and mortality. Because the human subject is uniquely capable of preventing the same suffering it inflicts, it is uniquely compelled to act on behalf of another’s well-being, whether that “other” is a human or more-than-human animal. With this re-evaluation of alienation and the new conception of animal-human co- subjectivities and historical transformation in place, a new interspecies humanism can begin to emerge. We can begin to see the transformation from human supremacist humanism to a species-inclusive humanism. This humanism beyond the human explicitly dispenses with any last remnants of anthropocentrism and instead repositions the liberatory struggle as a struggle in defence of all subjects qua animals.

6.5

Dialectics and the Conquest of Nihilism

The humanist subject is a historical subject and the historical subject is a dialectical subject that refuses to accede to and participate in the economy of violence. The tool it mobilizes to this end is dialectical rationality. Dialectical rationality enables the subject to position itself at a critical distance from the prevailing order, to identify its betrayal of the concepts and principles it touts (e.g. in the tensions between the freedom it promises, and the unfreedom disguised as freedom it delivers), and to imagine alternative approaches to social, political, ethical, and aesthetic organization.

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For Lyotard the disappearance of class antagonism laid waste to the critical dialectical model. Dialectics was reduced to the regurgitation of empty concepts such as Ernst Bloch’s concept of “‘hope’” which, Lyotard argued, was merely “a token protest raised in the name of man or reason or creativity . . . ” (Lyotard, 1984, p.13). Although, to be sure, the levelling out of class distinction in the twentieth century dramatically changed the nature of political theory and praxis, and diminished critical tension to some extent, a point Marcuse also made, it did not eliminate it entirely. Lyotard’s analysis is particularly troubling because he dismisses the struggle for dialectical reason and dialectical society on the basis that shifts in technics, socio-economic conditions, and so on have rendered dialectical tensions in thought and reality obsolete. He purports that “oppositional thinking is out of step with the most vital modes of postmodern knowledge,” or informatics (Ibid, p.14). This is a nihilistic view, and has very dangerous repercussions for humans and nonhumans for it effectively concedes defeat to the technical apparatus. By contrast, building on the value of critique that is so central to Enlightenment humanism, proponents of dialectical reason suggest that reason is nothing if it is not negative. For Marcuse, “the instinctual rebellion will have become a political force only when it is accompanied and guided by the rebellion of reason: the absolute refusal of the intellect (and the intelligentsia) to lend their support to the Establishment, and the mobilization of the power of theoretical and practical reason for the work of change” (Marcuse, 1972, p.131). Without the rebellion of reason, and the concomitant assertion of an “outside,” the subject would be powerless to resist its colonization by the prevailing, and highly irrational, ideology. It would not recognize irrationality for what it was, but would rather confuse irrationality with rationality and support the very system that depends on its voluntary acquiescence. A negative standpoint, on the other hand, cultivates the spirit of resistance and, crucially, enables the subject to think in universal and world-historical terms. Without the rebellion of reason, the subject would be ill-equipped to commit to historical transformation, but would remain atomized and self-absorbed, and as such, continue to serve the system which depends on its estrangement from and indifference to its fellow subjects (human and nonhuman).

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Thus, while the humanist notions of the self-creation or self-transcendence of the subject do not occur somehow outside of the existing social and economic conditions, they do allow for and even demand a refusal and rupture of existing conditions. More specifically, radical humanism calls for what Marcuse refers to in Nietzschean terms as “a political practice of methodical disengagement from . . . the Establishment, aiming at a radical transvaluation of values” (Marcuse, 1969, p.6). The practice of refusal “involves a break with the familiar, routine ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding things so that the organism may become receptive to the potential forms of a nonaggressive, nonexploitative world” (Ibid). Refusal, in other words, constitutes a deliberate break with the dominant ideology, and a deliberate and necessary reconstitution of the subject in opposition to it, at the “instinctual” or “biological” level, to use Marcuse’s terminology. According to Fanon, disalienation involves a break not only with the past but also with the present. “The body of history,” he insists, “does not determine a single one of my actions. I am my own foundation” (Fanon, 1967, p.231). For example, while the “Negro” is a product of history, it also blasts out of this mold, and rejects its creation by others as an object of oppression, by (re)creating itself now, at the present historical juncture, as a human being. On the one hand, while the human is bound to the contingencies of its factical existence in the world – including a given social, cultural, ethical, political, and economic order – those conditions themselves can change in part as a result of the subject’s deliberate refusal to submit. Although existentialism is charged with being “an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of despair” and of “pessimism” it is eminently hopeful because it “confronts man with a possibility of choice,” as Sartre points out, and therefore the possibility of determining its own trajectory to some extent (Sartre, 2007, pp.23–29). For our purposes, this means that the subject that has internalized the animal exterminationist worldview is capable of rejecting that worldview, and reshaping itself according to a different set of (say, anti-exterminationist) values. Georg Lukács noted that, from a Hegelian-Marxian perspective, dialectics is central to the self-transcendence of the subject, both as an

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individual and as a historical force. For both Hegel and Marx, the selfcreation of the subject depends on the dialectical method, which is the only method that casts the subject’s self-alienation and objectification into relief. The method is not only epistemological, but also defines the movement of history itself. A dialectical analysis would not remain satisfied with simply identifying the conflict, but would insist on bringing it to resolution by bridging the gap between how freedom is currently defined (as a human concern) and how it could manifest itself (as fundamental entitlement for all animals). Marcuse and Bookchin both suggest that Platonic dialectics provides an especially powerful antidote to technological rationality in as much as it refuses to take “appearances” for granted, but is instead always restless and agitated, always striving to explore the tension between the way a thing or an idea is in the world, and the way it could or ought to be (Marcuse, 1991, p.137; Bookchin, 1996, p.6). The recognition of the difference between the way things are and the way they ought to be is an important inspiration for any radical political project, especially one which seeks to overcome the systemic extermination of animals. The dialectical conception of the subject (and the dialectical method more generally) enables its practitioners to develop a philosophy and practice of hope against the current tide of nihilism, which is characterized by anti-humanists and posthumanists’ seemingly unreflective attraction to the fragmentation and hybridization of the subject and indifference to structural violence against animals (see Weisberg, 2014). A potent theory and practice of resistance would involve a refusal of the existing order and all of its abuses against all animal subjects altogether - a refusal that is shaped by the recognition that the way things are is not the way they should be, that the torture and murder of tens of billions of nonhuman animals for profit and superficial human gratification is an abomination, and every way contrary to what a healthy society would consist of. With this opposition laid out, the task becomes once again clear: to create the conditions for the mutual freedom of human and nonhuman animals to fully realize themselves. The resolution of this epistemological tension corresponds to the resolution of the ontological tension between a being’s actuality and its potentiality. This reconciliation is “the work of

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Logos and Eros” (Marcuse, 1991, p.127). It reconciles in peaceful harmony not only the object and its concept, but the being and what it is in essence, which is to say, what it ought to be. In seeking to create the conditions for epistemological reconciliation, in other words, critique helps pave the way for the subject’s ontological reconciliation, which, in Marcuse’s view, is constituted by “the joy of being” (Ibid). As stubbornly as naysayers might try to deny it, the joy of human being is intimately tied up with the joy of nonhuman animal being.

6.6

Conclusion

While it is flawed and certainly beholden to anthropocentric assumptions, Left humanism is not only salvageable but, once adapted and purged of its human supremacist content, offers a powerful platform for an animalinclusive emancipatory project. By aligning itself with humanism, animal liberation highlights its commitment to the universal emancipation of all animals – not just human animals – from violence, exploitation, and oppression. By the same token, as part and parcel of the humanist project, animal liberation can no longer be sidelined or marginalized without negatively impacting the Left as a whole. Animal liberation already is a humanism inasmuch as it is already devoted to historical transformation in general and the transformation of the subject in particular from a subject of cruelty and indifference to a subject of gentleness and empathy. But Left humanism offers animal liberation a conceptual and theoretical language by which to clarify the contours of this transformation, while also ensuring that human self-transcendence is inextricably linked to ethical and political maturation. Human freedom would no longer be compatible with animal slavery. Universal freedom, in a humanism shaped by animal liberation, translates into freedom for all animals. The humanization of the subject that Freire calls for becomes humanization in the fullest sense of the term: the cultivation of human being’s humanity or humaneness towards each other and all sentient beings. Of course, as a socialist project, self-transformation is not a matter of individual choice, but a historical imperative for which the abolition of capitalism is a necessary condition. A turn towards

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Left humanism would also involve a turn away from posthumanism, which, like its anti-humanist and poststructuralist antecedents, tends to embrace the fragmentation of the subject and its integration with the technical apparatus at the expense of a position of total refusal. The development of ecological Left humanisms has followed naturally from earlier iterations of Left humanism, just as the latter followed naturally from the earlier flawed and prejudicial iterations of humanism. It is clear that creating an animal-inclusive eco-socialist humanism is the next frontier in the liberatory project. Rather than shy away from this difficult task, animal liberationists ought to embrace it.

Bibliography Adams, C. J., 2010. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. New York: Continuum. Adorno, T. W., 2007. Negative Dialectics. Trans., E. B. Ashton. New York: Continuum. “An Ecosocialist Manifesto”, 2011. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. URL: www. cnsjournal.org/manifesto.html. Arendt, H., 2003. Responsibility and Judgment. J. Kohn, ed., New York: Schocken Books. Benjamin, W., 1968. Theses on the Philosophy of History. In H. Arendt, ed., Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. New York: Schocken Books. Benton, T., 1998. Humanism = Speciesism: Marx on Humans and Animals. Radical Philosophy, 50(3), pp. 4–18. Benton, T., 2011. Humanism = Speciesism?: Marx on Humans and Animals. In J. Sanbonmatsu, ed., Critical Theory and Animal Liberation. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Best, S., 2009. Minding the Animals: Ethology and the Obsolescence of Left Humanism. The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, 5(2), URL: www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol5/vol5_no2_best_minding_animals. htm Bookchin, M., 1980. Toward an Ecological Society. Montreal: Black Rose Books. Bookchin, M., 1996. The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism. Montreal: Black Rose Books. Bookchin, M., 2005. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. Oakland: AK Press.

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Butterfield, 2012. Sartre and Posthumanist Humanism, Beyond Humanism: Transand Posthumanism/Jenseits des Humanismus: Trans- und Posthumanismus (Book 4). ed. S. L. Sorgner. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin: Peter Lang. Césaire, A., 2000. Discourse on Colonialism. Trans., J. Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review Press. Coe, S., 2001. Modern Man Followed by the Ghosts of his Meat. 2nd Edition (Photo Etching). URL: graphicwitness.org/coe/mm2nd.jpg de Beauvoir, S., 1989. The Second Sex. Trans. (and ed.), H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage Books. Eagleton, T., 1996. The Illusions of Postmodernism. Malden: Blackwell. Eagleton, T., 2011. Why Marx was Right. New Haven: Yale University Press. Fanon, F., 1963. Wretched of the Earth. Trans., C. Farrington. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F., 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans., C. L. Markmann. New York: Grove Press. Foucault, M., 1980. Truth and Power. In C. Gordon, ed., (Trans., C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham & K. Soper), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M., 1990. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Vol. 1. Trans., R. Hurley. New York: Vintage Books. Freire, P., 2011. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th Anniversary ed. Trans., M. B. Ramos. New York, London: Continuum. Fromm, E., 1966. Introduction. In E. Fromm, ed., Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium. Garden City: Anchor Books. Fromm, E., 2004. Marx’s Concept of Man. London: Continuum. Gaard, G., 2011. Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-placing Species in a Material Feminist Environmentalism. Feminist Formations, 22(22), pp. 26–53. Horkheimer, M., 2002. Critical Theory: Selected Essays. Trans., M. J. O’Connel, et al. New York: Continuum. Horowitz, A., 1987. Rousseau, Nature, and History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Jones, P., 2002. Toward Total Animal Liberation. Conference address from Animal Rights 2002 Plenary Session on Engaging Other Communities. URL: www.pattricejones.info/texts.html Joy, M., 2005. Humanistic Psychology and Animal Rights: Reconsidering the Boundaries of the Humanistic Ethic. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 45(1), pp. 106–130.

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Levinas, E., 1969. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans., A. Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, E., 2007. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans., A. Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Luik, J. C., 2008. Humanism. In E. Craig, ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Lyotard, J-F., 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. In (trans.) G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 10, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Marcuse, H., 1965. Socialist Humanism?. In E. Fromm, ed., Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium. New York: Doubleday and Company. Marcuse, H., 1966. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. Boston: Beacon Press. Marcuse, H., 1969. An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press. Marcuse, H., 1972. Counterrevolution and Revolt. Boston: Beacon Press. Marcuse, H., 1991. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press. Marshall, P., 2008. Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: Harper Perennial. Marx, K., 1978a. Theses on Feuerbach. In R. C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd Edition. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Marx, K., 1978b. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. In R. C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Marx, K., 1990. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1. Trans., B. Fowkes London: Penguin Books. Nibert, D. 2002. Animal Rights, Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Noske, B., 1997. Beyond Boundaries: Humans and Animals. Montreal: Black Rose Books. Ollman, B., 2008. Why dialectics? Why now?. In B. Ollman & T. Smith, eds., Dialectics for the New Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Patterson, C., 2002. Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. New York: Lantern Books. Pico della Mirandola, G., 1956. Oration on the Dignity of Man. Trans., R. A Gaponigri. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. Sanbonmatsu, J., 2004. The Postmodern Prince: Critical Theory, Left Strategy, and the Making of a New Political Subject. New York: Monthly Review Press.

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Sanbonmatsu, J., 2007. The Subject of Freedom at the End of History: Socialism beyond Humanism. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 66(1), pp. 237–255. Sartre, J-P., 1963. Preface. In F. Fanon (trans. C. Farrington), The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Sartre, J-P., 1965. Anti-Semite and Jew. Trans., G. J. Becker. New York: Schocken Books. Sartre, J-P., 2007. Existentialism is a Humanism. In C. Macomber, ed., Existentialism is a Humanism. New Haven: Yale University Press. Staudenmaier, P., 2005. Ambiguities of Animal Rights. Institute for Social Ecology. URL: www.social-ecology.org/2005/01/ambiguities-of-animalrights Torres, B., 2007. Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights. Edinburgh: AK Press. Weisberg, Z., 2011. Animal Repression: Speciesism as Pathology. In J. Sanbonmatsu, ed., Critical Theory and Animal Liberation. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Weisberg, Z., 2014. The Trouble with Posthumanism: Bacteria are People too. In J. Sorenson, ed., Thinking the Unthinkable: New Readings in Critical Animal Studies. Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press. Zipporah Weisberg is an Independent Researcher living in Granada, Spain. In 2013 Zipporah completed her PhD in Social and Political Thought at York University. From June 2013 to June 2015 Zipporah was the Abby Benjamin Postdoctoral Fellow in Animal Ethics in the Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She specializes in critical animal studies, critical social theory, and existentialism and phenomenology. Zipporah’s notable publications include, “The Simple Magic of Life”: Phenomenology, Ontology, and Animal Ethics (Humanimalia, 2015), Biotechnology as Endgame: Ontological and Ethical Collapse in the “Biotech Century” (NanoEthics, 2015), The Trouble with Posthumanism: Bacteria are People Too (in Thinking The Unthinkable: New Readings in Critical Animal Studies, edited by John Sorenson, Canadian Scholars Press, 2014), and The Broken Promises of Monsters: Haraway, Animals, and the Humanist Legacy (Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 2009). Her most recent area of interest is interspecies community building.

7 Justice for Animals in a Globalising World Angie Pepper

7.1

Introduction

There now exists a huge and varied body of literature addressing the many challenges that humans now face as the intensification of processes associated with globalisation move us into a post-Westphalian era.1 Central to these lines of enquiry are questions to do with the nature of our responsibilities to individuals worldwide, and an evaluation of the existing global order. Yet, while theoretical enquiry on matters of global justice for humans has burgeoned in recent years, relatively little has been written on what we might owe to our fellow sentient creatures at the global level. The absence of contemporary animal rights theorists in discussions about anthropogenic climate change, 1

For excellent discussions of how processes of globalisation have affected the utility of the Westphalian view of politics see Falk, 2002; Held, 1999; Slaughter, 2004.

A. Pepper (*) Centre de Recherche en Éthique, Université de Montréal, Quebec, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_7

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international trade, resource distribution, territorial rights, disaster relief, war, and other forms of international institutional violence is troubling because these issues are relevant to the lives of all sentient animals. Moreover, the silence of animal rights theorists in these debates means that the lives and interests of nonhuman animals continue to be neglected in our thinking about global justice. In this chapter, I make the case that we must think about justice for all animals through the cosmopolitan lens. In Section 7.2, I make some preliminary remarks about global justice and cosmopolitanism. Section 7.3 explores some of the ways that the current global order maintains and exacerbates systems of violence and oppression that target nonhuman animals. I then argue, in Section 7.4, that while cosmopolitanism might initially look hostile to the agenda of protecting the rights of nonhuman animals, the theoretical foundations of cosmopolitanism in fact necessitate the inclusion of at least many, if not all, sentient animals. In Section 7.5 I argue that defenders of animal rights should be cosmopolitans about global justice and explain why this does not require forsaking our special relationships. I conclude the chapter with a plea to both mainstream defenders of cosmopolitanism and defenders of political justice for animals to unite in developing genuinely inclusive theories of justice.

7.2

Global Justice

The forces and processes of contemporary globalisation have resulted in “the emergence of a global economy, 24 hour trading in financial markets, multinational corporations which command economic resources in excess of those enjoyed by many countries, new forms of international regulation, the development of regional and global governance structures and the creation of global systemic problems” (Held, 2003, p.466). Theorists of global justice are concerned with this distinctive set of political problems, which differ from challenges to domestic justice insofar as they affect the lives of individuals living in more than one state, or are unresolvable without the co-operation of

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individuals across states (Brock, 2015). Examples of problems that have a distinctively global dimension include climate change, unsustainable resource consumption, pandemic disease, drug trafficking, the smuggling and trafficking of human beings, Internet governance, money laundering, mass terrorism, and poverty. Questions of global justice arise in these cases because the actions of agents in one state, or the state itself, harm or disadvantage individuals of another state. Similarly, when agents in one state could act to reduce harm or disadvantage elsewhere, questions arise over whether those agents have a duty of justice to do so (Ibid). Political theorists who recognise these global problems to be problems of justice, as opposed to concerns of compassion or charity, advocate cosmopolitan approaches to social and distributive justice. While there are a variety of cosmopolitan approaches and answers to questions of global justice, all cosmopolitan theorists share a commitment to moral cosmopolitanism, which can be summed up as follows: all individuals are the primary units of moral concern, all individuals enjoy this status equally, and having this status generates obligations that are binding on all (Pogge, 1992, pp.48–49). Taking individuals as the primary units of equal moral concern requires giving every individual in the world equal respect and consideration, irrespective of where they happen to live, or what group affiliations they may have. Moreover, moral cosmopolitanism demands that, because individuals have primacy, one focuses on the needs and interests of individuals, as opposed to those of states and other groups. Most, if not all, contemporary cosmopolitan approaches to global distributive justice are problematically anthropocentric because the cosmopolitan individual is assumed to be human, and only human needs and interests are counted as a matter of cosmopolitan concern.2 However, I contend that human institutions, and patterns of human

2

Articulations and defences of cosmopolitan justice are exemplified in the following works: Barry, 1998, 1999; Beitz, 1975; Brock, 2009; Cabrera, 2004; Caney, 2005; Jones, 1999; Pogge, 1992, 2002a, 2005.

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activity, generate problems of global justice that affect all sentient animals.3 That is to say, the treatment of nonhuman animals in the existing global order is apt to considerations of social and distributive justice. Moreover, I argue that when we think about our duties to other animals, we cannot theorise about our domestic duties in isolation from what we might owe to animals globally.

7.3

Nonhuman Animals, Institutional Violence, and the Domain of Justice: The Need to Think Globally

In recent years, several theorists have advanced theories of justice for nonhuman animals.4 While the details of these accounts differ, there are several commonalities. First, each of these views takes nonhuman animals to possess fundamental basic rights. Second, they each defend the claim that nonhuman animals are entitled to have their basic rights protected and promoted as a matter of justice. This means that nonhuman animals can appropriately be regarded as subjects of justice, and, accordingly, it is not only wrong of us to needlessly harm them, but we act unjustly when we violate their rights and do them unnecessary harm (Nussbaum, 2006, p.337). Third, most of these accounts concentrate on the duties of justice that citizens living within liberal democratic societies have toward those animals who live among them.5

3

In this chapter, I assume that having the capacity for sentience is a necessary and sufficient condition for admission to the sphere of justice. Sentient beings are subjectively aware and have an interest in their lives going better rather than worse. Thus, how sentient beings fare in life matters from the perspective of justice since justice is essentially concerned with the fair distribution of resources and privileges to satisfy interests and well-being. See Pepper (2017) and sources cited in n.4 for more thoroughgoing defences of the idea that all and only sentient animals can appropriately be considered subjects of justice. 4 See, for example, Cochrane, 2012; Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011; Garner, 2013; Smith, 2012. 5 While there is, to my knowledge, very little discussion about our duties of global justice to other animals, there are some exceptions including Cochrane, 2013; Cooke, 2014; Horta, 2013; Steiner, 2011.

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While these theories are promising and specify substantive duties of justice to animals living locally, they are often silent about what we owe to those animals living beyond our national borders. Yet much of the institutional violence done to nonhuman animals exists not only in the confines of territorially discrete, bounded, communities, but is maintained within a global order that perpetuates the exploitation, oppression, and suffering of hundreds of billions of nonhuman animals each year. Moreover, even when humans are not directly responsible for the harms experienced by other animals, human actions often produce indirect harms and our relationships with nonhuman animals tends to put them in a heightened state of vulnerability. To illustrate the scale of the harms done to nonhuman animals worldwide and expose the global dimension of these harms, let us consider several examples.

7.3.1 Trade in Animal Bodies Each year hundreds of billions of nonhuman animals experience extreme brutality at the hands of humans because their bodies, or bits of their bodies, have monetary value. The extent of the global trade in animal bodies is staggering. Live bodies, dead bodies, whole bodies, body parts, and bodily secretions are traded internationally as food, for clothing, for scientific research, for companionship, for traditional medicine, for decoration, and for entertainment. Nonhuman animal bodies are commodities to be captured, bred, brought, sold, owned, consumed, dismembered, used, and traded in a global market. The most obvious place to start is the global market for animal flesh. In 2015 the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) estimated that 31.2 million metric tons of nonhuman animal flesh would be traded across borders generating billons of US$ in revenue (FAO, 2015). Poultry flesh is the most traded meat product worldwide, followed by bovine, pig, and ovine flesh, respectively. Between 2002 and 2012 the export value of animal flesh in the United States increased by 121% from $8.3 to $18.5

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billion, and represents roughly 20% of the US’s total exports (excluding fish) (Muhammad, et al., 2014, p.1). In 2014, the United States imported 957,000 tons of cow flesh, worth $5.3 billion, while they exported 859,000 tons for $6.3 billion (FAS/ USDA, 2015).6 Currently the United States imports fresh and frozen cows flesh from eleven countries Australia, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Honduras, Iceland, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, and Uruguay (Ibid). In 2015, Brazil and India were the leading exporters of cows flesh, exporting 2.08 and 1.95 million tons respectively. The forecast for 2016 is that the world’s major exporters will move around 9.9 million tons of cows’ flesh, 10.7 million tons of chicken flesh, and 7.3 million tons of pigs flesh across national borders (Ibid). The trade in nonhuman animal bodies for human consumption covers a large variety of species beyond those animals traditionally regarded as “livestock” animals. There is, for example, a growing global market in flesh from alternative species such as red deer, fallow deer, rabbit, horses, pigeon, and ostrich (Poławska, et al., 2013). Similarly, the trade in shark flesh (including sharks and rays), grows year on year and increased by 42% from 2000 to 2011 (Dent & Clarke, 2015). Again, sharks are not simply captured, slaughtered, and processed domestically, but rather a significant share of the trade in shark flesh occurs across borders. For example, between 2009 and 2012, Brazil, one of the world’s largest importers of shark meat, imported 80,525 tons of shark flesh from seventeen different countries (Ibid, p.113). Besides trade in meat products, the global market for milk and dairy products, including butter, butter oil, skim milk powder, whole milk powder, condensed milk, and cheese, continues to grow. Citing data from the FAO, the International Dairy Federation estimates the global trade in dairy products to be 58.2 million tons (excluding trade within 6 The Foreign Agricultural Service/United States Department of Agriculture report states that these figures only “include fresh, chilled and frozen muscle cuts under HS headings 0201 and 0202 and exclude processed and prepared products which are not subject to U.S. tariff rate quotas” (FAS/USDA, 2015, n.1).

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the European Union), which represents 7.8% of world milk production (IDF, 2013). In terms of value, the trade of milk products (aggregate containing milk, cream, butter, cheese, whey, buttermilk, milk powder, yoghurt, and casein) is estimated to be at US$64 billion, which amounts to 5.9% of all of the agricultural products traded. These figures increase to US$69 billion, or 6.4% of the agricultural products trade, if lactose and infant formula are included (Ibid). Nonhuman animal bodies and body parts are not only traded as food, but also for clothing with the global leather industry having an estimated trade value of US$100 billion per year (UNIDO, 2010, p.12). In 2007, Asia manufactured more than 84% of the world’s footwear and while not all of those shoes are made of leather a great number of them are. For example, the city of Dongguan, China, produces approximately 1.5 billion pairs of shoes annually, of which about 75% are leather shoes (Ibid, p.61). While information on the global fur trade is difficult to find, the International Fur Federation commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers to conduct a report into the industry, which valued global fur retail sales at $35.8 billion.7 The largest international fur auction house in Europe, Kopenhagen Fur, was reported to have traded 25 million pelts from November 2013 to November 2014 at a value of almost €1.07 billion (Fur Europe, 2014, p.13). Furthermore, in addition to legal trade, there is a global black market in nonhuman animal bodies and by-products. Due to its illicit nature, the exact monetary value of the illegal trade in nonhuman animal bodies is difficult to ascertain though estimates tend to put the figure between US $8 and 20 billion – which makes it comparable in revenue and harm to the trafficking of humans, drugs, and weapons (WWF/Dalberg, 2012, p.9; IFAW, 2014).8 Writing in the UK newspaper The Guardian, John

7

http://www.wearefur.com/fur-fashion/fur-campaigns/economist-campaign-2014 (Accessed 2/2/2016). 8 According United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime press release, their executive director, Yury Fedotov, publicly stated that “the US$8-US$10 billion reaped annually from this ruthless trade ranked it alongside the trafficking of human beings, arms and drugs in terms of illicit profits” (UNODC, 2013). It is worth noting that the larger figures cited often include unreported and unregulated fisheries trade, as well as illegal trade in timber.

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Scanlon, Secretary-General of The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), reported that Today’s wildlife crime increasing [sic] involves organised crime syndicates, and in some cases rebel militia. These criminals operate across national borders and through international shipment routes; have significant financial support; understand and utilise new technologies, and are often wellarmed. They do not hesitate to use violence or threats of violence against those who try to stand in their way, and constantly adapt their tactics to avoid detection and prosecution (Scanlon, 2013).

The sale of illegally seized wildlife increasingly takes place in the online marketplace and the Internet has transformed the nature of the criminal activity against wild animals (IFAW, 2014). Over the course of six weeks in 2014, The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) monitored 280 online marketplaces in sixteen different countries and found 33,006 endangered wildlife, and wildlife parts and products for sale, worth a total US$10,708,137. Fifty per cent of the adverts recorded were for the sale of live animals, while 46 % were for animal parts and products. Although many animal advocacy groups call for individual governments to create more robust laws to protect animals against cybercrime and against illegal seizure in the wild, there is “general agreement among governments and international organizations that the commitments made and the actions taken are uncoordinated and fail to address the issue effectively” (WWF/Dalberg, 2012, p.5). All I can offer here is a glimpse of the global trade in nonhuman animal bodies. I have not, for example, discussed the global markets for companion animals, research animals, or zoo animals, nor have I explored recent trends in hunting tourism – all of which further highlight how the existing global order serves to harm other animals. However, what should be clear is that billions of nonhuman animals are captured, maimed, tortured, traumatised, exploited, and killed in order to satisfy a global demand for their bodies. To be clear, trade in nonhuman animal bodies is not confined to the discrete units of nation-states and their domestic economies; there is a rapidly expanding

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global dimension to human dependence on the bodies of other animals. Domestic markets, consumption habits, and ways of life are increasingly reliant on the import and export of nonhuman animal bodies. In order to secure justice for nonhuman animals we must be aware of the ways in which our lives are dependent on the suffering of animals beyond our borders.

7.3.2 Habitat Destruction The global network of trade in nonhuman animal bodies is not the only way in which other animals suffer globally as a consequence of human activity. Many wild animal populations have been affected and threatened by deforestation for agriculture, ranching, urban development, and logging for timber. In recent years, the most significant cause of deforestation comes as a result of clear cutting for agriculture and ranching in South America. According to Greenpeace, between 2004 and 2005 an estimated 1.2 million hectares of Brazilian rainforest were cleared to produce soybean crops, which were primarily intended to feed cattle (Greenpeace, 2006, p.5; see also FAO, 2006). The violence and exploitation of livestock animals is intertwined with the killing of wild animals and the destruction of their natural habitat. The lack of an effective supranational system of regulation in the global trade of animal bodies for food has resulted in harm to wild animals who happen to occupy land space that humans want to utilise for the feeding, rearing, and slaughtering of animals classed as “livestock”. In addition to the destruction of habitat for livestock farming, habitat degradation and loss also occurs as a result of human pollution. We pollute land with household refuse and industrial waste, including toxic, ignitable, corrosive, or reactive materials; we pollute water with chemicals, dangerous foreign objects, and nutrients; and we pollute the air with dangerous gases and particles released from the burning of fossil fuels. While these forms of pollution can be just as noxious for humans as they are to nonhuman animals, there are some forms of pollution that are less widely recognised because they do not affect us as much as some nonhumans. For example, when water is taken from a natural resource

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and then either cooled or heated and ejected back to the source, as is often done in manufacturing plants, this can affect the ecological balance of the water source and suffocate, or otherwise harm, the nonhuman animals living there and in the surrounding area. Additionally, many human activities produce noise and light pollution that can negatively impact on the capabilities and health of nonhuman animals. Take, for instance, the impact of anthropogenic noise on marine mammals who may change their vocalisation patterns, diving and foraging habits, become displaced, become stranded, and suffer stress in response to the noise from sonar and shipping (Weilgert, 2007). One might want to resist the thought that these problems have a distinctively global dimension because habitat destruction and environmental degradation often occurs in fixed geographical locations and thus will almost always fall within the jurisdiction of a particular state. But such a conclusion is difficult to maintain when one keeps in mind that many of the actors responsible for damaging the environment are neither nationstates nor entities and phenomena that nation-states have control over. Multinational corporations, development initiatives, non-governmental organisations, regional bodies, international organisations, trade agreements, and political treatises all have a hand in determining how natural resources are used and by whom.

7.3.3 Adaption to Climate Change Perhaps the biggest environmental crisis facing humans and nonhuman animals is the very real and present threat of anthropogenic climate change. There is now broad scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change is a fact and that if efforts are not made to reduce human impact on the world’s environment, then the consequences will be disastrous for future human and nonhuman animal populations.9 9 It is important to note that even without anthropogenic climate change, the Earth’s climate would indeed change and the many animal species on this planet would be forced to respond or risk extinction. However, it is predicted that without human assistance and a reduction in carbon emissions, many species will be unable to keep pace with the rapidly changing climate of the planet caused by human activity (Hoegh-Guldberg, et al., 2008).

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Furthermore, there is already strong evidence that the effects of climate change are being felt now and that changes to landscape and environment are making areas inhospitable to certain species of animal. For example, it is widely known that the population of ice-dependent species such as some seals, sea lions, penguins and polar bears have been in decline due to a loss of sea ice habitat. Even nonhuman animals who are free to move to better climes face problems as they try to adapt to a rapidly changing climate. Migratory species, for instance, can respond to changes in climate by altering their migration routes in order to find appropriate places to breed, rest, raise young, and feed, but this is often made difficult by human land-use and activity (Robinson, et al., 2008). The philosophical literature on the issue of climate change is primarily framed in terms of human well-being and human cost. But, as noted before, humans are not the only sentient animals on this planet with the capacity for well-being, and vulnerable human and nonhuman animals are similarly defenceless against the catastrophic effects of anthropogenic climate change. With this in mind, it is imperative that the interests of all sentient beings be considered in our moral thinking about what duties we have to mitigate the effects of climate change, and in determining who bears a responsibility to help the vulnerable adapt.

7.3.4 Assistance in Conflict Situations and Natural Disasters Humans are not the only animals to be affected in times of war and disaster. Given the fragility of animal bodies all sentient beings are vulnerable to violence, famine, drought, earthquakes, fire, biohazards, flooding, power blackouts, and extreme weather phenomena. The extent of the impact of these events on the lives of nonhuman animals is difficult to ascertain since the loss of life and suffering experienced in these circumstances is again often only documented in terms of human cost. That said, organisations such as World Animal Protection,10

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Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad,11 and the International Fund for Animal Welfare12 provide assistance to animals in conflict situations and natural disaster, and people across the globe are increasingly moved to respond to the needs of nonhuman animals in times of violent conflict and disaster, which helps to render the plight of nonhuman animals in these conditions visible. Leslie Irvine has written extensively on the vulnerability of the billions of domesticated, captive, and wild animals affected by disaster situations in recent years, and has argued that emergency response plans currently “reflect speciesist assumptions that give human lives priority, in all circumstances” (Irvine, 2006, p.1; 2009). Particularly striking statistics relate to those animals who are held captive in factory-farms, and who we have placed “at a level of risk that would be unacceptable for any other living beings” (Irvine, 2009, p.60). For example, Irvine reports that when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States in 2005, there were 635 million farm animals being raised in the region, and one leading poultry processor, Sanderson Farms, reported the loss of three million broiler chickens (Ibid, p.45). In addition to natural and accidental catastrophe, nonhuman animals are also vulnerable to injury, harm, and death in times of violent conflict between humans. While the heroic deeds, death, and suffering of animals on active service during wartime have been well documented, the direct and indirect effects of war on the lives of companion, captive, and wild nonhuman animals is still relatively under examined. One notable exception to this is Clare Campbell’s study of the plight of companion and zoo animals in Britain during the Second World War (2013). Campbell details how within the first week of war as many as 750,000 pets were euthanised on advice given by the National Air Raid Precautions Animals Committee, and she further estimates that two and half million companion animals were killed in total during the

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http://www.spana.org http://www.ifaw.org

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war (2013).13 Similarly, John Kinder examines the ways in which zoo animals are impacted by modern wars and explores the roles foisted upon them in wartime, noting that “From Berlin to London, Tokyo to Paris, Kabul to Baghdad, zoo animals have been bombed, shot, tortured, starved, massacred, and eaten during wartime” (Kinder, 2013, p.47).14 It should be obvious that human wars have a devastating impact on the lives of nonhuman animals. Yet the principles of just war and “humanitarian” intervention have little to say about the rights and entitlements of nonhuman animals in times of human conflict, or about the duties we have to them. Since nonhuman animals do not currently enjoy civilian status they are excluded from the protections afforded to non-combatants in wartime. Thus when they are perceived as enemy resources or enemy weapons they are vulnerable to being viewed as legitimate targets and are helpless to defend themselves against attack. Moreover, while many have argued in defence of a duty of military intervention in cases of gross human rights violations, the idea that such a duty might be invoked on behalf of nonhuman animals has enjoyed far less attention.15 One might think that wars and disasters are not problems of global justice but rather challenges to be dealt with by the political communities involved. Indeed, this is the view that many noncosmopolitans take (Nagel, 2005). But cosmopolitans recognise that we do have duties of justice to assist those affected by disasters, especially when those in need were made more vulnerable by the existing global order. When individuals are unable to meet their

13 While the plight of zoo animals in wartime has historically been truly horrific, it is important to keep in mind, as John Kinder notes, “that—even in times of peace—zoo animals remain, quite literally, captive subjects. If zoo animals are exceedingly vulnerable to wartime privation and attack, the primary fault lies with the institution itself rather than with an invading army” (2013, p.59). 14 Domesticated and captive animals are not the only casualties of human conflict, with modern wars also having “detrimental effects on wildlife due to direct losses, habitat destruction, the demands of displaced peoples for food and fuel, encouragement of trade in wildlife, and the establishment of environmentally unsustainable industries in the face of political destabilization” (Mishra & Fitzherbert, 2004). 15 One exception to this is Alasdair Cochrane and Steve Cooke’s discussion of “Humane Intervention” (2016).

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fundamental needs and interests, their lives go badly and they are therefore entitled to assistance.16

7.4

Extending Cosmopolitanism Across Species Boundaries

The above examples serve to demonstrate some, but by no means all, of the ways that the global institutional order affects the lives of nonhuman animals. They give us a snapshot of the complex global network of interspecies relations and the ways in which our lives are interdependent. The global trade in nonhuman animal bodies, body parts, and products makes the immense scale of the systematised violence done to other animals apparent; violence sanctioned and perpetuated by the existing global economic framework. We have also seen how the unbridled and often irresponsible human use and exploitation of valuable natural resources generates problems of global justice, which cross species boundaries as well as national boundaries. And addressing the imminent threat of anthropogenic climate change demands that we think not only about who bears responsibility to reduce carbon emissions, but also what we owe to vulnerable human and nonhuman animals who will be unable to adapt to the effects of climate change without assistance. Likewise, while much ink has been spilt over our duties to fellow humans in times of disaster, little has been said of what we owe to our fellow sentient beings, and yet the harms of injury, pain, and death face all animals in those circumstances regardless of species; in our animality we are all vulnerable to catastrophic events. If we accept that nonhuman animals can be subjects of justice, then the above discussion should give us pause. The forces of globalisation 16 This last point would be disputed by some cosmopolitans who have argued that we only have duties of justice to others when we have contributed to their plight (Valentini, 2013). Note, though, even if one were to adopt this position, humans would often have global duties of justice to nonhuman animals in disaster situations because nonhuman animal vulnerability to such events is often exacerbated by the actions of humans globally.

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give us good reason to think not only about what we owe to humans worldwide, but also to nonhuman animals. That is, the scope of justice must be extended to all sentient animals globally and defenders of animal rights should embrace a cosmopolitan approach to justice for animals. In this section I briefly explain why, despite appearances to the contrary, cosmopolitanism does not necessitate the exclusion of nonhuman animals.17 It might be thought that the cosmopolitan framework is hostile to the inclusion of nonhuman animals because cosmopolitanism is concerned only with human beings. As we have seen, cosmopolitans assume that the primary unit of moral concern is the human individual. Indeed, cosmopolitan accounts of global justice rarely mention other animals at all, and exceptions to this often take other animals as resources to be distributed, as opposed to ends in themselves with rights.18 Given the anthropocentric character of historical and contemporary cosmopolitan thought, it would not be unreasonable to surmise that the cosmopolitan framework can only accommodate human needs and interests, which, if correct, would disqualify nonhuman animals from the scope of global justice. However, it is important to recognise that there is no conceptual barrier to extending the scope of cosmopolitan justice to nonhuman animals, and, furthermore, by their own lights many cosmopolitans must include, at least some, nonhuman animals. All cosmopolitan approaches to distributive justice are motivated by the severe inequalities that exist between individuals globally and the suffering and harms experienced by the world’s most vulnerable people. Regardless of the metric of justice employed, all cosmopolitans are committed to the idea that human lives do not go well when they are reduced to a mere struggle for survival and that we are entitled, as a matter of justice, to access those goods essential to a minimally decent life. Thus, individuals are the primary units of moral concern because what matters most, morally speaking, is the well-being of individuals.

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For a fuller elaboration of this argument, see Pepper, 2017. See, for instance, Chris Armstrong who seems to assume that fish are a natural resource (2012, p.153 & 189). 18

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While all cosmopolitans are motivated by these shared considerations, their approaches to social distributive justice fall, broadly speaking, into two camps: relational and non-relational (Sangiovanni, 2007, pp.5–8). Relational cosmopolitans ground claims of justice in features of relationships, associations, and shared institutions, which makes our duties of justice conditional on the existence of those relationships (Beitz, 1975, 1999; Pogge, 1989, 2002a). Depending on the view, relational theorists emphasise at least one of three relational dynamics which characterise the existing global order, and that, they argue, make it justice-apt: (1) the current distribution of resources has arisen from a “global institutional order that, continually and foreseeably, produces vast excesses of severe poverty and premature poverty-related deaths” (Pogge, 2010, p.417); (2) the high degree of socio-economic and political interdependence at the global level constitutes a global scheme of social cooperation (Beitz, 1999, pp.143–153); and (3) the basic global structure has a profound impact on the life prospects of individuals globally (Beitz, 1999; Pogge, 2002a). Moreover, these three relational dynamics are taken to generate a negative cosmopolitan duty of justice not to participate in, or maintain, institutional arrangements that harm others, and positive cosmopolitan duties to bring about a more just global institutional order. We are now in a position to see why relational cosmopolitanism is not only amenable to the inclusion of nonhuman animals, but why predominant relational views must include, at least some, nonhuman animals. First, there is no principled reason why the cosmopolitan individual must be genetically human. The claim cannot be that cosmopolitan justice only encompasses humans because of their capacity for rationality, linguistic agency, or moral agency, because relational cosmopolitans are concerned with all humans affected by global institutional arrangements, including human infants and humans with severe cognitive impairments. Furthermore, relational cosmopolitans are concerned with the ways in which the existing global order causes suffering, premature death, has a profound and pervasive impact on the life prospects of individuals, benefits some to the disadvantage of others, and involves deep networks of interdependence. But all of these things are, as shown in the previous section, true for both human and nonhuman individuals

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alike. Nonhuman animals have the capacity for well-being and their lives are heavily affected by the global institutional order, in terms of trade, criminal activity, habitat destruction, pollution, welfare regulations (and lack of them), anthropogenic climate change, emergency response plans, and human conflict. Unlike relational accounts, non-relational cosmopolitans do not take relationships to be essential to generating considerations of justice but instead ground claims of justice in humanity itself (Barry, 1998, 1999; Caney, 2005, 2009). Simon Caney, for example, has defended a “humanity-centred” cosmopolitanism, which holds that “one has obligations of justice to others because they are fellow human beings – with human needs and failings, and human capacities for, and interests, in autonomy and well-being – and facts about interdependence do not, in themselves, determine the scope of distributive justice” (Caney 2009, p.391). For non-relational cosmopolitans like Caney, human beings have obligations and entitlements of justice simply because they are human beings. Thus, our entitlements do not originate in the relationships that we have to others, but are instead grounded in our humanity. Importantly, non-relational cosmopolitans do not ground considerations of justice in national or institutional membership because those features of an individual are morally arbitrary and cannot be used to determine whether or not one counts as a subject of justice. That is, membership to a particular nation or institutional scheme is morally irrelevant because it was neither earned nor deserved and thus “does not track any entitlement-creating properties” (Caney, 2005, p.112). But while the moral relevance of national and institutional membership is challenged on this view, the moral relevance of species membership is left intact. The non-relational cosmopolitan uncritically assumes that only humans are the proper subjects of justice and fails to explain why we should consider the interests of just one species when thinking about how to distribute the world’s resources.19 However, the view that species 19 Nussbaum (2006) is the exception here. However, while she initially includes animals as subjects of justice her commitment to political liberalism allows for gross violations of their rights, which means “animals are not genuinely recognised to be subjects but instead remain instrumentalities for the satisfaction of human needs” (Steiner, 2011, p.104).

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is relevant to determining whether one counts as a subject of justice has been convincingly called into doubt by defenders of animal rights. The fact that neither species nor rationality are something that we choose or can be said to deserve, like nationality, means that these properties must not influence one’s entitlements (Rowlands, 1997, pp.242–243). While some non-relational cosmopolitans might wish to maintain that species is morally relevant, they will have difficulty doing so in a way that includes all humans regardless of cognitive capacity and maturity. This again is important for the cosmopolitan since part of the appeal of their project is that they protect all vulnerable individuals regardless of cognitive ability or age. It seems then they have three options: they can (1) retain a commitment to an indefensible form of speciesism, (2) exclude all infant humans and cognitively impaired humans, or (3) embrace the logic of the cosmopolitan standpoint and include all animals with the capacity for well-being. While some may be prepared to take routes (1) and (2), the third option realises the full potential of the cosmopolitan framework, does not get mired in inconsistency, and preserves the appeal of the cosmopolitan project. Humans have constructed a global network of institutions that affects the lives of sentient animals worldwide. Under the current global order only a relative few prosper, while the majority of sentient animals, including most humans, fair badly. The lives of all nonhuman animals are either directly regulated or at least indirectly affected by human interaction, institutions, and regulative frameworks at the global level. Thus, theorists of global justice should think not only about the way that human institutions impact on human lives but also about how they impact on the lives of other animals.

7.5

Why Cosmopolitanism for Animals

Extending the scope of justice to all sentient animals marks a move from a “humanity-centred” cosmopolitanism, to a “sentience-centred” cosmopolitanism. Hence, we must take all sentient animals as the primary units of moral concern, which means that each individual’s needs and

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interests matter equally, and we proceed from “a defeasible presumption in favour of equal treatment” (Pogge, 2013, p.300). This means not only reconfiguring the cosmopolitan standpoint to include both humans and nonhuman animals, but giving equal consideration to like interests, and recognising a prima facie claim to equal treatment. Of course, while we must always consider individual like interests equally, since individual humans and nonhuman animals have different needs and interests, equal treatment will often be inappropriate. This is most obvious in the case of differently able humans who require more resources in order to increase their physical mobility, or nonhumans who require more space for physical exercise or different living conditions in order to maintain a decent degree of bodily health. However, it is important to note that while the presumption in favour of equal treatment can be defeated on a variety of legitimate grounds, not all reasons are legitimate defeating reasons; of particular concern here are reasons that invoke species. Appeal to group membership, whether it be nationality or species, cannot justify differential treatment because one’s nationality and species are morally arbitrary. Thus, being British, dolphin, German, chipmunk, Catholic, or human, cannot be invoked in favour of differential treatment, which is to say that being British or human does not, by itself, entitle one to more or less resources or privileges than dolphins, Germans, chipmunks, or Catholics. What is morally relevant from the perspective of a sentience-centred cosmopolitanism is that all animals are able to lead minimally decent lives and have access to the resources necessary to meet their basic needs.20 Therefore, the only legitimate

20

To be sure, the needs and interests of individual nonhuman animals will vary across species and will also depend on the existing dependency relations between individual nonhuman animals and humans. Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s distinction between dependent agents and competent agents is instructive here (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011). Through the process of domestication, the needs of some animals have been altered and they are heavily dependent on humans for food, shelter, companionship, and care. Wild animals, on the other hand, are competent, as both individuals and communities, to meet their needs and take care of themselves and any others with whom they share their lives, without human intervention (Ibid, p.175). Indeed, for wild animals it is often the actions of humans that threaten their ability to meet their own needs and which not only threaten the lives of individual animals, but also the communities of wild animals, and sometimes whole species in their entirety.

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reasons that can be invoked to justify differential treatment are those that relate to the promotion of individual well-being. At this point I anticipate some resistance to the claim that we have duties of justice to sentient animals that are global in scope. This seems quite likely if one considers the careful defences of non-cosmopolitan approaches to justice in the case of humans (Brock, 2013). Similarly, some defenders of domestic justice for sentient animals might also attempt to restrict the scope of justice to those animals living within the state. Thus, in addition to the considerations outlined in Section 7.3, here I explain why defenders of domestic justice for animals should be cosmopolitans by specifying what is at stake in the rejection of cosmopolitan duties of justice to nonhuman animals. Non-cosmopolitans tend to argue that while there are no duties of global justice, we do have weaker humanitarian duties to assist other humans (Nagel, 2005). By the same token, one could argue that while we have duties of justice to those animals who reside within the territorial bounds of the nation-state, we have no such duties of justice to sentient animals beyond our borders. Instead, one might further argue, we have sentientarian duties of assistance to save lives and reduce suffering worldwide. As with humanitarian duties, sentientarian duties of assistance are weaker in nature than duties of justice, because these duties are akin to duties of charity and are not therefore enforceable. One immediate concern with downgrading our duties to duties of assistance is that we render already vulnerable animals dependent on the goodwill of others. Since sentientarian duties of assistance are not enforceable, those who evade their obligations cannot be sanctioned or held accountable for their failure to comply. But a further, more disturbing, consequence of denying claims of global justice looms, which is that duties of charity assume that “the existing baseline resource and wealth distribution is a just one, and that the global basic institutions organized around legitimizing the prevailing allocation of wealth and resources are acceptable” (Tan, 2004, p.66). Thus, to deny sentiencecentred cosmopolitanism, would be to deny that the problems detailed in Section 7.3 are problems of global justice and to legitimate the existing global order. Yet, given the scale of abuse, institutional violence, and resource deprivation that sentient animals experience as result of the

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existing global order, such a conclusion seems deeply implausible. It is difficult to maintain that the existing distribution of resources and privileges is just when billions of nonhuman animals are traded as commodities, endangered and killed through human action, unable to meet their basic needs, and 836 million humans are currently living in extreme poverty (UNDP, 2015). Defenders of animal rights who might want to limit the scope of justice to the domestic sphere can only do so in ways which are in tension with the foundational moral commitments of their positions: if we think that animals are subjects of justice with fundamental interests that must be protected by respecting their inviolable rights, then this must be true of all animals, irrespective of where they happen to live. What grounds these rights is the fact that sentient beings have the capacity for, and interest in, a minimally decent level of well-being, which can only be secured if their fundamental needs are met. Here a possible worry emerges: can one coherently be committed to the equal treatment of all sentient individuals, and yet sometimes give preferential treatment to some individuals over others? The concern is that a sentience-centred cosmopolitanism requires us to forgo our special relationships and denies “the importance of membership in bounded communities which exercise control over themselves and their territories” (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2013, p.147). However, borrowing from Samuel Scheffler (1999), I think that while there may be tensions between the duties we have to all sentient beings, and those that we have to our compatriots, having these two sets of distinct commitments does not degenerate into incoherence. Scheffler argues that we can only value our special relationships in the ways that we do if we see them as providing us with reasons for differential treatment (1999, p.266). But acknowledging that this is a key aspect in the human valuation of relationships does not say anything about what one can justifiably do in the name of special relationships. Thus, accepting that our special relations provide us with reasons for unequal treatment does not necessarily justify always prioritising the needs and interests of our near and dear at a cost to strangers. As Pogge notes, “special relationships can increase what we owe our associates, but they cannot decrease what we owe everyone

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else” (Pogge, 2002b, pp.90–91). Thus, acting to fulfil our special responsibilities need not represent an unjustified departure from the cosmopolitan commitment to equality. To sum up this discussion, advancing a sentience-centred cosmopolitanism requires a radical reconceptualisation of the cosmopolitan individual. We must take both humans and nonhuman animals as central to our theorising about problems of global justice, which entails considering their like interests alike and, in the absence of defeating reasons, a commitment to equal their treatment. Moreover, since species is as morally irrelevant as nationality in determining who is entitled to what, appeals to species in order to justify unequal treatment are impermissible. Unlike non-cosmopolitan views, sentiencecentred cosmopolitanism challenges the status quo, advances the interests of animals who live beyond our borders, and allows us to identify and address global systemic harms. Importantly the project of cosmopolitan justice takes priority over determining what duties we have to our compatriots, for, as we saw, while cosmopolitanism does not require us to forgo our special relationships, it places serious constraints on what we can do in the name of those with whom we share our political community. Consequently, to start our thinking about justice from the standpoint of the liberal nation-state is to get things back-to-front. Only when we know what we owe to all animals globally, can we determine the precise content of our duties to compatriots.

7.6

Conclusion

In this chapter I have argued that the existing global order harms nonhuman as well as human animals, which gives rise to a distinctive set of problems of global justice. I further suggested that cosmopolitanism is not only amenable to, but demands the inclusion of all sentient animals, and defenders of animal rights must be cosmopolitan in their orientation. The reasons for this latter conclusion are twofold. First, human ways of life are often dependent on practices that harm animals across state boundaries; and second, we cannot determine what we

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justifiably owe to those with whom we share our political communities, without first figuring out what we owe to sentient animals globally. In light of the egregious harms produced and maintained by the global order, both cosmopolitans and defenders of animal rights have a responsibility to develop sentience-centred cosmopolitan approaches to questions of global justice. Meeting this responsibility involves not only the advancement of new views, but challenging the dominant discourse on global justice by framing the debates in terms of sentient animal interests. We have laboured too long under the false assumption that issues of global justice affect only humans, and justice demands that we seek to transform thinking as well as practice.

Bibliography Armstrong, C., 2012. Global Distributive Justice: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barry, B., 1998. International Society from a Cosmopolitan Perspective. In D. Mapel & T. Nardin, eds., International Society: Diverse Ethical Perspectives. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Barry, B., 1999. Statism and Nationalism: A Cosmopolitan Critique. In I. Shapiro & L. Brilmayer, eds., Global Justice, NOMOS. New York: New York University Press. Beitz, C., 1975. Justice and International Relations. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 4(4), pp. 360–389. Beitz, C., 1999. Social and Cosmopolitan Liberalism. International Affairs, 75(3), pp. 125–140. Brock, G., 2009. Global Justice: a Cosmopolitan Account. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brock, G., ed., 2013. Cosmopolitanism versus Non-Cosmopolitanism - Critiques, Defenses, Reconceptualizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brock, G., 2015. Global Justice. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, E. N. Zalta, ed., URL: plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/justiceglobal/ Campbell, C., 2013. Bonzo’s War. London: Constable & Robinson Ltd. Cabrera, L., 2004. Political Theory of Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Case for the World State. Abingdon: Routledge.

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Caney, S., 2005. Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Caney, S., 2009. Cosmopolitanism and Justice. In T. Christiano & J. Christman, eds., Contemporary Debates in Political Philosophy. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Cochrane, A., 2012. Animal Rights without Liberation. New York: Columbia University Press. Cochrane, A., 2013. Cosmozoopolis: The Case against Group-Differentiated Animal Rights. Law, Ethics and Philosophy, 1, pp. 127–141. Cochrane, A. & Cooke, S., 2016. "Humane Intervention": The International Protection of Animal Rights. Journal of Global Ethics, 12(1), pp. 106–121. Cooke, S., 2014. Perpetual Strangers: Animals and the Cosmopolitan Right. Political Studies, 62(4), pp. 930–944. Dent, F. & Clarke, S., 2015. State of the Global Market for Shark Products FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper No. 590. (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization. Donaldson, S. & Kymlicka, W., 2011. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donaldson, S. & Kymlicka, W., 2013. A Defense of Animal Citizens and Sovereigns. Law, Ethics and Philosophy, 1(1), pp. 143–160. Falk, R., 2002. Revisiting Westphalia, Discovering Post-Westphalia. The Journal of Ethics, 6(4), pp. 311–352. FAO, 2006. Livestock Policy Brief No 3: Cattle Ranching and Deforestation. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. FAO. 2015. Food Outlook: Biannual Report on Global Food Markets. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. FAS/USDA, 2015. Livestock and Poultry: World Markets and Trade. URL: apps. fas.usda.gov/psdonline/circulars/livestock_poultry.PDF (Accessed 8/8/16). Fur Europe, 2014. Annual Report: 2014. Brussels: Fur Europe. URL: www. fureurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Fur_Europe_Annual_Report_ September_2015_smallsize.pdf (Accessed 8/8/16). Garner, R., 2013. A Theory of Justice for Animals: Animal Rights in a Nonideal World. New York: Oxford University Press. Greenpeace, 2006. Eating up the Amazon. Amsterdam: Greenpeace International. URL: www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/planet-2/ report/2006/7/eating-up-the-amazon.pdf (Accessed 8/8/16). Held, D., 1999. The Transformation of Political Community: Rethinking Democracy in the Context of Globalization. In I. Shapiro & C. HackerCordón, eds., Democracy’s Edges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Held, D., 2003. Cosmopolitanism Globalisation Tamed. Review of International Studies, 29(4), pp. 465–480. Hoegh-Guldberg, O., Hughes, L., McIntyre, S. L., Lindenmayer, D. B., Parmesan, C., Possingham, H. P. & Thomas, C. D., 2008. Assisted Colonization and Rapid Climate Change. Science, 321(5887), pp. 345–346. Horta, O., 2013. Expanding Global Justice: The Case for the International Protection of Animals. Global Policy, 4(4), pp. 371–380. IDF, 2013. The Economic Importance of Dairying. URL: www.milkproduc tion.com/Global/PDFs/The-economic-importance-of-dairying.pdf (Accessed 8/8/16). IFAW, 2014. Wanted—Dead or Alive: Exposing Online Wildlife Trade. London: International Fund for Animal Welfare. Irvine, L., 2006. Animals in Disasters: Issues for Animal Liberation Activism and Policy. Animal Liberation Philosophy and Policy Journal, 4(1), pp. 1–16. Irvine, L., 2009. Filling the Ark: Animal Welfare in Disasters. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Jones, C., 1999. Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kinder, J. M., 2013. Zoo Animals and Modern War: Captive Casualties, Patriotic Citizens, and Good Soldiers. In R. Hediger, ed., Animals and War: Studies of Europe and North America. Leiden: Brill. Mishra, C. & Fitzherbert, A., 2004. War and Wildlife: A Post-Conflict Assessment of Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor. Oryx, 38(1), pp. 102–105. Muhammad, A., Jones, K. & Hagerman, A., 2014. Theme Issue Overview: Emerging issues in Global Animal Product Trade. Agribusiness, 30(1), pp. 1–4. Nagel, T., 2005. The Problem of Global Justice. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 33(2), pp. 113–147. Nussbaum, M., 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pepper, A., 2017. Beyond Anthropocentrism: Cosmopolitanism and NonHuman Animals. Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric. 9(2), pp. 114–133. Pogge, T., 1989. Realizing Rawls. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pogge, T., 1992. Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty. Ethics, 103(1), pp. 48–75. Pogge, T., 2002a. World Poverty and Human Rights. Oxford: Polity. Pogge, T., 2002b. Cosmopolitanism: A Defence. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 5(3), pp. 86–91. Pogge, T., 2005. Severe Poverty as a Violation of Negative Duties. Ethics & International Affairs, 19(1), pp. 55–83.

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Pogge, T., 2010. The Role of International Law in Reproducing Massive Poverty. In S. Besson & J. Tasioulas, ed., The Philosophy of International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pogge, T., 2013. Concluding Reflections. In G. Brock, ed., Cosmopolitanism versus Non-Cosmopolitanism - Critiques, Defenses, Reconceptualizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poławska, E., Cooper, R. G., Jóźwik, A. & Pomianowski, J., 2013. Meat from Alternative Species – Nutritive and Dietetic Value, and Its Benefit for Human Health – A Review. CyTA - Journal of Food, 11(1), pp. 37–42. Robinson, R. A., Crick, H. Q., Learmonth, J. A., Maclean, I., Thomas, C. D., Bairlein, F., Forchhammer, M. C., Francis, C. M., Gill, J. A., Godley, B. J. & Harwood, J., 2008. Travelling through a Warming World: Climate Change and Migratory Species. Endangered Species Research, 7(2), pp. 87–99. Rowlands, M., 1997. Contractarianism and Animal Rights. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 14(3), pp. 235–247. Sangiovanni, A., 2007. Global Justice, Reciprocity, and the State. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 35(1), pp. 3–39. Scanlon, J., 2013. Tackling the Illegal Trade in Wild Animals is a Matter of Global Urgency. The Guardian. URL: www.theguardian.com/environment/ blog/2013/mar/01/cites-animals-illegal-trade (Accessed 8/8/16). Scheffler, S., 1999. Conceptions of Cosmopolitanism. Utilitas, 11(3), pp. 255–276. Slaughter, A-M., 2004. A New World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Smith, K., 2012. Governing Animals: Animal Welfare and the Liberal State. New York: Oxford University Press. Steiner, G., 2011. Toward a Non-Anthropocentric Cosmopolitanism. In R. Boddice, ed., Anthropocentrism: Humans, Animals, Environments. Leiden: Brill. Tan, K-C., 2004. Justice without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Patriotism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. UNDP, 2015. Human Development Report 2015. New York: UNDP. UNIDO, 2010. Future Trends in the World Leather and Leather Products Industry and Trade. URL: leatherpanel.org/sites/default/files/publicationsattachments/future_trends_in_the_world_leather_and_leather_products_ industry_and_trade.pdf (Accessed 8/8/16). UNODC, 2013. Press Release: Wildlife Crime Worth USD 8–10 Billion Annually, Ranking it Alongside Human Trafficking, Arms and Drug

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Dealing in Terms of Profits: UNODC Chief. URL: www.unodc.org/unodc/ en/press/releases/2014/May/wildlife-crime-worth-8-10-billion-annually. html (Accessed 8/8/16). Valentini, L., 2013. Justice, Charity, and Disaster Relief: What, if anything, is Owed to Haiti, Japan, and New Zealand?. American Journal of Political Science, 57(2), pp. 491–503. Weilgart, L. S., 2007. A Brief Review of Known Effects of Noise on Marine Mammals. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 20(2), pp. 159–168. WWF/Dalberg, 2012. Fighting Illicit Wildlife Trafficking: A Consultation with Governments. Switzerland: WWF International. Angie Pepper is a political philosopher who received her doctorate from the University of Sheffield in 2013. In her published work Angie critiques statist conceptions of global justice from a feminist perspective and defends nonrelational cosmopolitanism. Angie’s current research focuses on what nonhuman animals are owed as a matter of justice and how their interests should be represented in human political decision-making. Angie completed her contribution to this collection during her time as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Animal Studies at Queen’s University, Canada.

8 Animal Rights and the Distorting Power of Anthropocentric Prejudice Gary Steiner

For a very long time in Western culture a guiding myth has prevailed, according to which human beings are the crown of creation and all nonhuman sublunary beings, nonhuman animals included, exist for the sake of satisfying human needs and desires. According to a more recent version of this myth, nothing exists for any particular reason; hence all relations devolve into power struggles, and in effect the measure of the legitimacy of the human exploitation of nonhuman animals and the rest of nonhuman nature is simply the fact that we can get away with it. In calling this picture of human existence and human prerogatives mythic, I follow the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg’s account of myth as the effort of the human will to counter what Blumenberg calls “the absolutism of reality,” the sheer contingency, incomprehensibility, and terror of a world that constantly threatens to swallow us whole and leave

G. Steiner (*) Department of Philosophy, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_8

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no trace of our ever having existed (Blumenberg, 1985, pp.3, 266). In this sense, it is not difficult to see, for example, how Descartes’s call in the Discourse on Method to use the new physics to render human beings “the masters and possessors of nature” constitutes a case of self-assertion of mythic proportions (Descartes, 1984, pp.142–143). Kant’s account of the sublime shows that he is working against the background of what is essentially the same myth of human mastery: Be it mathematical or dynamical, our experience of the sublime, so Kant would have it, reminds us of our metaphysical and moral superiority to the entire rest of the natural world and, at its limit, reveals to us the fact that our true being does not even reside in the world of space and time (Kant, 2008, pp.129–130, 156, 323). Descartes and Kant alike seek to master reality. Blumenberg’s reflections on myth remind us not only that this endeavor is ultimately unfulfillable, but more importantly that “there is no end of myth” inasmuch as the absolutism of reality is precisely that: absolute. There simply is no mastering a world that vastly transcends us. That we continually seek to deny this fact is a sign of what Nietzsche called “the will’s ill will against time” (Nietzsche, 1972, p.140). Reflections of this kind on the fundamental limitations of human existence and our prospects for countering the absolutism of reality remind me of Schopenhauer’s remark that the combined frantic strivings of the entire human race ultimately amount to nothing more than what one sees in “a drop of water, seen through a microscope and teeming with infusoria, or that of an otherwise visible little heap of cheese-mites whose strenuous activity and strife makes us laugh” (Schopenhauer, 2000, p.290). Even if we are not prepared to go as far as Schopenhauer and draw the conclusion “that human existence must be a kind of error,” it is always worth keeping in mind this basic, ineluctable fact of human existence: that we are mortal, finite, dependent creatures, and that this places us existentially in exactly the same situation as the countless nonhuman animals whom we have exploited from time immemorial (Ibid, p.287). Where the Western—and perhaps not only the Western—confrontation with reality has typically given rise to acts of violent self-assertion, the reflections of a Blumenberg, a Nietzsche, a Schopenhauer ought to instill in us, I think, a sense of humility. For these thinkers remind us not only that ours is an inevitable fate that we

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share with the rest of living nature, but just as importantly that we need to be extremely cautious and perhaps downright suspicious of our confident and cheerful proclamations of our superiority over the rest of the cosmos. Of course, these proclamations are often implicit rather than explicit, and quite often those who make them deny that they are doing so. Take, for example, Rawls’s strong implication in A Theory of Justice that by excluding nonhuman animals from the sphere of justice he is not arrogating any special superiority to human beings but simply following to their logical conclusion the terms of the very notion of justice. What Rawls tells us explicitly is that only those beings who can have “a sense of justice” are owed duties of justice (Rawls, 1999, p.448). Taken in isolation, this statement does not appear to presuppose any sort of cosmic hierarchy according to which beings possessing a “sense” of justice are superior to other beings; indeed, Rawls goes on in the same passage to suggest that “a conception of justice is but one part of a moral view,” and that “a correct conception of our relations to animals and to nature would seem to depend upon a theory of the natural order and our place in it” (Rawls, 1999, p.448; 2005, pp.21, 246). And while he does not say so and would certainly deny it, Rawls operates with a theory of justice that precisely does presuppose a view of the natural order and our place in it—if not a full-blown theory, at least a grounding myth that thinkers such as Descartes and Kant have sought to congeal into a determinate theory according to which human beings sit at the top of a hierarchy and enjoy the unique prerogative both to contemplate and manipulate what lies “below” us in accordance with aims that we arbitrarily set for ourselves. For anyone concerned with the task of bridging the gap between theory and practice as regards the fortunes of nonhuman animals in this world, it is important that we at least entertain the possibility that thinkers such as Rawls are tacitly presupposing a sense of human superiority over the rest of nature, and that their proclamations of detached objectivity are in fact reflections of anthropocentric ideology. For what do we mean by justice? Why should we suppose that only those beings who can have a “sense” of justice merit considerations of justice? In this, as in a great deal of thinking about the moral and political status of

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nonhuman animals, there lurks an anthropocentric prejudice that is made all the more palpable by the many insistent proclamations to the contrary. But how could one demonstrate that this is the case? While I do not think that anything like a knock-down logical proof can be provided, I do find a consideration of the claims and the reasoning offered in some of the leading debates about nonhuman animals to be highly revealing. For anyone who does not want to recognize the stamp of anthropocentric thinking in the terms of these debates, my remarks will have little meaning. Or perhaps my remarks will redouble your sense that certain forms of anthropocentric thinking and valuing are in fact legitimate. And while I would prefer to persuade you that anthropocentric thinking has no legitimate place in the endeavor to conceptualize justice in its most fundamental sense, I will consider these remarks to have been of value if I can get you to take seriously the importance of reflecting on the often unexpressed assumptions that people customarily make in debates about the following three questions: whether it makes sense to attribute some kind of “personhood” to nonhuman animals, whether it makes sense to attribute rights to nonhuman animals, and whether a robust theory of the moral status of nonhuman animals should (or should not) entail specific human duties such as veganism toward nonhuman animals.

8.1

The Question of Nonhuman Animal Personhood

For anyone who has read much about the moral status of nonhuman animals, the idea of nonhuman animals as persons will at least be familiar even if it might seem counterintuitive. The personhood debate surrounding nonhuman animals is best thought of against the background of Kant’s reflections on the respective places of humans and nonhuman animals in the cosmic scheme of things. Kant proceeds from a certain brand of common sense when he asserts that only human beings, and beings that are rational in the exact same sense as human beings, properly count as “persons.” Common sense tells us that a person is first and foremost a

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human being. In antiquity, Cicero conceived of humanity in terms of two interrelated personae, two roles or masks that distinguish us from nonhuman animals: The one persona is the mode of individuality; the other is the mode of universality, which according to Cicero is made possible by our rational capacity and “which raises us above the beasts” (Long & Sedley, 1990, 66E). On a straightforward view such as Cicero’s, it makes no sense to attribute personhood to nonhuman animals because the putative lack of logos in nonhuman animals renders them incapable of occupying the universal standpoint and presumably the individual standpoint as well. On this view, nonhuman animals lack inherent moral worth and possess purely instrumental value. It is here that Kant takes up his distinction between “persons” and “things” and categorically denies that nonhuman animals can possess anything like personhood. Like Aristotle and the Stoics before him, Kant characterizes personhood in terms of rational capacity. Rational beings, Kant tells us, “are called persons inasmuch as their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves, i.e., as something which is not to be used merely as means and hence there is imposed thereby a limit on all arbitrary use of such beings, which are thus objects of respect” (Kant, 1981, p.36). All nonrational beings, on the other hand, have “only a relative value as means and are therefore called things” (Ibid, pp.35–36). That nonhuman animals are to be accorded the status of mere things is clear from Kant’s characterization of experience and choice in nonhuman animals: While he rejects the Cartesian picture of nonhuman animals as enfleshed mechanisms and argues that nonhuman animals have perceptual representations and other subjective experiences, Kant nonetheless maintains that nonhuman animals possess no freedom and that their behavior is “necessitated by incentives and stimuli” (Kant, 1997, p.125). Even if in one sense we are essentially no different than nonhuman animals, in a specifically moral sense we are utterly unlike them. In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant states that “in the system of nature, a human being (homo phaenomenon, animal rationale) is a being of slight importance and shares with the rest of the animals, as offspring of the earth, an ordinary value (pretium vulgare) . . . But a human being regarded as a person, that is, as the subject of a morally practical reason, is exalted above any price; for as a person (homo noumenon), he is not to

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be valued merely as a means to the ends of others or even to his own ends, but as an end in himself, that is, he possesses a dignity (an absolute inner worth) by which he exacts respect for himself from all other rational beings in the world” (Kant, 1996, p.186). Nonhuman animals, for their part, possess only an “ordinary value” that, Kant suggests, is no different than the value of vegetables (e.g., potatoes) or fertile fields, which is to say that their value is entirely instrumental; Kant is very clear that our relation to nonhuman animals is such that we are perfectly entitled to kill them (Kant, 2009, p.369; 1996, p.115). Of course, Kant also says things to the effect that nonhuman animals, as perceiving beings, are not to be treated as we would treat inanimate objects. There is that well-known passage in The Metaphysics of Morals in which Kant acknowledges that we often feel “gratitude for the long service of an old horse or dog (just as if they were members of the household)”; but he is very clear that this feeling has nothing to do with any actual duties we have directly toward nonhuman animals, arguing on the contrary that such gratitude “belongs indirectly to a human being’s duty with regard to these [in Ansehung dieser] animals; considered as a direct duty, however, it is always only a duty of the human being to himself” (Kant, 1996, p.193). This characterization of our duties regarding nonhuman animals as merely “indirect” and really owing only to humanity follows very directly from the myth that, as Kant sees it, the human being is “the titular lord [betitelter Herr]” and “ultimate end of nature” (Kant, 2008, p.298). Even when we express gratitude toward an old horse or dog, we do so, Kant stresses, just as if they were members of the household. As titular lords of nature, we possess a superiority over nonhuman animals and the rest of nonhuman nature such that the only beings with whom we may properly be said to be oikeion, to be related or of the same household, are other human beings and any nonrational beings that prove to be rational in the same ways in which we are. This is the legacy of personhood that we have inherited from our cultural forebears, and it would seem to leave precious little room for the prospect of expanding the notion of personhood beyond the strictly human. It has virtually become a matter of common sense to many that “person” applies only to human beings and never to nonhuman animals,

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although with various recent efforts to secure basic rights for nonhuman animals there has at least been a willingness to question the proposition that there is a sharp and immovable line between the human and the nonhuman. Thus, to give just a few examples, in 1992 the Swiss altered their constitution so as to declassify nonhuman animals as “things” and acknowledge their reality as possessors of interests; in 2002, the German constitution was amended to accord dignity and respect to nonhuman animals; and in 2014, an orangutan named Sandra was granted at least limited personhood status by an Argentine court. Just how sanguine we ought to be at the prospects for a universal, worldwide acknowledgment of the interests, dignity, and rights of nonhuman animals is far from clear; in 2014 a US court rejected Steven Wise’s petition to secure legal personhood for Tommy the chimpanzee on the grounds that there is no precedent, either in New York state nor in Anglo-American common law, for treating anyone other than a human being as a person. The nonhuman animal personhood controversy includes practical as well as theoretical questions. Among the practical questions is the question whether we would do more to improve things for nonhuman animals by seeking welfare reform rather than outright personhood, which would open the door to categorical prohibitions on a variety of current practices, all of which depend on the property status of nonhuman animals, at least in the Anglo-American legal tradition. In these remarks, however, I would like to focus more primarily on a key theoretical question: what do we, or what should we, mean by “personhood”? For Cicero, this amounts to the capacity to be an individual as well as the capacity to take on the “universal persona” from the standpoint of which we can see ourselves as part of a total community of humanity. To be a person in this sense is to be capable of being what Diogenes of Sinope said he was when asked where he came from, namely, “a citizen of the world” (Diogenes Laertius, 2000, p.65). For how can one recognize oneself to be a citizen of the world, and more importantly how can one behave as a citizen of the world, unless one possesses the capacity to see oneself as an individual among other individuals and in turn to see that one is bound together with others in ties of mutual respect? Kant’s conception of personhood is of a piece with this thinking: He sees personhood as rooted fundamentally in the

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capacity for detached rational reflection, which facilitates not only the legislation of and respect for the moral law, but also collaborative progress through time, an achievement that according to prevailing common sense (and in any case according to Kant) is exclusive to human beings.1 And for Rawls, a person is “someone who can take part in, or who can play a role in, social life, and hence exercise and respect its various rights and duties” (Rawls, 2005, p.18). A person, on this view, is “someone who can be a citizen” because he or she possesses “a capacity for a sense of justice and a capacity for a conception of the good” (Ibid, pp.18–19). On Rawls’s view, if you cannot “propose principles and standards as fair terms of cooperation and to abide by them willingly, given the assurance that others will likewise do so,” you cannot count as a person or political actor (Ibid, p.49). If this reasoning is sound, then the task of securing personhood status for nonhuman animals would appear, on theoretical grounds alone, to be all but impossible. For even the influential primate researcher Frans de Waal, who has argued for the presence of a variety of proto-moral tendencies in nonhuman animals and particularly in higher primates, has concluded that “we [human beings] have moral systems and apes do not” (de Waal, 2006, p.54). De Waal effectively concedes Cicero’s point that only human beings are capable of the universal standpoint from which alone we can contemplate good and evil, right and wrong, just and unjust impartially and systematically. This is also what Rawls has in mind when he argues that a person is a being who can formulate a sense of justice and a conception of the good. Thus anyone who would seek to attribute personhood status to nonhuman animals, either in the moral sphere or in the legal, is going directly against a long-developed brand of common sense according to which a being can be considered to be owed basic respect only if that being can think, in fully abstract terms, about notions such as justice, the good, and rules for social cooperation. Gary Francione is one contemporary thinker who has sought to secure personhood status for nonhuman animals, and he has done so by directly challenging the proposition that a being must be able to

1

Kant hints strongly at this conclusion in Kant, 2001, p.180.

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contemplate justice, form abstract conceptions of right and duty, etc., in order to count as a person. Francione presents a considerably less exacting definition of personhood than the likes of Cicero, Kant, and Rawls. He proposes that “to say that a being is a person is merely to say that the being has morally significant interests, that the principle of equal consideration [of interests] applies to that being, that the being is not a thing” (Francione, 2008, p.61). Francione takes up Kant’s personthing distinction, sees it as a strict either-or, and argues that it is vital that we do exactly what the Swiss did in 1992: categorically deny that nonhuman animals are mere things. Francione’s take on nonhuman animals as persons is simply this: All sentient beings possess equal inherent moral worth, regardless of whether they can perform putatively “higher” cognitive functions such as do math, compose symphonies, or formulate legislation or general principles in abstract, predicatively structured language. For Francione the focus is not on the degree of cognitive sophistication but simply on the presence of sentience; sentience is both necessary and sufficient, on Francione’s view, for a being to possess dignity and merit respect (Francione, 2000, 2008). If our first reaction to this kind of proposal is to say that no nonhuman animal merits the respect commanded by a human being, it would be worth pausing to engage in a little bit of that activity that Rawls considers so vital to the refinement of rules of fairness: reflective equilibrium, in which we start with “an intuitively appealing account” of a moral or political question and see whether it accords with “our considered judgments” (Rawls, 1999, p.42). Those accounts that are the most appealing at an intuitive level are quite often accounts that reinforce our prejudices and serve our private interests at the expense of the interests of others. The ideal of reflective equilibrium is one according to which we step back from these prejudices and seek to subordinate our private interest to something like a Rousseaean general will. For a Cicero, an Epicurus, a Kant, a Rawls, and most likely for a Diogenes of Synope, it is certainly vital in a polity to subordinate one’s individual interests to the good of the whole at least in certain circumstances that will be anticipated by the society’s grounding documents. But those thinkers conceive of the general will in narrowly anthropocentric terms, which is to say that they will seek to exclude nonhuman animals from

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consideration on two interrelated grounds: on the grounds that nonhuman animals either do not possess a will or they possess a will that is fundamentally unfree in virtue of being determined by appetite or instinct, and on the related grounds that nonhuman animals cannot contemplate the general will and hence cannot take an active part in the determination of that will. Thus the terms of the debate over nonhuman animal personhood devolve upon the question whether the inherent dignity of a being depends on the level or degree of that being’s cognitive capacities, or whether simply possessing consciousness or sentience is sufficient for being accorded full moral status. This is intimately bound up with the question whether it makes sense to attribute freedom to nonhuman animals. It is in connection with this question that I would like to proceed to a discussion of the question of nonhuman animal rights.

8.2

The Question of Nonhuman Animal Rights

It goes without saying that the personhood question is inseparable from the rights question. In seeking to exclude nonhuman animals from personhood, thinkers such as Kant and Rawls are effectively seeking to deny nonhuman animals any kind of rights. The requirement that a being possess the capacity for “a sense of justice,” which is implicit in Kant and made fully explicit in Rawls, follows from the principle that a being can be a beneficiary of rights only if that being can contemplate the very ideas of rights and obligations: In order to qualify as a bearer of rights, I must be able to grasp what a right in general is, what sorts of corresponding duties it entails, and the fact that rights and duties are shared more or less equally and reciprocally by all moral or political agents. I must also be able to engage in some form of Aristotelian practical wisdom, the practical determination of how principles are to be applied in concrete circumstances. On this view, only those beings who can think in fully abstract conceptual terms and form general principles bearing on conduct are entitled to be bearers of rights. For

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these thinkers, as for the Stoics, who were the first to formalize this idea fully, justice is an all-or-nothing proposition: either a being grasps the notion of right conceptually and has both rights and responsibilities, or that being lacks such a comprehension and has neither rights nor duties. Any being incapable of taking on responsibilities is not the kind of being to whom it makes basic logical sense to attribute rights. The Stoic conclusion from this reasoning is that nothing we do to nonhuman animals can possibly count as an injustice, inasmuch as nonhuman animals are categorically excluded from the sphere of right by their lack of rational capacity (Steiner, 2005, pp.77–92). Two strategies often employed in an effort to debunk this reasoning as anthropocentric are the slavery analogy and the species overlap argument (traditionally and problematically referred to as the argument from marginal cases), and both strategies are highly controversial. Consider first the slavery analogy. The argument runs that by viewing nonhuman animals as things or property, we make the same mistake that one segment of humanity made once upon a time when it viewed other segments of humanity as slaves. Aristotle, for example, suggests in the Politics that some individuals are destined for slavery and that this is perfectly in keeping with the natural order (Aristotle, 1995, pp.1988– 1990). In modern liberal political thought it is Locke and Rousseau who challenge this hierarchization of humanity, Rousseau charging that Aristotle “mistook the effect for the cause” when he assumed that the prevalence of slavery in his society was attributable to the nature of things rather than to illegitimate force (Rousseau, 2013, p.43). To consider enslavement a condition that is compatible with human nature is to misunderstand at a very basic level what it means to be human— hence Rousseau’s lament that “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” (Ibid, p.41). And while it is true for Rousseau that the essence of a political body consists in the concurrence of obedience and freedom, he is quite clear that the purpose of civil obedience is precisely to promote freedom as far as political association permits (Ibid, p.111). It was in a similar spirit that, already in the sixth century, Justinian proclaimed slavery to be inconsistent with the natural freedom of human beings. To propose an analogy to slavery in the endeavor to secure rights for nonhuman animals is to suggest that nonhuman animals are in

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essentially the same situation vis-à-vis human beings as human slaves were in (or, lamentably, still are) vis-à-vis their human captors, namely, a relation of illegitimate force. Just as slavery came to be recognized (or ought to be recognized) to be based on an illegitimate use of force that disregards the fundamental freedom of all human beings, so the subjection of nonhuman animals—be it by denying them rights, classifying and treating them as property, and so on—employs the law of force and disregards the freedom and hence the inherent worth and dignity of nonhuman animals. The motive force of the slavery analogy is that enacting the law of peace among human beings while perpetuating the law of violence in our relations with nonhuman animals manifests an inconsistency that cannot withstand the process of reflective equilibrium. The bottom line in the slavery analogy is that denying nonhuman animals rights while according them to human beings exhibits an arbitrariness comparable to the arbitrariness of the sexist or the racist—that denying nonhuman animals rights while acknowledging that human beings possess them can be done only on the basis of criteria that are arbitrarily chosen, such as the degree of cognitive capacity, or perhaps simply on the basis of species membership. That the dividing line between human beings and nonhuman animals in this connection is not arbitrary but in fact is required by reason is the crux of the leading critical responses to the slavery analogy. Richard Epstein, for example, roundly rejects the slavery analogy on precisely these grounds. He calls the analogy between slaves and women on the one hand and nonhuman animals on the other a “gross oversimplification” that overlooks a key fact: that “the defense of the status quo ante on slaves and women slowly crumbled precisely because they were human beings and not animals” (Epstein, 2004, pp.149–150). One could hardly wish for a more straightforwardly anthropocentric response to the slavery analogy: Humans all deserve essentially equal legal and moral status purely on the grounds that they are not nonhuman animals. As far as it goes, this is textbook speciesist reasoning. It asserts, in effect, that humans are superior to nonhuman animals simply because we are humans and not nonhuman animals. But Epstein elaborates his views in a way that shows his position to be something at least a little more than purely arbitrary. He suggests that “the natural cognitive and

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emotional limitations of animals, even the higher animals, preclude any creation of full parity” with human beings (Ibid, p.151). Indeed, on Epstein’s view, Gary Francione’s call for personhood for nonhuman animals and the abolition of the property status of nonhuman animals amounts to a fanciful yearning for “a restoration of some imagined parity” between human and nonhuman sentient beings that makes neither theoretical nor practical sense (Ibid, p.152). On Francione’s view, all sentient beings possess the basic right not to be treated as a mere instrumentality, and the enjoyment of this right is fundamentally incompatible with the legal status of nonhuman animals as property (Francione, 2000, pp.94–95). Francione implicitly accepts the proposition that nonhuman animals possess sufficient freedom to regulate their own lives without interference from human beings. On Epstein’s view, there is some fundamental difference between what is in fact a robust capacity for freedom in human beings and what some of us mistakenly call “freedom” in nonhuman animals. The American jurist Richard Posner rejects the idea of nonhuman animal rights in a manner complementary to Epstein’s. Posner dismisses the very idea of nonhuman animal rights as “weird” and “insane,” notes the epic practical difficulties involved in the endeavor to implement nonhuman animal rights, and concludes with the lapidary suggestion that the human privileging of human beings follows from “a moral intuition deeper than any reason” (Posner, 2004, p.65). For anyone who seeks a simple resolution of the nonhuman animal rights question in favor of the conclusion that nonhuman animals should not be accorded rights, Posner offers an appealing approach—that there simply is no argument to be had, because the nonhuman animal rights question must be resolved not on the basis of anything like an argument but instead on the basis of intuitions that are impervious to rational scrutiny. In other words, there simply is no place for reflective equilibrium when it comes to deep moral convictions. While I believe that there is truth in the idea that our deepest moral convictions are not simply products of reason, I consider Posner’s categorical dismissal of reason in moral reflection to be as frightening as it is understandable—understandable inasmuch as it is simply a reflexive anthropocentric response to the suggestion that we might need to see ourselves as a mere part of a larger community of sentient

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beings, and frightening in that it implicitly models moral conviction in decisionistic terms. In Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism I go into some depth to show how this kind of reasoning makes every moral choice equivalent to the Kierkegaardian moment of singular decision in which the individual stands above the universal and is answerable to no one but her or his private god (Steiner, 2013, pp.67–76, 133–147). Every ethical choice, on this view, is essentially the same as what Carl Schmitt called the “sovereign decision” made by a political leader in exigent circumstances, circumstances in which rational norms must be suspended; in such a situation, Schmitt observed, the decision “looked at normatively . . . emanates from nothingness” (Schmitt, 2005, p.31). What a thinker such as Posner advocates, if only implicitly, is exactly this kind of approach to the question of legitimating our views about the moral status of nonhuman animals. Epstein asserts a putative dividing line between humans and nonhuman animals by appealing to “the natural cognitive and emotional limitations of animals, even the higher animals.” Because nonhuman animals are both cognitively and emotionally inferior to human beings—I do not know how to parse Epstein’s use of the word “limitations” other than to read it as signifying inferiority—it simply does not make sense to consider them bearers of rights. Of course, one could take the position that nonhuman animals can possess at least some rights without going so far as to attribute to them the basic right not to be property or the basic right of selfdetermination.2 Thus the nonhuman animal rights question resolves itself into two questions: should nonhuman animals be recognized to be bearers of rights at all, and if so, then which sorts of rights should be accorded to them? The answers to both of these questions return us to the question of nonhuman animal agency: are nonhuman animals “free” in anything like the sense in which we human beings consider ourselves to be free? Epstein openly acknowledges that there are “adult human beings whose mental disabilities in fact preclude them from taking advantage of many of the rights they are afforded,” but he does not for one second take this

2

Alasdair Cochrane offers such a view in Animal Rights without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

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incapacity to signify that these individuals therefore should be denied their rights (Epstein, 2004, p.151). Now if adult human beings with mental disabilities are entitled to rights—and this would presumably include the right, for example, not to be used as captive entertainment, even in situations in which we might feel confident that we were not encroaching on these individuals’ capacity for autonomous self-determination by using them for entertainment—then on what grounds can we justify denying comparable rights to nonhuman animals except by dint of speciesistic prejudice? One could bite the bullet and deny rights (or: some rights) to mentally disabled human beings, but I think there are good reasons to consider such a denial to be morally and politically pernicious. Thus we are left with the question how we can justify granting humans with disabilities certain rights, such as the right to freedom from use as a mere instrumentality and the right to command basic respect from others, while simultaneously denying such rights to nonhuman animals. So one hard question we have to confront is why we should define autonomy in these specific terms, when even Kant recognizes that socalled marginal cases such as children lack this kind of autonomy but nonetheless accords them full moral status (Kant, 1996, p.65). Another hard question is whether we humans are as smart as we think we are when we make sweeping pronouncements about what nonhuman animal experience is like, about what nonhuman animals are and are not capable of doing, and what nonhuman animals want or what kinds of interests they have. And we have to be especially cautious in rushing to judgment on any of these matters, given our epic capacity to inflict violence on others and assure ourselves that these acts of violence are really in the interest of those others. After all, just how certain can we be that nonhuman animals have no interest in something like self-determination? If we define the capacity for self-determination in narrowly anthropocentric terms, for example as the ability to legislate and voluntarily subject oneself to the moral law, then even I would grant that in all likelihood no nonhuman animals have an interest in self-determination; I tend to think that de Waal is right when he asserts that only human beings think in abstract systematic terms. What I simply cannot fathom is why we should insist on such a restrictive definition of autonomy, unless the reason is that doing so permits us to arrogate to ourselves the prerogative to use nonhuman animals as

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instrumentalities, all the while assuring ourselves that we are not really harming them because we are not infringing on any of their interests. In my own work I have advocated a pragmatic principle of conservatism regarding the prospect of using nonhuman animals: In Animals and the Moral Community I propose that, “rather than positing a rebuttable claim in favor of humans in cases of conflict with animals, we really ought to take as axiomatic a rebuttable presumption in favor of animals” (Steiner, 2008, p.109). I believe that Gary Francione proceeds implicitly on the basis of such a presumption when he argues categorically that the property status of nonhuman animals should be abolished. A variety of people have argued that Francione is wrong to see property status as irreducibly incompatible with the prospect of doing justice to the interests of nonhuman animals, Judge Posner going so far as to maintain that we can actually do a better job of protecting the interests of nonhuman animals by maintaining their legal status as property; in this connection, Posner lauds “the liberating potential of commodification” (Posner, 2004, p.59). I struggle to keep an open mind about this idea; but I keep coming back to all the tremendous advantages and prerogatives such an idea promises to grant to humanity, and I remain highly suspicious about the objectivity of this idea. Rather than focusing so much on all the prerogatives to use nonhuman animals that our Kantian autonomy confers on us, we would do better to think about the obligations toward vulnerable sentient life that our autonomy imposes on us. And for my own part, I think that a robust acknowledgment of nonhuman animal rights is the best way to accomplish this goal—where “robust” should be understood first of all in a very expansive sense and only subsequently, if ever, in a more restrictive sense.

8.3

The Question of Specific Human Duties Toward Nonhuman Animals

So far I have examined the questions of personhood and rights from the side of theory. I would like to conclude with a few thoughts about the practical implications and applications of these notions. A practical question that

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looms large pertains to the form of advocacy that should be embraced by individuals concerned about the fortunes of nonhuman animals at the hands of humanity. Should we be abolitionists or welfarists? Is this a strict either-or, or is it possible (and perhaps desirable) to be a welfarist with abolitionist aspirations? To have such aspirations is to pursue nonhuman animal welfare measures in an effort to ameliorate the conditions in which we maintain the nonhuman animals we use, even though our ultimate goal is to abolish many if not all of these very uses of nonhuman animals. This is one of the most urgent practical questions facing those of us who are appalled at the conditions under which so many nonhuman animals used for food, experimentation, entertainment, and the like are maintained as well as the conditions in which many of them are killed. The debate between strict abolitionism and what Francione calls “new welfarism” (the view that welfare reform can lead to abolition) finds a focal point in the question whether the expression “humane slaughter” is an oxymoron. This is an expression used with increasing frequency in the nonhuman animal agriculture industry, and many of the organizations that use it have earned cheerful endorsements from organizations such as PETA and the Humane Society of the United States. And yet the prevailing slaughter practices hardly seem to be even remotely humane. Of course, one can always respond that we simply need to impose more rigorous standards on the confinement and slaughter of nonhuman animals raised for food and other uses. But who determines these standards? In US law, a practice employed widely in the nonhuman animal agriculture industry is deemed not to be cruel if the practice is “common,” “customary,” or “normal” in the industry—which is to say that the industry, which is driven by the profit motive and not by anything like moral concern for nonhuman animals, is the final arbiter of what is cruel and what is acceptable (Wolfson & Sullivan, 2004, pp.207, 212). Moreover, in the United States the Animal Welfare Act explicitly excludes nonhuman animals raised for food and the Humane Slaughter Act explicitly excludes poultry, which constitute “over 95% of all farmed animals (approximately 8.5 billion slaughtered per year)” in the United States (Ibid, p.208). Yet again, one can say that we should simply close these loopholes, if that is an apt way to characterize these chasms in the law. And while

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doing so would, within the confines of some narrow utilitarian calculus, ameliorate the situation in which these nonhuman animals live and die, we would still be subjecting them to a regime of use and slaughter. I take it that even those whom Francione calls new welfarists recognize that there is something fundamentally wrong with this regime: If the ultimate goal is abolition, then to advocate welfare measures is, if only temporarily, to advocate practices that one acknowledges to be morally wrong. The new welfarist sees this as an unavoidable imperative, given how far our society is from the ideal of abolition. Regardless of how one conceptualizes the eventual goal of abolition, we are left with the question whether incremental welfare measures ultimately serve the interests of nonhuman animals. As I have suggested, there is a narrowly focused utilitarian lens through which, et ceteris paribus, a less bad practice is clearly better than a worse practice. But all other things are not really equal, and we have to take into account the effect of welfare measures on the thinking and valuing of a public that has shown itself in many ways and over a very long period of time to be all but completely unconcerned with the things we do to nonhuman animals but which wants to think that it is concerned about nonhuman animals. What, for example, will be the total effect of Proposition 2, a nonhuman animal welfare measure passed in November 2008 by my home state of California and which was put into effect in January 2015? One of the provisions of Proposition 2 was to expand the amount of space given to a brooding chicken from approximately the size of a piece of notebook paper to the size of a piece of legal paper. And what is the total effect of labeling meat as “free range,” given that the US Department of Agriculture regulations permit the use of this designation simply as long as the nonhuman animals who became meat had “access to daylight”—not an actual life roaming in sunshine, but literally access to daylight, a requirement that can be discharged by inserting a small trap door at the end of a large airplane-hangar-like structure that houses thousands of chickens, none of whom may ever actually get outside? And what, to offer a final example, is the total effect of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus’s announcement in early 2015 that it was planning to phase out the use of elephants in its shows, given that it was going to continue to use dogs, camels, and a variety of other nonhuman

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animals that arguably have existential needs that simply cannot be accommodated within the context of the confinement and imposed discipline that is part and parcel of a circus enterprise? We would do well to be very cautious in assessing the plaintive laments published in venues such as the New York Times by people who insist that “many modern circus elephants have lived long, fruitful lives,” when even a cursory study of ethology would reveal that a truly self-determining elephant would range over a vast number of miles in a single day and would live in a complex family and social structure that is quite explicitly disregarded by commercial circuses—just as Sea World quite explicitly disregards the existential needs of orcas, all the while insisting that they do nothing of the kind (Davis, 2015, p.9). When I ask about the total effect of these sorts of welfare measures, I am expressing a concern for the impact of labels such as “humane” and “free range” on the consciousness of human consumers. I simply cannot help but wonder whether Gary Francione is right when he suggests that one inescapable consequence of welfare measures is that they reinforce an underlying sense that the practices themselves are legitimate in principle. I know a lot of people who purchase “free range” nonhuman animal products in the belief that they are doing something good for nonhuman animals. The people I have in mind either seem unconcerned with the very fact of confinement and killing (and experimenting, etc.), or they purport to be concerned about such practices but bemoan the sacrifices they would have to make if such practices were abandoned altogether. For me the bottom line in the abolitionism-welfarism debate is this: In a world undistorted by selfish prejudice, welfare measures would be superfluous because everyone would proceed directly to an embrace of abolitionism. But given that we are far from living in such a world, and given the profound impact of anthropocentric prejudice even on our most scrupulous attempts at critical judgment, we ought to proceed on the basis of what I have called a rebuttable presumption in favor of nonhuman animals. And for me that means being very clear that certain obligations regarding nonhuman animals are incumbent upon us. I will mention just one: In Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism I argue for veganism as a strict ethical obligation on the part of

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human beings. I call this obligation the vegan imperative; I see it less in terms of a listing of what one does not eat or wear, etc., and more in terms of a principle of nonviolence (Steiner, 2013). To embrace the vegan imperative is to be committed to reducing more and more the violence we inflict on sentient life. To embrace this imperative is not to take on any kind of finger-wagging moral high ground, nor is it to assume naively that everyone can automatically and without further ado stop inflicting violence on nonhuman animals let alone adopt a vegan diet, nor is it to assume that anyone in the world in which we live can ever actually “be” a vegan in the sense of inflicting no harm on sentient life. The vegan imperative is a regulative ideal meant to give shape to our striving, and I embrace it in the spirit of what some contemporary French authors have been writing about for a number of years now under the rubric of conviviality. For these authors, many of whom take inspiration from the work of Ivan Illich, conviviality is a shared commitment to living together in the spirit of solidarity, humility, mutual respect, and common purpose (Illich, 1973; Caillé, 2011). Where these authors tend overwhelmingly to focus on conviviality among humans, I believe that the vegan imperative behoves us to broaden this sense of community to include all sentient life—hence the call for veganism, however difficult that may be to implement in practice. The vegan imperative poses a fundamental challenge to our most deep-seated anthropocentric tendencies: to our assumption that (supposed) differences in intelligence give rise to a moral hierarchy, that human beings stand fundamentally above nonhuman animals in that hierarchy, and that animals are ultimately nothing more (or little more) than instrumentalities for the satisfaction of human needs and desires. The vegan imperative reminds us that any being possessing sentience is a naturally free being that has the right to self-determination without interference from others who purport to be acting in that being’s interest but who are really acting out of self-serving motives. The vegan imperative requires us to acknowledge our commonality with nonhuman animals and to see that commonality as the basis for a robust sense of moral obligation toward sentient beings, particularly those who are most vulnerable to exploitation.

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As enormous as the practical challenges posed by the vegan imperative may be, the challenge to our moral imagination is even greater and will ultimately prove to be decisive for the fortunes of nonhuman animals. Are we prepared to open our thinking to the elemental truth that we have established our entire way of life on the backs of nonhuman animals? The terms of cosmic justice demand that we recognize the subjection of nonhuman animals for the crime that it is, and that we embrace a robust ethic of nonviolence toward nonhuman animals rather than treating veganism as a quaint lifestyle choice.

Bibliography Aristotle, 1995. The Complete Works of Aristotle. J Barnes, ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press. Blumenberg, H., 1985. The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Trans., R. Wallace. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press. Caillé, A., et. al., 2011. De la Convivialité: Dialogues sur la Société Conviviale à Venir. Paris: La Découverte. Cochrane, A., 2012. Animal Rights without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations. New York: Columbia University Press. Davis, J. M., 2015. A Bittersweet Bow for the Elephant. New York Times, (March 8th, 2015), Week in Review, p. 9. Descartes, R. 1984. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. 1. Trans., J. Cottingham, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. de Waal, F., et. al., 2006. Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Diogenes Laertius, 2000. Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Vol. 2. Trans., R. D. Hicks. Cambridge: Loeb/Harvard University Press. Epstein, R., 2004. Animals as Objects, or Subjects, of Rights. In C. R. Sunstein & M. C. Nussbaum, eds., Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Francione, G. L., 2000. Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Francione, G. L., 2008. Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Illich, I., 1973. La Convivialité. Paris: Seuil. Kant, I., 2009. Anthropology, History, and Education. Trans., G. Zöller & R. B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I., 2008. Critique of the Power of Judgment. P. Guyer, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I., 1981. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans., J. W. Ellington. Indianapolis: Hackett. Kant, I., 1997. Lectures on Ethics. P. Heath & J. B. Schneewind, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I., 1996. The Metaphysics of Morals. Trans., M. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I., 2001. Political Writings. H. S. Reiss, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Long, A. A. & Sedley, D. N., eds. and trans., 1990. The Hellenistic Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F., 1972. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Trans., W. Kaufmann. New York: Viking. Posner, R. A., 2004. Animal Rights: Legal, Philosophical, and Pragmatic Perspectives. In C. R. Sunstein & M. C. Nussbaum, eds., Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rawls, J., 2005. Political Liberalism. Expanded Edition. New York: Columbia University Press. Rawls, J., 1999. A Theory of Justice. Revised Edition. Belknap/Harvard University Press. Rousseau, J-J., 2013. The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings. V. Gourevitch, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmitt, C., 2005. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Trans., G. Schwab. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schopenhauer, A., 2000. Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 2. Trans., E. F. J. Payne. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Steiner, G., 2013. Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism. New York: Columbia University Press. Steiner, G., 2008. Animals and the Moral Community: Mental Life, Moral Status, and Kinship. New York: Columbia University Press. Steiner, G., 2005. Anthropocentrism and its Discontents: The Moral Status of Animals in the History of Western Philosophy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

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Wolfson, D. J. & Sullivan, M., 2004. Foxes in the Henhouse: Animals, Agribusiness, and the Law: A Modern American Fable. In C. R. Sunstein & M. C. Nussbaum, eds., Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gary Steiner is Presidential Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University (USA), where he has taught since 1987. He is the author of Descartes as a Moral Thinker: Christianity, Technology, Nihilism (2004), Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents: The Moral Status of Animals in the History of Western Philosophy (2005), Animals and the Moral Community: Mental Life, Moral Status, and Kinship (2008), and Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism (Columbia University Press, 2013). He is currently working on a book in which he examines the respective roles and mutual interplay of reason and emotion in the moral life. Together with Gary Francione, he edits the Critical Perspectives on Animals book series for Columbia University Press.

9 Interspecies Encounters and the Political Turn: From Dialogues to Deliberation Eva Meijer

The recent political turn in animal ethics asks us to reconsider state institutions, democratic procedures, rights, and other expressions of what we formerly thought of as solely human politics, in order to include nonhuman animal interests, on grounds of justice or democracy (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011; Garner, 2013). In this chapter I aim to contribute to this project by investigating whether a deliberative model of democracy, as developed by Jürgen Habermas, has value for institutionalizing interactions and dialogues between human and nonhuman animals, and for promoting nonhuman animal political voice. Habermas’ view of deliberation (1994) has been challenged from feminist (Young, 2000; Bickford, 2011), poststructuralist (Derrida, 2008), constructivist (Driessen, 2014), ecological (Dryzek, 2000), and agonistic (Tully, 2008) points of view. These approaches criticize both the image

E. Meijer (*) University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_9

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of the rational subject that is presented in deliberative democracy, and the image of political language and communication attached to that. Because of this, they provide a valuable basis for rethinking political communication with nonhuman animals. Nonhuman animal agency has in recent years become a topic of interest in different fields, such as political philosophy (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011), geography (Hobson, 2007), cultural studies (Haraway, 2008), ethology (Smuts, 2001), and history (Hribal, 2007a). However, the question of how to translate this agency, and interactions between human and nonhuman animals, to existing political institutions, practices, and structures, has not received much attention. This is unfortunate, both from the perspective of nonhuman animals, who currently have very little voice in matters that concern them, and from the perspective of democracy. In what follows I therefore investigate the meaning of the concept of deliberation in an interspecies context, in order to bridge the distance between dialogues between human and nonhuman animals and human political systems. I discuss both how deliberation between human and nonhuman animals already takes place, and how it can be improved. In the first section I discuss two different approaches to dialogues between human and nonhuman animals, Donna Haraway’s dialogues with her dog companion Cayenne Pepper (2003, 2008), and Clemens Driessen’s view of cow-human deliberation (2014), in order to show how nonhuman animals exercise agency in relations with humans. While these approaches do justice to nonhuman animal agency and show the richness of existing relations between human and nonhuman animals, as well as the potential for new relations and encounters, they do not challenge power relations and anthropocentrism on a macro level (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2015; Weisberg, 2009). This is problematic because violence towards nonhuman others is not adequately addressed, and it also raises the question whether human exceptionalism is adequately challenged. In the second section I therefore turn my focus to a political account of dialogues. I first briefly discuss Habermas’ view of deliberative democracy (1994). I then turn to the relation between democratic inclusion and different forms of speech, focusing on nonhuman animal languages, and the embodied and habitual character of political communication. In the third section I turn my focus to the

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translation of these insights to existing democratic mechanisms. I do so by investigating the relevance of the so-called systemic turn in `deliberative democracy for incorporating nonhuman animal agency and interspecies encounters in existing democratic structures. In the final section I discuss goose-human relations in the Netherlands, both in order to show that interspecies deliberation already takes place, and to make some recommendations to improve it.

9.1

Nonhuman Animal Agency and Interspecies Dialogues

In animal studies, nonhuman animal agency is often discussed on the basis of personal interaction with individual nonhuman animals. One of the most prominent examples of this approach is in Donna Haraway’s work on dog-human interaction (2003, 2008). Haraway writes about her relation with her dog companion Cayenne Pepper, and argues that through training for agility they did not only come to understand the other better, but both their worlds changed. Through interacting something new came into being, influenced by both the dog’s and the human’s agencies. Haraway describes agility as a “good in itself and also as a way to become more worldly” (2003, p.61). As a biologist and philosopher of science, Haraway extends this argument to historical doghuman relations and the process of domestication, which she sees as a dog-human project. She emphasizes the role that dogs have played in constituting the communities they shared with humans. Haraway sketches a very vivid picture of how a close relationship with a dog companion can impact the way one views her surroundings. She also successfully challenges the species boundary, showing that belonging to the same species is not necessary for understanding someone, building a close relation, or creating a common framework of reference. There are however also problems with her approach, that become clear if we focus on the larger context (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2015; Weisberg, 2009). Haraway critically addresses power relations: she questions human exceptionalism, and she

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challenges the image of dogs as incapable of meaningful communication. She does however not address the way that these power relations have been institutionalized, for example, on the level of the state, the market, or culture. She also does not discuss how this impacts possibilities to exercise agency for most domesticated nonhuman animals. Nonhuman animals who live under the conditions of intensive farming, for example, usually cannot exercise agency in the way Haraway describes – even those who can find a way to escape their fate and make newspaper headlines because they escape the slaughterhouse are usually shot and killed (Hribal, 2007a, 2007b). Haraway and Cayenne Pepper also participate in certain practices that involve nonhuman animal exploitation, for example, through eating nonhuman animals. Finally, Haraway does not question the larger framework in which she and Cayenne Pepper interact: while there is space for dog agency, the human in the relation sets the borders for the framework in which this agency can be exercised. Cayenne Pepper cannot choose to leave the situation, nor can she set up a different life for herself.

9.1.1 Animal Deliberation on the Farm Clemens Driessen (2014) conceptualizes nonhuman animal agency on a larger scale. He focuses on animal agency in relation to technological inventions on the farm, and argues convincingly that cow-human communication involving material interventions can be seen as a form of deliberation. Driessen presents the example of the development of a mobile milking robot. A group of Dutch farmers and cows experimented with an outdoor milking robot, leading them to deal with technical and moral questions in a new way. The farmers interpreted the behavior of the cows with regard to the robot, the cows adapted to the robot and showed their preferences, to which the farmers responded by changing the robot or its position, to which the cows again responded, and so on. The outcome regarding the position and use of the robot was the result of both the cows’ and the farmers’ agency. The robot thus enabled the cows to formulate

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their standpoint in a new way and the farmers to read them differently, and vice versa. Driessen no longer understands deliberative democracy as the Habermasian “ideal, impartial and power-free antithesis to bargaining and voting” (2014, p.96), but as an “ongoing attempt to find practical ways for making political processes more deliberative, stressing the importance of reasoned argument (in whatever form) and free and open discourse (in whatever space).” (Ibid) These processes take place between humans and other animals, which leads Driessen to use the term ‘animal deliberation’, with which he means political interspecies communication around material interventions. Theorizing deliberation and nonhuman animal agency in this way is promising and it could contribute to greater freedom for nonhuman animals, because their voices are brought to the front, and stereotypes about nonhuman animal agency are challenged. The cows can show what they want from a milking robot, which shows humans that they do not need to make all decisions for them. It also shows how interspecies understanding can grow through ongoing interactions, and that humans can adapt to nonhuman animal preferences. These type of experiments could very well inform government decisions; one could for example imagine a farm where groups of nonhuman animals can make decisions that regard aspects of their lives, from which other humans can learn. The example of the milking robot is however also deeply problematic. In the dairy industry, cows are held captive and exploited for human benefit, which causes them physical and mental harm. They have no (or very little) opportunity to end or escape this abuse. While suffering is not the only lens through which we should view nonhuman animals, something both Haraway and Driessen convincingly show, not taking their suffering seriously keeps intact the worldview that allows for exploitation, and runs the risk of legitimating the practices attached to it. It is also problematic to recognize nonhuman animal agency on the individual level and to not take into account the implications of this for political structures. Different layers of political interaction are porous (Tully, 2008), and nonhuman animal agency influences human cultures and political structures (Hobson, 2007). Rethinking a concept such as deliberation in an interspecies context therefore should imply asking how we can move beyond current power hierarchies on different societal and political levels.

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Using a political concept such as deliberation to conceptualize relations between human and nonhuman animals is very promising, but in its current form the political and democratic potential is not fully realized. Driessen shows that farm animals can and do exercise agency in affairs that concern their lives. He also shows that material interventions can support deliberations between nonhuman and human animals. It is however unclear why and if farmers should aim to further develop processes of deliberation with other animals, and how existing forms of deliberation can inform political decision-making. Nonhuman animal agency is again only conceptualized on the micro level, while humans determine the macro-framework in which it is enacted, which reinforces the hierarchy between humans and other animals that Driessen aims to challenge. Viewing nonhuman animals as subjects with their own perspective on life asks not only for rethinking nonhuman animal agency but also for rethinking the structures and relations in which it is shaped, on different levels. In order to further explore this, I now turn to Habermas’ view of deliberation.

9.2

From Dialogues to Deliberation

In Three Normative Models of Democracy (1994), Jürgen Habermas contrasts liberalism with republicanism, and argues for a third model, discourse theory, which incorporates features of both models. He argues that in republicanism, the original meaning of democracy is preserved, because of its focus on the communicative conditions that should ensure collective will-formation, and its focus on political rights as positive rights of participation and communication. Rights are in this view an expression of a collective political will, and the political process does not follow the logic of the market, but rather the “obstinate structures of a public communication oriented to mutual understanding” (1994, p.3); it functions as dialogues do. While Habermas recognizes the importance of discourse and deliberation in will-formation, he sees normative and practical problems with the republican model. Normative problems arise when

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republicanism is too communitarian, which leads to an ‘ethical overload’, in which the ethical aspects of will-formation overshadow the legal and moral aspects. Ethical aspects of will-formation should instead politically be subordinate to legal and moral aspects. Legal issues should according to Habermas refer to universal values, something that is problematic in a communitarian reading, and procedures have to be in the interest of all. Also, in a pluralist society, as most societies nowadays are, compromises make up the bulk of political processes. When there is no intersubjectively shared form of life, the balancing of interests cannot be reached from ethical dialogue. Rousseau’s notion of an assembled, physically present people, is according to Habermas furthermore simply unrealistic in present societies because of the large scale on which decisions are made, and the complexity of structures. The liberal model of elections and voting, which fails to do justice to the original meaning of democracy as well as republicanism does, is more realistic in this regard. In order to preserve the communicative dimensions of political willformation that are of democratic importance, but to escape the abovementioned problems, Habermas sketches a proceduralist view of democracy that incorporates features of both the republican and the liberal model. In his discourse theory, the normative content arises from the structure of communicative actions. Democratic procedures should be designed so that reasonable or fair results are obtained, in which “pragmatic considerations, compromises, discourses of selfunderstanding and justice” (Ibid, p.6) all play a role. Dialogical and instrumental politics are in this model interweaved. Deliberative democracy depends on a network of bargaining processes and forms of argumentation, in which pragmatic, ethical, and moral discourses have a place, and rely on different types of communicative presuppositions and procedures. In legal procedures the rational choice of strategies and the balancing of information and interests are interconnected with ethical self-understanding and moral justification. In these processes public opinion formation generates influence. Influence is translated into communicative power, through political elections, and this communicative power is through legislation transformed into administrative power. In this model, power is not located in the state, and we

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should not see state and society in terms of a whole and its parts. Because the model relies on the institutionalization of procedures and conditions of communication, it corresponds with the image of a decentered society. Deliberative politics is one component of society in this model, one that should however still be able to communicate with other spheres of action.

9.2.1 From Political Nonhuman Animal Agency to Deliberation Between Human and Nonhuman Animals Proponents of nonhuman animal rights or liberation have long argued for inclusion of other animals in our moral communities, on the ground that they are sentient beings (Regan, 1983; Singer, 1975). Recently, political philosophers (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011; Garner, 2013) have argued that we should also focus on translating these moral insights to democratic institutions, practices, and procedures. It is however often thought that humans should represent other animals politically, and that nonhuman animals are not capable of representing themselves, because they lack the language, cognition, or morality that is seen as necessary for engaging in political communication. Habermas’ discourse theory clearly focuses on humans. As we saw above, humans and other animals also engage in conversations. The political character of interactions and conversations between human and nonhuman animals is brought to the front by the recent work on political nonhuman animal agency. Political nonhuman animal agency has in recent years been described and conceptualized in different ways: as resistance and protest, cooperation with humans, voting with the feet, negotiating, and bargaining. Donaldson and Kymlicka propose to view nonhuman animals as co-citizens in interspecies communities, and nondomesticated animals as sovereign communities, or denizens. Hribal (2007a, 2010) shows how nonhuman animal acts of resistance and cooperation have shaped human societies, and argues that nonhuman animals should be seen as members of the working class. Animal geographist Hobson (2007) argues that other animals have co-shaped

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human communities, politics, and lives. Nonhuman animal acts also shape human concepts linguistically (Gaita, 2002). Developing a dialogue-based approach to politics, which builds on these ideas about political nonhuman animal agency, as well as the conversations developed by Haraway and Driessen, is important for several reasons. Interacting with other animals, recognizing and fostering their agency, can in some instances help us to better understand their worlds, and vice versa (Meijer, 2013, 2016), and it can lead to developing new types of relations (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011; Kerasote, 2008; Smuts, 2001). This is not just important from a democratic perspective, but also from the perspective of justice. Nonhuman animals have long been oppressed and silenced and this has led to (deliberate) misunderstandings about what they are capable of, but it has also led them to change their behaviors. We see this with both domesticated nonhuman animals, of whom many have been physically and mentally influenced and changed through breeding processes, and with freeroaming nonhuman animals, who learned to change their behavior for example because of hunting practices. To build better relations, we should respect them, and we need to learn to engage with them in new ways. This also has a practical dimension. The current movement from negative nonhuman animal rights to positive nonhuman animal rights, as proposed by Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011), shows that it is empirically not possible, and morally problematic, to end all relations, because we share a planet. Developing new forms of coexisting and interspecies understanding asks us to move beyond an anthropocentric account of politics, and asks us to redefine the borders of the political, in interaction with other animals. Furthermore, human democratic practices and institutions are currently often based on, or formed by, layers of interaction and communication. While the Habermasian ideal of power-free argumentation is not often reached, different types of arguments and communicative practices inform and shape institutions, procedures, and associations, legal as well as political. As we saw above, other animals constantly engage with humans, and influence our common surroundings and decision-makings. While they do not participate in political practices in the same way as humans do, paying attention to

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ways in which they act politically, and investigating the relations between different forms of politics, might contribute to closing the gap between current institutional highly symbolic human forms of interaction, and the nonhuman animal agency we recognize on the micro level. This might show us new ways of making political practices and systems more inclusive, and it might help us to work towards a new political model with other animals. Existing concepts, such as deliberation, can function as a starting point for thinking and acting, but we need to develop them further with other animals, if they are to have value in interspecies settings.

9.2.2 Democratic Inclusion and Forms of Speech In his view of deliberation, Habermas stresses the rationality of procedures. Democratic procedures are not just collections of dialogues in which anything is allowed. Through fair procedures, in which the force of the better argument plays a central role, decisions are improved. Different authors have argued that Habermas’ views of rationality and communication do not reflect universal values, but the preferences of the dominant group (Young, 2000). They are one language-game of critical thought aimed at reaching intersubjectively legitimate conclusions (Tully 2008), not the only one. If we conceive of deliberative practices as a cluster of language-games (see Mouffe, 1999; Tully, 2008), in which different practices, such as material interventions (as proposed by Driessen, 2014), species-specific languages, and interspecies languages, can play a role, we need to further investigate the relation between human political communication and communication with other animals. To do so, I first briefly discuss the relation between democratic inclusion and ‘proper’ forms of communication. I then turn to speciesspecific languages, and the embodied and habitual character of moral and political interaction. Iris Young (2000) notes that the democratic norm of inclusion, which is seen as necessary for the legitimacy of the outcome of a deliberative procedure, is frequently violated in deliberative practices. She distinguishes between two types of exclusion. External exclusion

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refers to forms of exclusion in which individuals or groups that ought to be included are left out of fora for discussion and decision-making. Internal exclusion occurs with groups that are formally included in processes of discussion and decision-making, but whose ideas or modes of expression are ignored, dismissed, patronized or in other ways not taken seriously. In democratic deliberation as it currently is, certain attitudes and attributes, such as being dispassionate, articulate, orderly, not emotional, focused on argument, are favored. These norms of good (i.e., rational, argumentative) political communication are presented as neutral, but they tend to reflect the preferences and style of the dominant group (i.e., educated, ablebodied, white men). Young argues that this image of proper political communication devalues the styles of speech of humans who have not learned to argue in this manner, or who do not speak the language that well, who are less educated, present their case in a more emotional manner, and so on. These humans are often members of groups that were historically excluded from participating in political discourse. She therefore argues that working towards democratic inclusion asks for expanding our conception of political communication, in order to identify new modes of inclusion and to learn to attend to one another in new ways in order to reach understanding. Young explicates the political functions of three modes of communication in addition to making arguments: greeting, rhetoric, and narrative. In doing so, she focuses not only on words but also on body language, signs, symbols, and other forms of expression. Nonhuman animals are currently excluded from political discourses; they do not participate in official political communication at all. Young shows that there is a strong connection between the forms of speech that are seen as rational and the exclusion of marginalized groups, and she shows that it is not enough to formally include the voices of those who are excluded without changing the view of proper political communication attached to it. In other words, it is not enough to simply see a group as political and ‘give them voice’ – acknowledging other groups implies rethinking what we think of as proper political communication. Political inclusion of other animals asks for rethinking language and

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political interaction, and it asks for learning about their languages and modes of communication.

9.2.3 Animal Languages Animals of different species express themselves differently. To communicate they use scents, colors, movements, words, songs, sounds, patterns on their skin, and so on. Humans are only beginning to understand the meaning of many of these signs and expressions. Recent research has for example shown that dolphins (King & Janik, 2013) and parrots (Berg, et al., 2011) call each other by their names. African Elephants use different alarm calls to distinguish between threats from bees and humans (Soltis, et al., 2014). Ravens use referential gestures (Pika & Bugnyar, 2011). Fork tailed drongos mimic the alarm calls of other species to scare animals away and then steal their dinner (Flower, et al., 2014). In the songs of many species of birds we find grammatical structures, including recursion (Gentner, et al., 2006). The skin patterns of squid can be seen as a language, including grammar (Moynihan, 1991). Prairie dogs describe intruders in detail, including the color of their T-shirts and hair, the speed with which they approach, and objects they might carry (Slobodchikoff, et al., 2009). Other animals can also learn to understand and sometimes use human words, and human and nonhuman animals can together create new forms of meaning. Irene Pepperberg (1995) investigated the linguistic capabilities of African Grey Parrot Alex, and by paying attention to the learning mechanisms of parrots – for parrots, learning a language is strongly interconnected with acting – she taught him not only to recognize, describe, and categorize many objects, but also to use concepts as ‘same’ or ‘different,’ and commands to control the behavior of others (‘come here,’ ‘go away’). The new language that parrot and human created offered Pepperberg insight into Alex’s mind, such as when one day he asked Pepperberg what color he was. In other language-experiments dolphins were taught to speak in human words, and nonhuman primates were taught to speak, sign, and use keyboards and symbols. Experiments in which

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nonhuman animals are taught to use human words can provide us with information about their learning behaviors, especially regarding mimicry, and about their attunement to humans. They can in some instances give us insight into their minds. But they do not tell us everything or even much about their linguistic skills; at best, human language can function as a tool to develop a new type of language, as with Alex and Pepperberg. We can only study nonhuman animal languages properly if we let go of the idea of human language as the only true language. A good example of moving beyond human language as the one true language, and being open to new forms of communication and understanding, can be found in the work of Barbara Smuts (2001). Smuts discusses two situations in which she develops a framework of common understanding with animals of other species, through interaction, mutual openness, and learning. The first involves studying a group of baboons, for which Smuts had to learn to speak baboon. Scientists usually try to ignore primates, in order not to let their presence near them influence their behavior. Smuts found out that ignoring them is not a neutral act. Baboons who are closely related or who are good friends might sometimes ignore each other’s close presence, but under other circumstances, ignoring can express mistrust or tension. Furthermore, by interacting with the baboons, she experienced critical aspects of their society, such as hierarchy, personal space, and communication, directly. Because she attended to them and adjusted her behavior, the baboons came to accept her as a social being in their midst; as a subject to communicate with, instead of as an object that had to be avoided. Smuts found the baboons did their best to understand her, even though she had an “outrageous human accent” (2001, p.307). Scientists call the process of getting used to the presence of an observer habituation, which implies that the baboons changed their ways to accept her as a neutral observer, but in Smuts’ experience the opposite happened: the baboons went on with their lives while she had to change her ways to be with them. The second example involves Smuts’ interaction with her dog companion Safi. Smuts adopted Safi from an animal shelter and decided not

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to train her, but to communicate with her as an equal. As Safi and Smuts are both sensitive to the other, they reach a high degree of understanding and intimacy. Because Safi has “an inherent sense of appropriate behavior in different circumstances” (Ibid, p.303), Smuts can take her almost anywhere off leash. In the city, she will make most decisions; outside Safi usually decides where to go and what to do. If they disagree, they meet somewhere in the middle. Smuts describes their daily rituals – including dog-human yoga in the morning, initiated by Safi – that come into being as a result of constant interaction. She sees intersubjectivity in their case as the possibility to shape new realities through interacting with others, in which both subjects are not ‘given’ before they meet (see also Haraway, 2003, 2008). Their habits and rituals are not given beforehand but spring from their life together and give it substance.

9.2.4 Embodied Political Communication Deliberation encompasses more than having a conversation in which two or more individuals agree or disagree. It also demands more than expressing preferences and responding to preferences of others, or sharing a common goal or plan. In deliberation, we mutually agree to normative claims, and we can be held accountable on the basis of that. Recent research in ethology and in animal ethics focuses on the question of whether nonhuman animals can be seen as moral agents, and investigates whether morality in nonhuman animal communities is similar to morality in human communities. In order to be able to live together, members of social species follow social rules. How this works, and to which degree nonhuman animals can choose to shape these rules, differs between species and communities. That norms and rules exist in many nonhuman animal communities is made clear by empirical research; that many nonhuman animals have a sense of justice is as well (see Bekoff & Pierce, 2009 for an overview). Many animal ethicists, biologists, and ethologists (see Rowlands, 2011 for an overview) claim that at least certain species of nonhuman animals can be seen as moral agents. How norms are established varies within and between species. Smuts (2001) for example argues that the play behaviors of dogs, and the

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greeting rituals of dogs, and bonobos, are ways of negotiating the future, and constitute intersubjective norms. How exactly these ways of establishing norms relate to human forms of deliberation is still a question, and how this would work between humans and other animals is as well. Further exploring this requires more empirical research about nonhuman animal languages and communities, and it requires rethinking political communication in an interspecies context. Nonhuman animals express themselves in a multitude of ways, and in order to do justice to the variety of shapes and forms this can take, we need to pay more attention to the embodied, habitual character of interaction. As Smuts shows, both with regard to free-roaming and to domesticated animals, embodied, habitual interaction, plays a large role in coming to an understanding and in creating common frameworks. Referring to recent work in moral psychology, Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011, 2014) argue that animal morality, including human morality, should be understood as primarily habitual. Humans are born with a certain social predisposition, and develop this in their childhood. When confronted with situations that ask for a moral judgment, they often do not reflect extensively but respond immediately. Nonhuman animals who display moral behavior are in a similar way socialized in their group (see Bekoff & Pierce, 2009; Peterson, 2012) and in different species we find a continuum of moral behaviors (there is variation in species and individuals). According to Donaldson and Kymlicka, domesticated nonhuman animals and humans form communities in which all are socialized and learn to respond to certain (in some cases interspecies) norms through the moral frameworks that structure social life. Moral agency is embodied and socially embedded; it is both subjective and intersubjective and something that is constantly learned and created with others. Donaldson and Kymlicka see this “norm responsiveness in intersubjective relationships – the ability to moderate behaviour in accord with internalized norms when relating to other selves” (2014, pp.14–15) as the basis of democratic citizenship. Different theorists of deliberation also stress the role of the body, and emotions, in deliberative interaction. Dryzek (2000) for example emphasizes listening as a key to a ‘green democracy.’ In a green democracy, there should be recognition of agency in nature, and respect for natural objects and ecological processes; humans and nonhumans should be equally

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represented and make equal demands on our capacity to listen. Paying attention to agency and the communicative capacity in nature is not as farfetched as it may seem. Dryzek argues that much of our communication already goes beyond linguistic communication (with this he means not just body language, but also the workings of pheromones, oxygen, and unintentional chemical processes), and he argues that humans are ecological instead of simply social beings. Susan Bickford (2011), who also emphasizes the importance of listening, argues that the role of emotion is undervalued in deliberative theories of democracy. She argues that there is no clear cut between emotion and reason in political communication: emotion is cognitive in important ways and constitutive of value judgments; reason is always informed by emotion. She also stresses the fact that our political judgments and actions are often habituated, instead of the result of a purely cognitive process, and shows that emotion-beliefs play a central role in political communication. As mentioned above, Iris Young also points to the importance of incorporating embodied forms of communication in deliberative practices. Dryzek (2000) argues that the practical challenge concerning effectiveness in institutional design, concerning communication that transcends the human world, is to dismantle barriers to such communication. Taking species-specific languages and new forms of political communication into account in deliberation, asks for adjusting not just the focus on reason that Habermas proposes and the view of language attached to it, but also the structure of deliberation, in order to incorporate different types of practices, some of which close to human political systems, others further removed from human politics. To further explore this I turn to the systemic turn in deliberation.

9.3

From Dialogue to Deliberation: A Systemic View

Embodied dialogues between human and nonhuman animals in which species-specific (human and nonhuman) languages, as well as new forms of interspecies understanding (Haraway, 2008; Smuts, 2001), play a role, can take place in different settings: between

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individuals, but also in (small) groups, such as households, sanctuaries (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2015), and towns. Ted Kerasote (2008) gives an example of the latter. He describes how he taught his dog companion Merle the rules of the small town Kelly in Wyoming where they lived, and then installed a dog door in his house, so Merle could come and go as he pleased. Other dogs in this town (Kerasote discusses a similar situation in Chamonix in France) also experienced this type of freedom. The dogs exercised agency in determining the grounds for interaction, as they were free to move about and connect with others. They had the space to make some decisions regarding their lives for themselves, and they had to make some other decisions together with humans. Kerasote shows how greater freedom makes the dogs more competent to deal with their surroundings and to navigate challenges. This model, in which domesticated nonhuman animals are offered greater freedom of choice and movement, could function as a starting point for interspecies collective decision-making, aimed at the interspecies common good. This type of interaction bears a family resemblance to Rousseau’s republican ideal. Interspecies republicanism, based on small-scale interactions in which all who are affected are present and have a voice, preserves the normative meaning of democracy. Also, scale matters practically; while many species of nonhuman animals have complex and nuanced ways to negotiate affairs, make group decisions (Meijer, forthcoming) or discuss the future (Meijer, forthcoming), in the current state of empirical understanding it seems difficult to translate these behaviors to existing mechanisms in liberal democracies, such as voting. There is however a large gap between small interspecies communities and the way in which liberal democracies are currently organized. There are also practical problems concerning interspecies republicanism, for example, with regard to the multitude of different species living in communities, lack of empirical knowledge, and misinterpretations and stereotyping of nonhuman animals. In the remainder of this chapter I therefore want to focus on how different spheres of political interaction are related, and to investigate how nonhuman animal voice is already present in democratic procedures, and how it can be made stronger.

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9.3.1 A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy Instead of focusing on deliberation in legislative bodies, or on improving deliberation in small-scale initiatives in which citizens can deliberate under relatively favorable conditions, the systemic approach to deliberative democracy turns the focus from single episodes to the structure of the system (Mansbridge, et al., 2012). This recognizes the complexity of most democracies, and the variety of associations, institutions, and sites of contestation – ranging from informal networks and schools to courts, organized advocacy groups, and the media – that foster and create political work. A democratic system is made up of a set of interdependent parts that are distinguishable and differentiated. These different parts are in some sense relationally interconnected, yet they function independently. A deliberative system encompasses a dialogue-based approach to political interaction, through expressing, demonstrating, arguing, and persuading. In terms of inclusive deliberation, the systemic approach is in favor of a focus on rational argument, yet it also acknowledges that sometimes protest and other forms of disruptive communication can have a place in the larger scheme of things (see Hribal, 2010 for nonhuman animal resistance), to put certain issues on the agenda, and to let the voices of those outside of hegemonic power be heard. In this, it also suggests “looking for ‘deliberative ecologies’, in which different contexts facilitate some forms of deliberation and avenues for information, while others facilitate different forms and avenues” (Mansbridge, et al., 2012, p.6). In the interspecies situation we could take this to mean that certain settings might facilitate dog-human interactions (in which spatial arrangements play a role), or goose-human interactions, while others might consist of humans deliberating about other animals, informed by interactions with them. Focusing on the system of deliberation brings to light aspects that remain hidden when one only focuses on individual sites of deliberation. I will here discuss three, and investigate their relevance for interspecies interactions. First, a focus on the system allows us to think about deliberation on a larger scale. Second, it helps to analyze the division of labor among parts of a system; the deliberative qualities

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of some settings might be weak if we regard them autonomously, yet they might still contribute to the overall quality of deliberation. Third, regarding the whole system brings out larger systemic inadequacies and contextual issues that impact individual sites but remain hidden when we only focus on these. In interspecies relations, thinking on a large scale is important. Face to face deliberations between humans and other animals only take place in small settings. Investigating the relations between these settings and institutionalized forms of human politics is important in translating nonhuman animal agency to existing political mechanisms. It also allows us to imagine how these relations can change over time. When we investigate nonhuman animal participation and inclusion, a topic that is currently underexposed, this larger scale perspective is important both in finding out how they already participate in political practices, or influence them from a distance, and in determining how and where this can be improved. Second, the division of labor that is proposed by Mansbridge, et al., (2012) can clarify nonhuman animal tasks and human duties. In the current state of empirical research it is unrealistic to expect to be able to communicate with nonhuman animals in all political affairs and institutions, or to be able to discuss things with them in the same way that they are discussed by humans. As Haraway (2003, 2008), Driessen (2014), and Smuts (2001) however show, this is not a matter of all or nothing, and there are many matters that we can discuss with them, and they with us. Mansbridge, et al. (2012) also discuss the role of experts in this context. While there are problems with using expert knowledge in deliberative settings, they can have a function in the larger structure. Nonhuman animals are experts in certain aspects of their lives (cows for example choose the right plants and herbs to eat when they are ill; nonhuman animals are also capable of making many decisions for themselves with regard to freedom of movement, housing, and other practical matters) and humans might be experts in other matters. Further developing interspecies interaction requires experimentation (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2015). In this, human experts – in biology, ethology, philosophy, and other fields of study, as well as art and

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literature – can play a role, both in interacting with nonhuman animals, and in making insights available to other humans. Research about nonhuman animal capacities can and should for example inform political decision-making. Third, when we look at the overall system of deliberative democracy, we find that nonhuman animals are underrepresented generally, but also that certain questions receive more attention than others. In mainstream political thought, there is a strong emphasis on human fixed institutions and procedures, and not so much attention for the processes and practices that inform and shape these. The role of nonhuman animals in these is also not adequately acknowledged. Furthermore, nonhuman animals are not often seen as a social group and underrepresented in social justice movements. Finally, while nonhuman animal sentience is increasingly seen as relevant in, for example, Dutch and European legal and political decisions, their voices are not taken into account democratically at all. The systemic approach has descriptive and normative potential for conceptualizing how to incorporate small-scale interspecies interactions in existing political mechanisms and institutions, precisely because it focuses on relations between forms of deliberation, and it shows us how some issues are represented and others neglected. It also helps us see that for political participation nonhuman animals do not need to be able to represent themselves in human language in courtrooms or political settings; there are many ways in which forms of deliberation already takes place, and many ways in which these situations are related to, or bear a resemblance to, human political decision-making procedures. There are currently still many questions about nonhuman animal cognition, languages, politics, and cultures, so it is too early for definite conclusions. A systemic approach to deliberation, which focuses on connecting different fields of interaction, could however be a good first step in incorporating nonhuman animal voices in human politics. As such it can be helpful in bridging the distance between the humancentered system we have now, and a true interspecies model, developed together with other animals. In order to further investigate how this could work in practice, I now turn to the example of goose-human deliberation in the Netherlands.

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The Dutch population of greylag geese has grown from eight nesting pairs in the 1970s, to hundreds of thousands in 2015. Their presence leads to conflicts in residential areas, farm areas, and around Schiphol airport, where they pose a risk to flight safety. In the past four years, large numbers of geese have been gassed in what activists call ‘mobile gas chambers’ around the airport. The gassings took place in late May, when they were molting and could not fly. Although 15,000 geese were killed in this way in 2013, the population was only reduced by 600 (Ganzen vergassen helpt niet, 2015). The grass around the airport is of high quality, due to increased use of fertilizers by farmers, and there are plenty of wet areas to rest, which encourages new geese to settle in the area as soon as there is space for them. In Dutch political discourses, and in the media, geese are increasingly framed as a pest. While many species of geese are protected, these changing views of geese have led to hunting exemptions, and in 2015 Dutch provinces even ordered the killing of geese in order to reduce their numbers. Discussions about geese take place between farmers and government, activists and politicians, hunters and farmers and politicians, any of these groups and the media, the media and the general public, and so on. Part of this communication is formalized and institutionalized, part of it is informal or disruptive. Different forms of communication are interconnected and influence each other. Activists for example might influence the general public, which might pressure the government to act differently. Financial compensation by the government might influence farmers’ behaviors. European legislation puts limits on how the national government can act. The media can expose practices – such as the violence that is used in gassing and beheading the geese – and thereby influences other parties. Geese also influence the communication, on different levels. An example is the communication about the land around Schiphol Airport. Farmers try to make their land less attractive by changing their way of sowing; solar panels and robot birds are used to scare the geese away. Geese respond in different ways, after which the strategies

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are changed. These experiments and interactions inform politicians, for example, from the Party for the Animals, but also other parties, who might be driven by economic motives. When humans change their strategies, geese might change their habits and resist, flee or occupy certain sites, and thereby they not only inform practices, but also discourse and concepts. They might not intend to influence political institutions, but just to find a better space to eat or live (not unlike the farmers); these acts can however have political consequences. Geese are not passive recipients of human care or terror; they actively shape the conditions of coexistence. Even though there is a lot of communication between humans and geese in the conflict, geese are not taken seriously as subjects, and the communication is often not seen as interaction, but as humans taking measures. As we saw, this has violent consequences, but it will also not solve the problem. To adequately address these types of conflicts we need to take goose agency and goose-human interaction into account. Geese communicate with each other in many different ways, for example, by using their voice, by sounds, smells, gestures, bodily movements, touch, eye contact, and through performing certain rituals. Communication between geese and humans also may take different shapes. When imprinted by humans,1 geese form very close relationships with humans, leading them to come down when they are flying if their significant human calls their name, and more generally to go through great lengths to be together with him or her. This led Lorenz (1991) to say geese are the species of nonhuman animals who make the best friends to humans, after dogs. Geese who are not imprinted but who live close to humans can still form friendships with them, although never with the same intensity (for both animals of both species: humans respond to geese intimacy). Geese who live close to human settlements will learn which humans and dogs are not to be feared, and which aren’t. They will typically be less shy than geese who have less interaction with humans. Domesticated geese will for example try to fight humans who come too

1 A practice that is highly problematic from an ethical and a political point of view, because it usually involves taking young animals away from their families, in order to benefit humans.

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close to their nests, while wild geese who never have contact with humans will usually flee. Geese respond to humans who imitate their alarm calls and contact calls. Humans often interpret geese signals (from friendly gestures to hissing and alarm calls) correctly without having special knowledge of their behavior. When humans try to catch or attack geese, they will flee or fight. Geese not only defend their own bodies, but also their nest and partner, and sometimes others with whom they have relationships. A systemic approach to deliberative democracy can help us imagine how different types of interactions that involve communication with geese, ranging from interventions that change the land to make it unattractive for them to actual human-goose encounters, can be connected to laws and political procedures and institutions. This is needed for normative reasons: geese interests are affected and therefore they should be consulted in democratic procedures, and it is morally wrong to kill geese. It is also needed for the simple practical reason that the current approach does not solve the problem. While justice demands that we do not kill the geese, and engage with them respectfully, a deliberative democratic perspective shows how we can engage with the geese and work together towards the future. Part of the solution is that humans accept the geese’s presence, but there will always be conflicts and interactions between groups of nonhuman and human animals, even more as humans take up more and more space, so these conflicts will keep arising, and new answers need to be found. A very first step towards the inclusion of goose voices could be that human politicians have to meet the geese they make decisions about. In the current situation politicians sometimes know nothing about the species and communities they are dealing with, which makes it easy for them to disregard their perspective, and to leave stereotypes intact. Second, existing goose-human interactions need to be mapped, and learned from: communication about land can for example provide us with information that can help us to communicate with them in better ways. Third, interaction with geese should inform political practices, and decisions made about them should be communicated back to the geese in a language they understand. They can then respond (e.g., by leaving a certain spot, or defending

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it), to which humans can respond. Fourth, small-scale political experiments should be set up to further research these questions. In order to find new ways to coexist with geese, we need to develop new ways to interact with them. Speaking with them and listening to what they have to say is the first step in this process.

Bibliography Bekoff, M. & Pierce, J., 2009. Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Berg, K., Delgado, S., Cortopassi, A., Beissinger, S. R. & Bradbury, J., 2011. Vertical Transmission of Learned Signatures in a Wild Parrot. Proc. R. Soc. B, 0932, pp. 1471–2954. Bickford, S., 2011. Emotion Talk and Political Judgment. The Journal of Politics, 73(4), pp. 1025–1037. Derrida, J., 2008. The Animal that Therefore I Am. New York: Fordham University Press. Donaldson, S. & Kymlicka, W., 2011. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donaldson, S. & Kymlicka, W., 2014. Unruly Beasts: Animal Citizens and the Threat of Tyranny. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 47(1), pp. 23–45. Donaldson, S. & Kymlicka, W., 2015. Rethinking Membership and Participation in an Inclusive Democracy: Cognitive Disability, Children, Animals. Disability and Political Theory. Forthcoming. Driessen, C., 2014. Animal Deliberation. In M. Wissenburg & D. Schlosberg, eds., Animal Politics and Political Animals, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Dryzek, J., 2000. Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flower, T. P., Gribble, M., Ridley, A. R., 2014. Deception by Flexible Alarm Mimicry in an African Bird. Science, 344(6183), pp. 513–516. Gaita, R., 2002. The Philosopher’s Dog. Melbourne: Text Publishing. Garner, R., 2013. A Theory of Justice for Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gentner, T., Fenn, K., Margoliash, D. & Nusbaum, H., 2006. Recursive Syntactic Pattern Learning by Songbirds. Nature, 440(7088), pp. 1204–1207. Habermas, J., 1994. Three Normative Models of Democracy. Constellations, 1(1), pp. 1–10.

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Haraway, D., 2003. The Companion Species Manifesto. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Haraway, D., 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hobson, K., 2007. Political Animals? On Animals as Subjects in an Enlarged Political Geography. Political Geography, 26(3), pp. 250–267. Hribal, J., 2007a. Animals, Agency, and Class: Writing the History of Animals from Below. Human Ecology Review, 14(1), pp. 101. Hribal, J., 2007b. Emily the Cow and Tyke the Elephant: Resistance is Never Futile. Counterpunch. URL: www.counterpunch.org/2007/04/17/resis tance-is-never-futile (Accessed 12/2/16). Hribal, J., 2010. Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance. New York: AK Press. Kerasote, T., 2008. Merle’s Door. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. King, S. & Janik, V., 2013. Bottlenose Dolphins can use Learned Vocal Labels to address each Other. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(32), pp. 13216–13221. Lorenz, K., 1991. Here I Am-where are You?: The Behaviour of the Greylag Goose. New York: Harper Collins. Mansbridge, J., Bohman, J., Chambers, S., Christiano, T., Fung, A., Parkinson, J. & Warren, M., 2012. A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy. In J. Parkinson & J. Mansbridge, eds., Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meijer, E., 2013. Political Communication with Animals. Humanimalia: A Journal of Human/Animal Interface Studies, 5(1), pp. 28–52. Meijer, E., 2016. Speaking with Animals: Philosophical Interspecies Investigations. In M. Tønnessen, K. Armstrong Oma & S. Rattasepp, eds., Thinking about Animals in the Age of the Anthropocene. New York: Lexington Books. Meijer, E., Forthcoming. Interspecies Democracies. In B. Bovenkerk & J. Keulartz, eds., Animal Ethics in the Age of Humans. Houten: Springer. Mouffe, C., 1999. Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?. Social Research, 66(3), pp. 745–758. Moynihan, M., 1991. Structures of Animal Communication. In M. H. Robinson & L. Triger, eds., Man and Beast Revisited. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. Pepperberg, I., 1995. Grey Parrot Intelligence. Proceedings of the International Aviculturists Society, (Jan.), pp. 11–15.

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Peterson, D., 2012. The Moral Lives of Animals. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing USA. Pika, S. & Bugnyar, T., 2011. The Use of Referential Gestures in Ravens (Corvus Corax) in the Wild. Nature Communications, 2, pp. 560. Regan, T., 1983. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rowlands, M., 2011. Animals that Act for Moral Reasons. In T. Beauchamp & R. Frey, eds., Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Singer, P., 1975. Animal Liberation. New York: Pimlico. Slobodchikoff, C., Perla, B. & Verdolin, J., 2009. Prairie Dogs: Communication and Community in an Animal Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Smuts, B., 2001. Encounters with Animal Minds. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(5), pp. 293–309. Soltis, J., King L., Douglas-Hamilton, I., Fritz Vollrath, A. S., 2014. African Elephant Alarm Calls Distinguish between Threats from Humans and Bees. PLoS ONE, 9(2), pp. 89403. Tully, J., 2008. Public Philosophy in a New Key: Volume 1, Democracy and Civic Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ganzen vergassen helpt niet, 2015. URL: vroegevogels.vara.nl/Nieuwsdetail.1006.0.html?&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news% 5D=371588&cHash=077945095653ba32c690ab1070b40e35 (Accessed 12/2/16). Weisberg, Z., 2009. The Broken Promises of Monsters: Haraway, Animals and the Humanist Legacy. Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 7(2), pp. 22–62. Young, I., 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eva Meijer is currently working on a PhD project in philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, titled Political Animal Voices, in which she develops a theory of political animal voice. She teaches the course ‘Animal Ethics and Politics’ at the University of Amsterdam and is the chair of the Dutch study group for Animal Ethics, as well as a founding member of Minding Animals The Netherlands. Recent publications include a book on nonhuman animal languages, Dierentalen, and a fictional biography of bird scientist Len Howard, Het vogelhuis. In addition to her academic work, Meijer works as a novelist, visual artist and singer-songwriter. More information can be found on her website: www.evameijer.nl

10 Gandhian Satyagraha and Open Animal Rescue Tony Milligan

Animal rights discourse has an uneasy relation to the language of the religious or spiritual, and particularly to key Gandhian-derived concepts concerning non-harm and non-violent dissent. It is a discourse that has primarily been shaped by a set of concepts (such as agency, being the subject of a life, liberty, and rights themselves) which embody Western notions of the rational. More especially, they embody philosophical ideas about the autonomous rational agent who is answerable to ethical norms that may be understood independently of any manner of religious commitment. The conceptual framework within which the discourse embeds itself is, accordingly, normative rather than neutral and merely descriptive. It presupposes a broad commitment to Western liberal values and practices of respect. The driving thought, in one form or another, is that nonhuman animals ought now to be brought more

T. Milligan (*) Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London, England e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_10

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clearly within the bounds of what is valued and respected, that they should be accorded a form of liberty and perhaps even a form of equality by all rational agents such as ourselves. (Whether such equality is best thought of in terms of an equal consideration of interests, or in some other terms, varies from theory to theory.) What follows will attempt to stretch the discourse a little beyond these familiar and comfortable bounds, by attending to concepts which do not quite fit, or which at least come from outside of the Western tradition, but which have nonetheless worked their way into animal rights activism and practice in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The concepts that I will focus upon, and open with an exploration of, are satyagraha and ahimsa; the second section will then provide an outline of what is known as ‘open animal rescue’ (more simply ‘open rescue’) which is a reasonable contender for involving or being an instance of both.1 The final section will then consider what we may gain and what we may obscure by associating open rescue with satyagraha and (less directly) with ahimsa, given that it is a Western practice and that these are (at least in the West) concepts of a somewhat obscure sort. All three sections will include a certain amount of ‘thinking out loud’. As a preliminary clarifying move, the following is an idealized description of an open animal rescue of the sort associated with various animal liberation groups in Australia, such as Animal Liberation Victoria or Animal Liberation New South Wales. A group of animal rights activists identify a site where battery hens are held and gather information about their condition from those who work there. Sufficient information about the extremity of the animals’ treatment having been gathered, and under cover of night, they break into the facility with minimal damage to locks and rescue a number of the birds that are then handed over for rehoming. The rescue operation, and the pre-rescue condition of the animals,

1 As indications of the presence of these concepts in the West, ‘Satya’ was the name of a wellknown US vegetarian and animal rights magazine which ceased publication in 2007 but reappeared as a special edition in 2016. ‘Ahimsa’ is an even more familiar term in UK and US animal rights circles. It is, for example, the name of the London-based newsletter of the Young Indian Vegetarians; and the official magazine of the American Vegan Society, American Vegan, carries the subtitle ‘ahimsa lights the way’.

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is filmed. While health and safety masks may be worn during the rescue, because of the health risks posed by the facility, at least some of the rescuers will also be filmed without their masks on. The rescue video will then be sent to the media or the police, or both, together with some disclosed names. The decision to prosecute or not is then left to the facility owners. The rescuers whose identities are disclosed are ready to face the penalties of the law and are ready to sacrifice themselves in order to appeal to the conscience of others.2 Contrastingly, the following is an idealized description of a covert rescue of the sort associated with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Information is gathered on the holding of nonhuman animals in a private or university research facility, with information leaked from the inside (by animal care staff whose job it is to look after the animals rather than experiment upon them). A group of masked activists then break into the facility and remove the animals. The animals are then passed on for care elsewhere, with the chain of information being kept on a ‘needto-know’ basis. While in the laboratory the activists may spray slogans on the wall and may engage in other activities that are not strictly a part of the rescue which is the primary goal. The rescue may be filmed for publicity purposes, but the identity of activists is concealed. They remain hidden by balaclavas. If the animals are primates, they represent a significant financial investment and the laboratory will typically press for recovery.3 While both of the above might qualify in the US as instances of terrorism under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (2006), and while covert rescue mimics certain features of terrorism, neither appear to be true instances of terrorism on any plausible definition of the latter. Actions of the first sort are also candidates for being instances of satyagraha or else for being satyagraha-like with regard to their openness, emphatic non-violence, and the readiness of activists to face the penalties imposed by law. The contention of what follows is that thinking of open rescue in these terms may well be illuminating.

2 3

For accounts of actual open rescues, see Mark (2003) and Milligan (2013), pp.117–26. For accounts of actual covert rescues, see Newkirk (2000) and Mann (2009).

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10.1 Satyagraha Gandhi remains an iconic figure within protest movements and a key figure in the development of the concept of civil disobedience. However, he himself referred more often to satyagraha, a conjunction of Gujarati terms that may be translated into English as ‘truth-force’ or ‘love-force’.4 Satya can mean truth or love or both, but it is, above all, that which endures; graha means force or compulsion but what often goes unnoticed is that the conjunction of the two also yields the opposite, agraha, as an intermediate term, thereby generating a degree of ambiguity about the sense in which opponents are to be compelled as opposed to persuaded with reluctance.5 Gandhi’s appeal to satyagraha, as the power of love to compel (or at least win over), represented the types of protest for which he served as a figurehead as a form of spiritualized political practice. Civil disobedience, in turn, was taken to be a branch of satyagraha, and similarly so for the other main branch of this type of protest. The distinction between the two principal branches of satyagraha may admit of borderline cases but can readily be understood by appeal to exemplars: if I fail to buy a TV licence or a dog licence because I disapprove of the emblems on the documentation then I am engaging in non-compliance.6 But if I then go out into the street and, in an otherwise peaceful manner, burn my old licence then I am engaging in civil disobedience (just so long as there is little or no likelihood that such an action will escalate into a riot). It is tempting to say that civil disobedience is more active or proactive, but this does not quite work. Both civil disobedience and non-compliance are responses to the agency of those in authority. And so the distinction is more a matter of the contrast between Gandhi (1996), p.61 uses the terms ‘love force’ and ‘soul force’, but see Gandhi (2009) pp.86–97 for the key connotations, and Gandhi (2007), pp.291–92 for the origins of the term. For an overview, see Parek (1989) pp.142–70. 5 Parekh (1989) suggests that the ambiguity came to be resolved over time, with the notion of agraha receding into the background, and this sounds right and fits well with Gandhi’s growing sense that truth could compel through the agency of satyagrahis. 6 Gandhi (1996) p.80 brings the two together, so Gandhi avoided a sense of strict duality, but generally the terms were applied to different sorts of acts. 4

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refusing to conform and deliberately flouting. Yet both exemplify ahimsa, a concept which may be understood in minimal terms as a rejection of physical violence and in a thick sense which involves also a rejection of the violence of the heart. Gandhian satyagraha involves ahimsa in a thick sense, i.e. it involves far more than a commitment ‘to avoid hitting anyone today’. What this means is that the promotion of any form of personal animosity, even when qualified by calls to non-violence, violates Gandhian ahimsa. So, for example, if a version of animal rights discourse were to become heavily tied to such animosity, through persistent accusations that others (e.g. non-vegans who claim to be animal lovers) were hypocrites, this discourse might still be committed to a form of ahimsa in the thin sense, but it could never qualify as a form of ahimsa in the more complex Gandhian sense.7 The latter requires a less hostile attitude towards the other even when they are in error, a sense that their faults and our own faults are, ultimately, one and the same, and above all, a positive commitment to their well-being rather than a mere refraining from harm. The latter commitment may even require yajna, i.e. sacrifice which, for Gandhi, is at the heart of a sense of human community or a shared humanity (Parek, 1989, p.88). In this sense, it amounts to a politicized form of love for, or bonding with, our fellow humans, rather than mere civility. Attempts to shame or humiliate, or the verbal abuse associated with branding others through name-calling and accusations of personal hypocrisy, will also be strictly ruled out. (Here, it is worth remembering that a sense of human bond is emphatically not a greater value claim, any more than a sense of family membership requires us to look down upon those who are not family members.) This neat two-branch understanding of satyagraha, which figures repeatedly in Gandhi’s journalistic writings and letters, i.e. in the greater bulk of his texts, does not, however, give us the whole picture. While the 7 There is, conveniently, a strong correlate of this in the Western liberal discourse, a commitment to treating repeated accusations of hypocrisy with caution, as characteristic of an illiberally hostile mindset, and to identifying cruelty as the worst that humans are capable of. The classic discussion of these matters is in the opening chapters of Skhlar (1984).

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very idea of satyagraha was developed in the context of political protest in South Africa, in order to distinguish respectable non-violent dissent by the Indian community from black militants in the mines, satyagraha was also used in various other contexts. Specifically (i) in Gandhi’s journalistic writings; (ii) in his autobiography, to describe actions which involved resisting family pressure; (iii) in his writings on village democracy through a system of panchayats where he used it to describe the non-violent enforcement of law by a local police force; and (iv) in Hind Swaraj together with his commentary upon the Bhagavad Gita where it was deployed as a synonym for non-violent spiritualized struggle of absolutely any kind.8 This poses at least two kinds of problem. The first concerns ambiguity. The second concerns the explicitness of Gandhi’s appeal to spirituality rather than to purely secular norms. In short, should animal rights supporters really want to have anything at all to do with language which suggests that there can be a ‘spiritual’ dimension to political action or to human life as a whole? I will suggest that there are three obvious considerations which might lead us to permit such a move. Firstly, talk of what is spiritual may involve no commitment to articulated systems of religion and/ or belief in the supernatural. Indeed, it is often one of the motivations behind talk about the spiritual life of agents that it connects up with familiar and deep human aspirations while taking the place of imagery which outstrips broadly naturalistic bounds. There are certain contexts in which talk about the spiritual dimension of dissent seems to capture its deep psychological and emotional impact upon political agents. Secondly, at least some political activists who are involved in the ecology and animal rights movements do regard their actions as having a spiritual dimension or would probably assent to such a view if they were ever to be asked about this matter. Finally, perhaps the inclusion of such talk in any analysis of contemporary patterns of activism is simply non-optional. Perhaps we can no 8 The most obscure of these contexts is that of Gandhi’s writing on panchayats. For satyagraha as a potential form of police control in the context of his idea of panchayati raj, see ‘My Idea of Village Swaraj’, Harijan, 26/7/1942. For an account of the panchayat system in his writings, see Milligan (2016), chapter 8.

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longer exclude such talk from the political domain out of a sense of realpolitik or the secularization of discourse. As late as the 1970s or even around 1980, it may have seemed that society was becoming progressively secularized and the systematic exclusion of religious and quasi-religious terminology from political discussions may have seemed viable or (in the case of Marxist analysis) compulsory. The criticisms of such a secularization thesis are, however, too well established to repeat in any detail. Suffice it to say that the theory depended both upon a particular way of reading the data and upon a flawed model of what religious and spiritual commitment involved. A change of practices was understood one-sidedly by appeal to the disappearance of old forms of spiritual commitment without sufficient attention being paid to the arising of new forms of such commitment. Rather than harking back to outmoded forms of political practice, appeals to the spiritual (or indeed to religion, understood in terms of some discrete tradition) now encounter the rather different problem of meshing in a suitable way with political liberalism, and particularly the liberalism which has shaped the rights literature. Especially so given that spiritual commitment is something about which reasonable agents may clearly disagree and, from a liberal point of view, where such disagreement is possible legislative compulsion is ordinarily deemed inappropriate. Even if a place can be found for religious and spiritual terminology, seeking legislative change while appealing to a discourse of spirituality may still seem to be either the wrong way to go about matters, or else it may require translation into other, more secular, terms that are capable of securing agreement (in which case we may wonder why the non-secular language was necessary in the first place). Accordingly, nothing that I have to offer will ultimately disarm the determined opponent of such language. And so, a background dispute about this remains open. But to try and avoid such a dispute being conducted upon the basis of a misunderstanding I will attempt, briefly, to clarify what I am and am not attempting to explore. I am, above all, interested in an issue of conceptual space. Satyagraha occupies a certain conceptual territory and, even if we happen to dislike the term, perhaps we would still need a concept

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that performs at least some of the same functions if we are to grasp all of the salient dimensions of political activism. Conversely, I am not interested in suggesting that the concept of satyagraha can come to play a role which is already played, far more effectively, more frequently, and more publicly, by the concept of civil disobedience, even if the latter does stand in need of some revision and reconfiguration. The advantage of couching matters in terms which are different from Gandhi, by favouring ‘civil disobedience’ on many occasions to ‘satyagraha’ are obvious. Agents who may not happen to share our political sympathies or level of political engagement readily understand that claims of civil disobedience are claims of special standing; they are claims of an entitlement to tolerant response. By contrast, except in India and perhaps one or two other countries (Brazil being one), satyagraha is an insiders’ term.9 It is used only by those who are ‘in the know’, by those who are familiar with the relevant literature or the relevant historical traditions. Nonetheless, activists often fall within this grouping and when they claim or are told that a protest is akin to satyagraha this may help to shape their view of the protest in question, and (if I am right) it may do so in an illuminating manner. But it will only do so if the concept of satyagraha is itself sufficiently determinate to be informative. And here the concern about ambiguity returns. Nathuram Godse, Gandhi’s assassin and also now something of a cult figure for radical Hindus, notoriously argued during his trial that ‘satyagraha’ meant whatever Gandhi wanted it to mean at any particular point in time and that nobody else could pin it down. In response, it may be conceded that Gandhi was indeed vague and imprecise (faults which he did not always tolerate in others). But this need not lead us to overlook the dominant sense of the concept, one which associates a type of action with ahimsa, thereby with spirituality and more precisely with 9 The term is known widely enough in India for Prakash Jha’s 2013 film Satyagraha to use it as the film’s title. The term ‘satyagraha’ is known in Brazil because of a major anti-corruption operation that took place there between 2004 and 2008, ‘Operação Satiagraha’. Thanks go to Gabriel Garmendia for pointing out the currency of the term in Brazil.

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non-violence and, in Gandhi’s revised and supercharged sense of ahimsa, with a readiness for sacrifice. Does this still retain a certain ambiguity? Up to a point yes. But here we may defend such ambiguity in more general terms as a matter of preserving the ‘open texture’ of at least some moral and political concepts. Such openness of texture allows that there is always more to be said, and more to be learned in the disclosure of the truth, a point about such concepts which is familiar from various philosophical traditions (and from Gandhi’s own account of how concepts may be developed).10 Not all ambiguity places us in a semantic abyss. What is needful is only that a concept be sufficiently determinate to perform a useful role and with regard to satyagraha this seems to be the case. If I were to suggest for example, that a particular action of animal rescue or protest over the treatment of nonhuman animals is an instance of satyagraha, I would presumably be suggesting that it has distinctive features that mark it out as different from sabotage or from deeds which are carried out in a spirit of hatred, or which are carried out without appeal to the conscience of the other. One point about familiar types of animal rights activism automatically follows from this claim: what is known as ‘open rescue’ may be a candidate for being an instance of satyagraha, or satyagraha-like, while covert rescue as described in idealized terms above is not.

10.2 Open Rescue So far the idea of the kind of open rescue that is a candidate for being satyagraha or satyagraha-like has been a little imprecise, set up by means of a contrast of exemplars. We may, while not removing all ambiguity, be a little clearer. By ‘open rescue’ I mean action which satisfies the criteria for animal rescue more generally and

10 Milligan (2014), p.288 considers Gandhi’s attitude towards the open texture of concepts in Gandhi’s commentary on the Gita and his readiness to extend and modify their sense.

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satisfies an additional constraint. The criteria for animal rescue I take to be the following: (1) Removing nonhuman animals from the threat of serious harm by humans. (2) Doing so for the sake of the animals themselves. (3) Apparent illegality in the form of trespass, unauthorized entry, and property seizure. (4) Little or no sabotage of equipment and infrastructure. Such rescue can be open or covert. The additional constraint which renders it open is: (5) The manner of the rescue or actions taken in its aftermath deliberately make the action (and, in particular, the identity of some key participants) known to the authorities and available for public scrutiny. In the light of this, we may allow that there will be marginal cases and that the boundaries between such open rescue and covert rescue are not absolute. Open rescue is not comprehensively open, and covert rescue is not comprehensively covert. In the former, openness may come after the action and not all participants may be identified; in the latter, there is often accompanying publicity. Nonetheless, in the case of open rescue, the media and/or authorities and/or animal owners may be alerted during or after the rescue, and some participants make no attempt to disguise their identities. Masks may sometimes be worn while rescuers are, for example, in chicken sheds, but this is often only a temporary measure, adopted for health reasons rather than primarily as a means of identity concealment (although an element of the latter may enter in). Even so, a partial identity disclosure is normal, and arrest followed by a court case is a familiar outcome. Unless you depart from Gandhi and adhere to the anthropocentric claim that there can only be civil disobedience over matters that concern human interests (a point suggested, if not definitively committed to by John Rawls and rejected by various Rawlsians such as Mark Rowlands), or unless you again depart from Gandhi and hold that there can only be civil disobedience when the direct target is the state rather than a private

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corporation (the view of civil disobedience associated with the preRawlsian Civil Rights era account of Hugo Bedau), there seems to be no good reason to reject the claim that open rescue, as defined above, genuinely is an instance of civil disobedience (or, that it qualifies ‘all other things being equal’).11 Or at least that is the case with the paradigmatic form of open rescue pioneered during the 1990s by Animal Liberation Victoria, practised by a variety of organizations in Australia and New Zealand, associated with the prominent animal rights activist Patty Mark, and transplanted (with varying degrees of success, and more often failure, to North America and Europe) from 1999 onwards.12 The guiding rationale for action of this sort was the deliberate attempt to shift away from the imagery which had become (somewhat misleadingly) associated with covert rescue, as practised by the ALF. While the latter are clear about their opposition to any harm to persons, ALF activists endorse, and from time to time have deliberately embraced, non-minimal damage to property and an imagery of combat clothing, balaclavas and animals held protectively across the chest like combat rifles. In part, this is a hangover from an idealization of the terrorist as the truly determined freedom fighter in the 1970s left in Europe and the United States. The ALF emerged at precisely the point when the (sizeable) revolutionary left in Europe had entered a terminal crisis and when terrorist groupings (such as the Palestine Liberation Organisation in the Middle East, Baader-Meinhof in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, and the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland) seemed to offer more than the conventional social democratic parties, such as the Labour Party in the United Kingdom (which was in power and increasingly unpopular at the time of the ALF formation). The imagery, if not the substance of the determined freedom fighter was adopted with results

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Rawls (1999), Rowlands (2009), and Bedau (1961) give a sense of what happens to the concept of civil disobedience when it is modelled too closely upon some current form of dissent, such as the civil rights movement (in Bedau’s case) or the protests over the Vietnam War (in Rawls’ case). Rowlands rescues Rawls from some of his more unfortunate formulations, but it is by no means obvious that what we are left with is really Rawls. 12 Milligan (2013), pp.118–120 describes the beginnings of Open Rescue in Australia and of its dissemination overseas.

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which have been, in the long term, deemed disastrous. It has become too easy to vilify non-violent activists as violent extremists. In the decade following an initial rescue at Alpine Farm in 1993, the practice of open rescue was refined and given some roots by appeal to Gandhi, to civil disobedience, and, from time to time, by appeal to satyagraha. According to Patty Mark, who in this stretch of text strengthens the connection to satyagraha (itself a fused term) by joining ‘open rescue’ into a single word, “Openrescue is an act of peaceful civil disobedience that involves breaking laws in order to give aid and rescue to individuals who are neglected and in peril. It is also all about opening – whether it’s a door, a gate, a cage or a mindset”. Here we have, similarly to Gandhi, a combined emphasis both upon rescue and upon the transformative freeing of the witnessing public and/or the political agents themselves (a step in the direction of what Gandhi referred to as swaraj, a positive rather than negative conception of freedom). The driving imperative is that “innocent lives are at risk, individuals who are defenseless or unable to help themselves. To be an Openrescue activist one’s passion for justice and nonviolence must override fear. Fear of breaking unjust ‘laws’ and the consequences to oneself that may follow. Though Openrescue may involve incarceration, there is an unparalleled sense of freedom when one steps up to help someone else who is imprisoned, tormented, tortured, abused, sick or dying” (Patty Mark, quoted in Milligan, 2013, p.119). My suggestion here is not that ‘open rescue’ is necessarily the way forward for the animal rights movement. At the moment, it probably is not. In Europe and America, the publicity surrounding rescues has tended to be negative or at least dismissive. Rather, the suggestion is that this kind of rescue opened up a certain kind of space, a way of doing things which was (at least in Australia) successful in portraying itself in a positive light as far as the public in general were concerned, while various other forms of protest have failed to do so. That being said, over time, some very clear limitations have emerged with the upshot that open rescue has never entirely displaced covert rescue, and its peak may now be coming to an end. The key problems are, firstly, that open rescue can result, all too quickly, in court cases which can take activists out of service through imprisonment or (often more damaging) monopolize time and resources which might be better spent in other ways. Secondly, activism of this sort is

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ordinarily unsuitable for the rescue of lab animals. The latter, unlike commercial breeding hens and comparable animals, often constitute an investment of time and money. While animals openly rescued may not be worth retrieving, lab animals are. Open rescue then makes recovery too easy. For this reason, what has emerged is not so much a displacement of covert rescue by open rescue as a division of labour between the two, with different sorts of establishments (labs on the one hand, parts of the food chain on the other) being targeted. Finally, open rescue has tended (as Gandhian protest generally does) to emphasize the role of individual leading activists such as Patty Mark. The anonymity of covert rescue is, in some ways, more in keeping with the horizontalist, egalitarian antileader ethos which has been increasingly favoured within the politics of dissent since the emergence of the anti-capitalist movement of 1999–2001 and subsequently in the Occupy Movement of 2011. This may not be a matter of concern to everyone who sympathizes with animal rescue, but it is a concern of activists who often come from a left-wing political milieu within which socialist and anarchist ideas are prominent. The anti-elitist worry may, however, be the weakest of the concerns set out above, given the recent development of populist parties out of the Occupy Movement, with the role of radical political leader again reaffirmed. (A circumstance repeated in the United States during the unexpectedly effective campaign of Bernie Sanders to secure the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination, a campaign which was itself targeted by a more traditional form of disruptive animal rights protest in its final stages.) It may be that the anti-leader ethos of the Occupy Movement registered only a temporary political shift that the animal rights movement ought to be cautious about following. Alternatively, it may be the shape of things to come.

10.3 Some Qualifications But why, when we have the concept of civil disobedience ready to hand, would we want to, even if only sometimes and in very specific contexts, think of open rescue, and perhaps also of some other protests, in the light of the concept of satyagraha? One obvious reason for doing so is that

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it may sometimes not be enough to appeal to a protest as civil disobedience. Or, regarding a protest as an instance of civil disobedience simpliciter may either reshape our understanding of the protest in problematic ways or else it may reshape our understanding of civil disobedience in ways that are equally problematic (drawing our understanding of the latter towards its most demanding instances and generating a tendency to regard anything less as something other than the real thing). In short, drawing a satyagraha/civil disobedience contrast allows us to separate out a more demanding form of protest (which will still qualify as civil disobedience) from civil disobedience in general. The requirements for the latter may then be understood as significantly less stringent than is sometimes supposed, such that even some instances of covert animal rescue (without the spraying on walls, gratuitous damage, or threats) may perhaps qualify. However, this move of contrasting civil disobedience and satyagraha or satyagraha-like activism can only be done at the expense of sacrificing a strict adherence to Gandhi’s own two-branch approach which makes all genuine instances of civil disobedience automatically instances of satyagraha, a move which may ask too much of any large political movement. Elsewhere (Milligan, 2013) I have advanced a view of civil disobedience that runs broadly along these lines, an account which stresses that protests do not have to be idealized in order to be civil disobedience. While qualifying the Gandhian account, it is also strongly continuous with its pragmatic strand. At times, when civil disobedience is in question, there is a clear doubling of his discourse, an association with ‘civility’ rather than with spirituality and love. Civil disobedience may then be understood as action that is expressive of a special virtue of civility (which may still appear too demanding, although it works well with Gandhi’s texts) or else as action that conforms to a number of basic civil norms such as respect for others, the attempt to avoid violence, the refusal to engage in hate speech, and the avoidance of reckless endangerment. (The latter will, of course, rule out certain cases of animal rescue of whatever sort from laboratories when it introduces some serious biohazard or where there is a danger of harm to the animals themselves because of the systems which happen to be in place.) Another side of the same coin is that, at least sometimes, we will want to describe an action as one which expresses something closer to the

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highest available standards of consideration for others while still causing them inconvenience and perhaps involving various sorts of unwelcome public exposure of faults. Perhaps, in cases such as open rescue, an appeal to satyagraha could perform this task in ways that are in fact more effective than any appeal to civil disobedience alone. And if we do not have the concept of satyagraha to fall back upon, we may still want to have a concept that plays this role or which (figuratively) occupies the same conceptual space by helping us to identify what sits beyond civil disobedience. One point in favour of sticking with satyagraha is that we can readily distinguish between saying that a protest is an instance of civil disobedience and claiming that it is an instance of satyagraha, in a way which does not leave either normatively impoverished. In a more analytic idiom, an agent, who by φ-ing engages in civil disobedience or satyagraha, is entitled to tolerant response in both cases, but they are automatically due to actual admiration only in the latter case. Where admiration can never be automatic, because of the nature of the cause, perhaps we might also want to say that it simply cannot qualify as satyagraha. And here we are very close to the original Gandhian sense in which only struggles for the truth will qualify (a demand which is far too stringent for civil disobedience). For example, we might think of forms of dissent over matters of animal ethics which we might not actually agree with such as protest over fox hunting. Certain kinds of largely non-violent and civil protests of the latter sort (but not hunting itself because of the latter’s violent aim) might qualify as civil disobedience. But they could never count as being satyagraha or satyagrahalike. In order for the latter concept to be so inclusive, it would have to become semantically unmoored, radically cut off from its original sense. By contrast, to help round out the conceptual picture of demandingness ranging from claims of satyagraha, civil disobedience and direct action, an agent whose action of φ-ing is considered under a description of ‘direct action’ is not necessarily entitled even to tolerant response.13 The latter is the kind of activity that both political saints and fascists might engage in to

The concept of ‘direct action’ originates within the early twentieth-century anarcho-syndicalist movement. For a brief overview of its development, see Carter (2005), pp.6–7.

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promote their respective causes. This is not, of course, a point against direct action (which was, after all, a key description used by Martin Luther King Jr. for activities by the civil rights movement in the United States). Rather it is not so much about the activities it is used to describe but about the normativity of the concept itself. When we are told that something is an instance of direct action, we have been told very little about how sympathetically we ought to look upon it. Perhaps we have been told that the participants have a certain kind of determination to do more than talk, but we have been told little more. Even so, two considerations, when they combine, might lead us to wonder whether open animal rescue really is akin to satyagraha in quite the sense that is set out here. After all, as noted at the outset, Gandhi chose the term ‘satyagraha’ precisely because the concept of satya connects truth and love. And this may be a connection too far. My point here is not that Gandhi was wrong to suggest that the concept of love can be politicized in various ways: Plato, Aristotle, Tolstoy, and a variety of contemporary thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Martha Nussbaum, have all made the same plausible claim, and it is one that I have defended in a qualified sense on various occasions.14 Rather, my point is that it may seem too much of a stretch to politicize love in quite the way that Gandhi attempted, a way that seems to require us to love adversaries who may simply not be deserving of such a response. Unless we are committed to some manner of agapic loving concern which extends to all beings, to love such agents would not be to align ourselves with truth but with a delusion about their merits. In line with this, perhaps we may credit open rescuers with incredulity at the cruelty of humans or a controlled and channelled anger at the callous actions of others but crediting them with love for their enemies, or requiring that they show such love, is an altogether different matter. I will take it that such a loving attitude is extremely uncommon and not at all typical of what shapes and is expressed by open rescue. 14 For a politicization of love in the concept of the debate over animal citizenship, see Milligan (2015) which is non-committal about whether citizenship is the right concept but argues that one of the classic Aristotelian barriers to citizenship can be removed, i.e. requirement that we regard others as potential recipients of love by some member of our political community.

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Yet, this may not be decisive. On the one hand, the requirements for love in the sense that Gandhi had in mind may be stronger than ahimsa on a minimalist reading, but they may not be much stronger than a combination of compassion and benevolence. Or the true object of love may be humanity or sentient beings in a more collective sense. And whether or not we want to regard this as love, in any proper sense, it was something that was well within the reach of some of Gandhi’s supporters and may similarly be within the reach of those who engage in open rescue. Or, more cautiously, it may be within the reach of open rescuers to much the same extent as it was within the reach of those agents who were once described by Gandhi (accurately or otherwise) as satyagrahis. They too will practice ahimsa in a non-minimal sense; they will be doing more than keeping a resolve ‘to avoid hitting anyone today’. Or, on a more constructive account, the actions in question may be of a sort that promotes such a response to the other, irrespective of the best intentions of protestors to remain angry and capable of certain sorts of aggression. This may avoid some of the empirical problems concerning the actual, and presumably quite mixed, motivations of agents who engage in open rescue for only short periods of time, as well as avoiding the dangers of an elitist understanding of satyagraha such that only the leaders of a movement need be satyagrahis while others may be motivated as they please (a problem that Gandhi never quite escaped from). On the other hand, we may feel that suspicions about an association of love and truth emerge out of a suspicion about emotion and affectivity more generally. More specifically, a legacy of the eighteenth-century contrast between reason and the passions that repeatedly surfaces in political philosophy with the elite cast in the role of the reason agents holding the passions of the masses in check. In line with this, perhaps animal advocacy and the case for animal rights has, for historical reasons, been couched too much in terms which are hostile to the affective or emotional dimensions of political engagement and, more specifically, that too much ground has been given to the charge that affective attitudes are sentimental. The model for presentation has, rather too often (and also rather oddly

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given the desire for popular impact), been analytic ethics of a deontological or utilitarian sort, with a distinctive 1970s flavour, before the latter’s re-evaluation of emotions as partly cognitive responses. Drawing a connection, then, to satyagraha may be a way of affirming a more inclusive attitude towards emotions of a sort that we typically find both admirable and disclosive of how the world is. As such, it may accord well with an ‘affective turn’ in animal rights.15

10.4 Conclusion Where this leaves us is with a story about affectivity, demandingness, the need for a rich conceptual repertoire, and multiple ways of describing one and the same set of events. The fact that it is also a story about the imagery of the spiritual, or about protest which may be described in terms that draw upon religiosity, may then seem less threatening because such a description is only available and is not forced. It is not the only way to describe the actions in question. What matters seems to be a sense of the demandingness which we are trying to capture in relation to a kind of dissent in which yajna (or sacrifice for the sake of the other) plays a major role. And while this may help us to characterize the distinctiveness of open rescue, or at least open rescue as practised by those whose identities are actually disclosed, it is by no means restricted to this form of dissent. Sacrifice (with all of the special and compassionate connotations of the latter, which draws admiration from opponents in a way that few animal rights protests have ever done), may take other and unanticipated forms. And in each case, some illuminating connection to Gandhian satyagraha may be drawn.16 15

For the affective turn, see Aaltola (2015). Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the Society for Applied Philosophy Annual Conference, University of Zurich, June 2013; and at the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT) workshop on animals and political theory in September 2014. Thanks go to Steve Cooke, Gabriel Garmendia, John Hadley, and Andrew Woodhall for improving comments. 16

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Bibliography Aaltola, E., 2015. The Rise of Sentimentalism and Animal Philosophy. In E. Aaltola & J. Hadley, eds., Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Bedau, H., 1961. On Civil Disobedience. The Journal of Philosophy, 58(21), pp. 653–665. Best, S. & Nocella, A., 2004. Terrorists or Freedom Fighters: Reflections on the Liberation of Animals. New York: Lantern. Carter, A., 2005. Direct Action and Democracy Today. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gandhi, M. K., 1996. Selected Political Writings. D. Dalton, ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Gandhi, M. K., 2007. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Trans., M. Desai. London: Penguin. Gandhi, M. K., 2009. Hind Swaraj and Other Writings. A. L. Parel, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mann, K., 2009. From Dusk ‘til Dawn: An Insider’s View of the Growth of the Animal Liberation Front. Voice of the Voiceless Communications. Mark, P., 2003. Opening Doors and Eyes to Animal Suffering. The Abolitionist, 15. Milligan, T., 2013. Civil Disobedience: Protest, Justification and the Law. London: Bloomsbury. Milligan, T., 2014. Civility and Politicized Love in Gandhi. Religions of South Asia, 8(3), pp. 285–300. Milligan, T., 2015. The Politicization of Animal Love. In E. Aaltola & J. Hadley, eds., Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Milligan, T., 2016. The Next Democracy? The Possibility of Popular Control. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Newkirk, I., 2000. Free the Animals: The Amazing Story of the Animal Liberation Front. New York: Lantern. Parekh, B., 1989. Gandhi’s Political Philosophy. Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan. Rawls, J., 1999. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rowlands, M., 2009. Animal Rights: Moral Theory and Practice. Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan. Skhlar, J., 1984. Ordinary Vices. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Tony Milligan is a teaching fellow in ethics and the philosophy of religion with the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London. His specialism is the ethics and politics of the other (other people, beings, places, and structures). Publications include The Next Democracy? (2016), Animal Ethics: The Basics (2015), Civil Disobedience: Protest, Justification and the Law (2013), Love (2011), Beyond Animal Rights (2010), and Nobody Owns the Moon (2015) as well as co-edited volumes on Love and its Objects (2014) and The Ethics of Space Exploration (2016).

11 Shame: From Defensive Fury to Epistemological Shifts and Political Change Elisa Aaltola

“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed” Jonathan Swift

Shame is frequently deemed to be a powerful moral emotion. Efforts to alter immoral behaviour often revolve around eliciting shame, as both the behaviour and the wrongdoer are depicted as reprehensible, even disgraceful. This belief in the primacy of shame is evident in moral education, as already children are told to be “ashamed” of acts viewed to be morally corrupt, and it is equally evident in other everyday, lived moral interactions, as “shame” is repeatedly referred to when discussing issues related to moral wrongs and blame. Most importantly, shame is a moral emotion that is frequently raised in the context of political campaigning – indeed, shame is perhaps nowhere as obvious as in the E. Aaltola (*) Department of Social Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland e-mail: elanaa@utu.fi © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_11

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public, societal realm, where various political instances are depicting others as “shameful”, and where “shame” implies both moral and political culpability. This is also evident in the context of animal liberation and advocacy, where the act of shaming is, even if often inadvertent and unintentional, yet frequent. Here, shaming can be both explicit and implicit. When it comes to explicit shaming, slogans such as “shame on you!”, common in animal rights demonstrations – throwing paint on a fur wearer or pointing one out on the street with a portable signpost, naming farming companies that have been revealed to treat nonhuman creatures sadistically, or publicising images of trophy hunters online – are just some among the various instances of explicit shame instigation. Implicit shaming, on the other hand, is often unintended and much less noticeable, but also abundantly more prominent. The form of vegan outreach, which draws (often subtle) links between social identity and wrongdoing, works as one example – here, it is discourse accentuating the moral issues related to not only the act of using other animals but also (and even primarily) the ontology of being the “type” of a human person who uses other animals, which may result in shame. Thereby, shame appears to stand at the epicentre of not only everyday moral discourse but also political campaigning, including animal liberation advocacy. The questions that emerge are what shame comprises of, and whether evoking it is a fruitful way to seek moral and political change. Is shame a productive moral emotion, or does it merely spark the sort of defensive action that only solidifies the status quo? This chapter explores these questions in the context of animal advocacy – a term here taken to mean any activism or scholarly work aimed at animal liberation. It will be argued that shame is one of the most understudied moral factors in animal liberation, and an emotion that holds often a pivotal, dual, and contradictory role in both deterring people from veganism and inviting them to embrace it.

11.1 Guilt and Shame “Shame” is a concept often confused with another moral emotion, guilt. Yet, there are important differences between the two, which help our way towards defining both the meaning of shame and its moral potential.

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In literature, guilt is usually defined as an other-directed emotion, concerned with how one’s actions affect others – in a state of guilt, our emotion is directed towards those whom we may have harmed. Guilt is also principally internal, and hence concerns how the moral agent herself evaluates her own actions, not how others deem them. A guilt-ridden person will thereby undergo guilt for also those misdeeds that nobody noticed, for what suffices is that she herself knows her own wrongdoing. Finally, guilt is spurred on by norm violations, and thereby takes place, when we note that we have broken specific moral principles or values, the validity of which we accept. Shame, on the other hand, is self-directed and revolves around one’s self-identity, social status, or public image. A person undergoing shame is thereby concerned with – not the welfare of her victims – but how others evaluate her own “self”. Shame is also anchored on social responses rather than on internal evaluation, and hence it arises even when the person herself does not acknowledge any wrongdoing or does not personally evaluate her own actions negatively – it is enough that others see her in a negative light (indeed, her shame can be constituted solely by how others deem her actions). Lastly, instead of external norm violations, shame stems from a failure in core values related to identity. An ashamed individual does not necessarily feel that she has broken any moral principles, but rather that she has failed values revolving around identity and the “self” – she has failed, not primarily in moral conduct, but as a person. Therefore, whereas guilt is otherdirected, internal and based on norm violations, shame is self-directed, social, and based on identity violations (Allpress, et al., 2014; Gausel & Leach, 2011; see also Berthoz, et al., 2006). Most significantly, guilt concerns the content of our morality, the norms and values we follow (or fail to follow), and shame is related to identity, how the “self” is evaluated. Therefore, to continue the list of distinctions, guilt is related to specific acts, and it is perceived to serve a positive function in motivating one to review those acts – guilt is thereby associated, for instance, with a specific act of lying, and pushes one towards honesty. This means that guilt is both precise and reparatory, aimed at restitution and eradication of moral misgivings. Shame, on the other hand, is related to the self, rather than acts, for it concerns the

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whole of the self, not the specific actions that the self takes, and is thereby “global” rather than “local”.1 As a result of its global nature, it is rarely – according to this interpretation – reparatory or aimed at modifying one’s acts towards a more morally sound direction (the reason for this is simple: shame concerns the whole of the self rather than acts, and one cannot change the whole of the self) (Allpress, et al., 2014). What is worse, shame is often defined as an emotion with negative moral outcomes, for it tends to ignite various defensive behaviours, from avoidance (evading those, in whose eyes one feels shame) to denial (denying that there is anything shameful in one’s actions) (Allpress, et al., 2014; Sheikh & JanoffBulman, 2010). As has been summarised: “Shame leads people to defensively protect their self-image from further harm by hiding, avoidance, and withdrawal” (Gausel & Leach, 2011, p.468). At worst, shame may spark wholly unsocial behaviours, such as complete withdrawal, hostility, and even violence, as the defences of the person undergoing shame come to full flame (Ibid). Shame is, according to this construal, thereby a morally destructive emotion. It pushes people towards defensive positions, where they 1) seek to avoid those who criticise them; 2) become irrationally prone towards denial, as if they could not hear the moral arguments offered to them; 3) withdraw from normative engagement, thereby seeking to cover or hide their ashamed self; and 4) even resort to hostile, angry defences, filled with fury and revenge. Drawing together these defensive outcomes of shame, it has been argued that shame is often met with two responses: 1) rejection, as the ashamed rejects shame by rejecting the values on which it is grounded and the individuals supportive of them (this rejection, again, may entwine with full-blown denial, e.g. “no values were broken”); and 2) overcompensation, by either directing attention to one’s good parts, or lashing out on those, who offer criticism, thereby seeking to place focus on their presumed failings (Klaassen, 2001).2 These responses include For these reasons, shame is perceived as “negative global evaluation”, whereas guilt is “negative local evaluation” (Sheikh & Janoff-Bulman, 2010, p.215). 2 More specifically, it has been suggested that shame leads to four responses: withdrawal, attack self, avoidance, and attack other (Nathanson, cited in Klaassen, 2001). 1

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the various elements mentioned above: rejection includes avoidance, withdrawal, and denial, as one refuses to face the realities of one’s shame; and overcompensation includes hostility, anger, and violence, as one places attention on others rather than oneself. In both, the ashamed has gone into hiding, seeking to cover up his misdoings under layers of deception. As Johann Klaassen posits, both responses may also mask instability and flaws as “eccentricity”, as the ashamed becomes an increasingly odd character, proudly berating the values which he has failed, thus depicting the whole matter as a joke, or rebelliously ridiculing those, who remind him of the moral ideals he is flouting. The consequences of such eccentricity can be extreme, for they can lead into a vicious circle, where the ashamed is escaping his shame under evermore layers of rejection and attack, and thus lets his “self” become affected and warped in the midst of the increasing hostility: “Attack on others slips into paranoia and sadism, avoidance leads to delusion, narcissism, and sociopathy, and attack on self drifts into masochism” (Ibid, p.191). In light of the above, shame appears as a highly destructive moral emotion, and thereby as nothing but harmful from the perspective of political advocacy and animal liberation. Shame is self-directed, and thereby a poor candidate for an emotion that could entice one towards paying closer attention to the moral status of nonhuman animals as “others”. First, it is grounded on social esteem rather than internal reflection, which again does not make it an accommodating basis for reflection on animal ethics, for here the moral element, the desire to morally re-evaluate our actions, remains missing. Second, it revolves around the “self” rather than moral principles, which further undermines its capacity to foster thought on animal ethics. Third, it is global and concerns the whole of the self, rather than specific acts, which means that evoking shame does not support restitutive acts or moral change in how one treats nonhuman animals. Fourth, it is defensive, which suggests that it will only destroy rather than enhance possibilities of animal liberation. Indeed, all these considerations are evident in the context of animal advocacy and vegan outreach. Often animal ethics arguments and the harrowing facts of animal industries are met with – not alertness and

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moral concern – but rather via various reactive behaviours, as the audience may deem the arguments and facts “irritating” or even “offensive” due to the five considerations mentioned previously. First, shame is concerned with the well-being of the self rather than that of others, and thereby directs attention away from the treatment of those others onto the treatment of the self. The standard way to escape shame, within this logic, is self-victimisation: the focus placed on the self is used as a paradoxical getaway from negative attention, as the ashamed declares “What about me?” Hence, many will instantly review, and indeed become preoccupied with, how the arguments and facts concerning animal ethics would affect the “self” – it is perhaps because of this that animal liberation is often deemed as a negative project, something that “demands” a great sacrifice, and ultimately as something that would only infringe on human well-being (the meat-eater may, thereby, react to noting the moral corruptness of her actions by declaring that she will have to prioritise herself, that she will refuse to make “sacrifices” for pigs or cows, and that it would be asking too much from her “self”). That is, as shame focuses attention on the self, it can be twisted into attention on the harm suffered by the self; and in these instances, it simultaneously erases concern for other beings. Paradoxically, the very trigger of shame (noting how one has failed others) becomes the cause of accentuating the self at the cost of those others.3 Second, shame reflects social image rather than morality, and thus where the advocate is seeking to orientate attention towards animal ethics, her audience may read her arguments from the viewpoint of dominant social identities. Here, those identities may also, again paradoxically, offer an escape, and hence one may hide from the social identity disparaged by shame under another identity that eradicates that shame: when shamed for violence towards nonhuman animals, a milk-drinker can, thereby, escape into the realms of, say, “masculine” or “rural” identity. In an anthropocentric society, the variety of social identities, into which zoocentric shame

3

This peculiar logic, again, will do nothing but enhance the dualistic tendencies within anthropocentric worldviews – tendencies, which suggest that instead of choosing “all”, we have to make a competitive choice between “us” and “them”, between “self” and “others”.

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is escaped, are evidently abundant; and as long as internal moral reflection is not adequately encouraged and prioritised over identity, this play with social identities appears to be an even likely (failed) result of animal liberation advocacy, as slogans such as “real men eat meat!” enter the stage and affirm the status quo. Thirdly, and relatedly, since shame is obsessed with the “self” instead of moral principles or values, the meat-eater or the milk-drinker, when evoked to feel shame, will be preoccupied with how the arguments of animal ethics affect her notions of “self”. It is perhaps this which paves the way for the usual if regrettable emphasis of these debates – identity. Instead of concentrating on moral issues, the debate focuses on the identities of the advocates and the identities of those whom the advocates are trying to persuade. The advocates become the targets of ad hominem attacks, as they are labelled as “fanatic”, “self-conceded”, “purist”, “arrogant” or even “terrorists”, and the ones in the grips of shame label their own identities, their own “selves”, with attributes related to “common sense”, “naturalness”, and other justifying features (and, should the advocate want to spark further shame and detach from moral issues altogether, she will retaliate by calling the meat-eater “evil”, etc.). This is one of the key dangers of shame: it can reduce morality into battles between identities as the ashamed seek to reaffirm their own sense of “self” as acceptable and non-affected, with the result that the message of animal liberation is, quite simply, lost. Fourthly, and again relatedly, shame does not direct attention onto specific acts, but instead is global. Therefore, where the advocate hopes to spark reflection on the specific ways of treating other animals, her audience may feel that their whole, global “self” is under attack, that no specific amendments of behaviour would suffice, and that they are undergoing a full-blown attack on their very core being. This may explain why the presumed “impracticality” of the vegan lifestyle is often brought forward, simultaneously as notions of human essence (“humans are carnivores”) are underlined. The rationale behind these claims is simple: the way to react to shame, as a global attack on the self, is to divert focus away from local concerns (amendment of specific acts) by naming them “impossible” and to defend the core or essence of that self. Finally, the notion of animal liberation is met with defensiveness, as both rejection and overcompensation are notoriously evident. Those

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whom the vegan advocate is trying to persuade withdraw from contact, thereby refusing to enter situations, where their choices might come under critical light. Denial is commonplace, as the meat-eaters and the milk-drinkers seek to block out information concerning both the moral and welfare problems related to the use of nonhuman animals – the advocate will repeat time and again her arguments, and yet it is as if they had never been noted. Next to these strategies of rejection, and perhaps most disturbingly, in the midst of overcompensation the leather-wearer or the egg-eater may go on counter-attack, thereby ridiculing the advocate, parodying her arguments and identity, coming out with an arsenal of slights and insults, or with rancour threatening anybody who dares to speak of animal liberation. It is here that shame can ignite violence and lead into advocates being chased down the road or hunt saboteurs being badly beaten. This hostility can reinforce itself, as it sparks further shame, only eradicable by further attacks. Thus the eccentric, narcissistic, ego-orientated, and hostile meat-eater is born, filled with contempt for all those who promote a change in how nonhuman animals are related to, and eager to shout out scornful, mocking tirades at the advocates. For him, the whole thing becomes a bitter, cortisol-inducing, even fist-waving joke, filled with venom and spite. Therefore, shame can act as a wholly counterproductive emotion from the standpoint of political activism, including animal liberation. Instead of inviting change in the actions and behaviours of others, feelings of shame may spark the sort of defensiveness that will bury those others ever deeper into their accustomed ways of behaving. The ashamed person surfaces as a wounded creature, possessed by the need to defend herself either via escaping or via attacking those who have noted her shamefulness. This forms perhaps one of the most significant hurdles in the way of animal liberation: despite the intention of activists and scholars, shame is arguably a common result of advocacy, noticeable in the way in which many do react with withdrawal or hostility to the arguments presented to them. The symptoms of shame are present, and even the gentlest, most well-meaning advocate should consider the possibility that her way of presenting the case for animal liberation is sparking shame, and thereby alienating rather than persuading people.

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But how can we avoid sparking shame, if its causes are often unintentional and unnoted? That is, if even temperate efforts of persuasion cause shame, what is the advocate to do? Here, the difference between proscription and prescription becomes relevant. Proscriptive morality, like the Ten Commandments, emphasises the forbidden. It is based on disallowance or prohibition of given actions (what we should not do), and often uses negative emotions (such as fear of punishment or other unwanted consequences) as an impetus. Prescriptive morality, on the other hand, tells us what we ought to do, and does so via positive means. Rather than disallowing actions, it seeks to encourage them (emphasis being on what we should do); and instead of using negative emotions as an enforcer, it motivates action via approach or reward. Thereby, whereas proscription is wholly negative (its aim is, via negative means, to demotivate), prescription is wholly positive (it aims, via positive means, to motivate).4 Now, whereas prescription is linked to guilt, proscription often implies condemnation and blame, and is therefore linked to shame. Guilt accentuates positive rewards, how one ought to behave, thereby offering incentive and motivation, whereas shame accentuates negative factors, what one ought not to do, thereby signalling blame and omission (Sheikh & Janoff-Bulman, 2010, p.215). The implications are twofold. First, shame can be avoided by concentrating on the positive rather than the negative. Political action for animal liberation ought to, therefore, underscore those things that people can do, rather than those that they ought to refrain from. Whereas currently, veganism is often defined precisely via omissions – the acts that are disallowed (“vegans do not consume animal products”, etc.) – and is thereby quite proscriptive in tone, it could also be defined via placing emphasis on the positive, the actions that are encouraged. The grounds for accomplishing this change are plentiful, as veganism could be termed something that is founded, positively, upon one’s empathy towards other

4

Yet, according to various studies, proscriptive morality has a stronger hold: we fear negative feelings (and thereby unwanted consequences) more, and are hence more ready to avoid given behaviours than we are keen to follow reward and approach (Sheikh & Janoff-Bulman, 2010).

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animals, and on respect for their well-being, integrity, individuality, and life – instead of “I don’t eat animals”, a vegan would declare “I want to see other animals live”. Next to such positive moral acts that signal one’s capacity to enhance the lives of other animals by insisting on the fulfilment of their various freedoms and needs, also positive outcomes could be stressed. One example of this is epistemic richness, the gaining of a new, multifarious outlook on being and moral worth. Therefore, instead of shame, with animal liberation one would become the recipient of a wholly new world, in which next to the human perspective, almost innumerable nonhuman ways of being spark richness, intensity, and colour into one’s existence – that is, instead of simply acknowledging what is human, and thereby inhabiting a rather bland, grey reality, one would suddenly see the reality as a realm filled with an astounding abundancy of forms of life, all worthy of moral consideration. Here, veganism and animal liberation would not be depicted as something that take away from human experience, but rather as matters that immeasurably enrich that experience. Therefore, avoiding shame could be accomplished via a change of discourse away from the negative, towards the positive.5 Second, this turn towards positive discourse and prescription would transform shame into guilt, which – in the light of the above – is precisely what the animal liberationist may wish to happen. Since guilt appears to have much healthier moral outcomes than shame, since it is a morally productive emotion, it might make sense to advocate in ways that induce guilt rather than shame – after all, guilt seems to fit all the requirements that an animal liberationist could hope for from a moral emotion, ranging from moral reflection and other-directedness to the wish to alter one’s behaviour. In short, the animal advocate would ignite guilt with her positive suggestions, and by so doing could potentially be far more efficient in constructing a way towards a less violent world.

5

Arguably, this would benefit nonhuman animals the most, since even if proscription is usually more effective (see the previous footnote), in the nonhuman context there is no fear of punishment, and thus its effectiveness appears quite shaky.

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11.2 Destruction or Construction? Yet, not all are willing to support this negative evaluation of shame. Indeed, shame has also been positioned as a morally productive emotion (see, for instance, Hutchinson, 2008)6 – something that our stubborn tendency to emphasise it in moral pedagogy appears to support. Therefore, it is worthwhile exploring the apparent tension between shame and morality a while longer. Jon Wilson suggests that shame is a fundamentally positive moral emotion, and that its positive merits stem from a simple, if surprising source: its relation to the global “self”. Whereas above, the prominence of the global self was interpreted to mean that shame fosters unhealthy, reactive moral responses, Wilson argues that, on the contrary, since most wish to create a positive image of themselves, shame only pushes them to alter their behaviour – precisely because we wish for the image concerning our “selves” to be affirmative, shame will spur reconstructive action. He goes so far as to suggest that shame is more constructive than guilt, for guilt offers us the chance to hide behind specific rules or norms, whereas shame requires one to evaluate oneself, one’s own constitution. Thereby, Wilson stands quite radically against the common understanding of shame, outlined above (and brought forward in various cultures). Precisely because shame concerns the whole of the self as perceived by others, there is nowhere to hide, no laws, conventions, or regulations, which one could use as a cover, and for this same reason, the ashamed will want to make an amend to reconfigure her behaviour (Wilson, 2001). Particularly the notion that the social identity related to shame may have positive moral outcomes deserves closer attention. When approached from the perspective of meta-ethics, the social dimension has obvious relevance – there is no purely “internal” morality. One claim is that the impact which societal realms have on value constitution is not

6

According to the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, shame preserves communal hierarchies: it maintains norms, whereas guilt fosters prosocial interactions (Haidt, 2003). Yet, of course, it needs to be questioned whether communal hierarchies are needed.

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only factual (values are socially imbedded) but also normative (values should be affected by the social). Indeed, erasing the social would be catastrophic, and at worst would plunge us into an ultra-Nietzschean state, where “morality” is reduced to the solipsistic, even narcissistic enactment of our personal will. Therefore, and opposing this asocial caricature, the moral agent also takes into account how others perceive both the world and herself and wishes to better her own understanding via a continuous engagement with those others. Here, the Aristotelian notion of morality as an essentially social affair emerges as poignant, as the moral agent becomes “moral” precisely via a constant, reflective dialogue with others and the polis. This social dimension of morality also sets the context for the moral relevance of social image and the potential constructiveness of shame. We should concern ourselves with how others perceive us, for moral growth is grounded on dialogue and feedback – and to suggest we should not, may amount to nothing but Nietzschean egoism. Approached from this viewpoint, shame, with its tendency to emphasise social evaluations, may serve nothing less than a pivotal moral function. Therefore, shame may be a morally positive emotion after all, precisely due to the way in which it accentuates the social dimension, and reminds us that we ought to listen to others, and even alter our behaviour on account of how those others perceive us. The purely internal reflection associated with guilt would not suffice, for we need social feedback, even social criticism, in order to sustain moral agency as something other than a solipsistic adventure. This is a topic that also Cheshire Calhoun explores, as he depicts shame as a sign of nothing less than moral maturity – shame is required for the type of moral growth that signals one’s capacity to learn from social response. Thereby, like Wilson, he suggests that shame has positive potential (Calhoun, 2004). In order to probe deeper into this potential, yet a further distinction is required. Indeed, Calhoun is not indiscriminate with shame and instead argues that shame can be rested on two quite distinct foundations. First, shame may be based on one’s own estimation of oneself (failing one’s own standards). Here, we fall short of our personal moral reflection, and even if the whole of the society deemed us as morally pure, we would still be engulfed with shame – that is, this form of shame is not primarily

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societal. Second, shame may be grounded on an external, social estimation (failing the standards of others). In such instances, it is the societal rather than the personal that surfaces as the defining factor, as we feel shame in the eyes of others even when in our own normative estimation, no harm was done (Ibid). Often only the latter aspect is emphasised, as shame is frequently positioned as an intrinsically and primarily social phenomenon. Yet, as Calhoun reminds us, shame may be more varied as an emotion than suggested by this standard analysis, and – in its most productive form – shares with guilt the latter’s emphasis on personal, moral assessment. Therefore, what surfaces is a notion of shame, which is inclusive of both social evaluation and personal reflection. Indeed, Calhoun argues that shame can be morally mature, when it combines personal reflection with social mindfulness (Ibid). Morally mature shame revolves around self-estimation, but is not wholly grounded on it, and instead also requires that the agent is aware of the social dimension, and thereby ready to reflect on the norms and values offered by other agents and the society at large. She does not merely follow her own will, as if she existed as an atomistic island, independently of others, purely flowing with the assertions of her own ego, but also takes into consideration how others view her, how the values and norms manifested in her actions appear to other individuals. Thereby, moral maturity cannot be found from reducing shame to the personal level, as if all that mattered in moral realms was how we deem ourselves, how the mirror reflects our own image. The social dimension evident in shame is, for this reason, a positive feature – something which the standard depiction of shame fails to notice. Yet, Calhoun points out that it would be catastrophic to eradicate the relevance of the personal level, and to reduce everything to the social: quite evidently, it would be exceedingly immature to be ashamed of whatever social opinion estimates as shameful, and this explicates how pivotal also personal reflection, not only on oneself but also on the social opinions that continually bombard us, is (Ibid). Again, this is meta-ethically quite obvious, for if we do not reflect, from our own personal perspective, on the validity of social norms and values, morality is as equally jeopardised as it is when the social is wholly

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replaced by the self. Here, instead of following the whims of the ego, we wholly uncritically follow the whims of social opinion, thus reducing morality into utter, mindless conservatism.7 In this combination between personal evaluation and social feedback, it is the fact that norms and values are shared (rather than pushed upon us by society), which arises as the key factor. When the personal and the social entwine, given normative considerations surface as mutual, and it is here where the foundation of shame is located: “Shame has more to do with our sharing a moral practice with others than it does with accepting another’s criticism” (Ibid, p.141). Thereby, we do not merely follow internal or external criticism, but rather a mixture of both, via seeking to internalise only those socially produced values and norms that we can, on a personal level, endorse. Calhoun argues that shame is dependent upon such a shared view of moral practice, for only those normative elements, which touch on both the personal and the social, are capable of sparking shame: “Within a shared practice of morality, those whose criticisms express a representative viewpoint have the power to shame” (Ibid, p.143). It is precisely this shared dimension of morality, this mutuality of values, which produces constructive shame. Merging together Wilson and Calhoun, the positive stance on shame depicts shame as a state founded upon norm or value violations that both the society and the agent herself deem as such, and as a state that urges us to alter our “selves” towards a direction that corrects these violations. We note, personally, the validity of the social standards that ignite our shame, and we, due to shame’s painfulness,8 often fervently wish to better ourselves. It is on these grounds that shame becomes a moral motivator and an element of

The social is required for shame particularly, because shame concerns notions of “identity”, strongly linked to the social realm (Calhoun, 2004). Thereby, it is only when one has a moral identity, constructed also on societal foundations, that one becomes capable of being shamed. 8 Shame may be a defensive mode of behaviour, but it also a painful one. Indeed, a common claim is that shame is far more painful than guilt. Guilt implies potential restitution via simply amending one’s specific behaviour, whereas shame implies that one’s whole self is ruined, with perhaps no possibility of amendment (as suggested above, how could one alter one’s whole being?), and it is here that the latter’s agonising potential is argued to stem from (Sheikh & Janoff-Bulman, 2010). 7

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moral maturity and growth. Here, the relevance of reflection ought to be highlighted. Whereas Williams and Calhoun simply refer to the acceptance of social or shared values, it ought to be reflection that underlies that acceptance – that is, it should not be whatever values we happen to have internalised as “shared” that spark morally mature shame, but instead values that we have assessed and examined. Indeed, it is only via reflection on one’s own normative outlook and that of the surrounding society that the two can form a meaningful whole and offer us the sort of “shared” values that signal moral development. This type of aware, reflective attention forms the grounds for moralities that are not merely solipsistic nor adopted, and neither purely personal nor social, but rather grounded on a constant effort to seek the “good” within the limits of being both individual and social creatures. When such reflective attention sparks shame, that shame can be termed “morally mature” and will motivate efforts to alter one’s behaviour – when judged by the eyes of both others and oneself, most will want to undergo moral change. The productiveness of such shame is not difficult to locate: when shame is in tune with our personal moral scrutiny, when we are capable of accessing and evaluating its sources, it no longer remains an undefinable, threatening, and ultimately intolerable mental event, which one can only seek to escape from under layers of defensiveness, but instead it transforms into something one can and wants to manage by rectifying one’s behaviour towards others. Therefore, shame that originates from reflected, shared values is morally productive. Jennifer Manion also positions shame as a positive emotion, and she precisely locates the positive potential in its entwinement with reflection – or more particularly, with its capacity to spark self-reflection. Here, the individual adopts an impersonal viewpoint to morality, wherein she sees herself as if from the outside, and witnesses what her own actions towards others appear like, when viewed externally. Suddenly, thereby, even our own focus is on ourselves, on our way of treating others, and it is this capacity to reflectively note one’s own actions, one’s “self”, as opposed to simply following the pressures of the society, that speaks of moral maturity: “Only when a person reviews her values from a perspective of self-

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concern can she maintain her integrity. When cultural forces play a significant role in shaping preferences, and concurrently, these forces actively discourage revision of these preferences, it may be difficult to appreciate and preserve one’s integrity” (Manion, 2003, p.37). Yet, this view of the self should not be overly harsh and indeed ought to include a type of empathic care: “My engaging in self-concerned reflection requires me to step into the affective position of another who knows me and cares about me” (Ibid, p.31). Significantly, selfreflection does not, therefore, signal relentless self-criticism, but rather an empathic response towards one’s own frailties – yet it does not merely condone, but seeks to rechannel actions towards a more morally just direction. It is here, in its capacity to suddenly compel us to perceive our own actions from the outside, and to empathically seek to redirect those actions, that Manion locates shame’s value. In short, shame interrupts us by making us witness ourselves from the outside, and when combined with an attentive, non-accusatory approach, it can spark new forms of behaviour. The positive potential of shame also stems from the suddenness of it all, from the way in which shame abruptly pushes one to note one’s “self” from the outside: “Shame characteristically takes one ‘all of a sudden’, forcing one’s attention onto the self. Because it is disconcerting, it provides one with the opportunity to review the kind of person one wants to be, to gain clarity about just what values one has espoused, and to identify with those values that one wishes to embrace” (Ibid, p.34). Thus, the value of shame lies in – not only the external viewpoint – but also destabilisation, which forces us to review our own way of relating towards the world. This sudden change of perspective is also underlined by Klaassen, who posits that shame stems from an unexpected pause, a moment of reflection that abruptly reveals to us how we appear for others, unmasks our identity, our very self in all its defectiveness. According to Klaassen, this sudden shift of perspective amounts to a moment of confusion, wherein we begin to note that we are not what we thought we are. Before shame, we wilfully ignore our misgivings or at least conceal them from others – however, at moments of shame, such ignorance or hiding becomes impossible, for we are stirred awake to our defectiveness both in our own eyes and those of others. Hence, we

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become aware of failing the standards we wish to fulfil: “With selfawareness, then, shame changes from a kind of frustration caused by my failures, my ineffectual attempts to alter my surroundings, to a kind of personal pain caused by my failure to exhibit the character traits which I endorse, my failure to live up to my own ideals” (Klaassen, 2001, p.178). Yet, also (and particularly) in these instances, shame remains productive, for it pushes towards reflection and (even radical) change, and thereby – in all its painfulness – feeds nothing less than moral growth. Therefore, shame can have a positive impact, when it 1) originates from shared, reflected values that combine the social and the personal, 2) enables empathic self-reflection, and 3) provides a sudden, external perspective onto the self. When entwined with these criteria, shame can spur both moral maturity and radical change. This, again, suggests that political activism does not need to swap shame to guilt, but instead ought to evoke a particular type of shame, capable of combining the reflective element of guilt with the social dimensions of shame. In the context of animal liberation, perhaps those who continually overlook the well-being and moral value of nonhuman creatures ought to feel shame, and thereby become capable of altering their way of relating to the cows, chicken, fish, and pigs of this world. They ought to be shocked to a sudden shift of attention, wherein they perceive their own “selves”, their own identities from a new angle, and are pushed towards self-awareness that concerns the way in which those “selves” relate to, and evaluate and treat, nonhuman animals. The core question that thereby emerges is “What do our ‘selves’, our ‘humanity’, look like from the perspective of more-than-human animals?”. This reversal of viewpoint is, arguably, the very foundation of deposing anthropocentrism, for within the latter, the perspective is always self-focused and onesided – anthropocentrism is grounded on an epistemology, within which it is the human who looks at the other animal. Here, other species are only seen in the light shed by the mirror that the Narcissus of anthropocentrism holds in his hands, eager to only note that, which will enhance his own well-being and status. The grip of this epistemology is wide reaching, for even animal ethics and animal liberation literature often concentrates on how “we” as humans value and perceive other animals, whereas the perspectives of those animals – how they perceive

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us, how the human “we”, the “human identity”, and its generic “self” appear when witnessed from the outside – tend to remain unnoted and unmentioned. Shame, thereby, provides a platform for a radical epistemological shift, a sort of transferal of attention, wherein one no longer concentrates on how humans perceive other animals, but rather on how the human “self” looks when witnessed from the viewpoint of other creatures. In its most productive form, shame can take the mirror from Narcissus and replace it with the standpoints of those pigs and chickens whose flesh fills his plates, but whose individuality he thus far has failed to notice. In its capacity to provide sudden shocks that stir such epistemological shifts, shame becomes a potentially potent instigator of political change. Yet, in order to ensure that shame is constructive, the advocate would have to invite moral reflection on the part of her audience rather than simply tell them, as if from the position of authority, that their actions are immoral. It is via such reflection-inviting engagement, via a type of social pedagogy which aims at moral dialogue, that shame can transform from a wholly destructive force into an ally of political change. Those whom the advocate is seeking to persuade should not remain passive recipients, but rather transpire as active participators in the effort to pay serious moral scrutiny to nonhuman creatures. Here, they would be invited to reflect on the norms of the society to pay attention to which societal values concerning nonhuman creatures they view as “shared” – they would be urged to note the mechanisms of anthropocentrism, the levels of social pressure and indoctrination, and prompted to explore their own stance on animal ethics. Moreover, in order to guarantee shame’s positive nature, animal liberationists would have to endorse empathic self-awareness in those whom they are seeking to convince. Therefore, egg-eaters and milkdrinkers should not be condemned as “evil” or targeted with rage and resentment, for such condemnation will only ensure negative outcomes. Instead, the advocate should remind her audience of empathy towards the self, by bringing forth the ways in which societal impact may spark moral inattention, and thereby by noting that immoral choices are understandable – even if not justifiable – in light of the heavy, lingering influences of anthropocentrism. In this way, empathic self-awareness is prompted by explicating the ways in which the “self’s” relation to nonhuman animals is

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impacted by socially produced traditions and practices, and by manifesting how attentive care towards both the “self” and other animals can be combined (and indeed, are inclusive of each other). Therefore, as long as it is rooted in “mature” morality, shame holds the potential of acting as a positive force also in the context of animal liberation. In fact, perhaps it stands as an abundantly more promising candidate than guilt, for guilt fails to spark the sort of attentive, epistemic, radical shifts that are required for a holistic, thorough change in how one treats other animals. In its tendency to focus only on specific acts, guilt can prevent such a holistic change, and instead may feed welfarism, as one chooses to support the eradication of specific acts of wrongdoing (say, de-beaking or foie gras) instead of concentrating on the larger picture. Therefore, guilt asks for only small steps, and focuses on remedying specific acts, thereby inviting reduction of animal consumption, the switching from factory farmed to free ranged, whereas it may be shame, which (when most constructive) forces us to finally witness the enormity of the situation, the vastness of the violent moral corruption evident in the society’s treatment of more-than-human creatures. But what of the relevance of the “social” which mature morality ought to include? That is, if anthropocentrism is positioned as one of the most dominant tenets within most contemporary societies, is animal ethics not simply a “private” or personal project, detached from the polis, and thereby an anti-social, solipsistic diversion? It is precisely here that the dynamic, the dialogue, between the social and the personal becomes pivotal, as the latter can and should impact also the former. Moral progress is often founded upon individual rebellions and importantly, such rebellions are rarely wholly detached from the societal levels, but instead spur from various shared elements – thus, one can speak for equality in a racist culture by finding points of mutuality from various other values, such as justice, fairness, empathy, and so forth. Therefore, a zoocentric in an anthropocentric society can anchor her rebellion on shared values, ranging from the values of experience and diversity to the importance of justice, equality, and loving, empathic attention. When shame is sparked by such points of mutuality, it finds its most fruitful form.

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11.3 Image Shame: Rejection, Inferiority, and Humiliation Thereby, shame appears both utterly destructive and wholly constructive – it seems to invite both defensive fury and fervent moral change. How are we to compare these contradictory depictions? One answer is provided by Gausel and Leach, who suggest that it may not be shame in itself at all that is morally destructive and debilitating – rather it is rejection and inferiority, which are damaging. They posit that shame has, thereby, been wrongly positioned as the culprit among emotions: it is just as (if not more) productive as an emotion as guilt, for it evokes – as argued earlier – the desire to amend how others perceive one’s identity and self. Shame sparks impetus for improvement precisely because it affects one’s image, one’s identity – we want to be good not only in our specific actions (guilt) but also in ourselves, as beings (shame). Instead of shame, it is rejection and inferiority, which are highly destructive and lead to the type of detachment, hostility, anger, and aggression shame is indicted for. In other words, shame has been wrongly accused, and other, less discussed emotions stand as the real culprits. The negative impact of sense of rejection and inferiority is, according to Gausel and Leach, easy to locate: they both immobilise (thereby sparking avoidance, denial, withdrawal, and other defensive modes) and cause acute pain (indeed, social devaluation has mechanisms similar to physical pain). These act as catalysts for precisely the type of defensive behaviours shame has been associated with (Gausel & Leach, 2011, p.468). Yet another candidate to replace the culprit status of shame is humiliation. Humiliation results from the process of being downgraded, “the move from the higher position which one pretended to the lower position which one appears to deserve” (Klaassen, 2001, p.178). For humiliation, it is the fall, the loss, that matters – fall from a higher status, and the ensuing loss of dignity. Moreover, humiliation involves power: we have lost power to someone else who now dominates us. Hence, while shame concerns the self, humiliation concerns status, and more particularly the lowering of status, of suddenly being “less” in the eyes of

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others and thereby under their control. Humiliation also concerns pretence, as one is caught for having pretended to be more valuable, more exceptional, than one is: “One feels humiliation when one’s presentation to the world does not, in the eyes of the world, match up to the real self as revealed” (Klaassen, 2001, p.180; see also Allpress, et al., 2014). Just as rejection and inferiority, humiliation sparks defensive behaviours: we escape from and lash out at those who witness our downfall, our wounded ego. Therefore, rejection, inferiority, and humiliation appear to come close to the type of depiction of shame offered in the first part of this chapter. This has two implications: 1) when discussing shame, care needs to be placed on distinctions between different types of shame (whereas some may serve constructive moral roles, others may be utterly damaging) and 2) the damaging forms of shame may come close to other, less discussed moral emotions. In relation to the first of these implications, one suggestion is that “image shame” and “moral shame” ought to be separated. Image shame is related to anti-social behaviour: it concerns social image or rather the defectiveness of that image. It is primarily focused on one’s “self” and only secondarily (if at all) on the victims, and in fact, the victims are usually considered with hostility, since they are perceived as the sources who made the ashamed look bad. Thereby, image shame is self- rather than other-directed and focuses on efforts to restore one’s own reputation, not on efforts to care for those, whom one’s misdeeds have caused harm. Moral shame, on the other hand, is prosocial and concerns moral character, one’s “moral self”, rather than image. Within the state of moral shame, we are not so much preoccupied with how we appear, but rather on the moral content of our actions, and the way in which that content expresses our identity. Moreover, moral shame is interested in the victims and will motivate restorative actions (it is, in other words, other-directed).9 Now, it is precisely image shame that is more likely to

Its intensity will depend on how much importance the ashamed places on the value violated – indeed, it is precisely moral shame that can be more potent than guilt, for it aims at restoring belief in the whole of the self, rather than in one’s capacity to follow specific acts.

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lead to negative outcomes, as the destructive behaviours offer a type of a facade, aimed at directing attention away from the cause of shame – the primary intention is to restore one’s social image via avoidance and coverup. Indeed, Allpress, et al., claim that, due to the defensive implications of image shame, one ought to be careful not to evoke it, for at worst such evocation will only increase the harmful acts of the ashamed: “Our data suggests that the public shaming of perpetrator groups can sometimes increase negativity by provoking such reactions as anger, avoidance, attempts to cover up the ingroup’s wrongdoing, and victim blame. We speculate whether the common tactic of ‘naming and shaming’ may not always promote positive reactions” (Allpress, et al., 2014, p.13). Moral shame, on the other hand, is morally constructive as long as the values that are violated are relatively easy to follow in the future (that is, as long as restitution is possible). Allpress, et al., summarise the above with the following: “Shame arising from a threatened social image is associated with negative outcomes, whereas shame arising from a threatened moral standing is associated with positive outcomes” (Ibid, p.12). When it comes to the second of the implications mentioned above, image shame resembles rejection, inferiority, and humiliation, which arguably add to its negative orientation and consequences. It springs from how others see oneself as a failed creature, and hence signals the possibility of social exclusion, an inferior status, and loss of dignity and power (something that Martha Nussbaum terms “primitive shame”, see Nussbaum, 2004). Therefore, it is image shame – shame entwined with rejection, inferiority, and humiliation – which is to be avoided. Instead of avoiding or embracing “shame” as a generic term, we ought to pay attention to varieties of shame. Shame stemming from social image is both morally destructive and entwined with further negative moral emotions, whereas shame stemming from moral concern can be highly advantageous to moral awareness. It is precisely moral shame, which is linked with the positive aspects of shame discussed in the previous section, ranging from reflection and self-awareness to epistemological shifts and moral maturity. Therefore, it ought to be moral shame, instead of image shame, which political advocacy evokes. But how to ensure the right type of shame is sparked? It would seem that igniting moral shame is grounded on similar

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tactics as igniting guilt: on accentuating the positive rather than the negative, with the difference that here, it is the character of the person, her virtue as a moral agent, rather than single acts, which are under scrutiny. The advocate should aim to ask “What are we as beings, as moral agents, in relation to other animals? What could both we ourselves and nonhuman animals gain from a more morally inclusive, empathic way of meeting the world and its creatures?” There is also a practical benefit to advocating moral rather than image shame. Image shame tends to rest on majority opinion, and thereby those, who simply flow with the status quo, within the contours of dominant beliefs, are less likely to feel shame when confronted by minority voices. In the context of animal liberation, this means that proud meat-eaters, particularly when invested with social identities perceived as dominant, are less likely to undergo image shame over their treatment of nonhuman animals, for they feel that nobody condemns them and that indeed their social identity is perfectly “normal”. It is only via underlining mutual, shared beliefs (such as those concerning equality, compassion, or justice) that shame may be provoked – mere critique of anthropocentrism, or even mere depictions of the treatment of other animals, may not suffice. Moral shame, on the other hand, does not depend so extensively on dominant beliefs and is more readily accessible. Here, moral dialogue, the push towards moral scrutiny over one’s way of relating to nonhuman animals, suffices. Yet, also image shame is evoked within animal liberation. As argued in the first part of this chapter, the typical mechanisms of this form of shame, ranging from withdrawal to defensiveness, are evident in animal ethics debates. Image shame is less likely, but still quite manifest, arguably even common. Its sources lie in emphasising the negative and in implying the other three morally destructive emotions. In relation to the latter, rejection may be linked to discourses that imply social exclusion (for instance, via references to vegan “righteousness” or “purity” – unfortunately, the vegan political field does contain some ego-orientated and almost dogmatic overtones, concentrated on establishing who is the “right prophet”, and whose way of veganism is the only correct choice, whilst non-vegans may be approached as pariahs and outcasts). Inferiority may, relatedly, be entwined with “the sense of superiority”

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animal liberation advocates are often accused of and is perhaps often sparked by an authoritative style of discourse lacking dialogue and engagement. Moreover, advocacy may cause humiliation by placing its audience under a rancorous spotlight. Angry, vindictive, accusatory or parodying, even sarcastic discourse can pinpoint meat-eaters or milkdrinkers as somewhat ridiculous creatures, who have not fathomed the realities of animal industries or who have failed to take part in moral reasoning. Here, they emerge as significantly less intelligent and moral than they have presumed to be, with the result that they may feel humiliated and quickly push out their defensive armours in order to attack back those who have downgraded them. There is also another lesson to be learned from social shame. Social identity ought to be approached with care when discussing animal issues, not only because accusatory overtones may spark image shame and thereby defensiveness in those the advocate is seeking to convince, but also due to the almost wholly undiscussed issue of shame among advocates and vegans. Indeed, it seems that, when placed in a setting clearly dominated by anthropocentric social identities, advocacy is prone to spark image shame in the advocates themselves, which again may partly explain the reluctance many experience in taking part in advocacy or discussing their animal ethics in, say, a macho work environment – it may also help to explain why some vegans turn their back to veganism, and why many of those, who would otherwise want to be vegan, fail to make the transition. Shame is not reserved only for those who are embedded in anthropocentrism, but is also common among zoocentrics situated in an anthropocentric world. Indeed, vegans may feel incredible social pressures and undergo shame even when they individually, on a personal level, know that their actions and way of life are morally laudable. It is precisely image shame that is, in these situations, aroused, as vegans may feel 1) marginalised and thereby rejected by the “dominant society”, 2) ridiculous and thereby inferior in the eyes of anthropocentric others, and 3) mocked, stereotyped, accused, laughed at, and thereby humiliated by the surrounding social world. In fact, perhaps it is not the sworn meat-eater’s shame that is the most poignant obstacle in the way of animal liberation, but rather the shame felt by those who wish to be or are vegan – that is, the primary issue may not be how to avoid sparking shame over not being vegan, but rather how to tackle the shame

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often socially associated with veganism. In a society soaked in and coloured over by anthropocentric practices, institutions, habits, and beliefs, veganism by necessity touches on social identity – or rather, the latter is threatened by the former. As a result, image shame may emerge as the most potent counterforce of animal liberation, as the aspiring vegan becomes the target of social pressure, criticism, and ridicule.10 Therefore, great care must be taken with shame. Image shame, and the sort of rejection, inferiority, and humiliation it is intertwined with, ought to be resisted, whether encountered among anthropocentrics or vegans, and replaced with more positive emotions, such as moral shame, capable of signalling moral maturity. The key to accomplishing such a choice between varieties of shame is the accentuation of the affirmative – the positive dimensions of both becoming and being vegan. Here, neither the meat-eater nor the vegan would feel rejected or humiliated, but instead would meet the world and its challenges with a notion of “self” that prioritises ethics over image.

11.4 Conclusion: From Blame to Maturity Shame is usually depicted as a morally destructive emotion, capable of only evoking defensive behaviours ranging from withdrawal to violent upsurges. Yet, it also serves a positive function, and in fact has been linked with moral maturity, the capacity to suddenly witness one’s own behaviour from an exterior angle, and to reflect on what one’s moral “self” is in relation to the “selves” of other beings. This duality in the characterisations of shame can be explained via a typology of shame: whereas image shame is destructive, moral shame has constructive outcomes. Image shame revolves around our social identity, how we appear to others, and moral shame concentrates on our moral agency, the very 10 A good response to image shame lies in what Manion terms “false shame” (shame, the causes and standards of which one does not, on closer inspection, endorse). Within a state of false shame, we follow social norms and become flooded over with the sort of accusations they are capable of directing at us, but do not personally condone these norms – and importantly, as we recognise their invalidity, we also recognise the invalidity of our shame (Manion, 2003).

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fibres of our moral “selfhood”. Whereas image shame intertwines with damaging emotions such as rejection, inferiority, and humiliation, moral shame can deepen our grasp of the origins of our morality, evoke radical change, and render us morally mature. For these reasons, animal liberation ought to avoid image shame and pay serious attention to how it is yet continually, even if undeliberately, aroused by advocacy – indeed, it may form one of the principal deterrents on the way of animal liberation, as both non-vegans and vegans are dizzied by the pressures it comes with, and as a result react in counterproductive ways to the outside world, whether this be via avoidance or sheer, gut-spilling fury. The way to avoid image shame, and the path towards inviting moral shame, is to consistently emphasise the positives of animal ethics and liberation, the way in which animal equality enriches not only the lives of other animals but also the human “self” and her moral agency. There are lessons to be learned from shame. Its centrality manifests how significant the notions of “identity” and “self” are and how they may bear a profound impact on animal politics (both animal liberation advocacy and its reception). Usually, emphasis is merely on actions and their underlying moral principles, whilst the prominence of the “self” as an underlying decider is almost consistently ignored. It is this “self” that animal liberation ought to pay more scrutiny to, as particular constructions of human identity, of human “self”, stand at the epicentre of anthropocentrism, and as alternative ways of construing these human “selves” also stand at the epicentre of animal liberation. How we appear to ourselves and others matters morally, and even if placing attention on sheer image is destructive, noting the relevance of moral selfhood – the relevance of cultivating our specific identities in ways that feed and foster interspecies ethics – may form one necessary step on the way to animal liberation.

Bibliography Allpress, J., Brown, R., Giner-Sorolla, R., Deonna, J. A. & Teroni, F., 2014. Two Faces of Group-Based Shame: Moral Shame and Image Shame Differentially Predict Positive and Negative Orientations to Ingroup

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Wrongdoing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(10), pp. 1270–1284. Berthoz, S., Grezes, J., Armony, J., Passingham, R. & Dolan R., 2006. Affective Response to one’s own Moral Violation. NeuroImage, 31(2), pp. 945–950. Calhoun, C., 2004. An Apology for Moral Shame. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 12(2), pp. 127–146. Gausel, N. & Leach, C., 2011. Concern for Self-Image and Social Image in the Management of Moral Failure: Rethinking Shame. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41(4), pp. 468–478. Haidt, J., 2003. The Moral Emotions. In R. J. Davidson, K. R. Scherer & H. H. Goldsmith, eds., Handbook of Affective Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hutchinson, P., 2008. Shame and Philosophy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Klaassen, J., 2001. The Taint of Shame: Failure, Self-Distress, and Moral Growth. Journal of Social Philosophy, 32(2), pp. 174–196. Manion, J., 2003. Girls Blush, Sometimes: Gender, Moral Agency, and the Problem of Shame. Hypatia, 18(3), pp. 21–41. Nussbaum, M., 2004. Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sheikh, S. & Janoff-Bulman, R., 2010. The “Shoulds” and “Should nots” of Moral Emotions: A Self-Regulatory Perspective on Shame and Guilt. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26(213), pp. 213–224. Wilson, J., 2001. Shame, Guilt and Moral Education. Journal of Moral Education, 30(1), pp. 71–81. Elisa Aaltola, PhD, is a Finnish philosopher, who has focused her work on animal ethics and philosophy. Her books include Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy (co-edited with John Hadley, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). She currently works as a senior research fellow in philosophy at the University of Eastern Finland, where she is concentrating on the moral psychological dimensions of human–nonhuman relations.

12 Are We Smart Enough to Know When to Take the Political Turn for Animals? Kim Stallwood

12.1 Protests in the Primaries The 2016 presidential election in the United States had its share of street theatre, but not all was attributable to Donald Trump. Early on in the primaries, on March 30, three protestors from the animal rights organisation Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) interrupted US Senator and Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders while he spoke at a town hall meeting in Kenosha, Wisconsin (Direct Action Everywhere, 2016). This was one of a small number of protests targeting Sanders by DxE.

I wish to express my appreciation for the advice and professional assistance of Jill Howard Church in the writing of this chapter.

K. Stallwood (*) a self-employed consultant and author, Hastings, East Sussex, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_12

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A YouTube video showed the protestors holding a banner declaring “Animal Liberation Now”. They shouted that Sanders once said, “The greatness of a nation1 is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable”, but claimed that Sanders—who campaigned as a “Democratic socialist”—continued to “ignore the most vulnerable in our society”, meaning nonhuman animals. The protestors eventually were drowned out by the crowd’s hand-clapping and chanting of “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!” From the stage, Sanders gestured for the protestors to sit down. The activists eventually went silent but continued to make the banner visible to as many people as possible. The crowd cheered when the banner was torn down and security escorted the protestors from the auditorium. In “Why Vegans Are Protesting Bernie Sanders Rallies”, published on Munchies, a website “dedicated to food and its global purpose”, Nick Woods wrote about Matt Johnson, one of the DxE protestors (Woods, 2016). Johnson has been a “vegetarian since he was four-years-old, and vegan for the last three—no small feat for a trucker born and bred in ‘the leading state for hog,’ as he describes it”. “Matt sees the Kenosha protest not as an affront to the Sanders campaign”, the article continues “but a comment on alleged, deeply ingrained animal exploitation in American culture. He says the aim is to first get the issue on the table, and prevent it from being forgotten or silenced. Sanders, he says, as a progressive leader, needs to be held accountable for his support of farmers who slaughter animals, or contribute to their slaughter for food”. A MoveOn.com petition urged Sanders to: “End your support for one of the most violent and corrupt industries in the world and commit, as a presidential nominee, to cutting all subsidies for animal agriculture!” (Hsiung, 2016). The Democratic frontrunner and ultimate nominee, Hillary Clinton, was the subject of a similar action. At a campaign stop in Las Vegas in August, a small group of DxE protestors interrupted a rally by chanting and holding signs that read, “Until Every Animal is

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated” is widely attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, but it is not found in his works.

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Free”. Clinton did not address their concerns directly but stopped her speech to say, “Apparently these people are here to protest [Republican nominee Donald] Trump because Trump and his kids have killed a lot of animals. Thank you for making that point” (Gabriel, 2016). She was referencing Trumps’ two sons, who have been photographed on big game hunts in Africa (Everett, 2012). The activists, however, were referencing an open letter they issued to Clinton asking her to end subsidies to meat producers (Jones, 2016). Trump was not the focus of any DxE protests, although one DxE protestor briefly interrupted a rally held by Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz (Direct Action Everywhere Chicago, 2016). That these incidents occurred, and that they were covered by the mainstream American media amidst a host of more humancentred campaign topics, raises the issue of how (and, indeed, whether) nonhuman animals are represented and discussed in world politics.

12.2 The Key Questions to Ask As an animal rights activist and theorist with more than 40 years of personal commitment as a vegan and professional involvement with the international animal rights movement, I reflect upon the idea of a “political turn for animals”. I understand its current meaning is to describe how the discussion of nonhumans in literature and debates is moving from ethics to political theory. But a theory is only as good as it is in practice. The political turn for animals has to be more than just theory; it must be also about the practice of animal advocacy. I wonder whether there is a grand narrative in animal rights advocacy to be found here. Have we reached a point in the social justice road where there is a sign that says, “This way to take the political turn for animals”? At times it appears that the movement is gaining speed down the road towards our epic destination of freeing all species from the subjugation of our own. The goal is to secure moral rights for nonhuman animals and for that generally accepted wisdom and practice to be

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encoded into law as legal rights with meaningful and effective enforcement. But there are also times when I think we have slammed the movement into reverse and are hurtling backwards as fast and as far as we can go back up that road. There are even times when I think we do the impossible and go in opposite directions simultaneously. We stand still with the movement’s wheels spinning up nothing but smoke. Reading about DxE’s protests against Sanders felt like one of those times. The activists were pushing the humane movement forwards in the sense that Sanders had a good-but-could-be-better position on animal rights. But the protests pushed the movement backwards because it wasted an opportunity to work with a sympathetic presidential candidate who had the potential to become even more outspoken on animal rights. Sanders is, of course, a public figure. He is a long-standing US senator and generated strong support as a US presidential candidate. The official Sanders website, (BernieSanders.com), did not include any official statements regarding animal protection. However, another website, FeelTheBern.org (“built and maintained by volunteers with no official relation to Bernie Sanders”), did (FeelTheBern.org, 2016a). It stated, “Even though livestock animals are raised specifically for consumption, we have an ethical responsibility to make sure they are raised humanely” (FeelTheBern.org, 2016b). This worthy but vacuous statement substantiates Johnson’s claim that Sanders’ view of animal rights is not even “on the table”. To his credit, Sanders received a 100% rating in the Humane Scorecard for the 113th Congress published by the Humane Society Legislative Fund (HSLF), the animal protection lobbying organisation (Humane Society Legislative Fund, 2015). But the Open Secrets website, published by the Centre for Responsive Politics (a nonpartisan, non-profit organisation that tracks money in US politics) also reported that Sanders’ presidential campaign received $318,579 in contributions from US agribusiness (OpenSecrets.org, 2016). Agribusiness is, of course, responsible for killing more than nine billion nonhuman animals annually (Humane Society of the United States, 2015).

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Further, agribusiness is a major actor in the animal industrial complex (see Section 12.3), the collective term used to describe the many traditions, institutions, and industries that transform nonhuman animals into products and services for human consumption (Noske, 1989). Sociologist Richard Twine describes the animal industrial complex as a: [P]artially opaque network of relations between governments, public and private science, and the corporate agricultural sector. Within the three nodes of the complex are multiple intersecting levels and it is sustained by an ideology that naturalises the human as a consumer of other animals. It encompasses an extraordinary wide range of practices, technologies, identities and markets. (Twine, 2010)

It is, of course, disappointing that Sanders appears not to understand animal rights more than he does. Further, as the self-proclaimed progressive presidential candidate, Sanders should recognise the animal industrial complex (particularly intensive animal agriculture) for its frequent mistreatment of its workforce, who are often undocumented migrant workers, the environmental pollution that it causes, its health threats to human consumers, and its inhumane practices towards nonhuman animals. Hillary Clinton’s official campaign website (Hillary for America, 2016) did have a section called “Protecting Animals and Wildlife”, in which she posted statements related to her general positions on wildlife trafficking, horse slaughter, regulating puppy mills, and “encouraging farms to raise nonhuman animals humanely”. When she was a US senator from New York, she was “proud to have earned a perfect score on the Humane Society’s scorecard in the 108th and 109th Congresses” (Humane Society Legislative Fund, 2007). DxE believed Sanders and Clinton were legitimate targets for animal rights protests, but were they correct to challenge the candidates the way they did? The key questions to ask are: What would have been the most effective animal rights message to the candidates? How should it have been delivered? Did the protests bring ethics and politics together to further the political turn for animals, as part of a movement-wide strategy to making society’s treatment of animals a mainstream political issue?

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DxE failed, in my opinion, on all counts to answer these questions correctly. The DxE protests represent one of many conflicts I see often in the animal rights movement as it struggles to gain wider acceptance. It is an example of when the movement goes in opposite directions simultaneously. Yes to raising animal rights within the mainstream political arena. No to publicly confronting potentially sympathetic candidates and alienating potential public support. The rules of engagement within the mainstream political arena are different from those generally in society. Elections, including for US presidents, provide opportunities for the country to discuss the state of the nation and its future. Such public discourse, regardless of whether it is at the community, county, city, state, or national level, is a necessary process in a functional democracy. Democracies can be only as robust as their citizens engage with the democratic process, including participation in political parties, social movements, and other relevant institutions. Whereas it was good to see DxE engaged in the presidential campaign, how they went about it was bad. Which leads me to the next question: Is the animal rights movement ready to grow beyond being a moral crusade and take the political turn for animals as a full-fledged social movement?

12.3 The Animal Industrial Complex Notwithstanding formidable challenges to accomplishing its mission to free all species from the subjugation of one, the animal rights movement is making progress with what can be viewed as short-term victories. However, in the long term, it is failing generally and significantly to decrease the number of nonhuman animals consumed, persuade sufficient numbers of people to go vegan, convince governments to pass meaningful animal protection legislation, and challenge fundamentally society’s attitudes towards other animals. Establishing moral and legal rights for nonhuman animals is currently beyond the reach of the present animal rights movement. The movement’s primary strategy of emphasising personal lifestyle choice (short term), as opposed to more wholesale policy change (long

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term), is no match for the animal industrial complex. Institutionalised animal exploitation is fundamentally different from individual acts of animal cruelty. They are principally for financial gain, which is why they are difficult to stop. Generally, public policy and legislation (and its enforcement) as it relates to other animals reflects the dominant culture’s view that nonhuman animals exist for human purposes. This instrumental use is codified into law by designating nonhuman animals as property rather than as independent, sentient beings with their own self-interests and legal standing. Various justifications are made in defence of this exploitation (e.g., feeding people, curing disease, entertainment, education), but this wholesale use of nonhuman animals is increasingly regarded as questionable or unnecessary and harmful to public health. Further, the emerging market of vegan, cruelty-free products and services demonstrates that economically viable alternatives are increasingly available. The animal industrial complex has a self-interest in overstating the benefits to its exploitation of nonhuman animals. Its component corporations manipulate public opinion to fear any change in their use of nonhuman animals. It is doubtful that all of the products and services derived from animal exploitation are essential for human survival. People may not be aware of the existence of the animal industrial complex per se, but as consumers they use its products and services as the food they eat, the clothes they wear, and the medications they take. Of course, when asked about animal rights, many people are going to express concern about giving up any pleasure (e.g., eating meat) or losing any benefit (e.g., safe products) they may feel is their prerogative. But the deeper people’s understanding, particularly of practices considered egregious (e.g., wearing fur or watching orca shows), the less fear there is of losing pleasure or benefit. Sympathy for other animals, when they are particularly cruelly treated and where there is a willingness to forgo any perceived or real human benefits, is demonstrated in the public’s slowly growing support for animal rights. The dominance of the animal industrial complex is actually emboldened by the animal rights movement and its narrow emphasis on personal lifestyle choices. Corporations that profit from animal exploitation

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occasionally accommodate symbolic demands made by the animal rights movement to end the egregious use of animals. While these developments deserve recognition, they are accomplished without any real obligation imposed on the animal industrial complex to end its institutionalised violence towards animals. These companies can sometimes take advantage of the opportunities for new markets in consumerism by touting incremental husbandry improvements (e.g., cage-free, pasture-raised, fewer hormones) without significantly improving the lives of the animals they continue to exploit. Although welfare changes are welcomed, they can also have the effect of weakening the animal rights movement’s larger imperative for demanding moral and legal rights for animals by ensuring that many forms of animal exploitation (e.g., eating meat, using certain cosmetics) remain as personal lifestyle choices. While genuine cooperation between the animal rights movement and the animal industrial complex is an important strategy to end animal exploitation, the former must avoid being used by the latter, even unwittingly, to legitimise or even perpetuate institutional animal exploitation. The emergence of the so-called humane economy (Pacelle, 2016) that is enabling consumers to no longer rely upon products and services manufactured from some of the more egregious areas of animal exploitation by purchasing instead humane or nonanimal alternatives is generally a positive development and to be welcomed. Nonetheless, I believe the notion of a humane economy further perpetuates the idea that it is possible to end institutional animal exploitation by only voluntarily, and incrementally, changing one’s lifestyle. Political and consumer campaigns which call for public policy to end animal exploitation have been shown to mobilise strong resistance from the animal industrial complex to protect its profitable use of animals. For example, commercial agricultural interests in various states in the United States have used their vast financial resources to lobby legislators to pass so-called anti-whistleblower “ag-gag” laws which criminalise individuals who document animal exploitation in factory farms. The US Congress passed the Animal Enterprise Protection Act in 1992 and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act in 2006 to protect the interests of factory farms and laboratories and their economically dependent businesses, including breeders and cage manufacturers. The enormous

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profits made from animal exploitation are zealously protected by existing relationships with governments and their regulatory mechanisms. The animal industrial complex has a documented history of collusion with private security forces and state law enforcement to monitor, pervert, and harm the animal rights movement, including the infiltration of activist groups by law enforcement officers and/or informants (Potter, 2011; Evans & Lewis, 2013; Vidal, 1997). It is therefore not surprising that nonhuman animal-related public policy is more about protecting human and corporate interests than protecting animal welfare. Animal researchers (not anti-vivisectionists) and animal farmers (not vegans) are far more likely to be represented in the policy-making networks which determine regulations and laws governing the use of nonhuman animals. This unsatisfactory state of affairs is due in large part to our understanding of animal rights as a narrowly defined moral crusade and not as a wider social movement with a political mission and strategic objectives.

12.4 Animal Rights as a Social Movement Sociologists Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper define social movements as a “collective, organised, sustained, and non-institutional challenge to authorities, power holders, or cultural beliefs and practices” (Goodwin & Jasper, 2003, p.3). By that definition, the modern animal rights movement is a social movement in terms of being collectively organised and sustained, but it has yet to effectively develop the capacity for challenging authority in the political mainstream, as full-fledged social movements do. By limiting its focus primarily to individual lifestyle choices, the movement has not graduated to the level of effectively addressing large-scale institutional change as a public policy issue. Moral crusades are a type of social movement that frame specific issues as exclusive causes with extraordinary meaning. They may be religious or political campaigns or similar initiatives which embed a spiritual, political, or moral belief as an integral component. They address fundamental and profound issues relating to human activity, including the relationship humans have with their perception of

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themselves and their place in society. Moral crusades rely upon campaigns which trigger moral shocks to provoke public outrage; for example, efforts to ban keeping so-called dangerous dogs rely upon sensational media coverage of attacks by certain types of dogs on defenceless people (often children). Such extraordinary situations or conflicts may even be characterised as moral panics because of their exaggerated sense of urgency. An example of moral crusades were, literally, the Crusades from the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, which were military campaigns organised by the Catholic Church in support of Christianity in the Middle East. Another moral crusade occurred in the United States during the 1920s, when advocates of Prohibition made it virtually illegal to sell, and often consume, alcohol. Contemporary moral crusades are often contentious issues that relate to lifestyle choice (e.g., alcohol consumption and recreational or illegal drug use), sexual activity (e.g., pornography, homosexuality, and monogamy), or issues of individual health or freedom (e.g., abortion, euthanasia, death penalty). Social movements, including animal rights, are accused routinely of seeking change which will adversely impact society if they achieve their objective. But if it were, very little social and/or economic progress could have been made over the centuries if lasting harm resulted from social change. Such exaggerated negative consequences rarely, if ever, turn out to be true. For example, opponents of marriage equality laws claimed legal marriage and civil partnerships for gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered people would result in the collapse of heterosexual marriage as an institution, yet that has not been the case. Even though moral crusades mean different things to different people, it is not unreasonable, if not entirely correct, to view the animal rights movement as one. Certainly, the animal rights movement behaves like a moral crusade, with its emphasis on personal lifestyle choice and with such calls to action as “Go vegan!” or “Go cruelty-free!” For it to function as a more comprehensive social movement, it must also challenge the laws and policies that allow nonhuman animals to be raised for food or used for research in the first place.

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12.5 Challenges and Key Differences Notwithstanding my earlier criticism, the modern animal rights movement has increased public awareness about animal exploitation, encouraged people to live cruelty-free lifestyles, particularly as vegetarians and vegans, persuaded corporations, charities, non-governmental organisations, churches, and other entities like them to adopt various pro-animal policies, and lobby local, national, and international governments and their agencies to implement regulations and pass laws limiting or prohibiting some animal use. But the challenges that other exclusively human-based moral crusades have confronted (e.g., civil rights) are clearly different from those which the animal rights movement faces. The animal rights movement asks that members of one species should change thousands of years of custom and practice regarding its relationship with all other species—a challenge of unprecedented scale. This presents unique challenges with regard to achieving political change for animals as opposed to simply elevating their moral status. The animal industrial complex defends and promotes its continued use of nonhuman animals in science, agriculture, and other industries by claiming that any interests these nonhuman animals may have must always be subordinate to human interests. This frames human and nonhuman interests as a competition, or at the least a source of serious, repeated, or even irreconcilable conflict. This is a strategic dichotomy prevalent in human history: men are superior to women, whites are superior to nonwhites, heterosexuals are superior to homosexuals, and so on. The idea that humans are inherently superior to all nonhuman animals is a concept which author and philosopher Peter Singer defined as “speciesism” (Singer, 1990). Human/nonhuman conflicts are fundamentally rooted in speciesism2 because human interests, and their resulting cultural and economic constructs, inevitably prevail because nonhumans have no legal standing and no political voice of their own. As society evolves, however, and we become aware of our superiority prejudices, we can seek to resolve 2

Richard D. Ryder is attributed to first defining “speciesism” as a word.

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them as we become more aware of the resulting injustices. We readjust, accommodate, and move on—in all likelihood, the better for it. The same, no doubt, will be true for animal rights, particularly when it is understood that to feed the world’s population and promote better health, animal exploitation in agriculture and science are fundamentally problematic. For example, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), or factory farms, are designed to raise the maximum number of “production units” (nonhuman animals) with little or no regard for individual well-being and minimal humane oversight. This is profitable for the meat industry, but animal agriculture has been cited as the single most contributor to greenhouse gas production and climate change, which adversely affects the planet’s human population (Steinfeld, et al., 2006). Animal research and testing are conducted on millions of nonhuman animals, more than 90% of whom are rats and mice given no federal legal protection. But scientists have long argued that extrapolating results from nonhuman subjects to human patients is tenuous at best and dangerous at worst. In both science and agriculture, exploiting millions of nonhuman animals can backfire on the human beings who have created this speciesist paradigm. These vast numbers of nonhuman animals are, as Wolfson noted, “beyond the law” (Wolfson, 1996). This is why it is vital for the animal rights movement to reframe itself to be not only a moral crusade but also a larger social movement that challenges the political status quo and not just personal lifestyle decisions. All social movements face significant challenges, internally (e.g., limited resources) and externally (e.g., disinterested public and unsympathetic media). But two key differences add significantly to the challenges of the animal rights movement, making its mission even more daunting and its accomplishments even more impressive. The first of the two key differences speaks to the nature of social movements and their protagonists and beneficiaries. Often, social movements are populated and supported by those whose self-interests are at stake. Their protagonists are the agents of their own change; they seek legal status withheld from them usually because of a prejudice embedded in society. They wish to remedy wrongs committed against them or improve their well-being and legal standing. However, in the animal rights movement, the protagonists are mobilised by the interests of

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beneficiaries who are not even the same species. These beneficiaries—all nonhuman animals who are instrumentally used by humans—are unable to form their own social movement to advance their own agenda. The protagonists who seek animal rights come from the one species that oppresses all others. The animal rights movement is not the only social movement whose beneficiaries are not the protagonists and not the same species—those who advocate for the environment do so on behalf of both plant and nonhuman animal species. But it can be argued that environmental advocates do benefit from biodiversity or cleaner air and water, so their actions are not entirely altruistic. Animal rights advocates do seek benefits for members of other species with no expected or even implied benefit for themselves. The second key difference between the animal rights movement and all other social movements is the question of the benefits enjoyed by humans from exploiting nonhumans. Although there are benefits to humans from liberating nonhuman animals from our exploitation (e.g., better health from a plant-based diet), the common perception of animal rights is that, if it is accomplished, it would adversely impact human interests (e.g., farmers put out of business or fewer drugs to fight disease). Animal rights requires humans to relinquish all benefits gained from nonhuman animal exploitation, regardless of whatever possible harm it may cause to humans. It is customary among social movements that any benefits gained by protagonists, and enjoyed by them as beneficiaries, also bring some benefits to others with minimal impact or cost to society. For example, when smoking was banned in most restaurants and offices, non-smoking patrons benefitted but so did the waitstaff. Because of these two key differences, animal advocates need to persuade people of the value of changing their hearts and minds as well as their lifestyles, with respect to their relations with other animals. Further, the benefits to be accrued from this change in attitudes towards nonhumans must be carefully framed to reveal their full extent. Not only will they end nonhuman animal cruelty and exploitation, but they will also bring advantages to ourselves and the environment we live in. The personal transformative moment (Stallwood, 2014) is the currency of the animal rights movement, which seeks to foment in others similar

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conversion experiences. For many people, the moral shock strikes at the heart of how they see themselves and their world. It is a personally transformative moment (e.g., watching a video, visiting a website, talking to a friend, rescuing an animal) that hastens uncomfortable and hitherto hidden realisations. Indeed, personal change changes one person at a time, but institutional change changes all of society. The fault line between success and failure for the animal rights movement lies in understanding the difference between personal change and institutional change; or, in other words, the difference between a moral crusade (inspired by selfinterests) and a social movement (inspired by benefits for many). By emphasising personal lifestyle choice over institutional change, the animal rights movement pursues a strategy which is not fit for purpose and impedes severely its ability to achieve institutional change. A new strategy with equal emphasis on action at the level of the individual and society is needed. Only then will the animal rights movement be in a better position to achieve its mission and confront the animal industrial complex. Framing animal rights as a social movement emphasises a strategy which expands from the individual to society—an approach that includes public policy, legislation, and law enforcement and not just personal lifestyle choices. This difference in strategy is reflected in how its mission is viewed. Generally, animal rights is seen as a demand for individual lifestyle change. In contrast, as a social movement, the animal rights mission calls for the transformation of society and its relations with other animals.

12.6 Theory and Practice At the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruetly to Animals’s ‘Rights of Animals’ symposium at Trinity College Cambridge in 1976, I heard Lord Houghton of Sowerby challenge the UK animal rights movement to be less like a moral crusade and more like a social movement: My message is that animal welfare, in the general and in the particular, is largely a matter for the law. This means that to Parliament we must go. Sooner or later that is where we will have to go. That is where laws are made and where the penalties for disobedience and the measures for

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enforcement are laid down. There is no complete substitute for the law. Public opinion, though invaluable and indeed essential, is not the law. Public opinion is what makes laws possible and observance widely acceptable. (Paterson & Ryder, 1979, p.209 (emphasis in original))

Between World War II and his death in 1996, Lord Houghton played a prominent role in British politics as an elected Member of Parliament, government Minister, Parliamentary Labour Party Chair, and member of the House of Lords. He was an experienced political authority who provided much needed leadership to the nascent animal rights movement. Although he did not frame his remarks in the context of my five-stage analysis of social movements (see Section 12.7), Lord Houghton’s emphasis on Parliament and the law as the essential and unavoidable stage for institutional change supports the position that the animal rights movement should aspire to, and act like, a social movement. The Rights of Animals symposium was a significant event as it brought together philosophers, politicians, veterinarians, theologians, and advocates in an unprecedented discussion on animal ethics and animal advocacy at an early point in the history of the modern animal rights movement. Activists and philosophers may not, at first impression, make complementary travelling companions; but the animal rights movement demonstrates why both advocates and academics are needed to inspire and inform the larger society. Leading philosophers, psychologists, and theologians (e.g., Andrew Linzey, Tom Regan, Richard D. Ryder, and Peter Singer) were actively engaged in the formative years of the animal rights movement. And animal rights, like other social movements-in-the-making, has enjoyed complementary advocacy and academic flanks (e.g., the feminist movement and women’s studies) as it has evolved, including animal law, animal studies, and, animal welfare science. The three most commonly known traditions in animal ethics are utilitarianism, natural rights, and ecofeminism. The utilitarian perspective is generally associated with Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, in which he states: If a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the

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being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like suffering—insofar as rough comparisons can be made—of any other being. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, there is nothing to be taken into account. So the limit of sentience (using the term as a convenient if not strictly accurate shorthand for the capacity to suffer and/or experience enjoyment) is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others. To mark this boundary by some other characteristic like intelligence or rationality would be to mark it in an arbitrary manner. Why not choose some other characteristic, like skin colour? (Singer, 1990, pp.8–9)

In 1983, Tom Regan published The Case for Animal Rights, which rejected utilitarianism as insufficient in protecting the interests of other animals and advanced instead the natural rights view. Animals, Regan argued, have: [C]ertain basic moral rights, including in particular the fundamental right to be treated with respect that, as possessors of inherent value, they are due as a matter of strict justice. Like us, therefore . . . they must never be treated as mere receptacles of intrinsic values (e.g., pleasure, or preference-satisfaction), and any harm that is done to them must be consistent with the recognition of their equal inherent value and their equal prima facie right not to be harmed. (Regan, 1983, p.329)

Animals are “subjects of a life”, Regan argued, with their own individual biographies, and are therefore no more our property than other humans are objects for us to use as we wish, even if that use did not involve suffering. Both Regan and Singer were at pains to argue that one could make claims on behalf of other animals that were not founded in emotion or sentiment. In other words, you did not have to “love” or even like nonhuman animals to recognise—through logic and reason—that it was intrinsically wrong to harm them. In the 1980s and 1990s, ecofeminist scholars such as Marti Kheel (1948–2011), Lori Gruen, and Carol J. Adams began to contest the notion that our feelings for other animals were irrelevant in making the

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case for why we should not abuse them. They argued that a feminist ethic of care is: [A]n alternative to the rights-based justice accounts that had dominated discussions within the academy and in social justice movements. Though many feminists saw “care” as a necessary complement to “justice”, the justice/care debate was often framed in binary terms, where our responsibilities and motivations were seen as a matter of justice or as a function of our capacities to care. Ecofeminists identify dualistic thinking (that creates inferior others and upholds certain forms of privilege as in the human/animal, man/woman, culture/nature, mind/body dualism) as one of the factors that undergirds oppression and distorts our relationships with the earth and other animals. (Adams & Gruen, 2014, pp.2–3)

Further to animal ethics, there is also in the academy the development of animal welfare science in the biological and veterinary sciences and animal studies (or human–animal studies) in the social sciences and humanities (as well as critical animal studies). These disciplines indicate significant changes are underway, specifically in the academy but also more broadly in society, to explore and understand the “compromise and concealment” in our relations with other animals (Thomas, 1983, p.303).3 Two further related developments are animals and the law and animals and political theory. In the United States, animal law is enjoying significant growth in research and litigation; the study of animals and political theory is less developed, and although there are indications that this is changing (Radford, 2001; Schaffner, 2010; Wise, 2000), it has not yet materialised into a political turn for animals. For many years, Robert Garner stood out as the primary political theorist exploring the political status of nonhuman animals (Garner, 2004, 1998, 2005a, 2005b). His current research considers society’s 3 “A mixture of compromise and concealment has so far prevented this conflict from having to be fully resolved. But the issue cannot be completely evaded and it can be relied upon to recur. It is one of the contradictions upon which modern civilisation may be said to rest. About its ultimate consequences we can only speculate” (Thomas, 1983, p.303).

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treatment of other animals within the context of justice and the application of ideal and non-ideal theory to animal ethics with respect to legislation related to regulating and ending animal suffering (Garner, 2013). New research on the political theory of animal rights is also led by Alasdair Cochrane (2012), Dan Lyons (2013), Siobhan O’Sullivan (2011), and Kimberley K. Smith (2012). But the publication of Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka stands out as a key moment, as it provided a critical evaluation of the modern animal rights movement and a new approach to establishing moral and legal rights for animals by applying citizenship political theory to animals. “But what surely is clear after 180 years of organised animal advocacy”, they wrote, “is that we have made no demonstrable progress towards dismantling the system of animal exploitation” (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011, p.3) Our varied relationship with animals has its own moral complexities which have, in turn, political consequences, Donaldson and Kymlicka argue: Some animals should be seen as forming separate sovereign communities on their own territories (animals in the wild vulnerable to human invasion and colonization); some animals are akin to migrants or denizens who choose to move into areas of human habitation (liminal opportunistic animals); and some animals should be seen as full citizens of the polity because of the way they’ve been bred over generations for interdependence with humans (domesticated animals). (Ibid, p.14)

The work of Donaldson and Kymlicka and other political theorists who are exploring new ways to understand the moral and legal status of nonhuman animals is central to the development of public policy and its implementation. It is one thing to claim moral rights for animals; it is something else to successfully organise and persuade society (and its representational governments) to recognise and defend legal rights for animals. That is to say, the question of how fundamentalism meets real politik. Indeed, the animal rights

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movement as a fledgling social movement is not alone in struggling under the tension between abolition and regulation or in failing to resolve them successfully (Francione & Garner, 2010). Frequently, this tension is framed as an exclusive choice. I do not support this view. Both are needed to achieve change. The challenge is to learn how to direct movement strategies simultaneously and complementarily while pursuing both. Animal rights is (or should be) more than just a moral crusade pursuing idealistic goals of abolition. It should function as a pragmatic social movement working to embed the values of animal rights into public policy (Stallwood, 1996). The animal rights movement can successfully chart its way through these turbulent waters with an understanding of how public education leads to public acceptance.

12.7 The Five Stages of Social Movements In his book, Eco-Wars, political scientist Ronald T. Libby discusses an analysis of the animal rights movement by Bill Rempel, a research scientist in animal agribusiness at the Department of Animal Science at the University of Minnesota (Libby, 1998, pp.62–63). Rempel makes the case that the agriculture industry’s perception of the political influence of animal rights groups passes through four stages. His four stages of the animal rights movement are (1) developing an issue, (2) politicising the issue, (3) legislating the issue, and (4) litigating the issue. From my experience with the animal rights movement, I conclude he was partially correct. Therefore, I have adapted it to the following five stages: 1. Public education, when people are enlightened about the issue and embrace it into their lives 2. Public policy development, when political parties, businesses, schools, professional associations, and other entities that constitute society adopt sympathetic positions on the issue 3. Legislation, when laws are passed on the issue

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4. Implementation, when laws and other public policy instruments are enforced on the issue 5. Public acceptance, when the issue is embedded into the values of society This is the progression of a successful social movement, as it emerges from obscurity into acceptance. The five-stage analysis makes it possible to determine which stage is reached, what is next, and why some organisations and issues fail, stagnate, or succeed. The five-stage analysis can also evaluate individual or single objectives and how their strategies are pursued. Most issues start in stage one and expand to the others, but not always in a clear sequential order. Movements, like life, can be very complicated; not everything fits neatly into any analysis, and simplistic schemes are problematic when many influences are in motion. Nevertheless, they help to determine where we have come from and where we go from here. For any social movement to achieve its mission, it must pass through each of the five stages and maintain an active engagement in each one. In doing so, its ability to resist setbacks, obstacles, and opposition from opponents is increased. In other words, as a social movement expands its presence in each stage while maintaining activities in each one, the power and control that any opposition may wield against it is further weakened. For example, the gay rights movement in the United States used public education (through scientific definitions and personal narratives) to counter the stigma of homosexuality as being “unnatural” or “dangerous”. Its supporters organised to push for political change to end discriminatory laws and to demand equal protection under the US Constitution, which resulted in the legalisation of same-sex marriage nationwide. Today, public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage, a drastic change from only a decade ago. These same five stages illustrate the transition animal advocates must make from moral crusaders to political activists, to transform the animal rights movement from a moral crusade to an effective social movement. This analysis also shows the need for a variety of organisations with

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differing approaches. For example, general campaigning organisations (e.g., In Defense of Animals, International Fund for Animal Welfare, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) are needed to be active in Stages One and Two, along with specialist campaigning organisations such as United Poultry Concerns. This is not to suggest that these groups are also not present in Stages Three and Four, as some of their work may also fit this description; however, the organisations specialising in law and public policy (e.g., Animal Legal Defence Fund, Humane Society Legislative Fund, Nonhuman Rights Project) are those who will be most active here and not in public education. As a whole, the modern animal rights movement has not fully progressed beyond the public education phase of Stage One. True, it has some presence in public policy, legislation, and enforcement (Stages Two through Four), but I think most animal advocates feel more comfortable in the moral crusade (Stages One and Two) than as part of a social movement (Stages Three and Four). This is likely because (a) they are comfortable drawing from their personal transformative moments to talk about their own personal experiences (going vegan, buying cruelty-free products) but are not well versed in formal political organising, (b) not enough activists understand that just sharing educational information with other individuals (who might make their own personal transformations) will tip the balance for institutional change the way that formal political action can, and (c) we generally live as passive consumers untaught and unskilled in knowing how to achieve social justice. It is easier to make a cardboard sign and stand outside a fur salon to protest for an hour than it is to collect signatures, lobby legislators, or put pro-animal initiatives on a ballot. We can never assume that a growing collective of personal lifestyle change automatically leads to institutional, societal change. The capriciousness of human nature is subject to change. Institutionalised regulations and laws are much more entrenched expressions of society’s values. Unfortunately, the animal industrial complex is deeply ingrained and fully engaged in all five stages, which is why much of the public debate and legislation relating to nonhuman animals is about the parameters of how they can be used and not the abolition of practices or protecting

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other animals from violence. Those who represent the animal industrial complex remain in positions of power and influence; they control the public policy debate about the moral and legal status of other animals. Nonhuman animals are still principally viewed as property, and therefore are disposable commodities in public policy.

12.8 At the Political Crossroads Nonhuman animals can neither join a moral crusade nor organise their own social movement. Unlike humans, they cannot be the agency of their own liberation. Further, nonhuman animals are not the problem. They do not choose to subject themselves to the cruelty and exploitation we inflict upon them. We are the problem. And we are the solution. We can only stop institutionalised violence to nonhuman animals and award rights to them if we want to. Nonhuman animals are already in the political arena, except their representatives are allied with powerful commercial interests—the animal industrial complex—to ensure that animal exploitation continues for as long as possible, even when nonanimal products, services, and options are available. The involvement of powerful commercial interests in the political process helps to maintain the status quo, to make sure that any regulations or laws protect their interest in using animals rather than further our interest (and the animals’ interest) in not being used at all. Notwithstanding significant challenges and noteworthy accomplishments, the impact to date of the modern animal rights movement on society’s relationship with animals is limited. The present reliance upon a strategy emphasising personal lifestyle choice appeals only to a small minority. For example, in a public opinion poll commissioned by the Vegan Society in the United Kingdom in partnership with Vegan Life magazine, it was found that only 1.05% of the age 15 and over population was vegan (The Vegan Society, 2016). Although this was reported in the media as an “increase of over 350% over the past decade, making veganism one of Britain’s fastest growing lifestyle movements”, I had hoped that after 40 years of the modern animal rights movement, which

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includes vegan advocacy as one of its primary recommendations for action, that the number was higher (Moss, 2016). A poll commissioned by the Vegetarian Resource Group in the United States found that 3.3% of adults 18 and over were people who never ate meat, fish, seafood, or poultry. About one half of the vegetarians were also vegan (The Vegetarian Resource Group Blog, 2016). Again, one has to wonder why this number is not significantly higher.

12.9 Taking the Political Turn for Animals It is naive, even delusional, for the animal rights movement to believe that this present strategy of a moral crusade will persuade society and its representational governments to recognise legal rights for animals, including enforcement by the state with its legal apparatus. The animal industrial complex is the formidable adversary of the animal rights movement; however, its position as opponent can be softened and, in certain situations, could be positioned as associate, if the animal rights movement became a social movement with a political agenda. Therefore, I believe the new strategy of the animal rights movement must be to transition from a moral crusade to a social movement—not one or the other but both at the same time. This is the only way to cross the fault line lying between success and failure in understanding the difference between personal and institutional change. This is how to take the political turn for animals. My argument here is to recognise that much has been achieved for animals, but these accomplishments fail to tackle in any meaningful way the institutionalised exploitation of animals. “The animal advocacy movement has nibbled at the edges of this system of animal exploitation”, Donaldson and Kymlicka write, “but the system itself endures, and indeed expands and deepens all the time, with remarkably little public discussion” (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011, p.2). I agree with them when they write in Zoopolis, that “In a more global perspective, we would argue that the [animal rights] movement has largely failed. The numbers tell the story” (Ibid). The animal rights movement was largely absent from the US presidential election campaign. Between the primaries and Election Day,

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the movement had ample opportunity to engage with the American people about its treatment of animals at a time when the nation was discussing its values and future. The opportunity to raise society’s treatment of animals during the time of a national debate has once again been lost. This unsatisfactory situation is further testimony to my assessment that the US animal rights movement is largely in Stage One (public education) with some activity in Stages Two, Three, and Four (public policy, legislation, and enforcement). Once again, the US animal rights movement failed again to seize the opportunity to take the political turn for animals. Meanwhile, the financial and other interests that constitute the animal industrial complex were fully engaged in the presidential election campaign. When making the case for the Sanders protest, Matt Johnson of DxE said that the group’s the aim was to “get the issue on the table, and prevent it from being forgotten or silenced” (Woods, 2016). Indeed, the modern animal rights movement has only recently succeeded in getting the issue of animal rights into the public’s consciousness. We fail to make any meaningful impact in the mainstream political arena. This criticism is not made with any intent to impugn the progress made to date in public policy related to animals. The animal rights movement can rightly make claim to the accomplishments it has achieved in various local and state (including with citizen initiatives) legislatures and the federal government in the United States, and in many other countries throughout the world, and with such international agencies and governments as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the European Union. Nonetheless, animal rights is still principally framed as a personal lifestyle choice—a moral crusade. Animal rights is not a mainstream political issue alongside others such as the economy, defence, and civil rights. For it to become a true social movement, people who are sympathetic towards animals must: 1. Engage with local community meetings and speak out whenever any issue is considered that affects animals. For example, advocates can support Trap-Neuter-Return programs to reduce the population of

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community cats, or meet with school boards to persuade them to adopt Meatless Mondays and vegetarian/vegan alternatives in school cafeterias. 2. Join political parties and attend local and state meetings to become engaged with issues and candidates. They can discuss animal rights with others in their political party and collaborate with like-minded party members to develop party positions that are informed and sympathetic. 3. Join animal-related state lobbying organisations, which in the United States include chapters of the League of Humane Voters and individual groups such as Animal Protection Voters New Mexico. By adding their voices to others in the state who care about animals, advocates can strengthen the call for more effective legislation and oppose any proposal that puts the lives of animals at risk. 4. Quiz candidates for office regarding their positions on animal issues so that they understand how much of the public cares about animals and wants to know where they stand. Encourage candidates to make official statements about supporting animal protection. 5. Attend political conventions to make animal issues more visible. These special events bring together activists, party members, the media, and other opinion formers to determine the party’s platform and candidates. They are opportunities to raise awareness about animal rights with the objective of seeing the issue discussed alongside others, especially where interests overlap (e.g., animal protection and the environment, or animal protection and taxation). 6. Stand for public office themselves. When people sympathetic to animals rise to the challenge of representing their community, they can include animal rights among related issues that they will support if elected. Only when this happens on a sufficient scale, over a protracted period of time, will it be true to say that the US animal rights movement has taken the political turn for animals. Perhaps then, policies will have replaced protests.

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Pacelle, W., 2016. The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers are Transforming the Lives of Animals. New York: William Morrow. Paterson, D. & Ryder, R. D., eds., 1979. Animals’ Rights - A Symposium. Fontwell, Sussex: Centaur Press. Potter, W., 2011. Green is the New Red: The Journey from Activist to ECOTerrorist. San Francisco: City Lights Books. Radford, M., 2001. Animal Welfare Law in Britain: Regulation and Responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Regan, T., 1983. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schaffner, J., 2010. An Introduction to Animals and the Law. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Singer, P., 1990. Animal Liberation. 2nd Edition. New York: New York Review. Smith, K. K., 2012. Governing Animals: Animal Welfare and the Liberal State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stallwood, K., 1996. Utopian Visions and Pragmatic Politics: Challenging the Foundations of Speciesism and Misothery. In R. Garner, ed., Animal Rights: The Changing Debate. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. Stallwood, K., 2014. Growl: Life Lessons, Hard Truths, and Bold Strategies from an Animal Advocate. New York: Lantern Books. Steinfeld, H., et al., 2006. Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The Vegan Society, 2016. There are Three and Half Times as many Vegans as there were in 2006, making it the Fastest Growing Lifestyle Movement. URL: www.vegansociety.com/whats-new/news/find-out-how-many-vegans-aregreat-britain. (Accessed 18/9/16). The Vegetarian Resource Group Blog, 2016. How many Adults in the U.S. are Vegetarian and Vegan? How many Adults eat Vegetarian and Vegan Meals when eating out?. URL: www.vrg.org/blog/2016/04/29/how-many-adultsin-the-u-s-are-vegetarian-and-vegan-how-many-adults-eat-vegetarian-andvegan-meals-when-eating-out/ (Accessed 18/9/16). Thomas, K., 1983. Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility. 1st American Edition. New York: Pantheon Books. Twine, R., 2010. The Industrialisation of Animals: What happened to Ethics?. The Scavenger, (Monday 13th, December). URL: www.thescavenger.net/ social-justice-sp-24912/animals/538-the-iindustrialisation-of-animalswhere-are-the-ethics-89912.html (Accessed 18/9/16).

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Vidal, J., 1997. McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial. London: Macmillan. Wise, S., 2000. Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals. New York: Basic Books. Wolfson, D. J., 1996. Beyond the Law: Agribusiness and the Systemic Abuse of Animals Raised for Food or Food Production. 2 ANIMAL L. URL: natio nalaglawcenter.org/publication/wolfson-beyond-the-law-agribusiness-andthe-systemic-abuse-of-animals-raised-for-food-or-food-production-2-ani mal-l-123-154-1996/(Accessed 18/9/16). Woods, N., 2016. Why Vegans are Protesting Bernie Sanders Rallies. URL: munchies.vice.com/en/articles/why-these-vegans-are-protesting-bernie-san ders-rallies (Accessed 18/9/16). Kim Stallwood is an independent scholar and author on animal rights. He has more than 40 years of personal commitment and professional experience in leadership positions with some of the world’s foremost animal advocacy organisations in the United Kingdom and United States. This includes Compassion in World Farming, British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and The Animals’ Agenda magazine. He co-founded the Animals and Society Institute with Ken Shapiro in 2005. He is the (volunteer) executive director of Minding Animals International. Currently, he is a consultant to Philip Lymbery, Chief Executive, CIWF, in the United Kingdom and Becky Robinson, President and Founder, Alley Cat Allies, in the United States. He is the author of Growl: Life Lessons, Hard Truths, and Bold Strategies from an Animal Advocate with a Foreword by Brian May (Lantern Books, 2014). He is the editor of Speaking Out for Animals: True Stories about Real People Who Rescue Animals with a Foreword by Jane Goodall (Lantern Books, 2001) and A Primer on Animal Rights: Leading Experts write about Animal Cruelty and Exploitation with a Foreword by Jeremy Rifkin (Lantern Books, 2002). He became a vegetarian in 1974 after working in a chicken slaughterhouse. He has been a vegan since 1976. He holds dual citizenship in the United Kingdom and United States. His website is www.kimstallwood.com.

13 Interspecies Atrocities and the Politics of Memory Guy Scotton

13.1 Introduction The unfolding “political turn” in animal rights theory has enriched the agenda of animal ethics with the central concepts and concerns of political theory, extending new paradigms for inclusion, representation, and redress to nonhuman animals within the rubric of justice. These projects have concentrated on various forward-looking aspects of the moral, political, and legal standing of different nonhuman animals, with most theorists within the political turn so far having little to say about the symbolic, narrative, and affective dimensions of interspecies justice. In this chapter, I employ a framework of interspecies atrocities in order to begin a conversation with the broad literature on memory and reconciliation after violence and atrocity, exploring the opportunities as well as the limitations and asymmetries this approach highlights for G. Scotton (*) Independent researcher, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_13

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the project of just interspecies community. What might it mean for societies to be sorry, and to take historical responsibility, for vast and still expanding systems of exploitation and dispossession of nonhuman animals? In the first and second sections of this chapter (13.2 and 13.3), I survey some philosophical resources for attending to interspecies atrocities. In the third section (13.4), I apply a framework of moral repair to interspecies justice. This framework is attentive to existing practices of interspecies mourning and memorialisation, considering examples of events staged by activists as well as the changing complexion of public awareness and education. These cases illustrate the contested nature of collective memory as a resource for political judgement, with various practices of remembrance disrupting or stabilising different perspectives and attitudes towards interspecies justice. Finally (in 13.5), I consider how the themes of remembrance and atonement my chapter has foregrounded might develop a broader conversation within the political turn in interspecies ethics about the role of political emotions and narratives in advancing interspecies justice.

13.2 Invoking Interspecies Atrocities Shifting ethical attention towards the symbolic dimensions of interspecies justice, and especially to the symbolic dimensions of historical relationships, faces an uphill battle of justification. Clare Palmer makes explicit a central concern about any such project as she develops a model of material compensation for nonhuman animals that are displaced or deprived by human activities. In the course of her case study of coyotes displaced by development, Palmer contends that coyotes (and other nonhuman animals) “cannot gain psychologically from knowing that reparation is reparation; anything like an apology or a memorialization would be wasted on them. They lack concepts of justice, bear no grudges against either perpetrators or beneficiaries, and seek no satisfaction from either” (2010, p.104). There is an obvious and substantial sense in which Palmer is right: namely, that nonhuman animals receive no psychological gratification

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from the norms of dignity and recognition which (however understood) shape symbolic acts of moral repair (Walker, 2006, p.5). But, as beings inextricably implicated in symbolic relations with human communities, it does not follow that acts of symbolic justice necessarily are “wasted” on nonhuman animals. Apologies for the treatment of human generations long past, or infants, or people otherwise unable to benefit psychologically from them, generally are considered both coherent and (potentially) constructive acts of historical justice. As Roy Brooks puts it in relation to apologies for long-past injustices: While I would not go so far as to say that apology is for the perpetrator and reparation is for the victim, I would say that, in a real sense, apology is as much for the perpetrator as it is for the victim . . . In sum, the presence of the victim is not necessary for the tender of apology, or for that matter, reparations, to take effect . . . It would be better, of course, if the victims were able to witness this special occasion, but their absence should not invalidate the redemption—the perpetrator’s ability to redress its selfinflicted moral wound. (2006, p.226)

Donaldson and Kymlicka are more forthcoming on this point, holding that “the focus of our efforts should be forward-looking justice. Even so, we have strong reasons at least to acknowledge the facts of historic injustice, through education, memorials, collective apologies, and other forms of symbolic compensation” (2011, p.196). However, Donaldson and Kymlicka conclude their book by calling for “a fresh start—for first contact all over again. Fortunately, most animal communities do not retain detailed intergenerational records of abusive treatment by humans” (Ibid, p.258). I am not suggesting that their emphasis here on the political opportunities of new forms of community with nonhuman animals is misplaced, a point to which I return in Section 13.5. My observation is just that these passages, together with Palmer’s, represent some of the only explicit attention to the symbolic life of justice, and historical justice in particular, within the political turn so far. The vast literatures of memory studies and historical justice link public norms to rituals, symbols, narratives, and emotions in ways that could enrich theories of interspecies justice and enhance their abilities to converse

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with developments in other domains of political theory. I turn now to the concept of evil in order to grasp what is at stake in the cultural and emotional life of interspecies justice. Philosophical, psychological, and historical accounts of evil have consolidated in the past three decades around a secular framework paradigmatically concerned with inter-human atrocities such as torture and genocide. Outside of the work of Claudia Card, whose theory of evil I take up subsequently, attention to nonhuman animals within the contemporary philosophical literature on evil can very nearly be canvassed in one paragraph. Geoffrey Scarre opens After Evil with the remark that “To reflect on evil is to consider the myriad ways in which lives—animal, as well as human—can be destroyed or damaged or prevented from reaching their full potential” (2004, p.1), although he does not follow up on this point.1 John Kekes notes in Facing Evil that “A full account would have to consider animals and perhaps also plants, other organisms, and possible sentient beings not presently known, but I shall ignore all of them here” (1993, p.45). Jonathan Glover remarks at the outset of his moral history of twentieth-century catastrophes that “[a] more generous conception would include”—amongst various other topics—“attitudes towards animals, to the natural world and to the environment” (2012, pp.2–3).2 In On Evil, Adam Morton lists factory farming amongst other examples as one of the “factors . . . of dubious moral status” on which our society “depends”, and about which we are liable to suppress reflection: “We learn strategies for not noticing that our actions lead to atrocity” (2004, pp.57–8). To my knowledge, no monograph deals extensively with interspecies evils.3

Elsewhere, Scarre offers, without elaboration, that “hunting animals purely for sport plausibly counts as evil under my working definition” (2012, p.75n.2). 2 In an essay responding to Glover’s book, Nussbaum (2010) evokes interspecies comparisons, though her purpose is not to highlight nonhuman animal suffering per se; rather, she explores “two important silences” in Glover’s book, one being the affinities between the emotional lives of humans and nonhumans, the other being “the human denial of kinship with the animal, and the misogyny that is all too often a concomitant of that denial” (2010, p.206). The issue of “suffering in the factory food industry” is invoked in a subsidiary way to illustrate compassion (Ibid, p.209). 3 I use “interspecies evils” and “interspecies atrocities” throughout to mean “human evils towards other species” and “human atrocities towards other species”. 1

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The situation is little better in the recent cluster of works examining the social psychology of evil and atrocity (for popular and representative monographs, see Waller, 2002; Zimbardo, 2007; Baron-Cohen, 2011). In this literature, nonhuman animals feature principally as the absent referents of discussions about de- or infra-humanisation, as models for investigating human psychology,4 or occasionally as the victims of socially aberrant instances of cruelty, interesting largely as symptoms of human-directed malevolence. Conversely, animal ethicists, including those of the political turn, have paid no systematic attention to the concept of evil itself. Presumably, many animal ethicists hold doubts in common with other “evil-skeptics”, to borrow Russell’s (2006) terminology. As moral philosophers work to disentangle a post-metaphysical understanding of evil from its roots in the Western tradition, and political theorists largely remain “[t]emperamentally wary” of such a loaded term (Haddock, Roberts & Sutch, 2011, p.3), evil-skeptics worry about evil’s theological heritage, its abuse in political rhetoric, and the resemblance of the emotions it evokes to the hatreds and fears that impel injustice and violence. Perhaps animal ethicists have additional reasons to avoid any such impression of sermonising, given the charges of sentimentality and misanthropy so often flung their way; in any case, the conceptual priorities of animal rights have lain elsewhere. But despite the mutual disengagement of animal ethics from discussions about evil, references to inter-human atrocities—ranging from isolated evocations to explicit analogies or extensions of concepts—are scattered throughout the animal rights literature. Steven Wise, for instance, describes the murder of chimpanzees and bonobos as “genocide” (2000, pp.265–266), Donaldson and Kymlicka refer to the

4 Often, nonhuman models for human psychology are discussed by reference to experiments that in and of themselves constitute interspecies atrocities—a point which troubles Baron-Cohen in his treatment of “the science of evil”: “In Chapter 1 I was clearly condemning of the Nazi experiments that tested how long a person could tolerate freezing water, yet here I seem to be willing to justify Harlow’s and Hinde’s monkey experiments. I suspect I am guilty of a double standard when it comes to human versus animal research” (2011, p.203n.v).

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eradication of “pest” animals as “ethnic cleansing” (2011, p.211), and a brace of more involved historical and sociological comparisons to human slavery and the Holocaust have been advanced by Spiegel (1989), Patterson (2002), Davis (2005), and Sztybel (2006). The Holocaust analogy is also a dramatic and conceptual crux of Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals (1999) and in much of the ensuing commentary on Coetzee’s work. In public discourse, animal rights activists have deployed these comparisons in slogans, pamphlets, and multimedia campaigns, most notoriously in the mid-2000’s campaigns of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Popular outrage at particular instances of nonhuman animal suffering—often those brought to light through the efforts of activists—also grasps for the language of atrocity, sometimes in unexpected ways. Thus, a former Australian Commonwealth meat inspector proclaimed in 2011, after investigative footage of Indonesian slaughterhouses catapulted Australia’s live cattle export industry to national attention: “Of all those years as a meat inspector I have never seen the atrocities against animals as I did last night” (Taylor, 2011). All of these invocations of atrocity have proven fraught. Scholarly comparisons to inter-human atrocities occupy a narrow cul-de-sac, ignored by the fields studying human atrocities. PETA’s campaigns publicly ran aground; amidst recriminations from human civil rights groups, PETA was sued by Marjorie Spiegel not only for tarnishing the reputation of her work but also for “degrad[ing] and impair[ing] public discourse” (Goldstein, 2008). Popular outrage remains sporadic and inconsistent at best; the former meat inspector in my example above objects to “the cruelty over there” while advocating for a corresponding increase in local slaughtering operations (Taylor, 2011). I will not adjudicate on the legitimacy or effectiveness of these comparisons here.5 Rather, I will suggest that by turning to the moral vocabulary of evil and atrocity underlying much of this discourse, and by 5 For representative criticisms of these comparisons from non-animal rights perspectives, see Costelloe (2003) and MacDonald (2006). Kim (2011) defends PETA’s exhibits on the “moral” grounds that they contribute to the “destabilization” of historically particular dualities and hierarchies, but criticises them for their “political” hazards in alienating the mainstream media

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locating nonhuman animals within the philosophical literature on evil and atrocity, we can look past the dilemmas of particular comparisons to more productive questions about how to attend to, and make amends for, a history of interspecies atrocities, and how best to approach the past as a moral resource in the ongoing project of interspecies justice. Horror at evil—moral horror6—stakes out an extreme zone on the compass of moral psychology which can help to locate emotions such as outrage, sorrow, and shame. My interest in evil here raises broader issues of moral psychology: how do political emotions form and sustain commitments to justice, and what sorts of institutions and practices would cultivate the emotional bases of interspecies justice? The case of interspecies atrocities thus serves as a vivid way to connect the political turn to developments in political theory concerning the symbolic and affective dimensions of justice and to begin a conversation on the role of political emotions, rituals, and narratives in cultivating and sustaining commitments to interspecies justice.

13.3 Pursuing Interspecies Evils in Claudia Card’s Atrocity Theory Claudia Card’s theory of evil offers a substantial starting point for my invocation of interspecies evil and atrocity. Card’s working definition of evil is that “evils are foreseeable intolerable harms produced by culpable wrongdoing” (2002, p.3), or, in expanded form: and for hindering intersections with other anti-oppression causes, concluding that coalitionbuilding should take prominence. 6 Despite being a “high-temperature and high-profile phenomenon”, the concept of moral horror has received little philosophical attention (Wilson & Wilson, 2003, p.321). Wilson and Wilson’s paper raises apt concerns about the resemblance of horror to disgust and the tendency to aversion and its corresponding affiliation with discourses of purity and contamination. However, I disagree with their assessment of moral horror as a form of taboo which occludes rational reflection, a sort of psychological allergic reaction which in our moral reasoning “we should strive to get rid of” (Ibid, p.327). Horror is not simply an aversive reaction—a moral sneeze—and, in the particularity of our own experience of horror, we may in fact become more receptive to the particular suffering of victims of evil, and to the specific “ordinary goodness” of the lives which evil so definitively ruptures (Ruddick, 2003, p.218).

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[A]n evil is harm that is (1) reasonably foreseeable (or appreciable) and (2) culpably inflicted (or tolerated, aggravated, or maintained), and that (3) deprives, or seriously risks depriving, others of the basics that are necessary to make a life possible and tolerable or decent (or to make a death decent). (Ibid, p.16)

Card’s specifications readily accommodate nonhuman animals, and Card commits to this implication, acknowledging “evils done to animals who are raised on factory farms and butchered in mass production slaughterhouses” (Ibid, p.9), and noting that “hunting animals for sport is an evil widely not recognized as such” (Ibid, p.10). In her follow-up volume, Confronting Evils, Card outlines laboratory testing on nonhuman animals as one of five forms of socially prevalent violence in which “vast amounts of torture remain publicly unacknowledged” (2010, p.225). Nonhuman animals disappear soon after they are introduced in the first chapter of The Atrocity Paradigm, and though they return in somewhat more detail in Card’s Confronting Evils, they scarcely feature in the commentary these works occasioned. Here, the predicament of nonhuman animals arises only within a further extension of Card’s theory: the conundrum of whether or not non-sentient forms of life such as ecosystems can themselves be regarded as victims of evils (Norlock, 2004; Card, 2004). Nonetheless, in addition to the explicit inclusions of nonhuman animals noted above, Card’s theory contains a number of other features which can be pressed to yield insights about interspecies evils. First, since Card’s definition of evil involves culpability on the part of the perpetrator but not particular dispositions or motivations, her theory is psychologically thin. This has two advantages for Card: one is to restore attention to “the relatively neglected experience of victims” of evils (2002, p.10), whose experiences often are side-lined as philosophers and social psychologists investigate the character of evildoers. The other, interrelated advantage is to direct our view to structural or institutional evils, and so to the role of collective systems of complicity and denial in sustaining these evils. The colossal enterprises of animal agriculture and animal experimentation involve evils which make their victims invisible even as their products suffuse every aspect of the social world.

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Second, Card’s account treats evils explicitly as “evils, plural” (Ibid, p.9): that is, her attention to the experiences of victims, along with her theory’s sensitivity to the ambiguities and complexities of mass evildoing, resists broad comparisons and rankings of atrocities even as it strives to make them mutually intelligible (Ibid, pp.13–16). This resistance accords with Carol J. Adams’ objection to employing the Holocaust and other atrocities in order to evoke identification with nonhuman animal suffering: “These metaphors attempt to make others’ experience ‘borrowable.’ It is not for us to compare suffering. We should acknowledge suffering but not compare it. Acknowledging grants the integrity of the suffering, while comparing assumes the reducibility, the objectification of suffering” (Adams, 2007, p.212; emphasis in original). Card’s theory offers non-metaphorical standards for assessing evils, and moral responses to evils, in a common light, but remains attentive to the irreducibility of victims’ experiences. Her atrocity theory is responsive to the idea of testimony and the moral voices of victims. While these dimensions of attending to evil may seem to demand complex communicative abilities on the part of victims, I will suggest in the next section that issues of testimony have analogues in the interspecies case as well. Third, Card develops three case studies of atrocities as evils “writ large” (Card, 2002, p.9), and although she discusses slavery and the Holocaust, especially in investigating the institutional structures behind atrocities and the moral powers and obligations of victims and perpetrators, her case studies are carefully selected to reveal new aspects of familiar categories. Thus, her focus within war atrocities is on mass rape and sexual slavery; and she employs the concepts of terrorism and torture to describe the “private atrocities” of domestic abuse (Ibid, p.5). It is worth pausing here to consider how nonhuman animals already are implicated in Card’s case studies. Because of the destructive scope of modern combat and because of the ubiquity of nonhuman animals as resources, warfare predictably involves the destruction of nonhuman animal lives, whether in the testing of weapons, in the ecological devastation of wilderness, in the collateral killing of domestic animals or their deliberate killing to subjugate human populations, or in the “enlistment” of other species for military support roles. As Weinstein observes, “the environment [including nonhuman animals] is often both

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a victim and a tool of armed conflict” (2005, p.698). Edmund Russell remarks that “war and environmental change were not separate endeavors, but rather related aspects of life in the twentieth century”, and notes that the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea “became one of the most bountiful nature preserves in Asia” (2001, p.235)—a poignant illustration of war’s entanglement of intra- and interspecies atrocities.7 Nonhuman animals are both victims and tools in domestic violence as well. Card notes that domestic abusers manipulate their victims using, amongst many other methods of coercion, “threats to significant third parties (including animal companions)” (2002, p.145; 2010, p.143). Card proceeds to argue that the institution of marriage as currently constituted—legally and socially ordained as a lifetime bond—enables the evils of domestic violence so predictably that it must be judged an evil-facilitating institution, to be drastically altered or abolished. Correspondingly, I suggest that the institution of animal companionship as currently constituted—legally and socially ordained as a chattel property relation8—facilitates the evils of animal abuse, governed, as with marriage, by a patriarchal nexus in which ““biology” and “privacy” provide alibis for abuse” in the home (Adams, 1994, p.75). Recognition of the property status of nonhuman animals as evil-facilitating—a structural evil—raises important themes of complicity and agency, dimensions of social philosophy which a theory of evil such as Card’s may help to consolidate in animal ethics. The final salient feature of Card’s theory is the most challenging to an interspecies extension of the concept of evil. Having examined paradigms of atrocity, Card examines the central moral powers of both victims and perpetrators. Her treatment of the “ethical issues of attitudinal response” appears most remote from the situation of interspecies

7 Interest in the more-than-human consequences of warfare is growing in environmental history and the emerging sub-discipline of warfare ecology. However, as Bankoff remarks, nonhuman animals “rarely appear directly in these narratives but are generally regarded as an undifferentiated part of an abstract environment or, at best, as elements of a threatened ecosystem” (2010, p.205). 8 Card notes Gary Francione’s formulation of this argument in passing (2010, p.118), in one of her only direct references to the animal ethics literature.

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atrocities, since—as in much of the literature on moral repair—Card takes the personal apology as a central model: “Paradigm forgiveness is interpersonal” (2002, p.174). Yet working through this model illuminates new aspects of the possibilities—and limitations—of interspecies justice. The question is what these processes of repair might look like absent the tight coupling Card observes between the moral powers of victims and the burdens of perpetrators. Processes and attitudes grounding the receptivity of victims, but which are largely absent from the interspecies case, include trust, respect, mercy, forgiveness, and clemency or rescue from punishment or reparations (to the extent that these are in the victims’ hands) (2002, chaps. 8 & 9). Also absent or greatly different in the nonhuman case is the emotional dynamic propelling different phases of what is often studied under the rubric of “trauma”, including complexities such as the “second injury” which may occur when societies fail to acknowledge or support victims’ grievances (Walker, 2006, pp.15–21). Correspondingly, gratitude is lacking from the perpetrator’s repertoire of responses to victims of interspecies atrocities; but many of the other burdens remain intact, including guilt and shame. Fearing no vengeance9 and expecting no forgiveness, how might human communities meaningfully assume the moral burdens of perpetrators? Other moral powers may be distributed: “one need not be a victim in order to blame or condemn” (Card, 2002, p.184); indeed, we can blame or condemn ourselves (Ibid, p.176), and this is one of the necessary criteria of a successful apology on most accounts. Picking up from Card’s claim that guilt “is not just masochism, self-torture, or the internalization of victims’ hostilities” (Ibid, p.190), perhaps the spectrum of moral powers and responsibilities in the face of interspecies atrocities could be said to lie between self-flagellation and self-forgiveness. This spectrum includes introspective as well as otherdirected tasks: “Appreciating moral luck in general, as well as our own

9

As my interest here is in secular accounts of evil, I leave aside the prospect of divine judgement and punishment. Also, I assume that the animal rights movement will continue to be overwhelmingly non-violent.

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strengths and weaknesses in particular, may be one intermediate position between the refusal to feel guilt and obsessive self-torture” (Ibid, p.201). Yet the danger remains that guilt and shame [c]an lead to excessive self-absorption, centering one’s own character, culpability, or defectiveness, one’s own need to be redeemed or reinstated . . . [E]xcessive self-absorption can hinder moral regeneration, which requires us to act in the world and get involved in projects sensitive to others’ needs—other than their need to know that we are aware of our faults. (Ibid, p.207)

In the next section, I sketch some ways of beginning to respond to interspecies evils through forms of narrative, memorial, and testimony. Precisely where many evil-skeptics are most suspicious of evil—its narrative power—I hold that it has explanatory and normative advantages that are worth the hazards that its invocation also entails. This narrative—indeed, performative—aspect of talking about evil has particular resonance in the wake of the “apology phenomenon” (Lazare, 2012, p.7; Celermajer, 2009, chap. 1), and what Pauline Wakeham terms “the phenomenon of reconciliation” (Wakeham, 2013, p.209), which covers a host of scholarly and popular discourse on truth commissions, official apologies, commemorations, and other measures, typically by nation-states, to respond to historical injustices.

13.4 Interspecies Moral Repair: A Social Right to Truth? Here, I apply the framework of interspecies atrocities to the theory and practice of historical justice, expanding the “right to truth” now prevalent in human rights discourse (Walker, 2010, pp.526–529) to encompass the experiences of nonhuman animals systematically and egregiously wronged by human communities. The right to truth is a claim for the significance of truth-telling as a reparative action distinct from, though usually informed by, whatever truth-gathering measures are necessary to stop a given atrocity or to punish its perpetrators (where

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legal sanctions are available). Thus understood, the truth commission model advances an ethic of social attention to the experiences and perspectives of nonhuman animals in light of their ongoing mass oppression, informed by emerging theories and practices of exploring and enabling nonhuman agency. This will involve remedial attention to animal suffering in its historical fullness, but also to animal pleasures and capacities and opportunities for flourishing—attention that incorporates public rituals and institutions of care as well as the cultivation of personal habits and other-regarding skills. One objection to the idea that anything like a truth commission would be constructive in the case of interspecies atrocities is that, precisely because violence against nonhuman animals has been (and is) so widespread and so normalised, there has been no comparable effort to conceal or concertedly deny the core facts of interspecies atrocities. However much corporations prevaricate, the treatment of nonhuman animals is blithely documented in reams of industry literature, as indeed Peter Singer employs to harrowing rhetorical effect in his recitation of lab reports and trade magazines (2002, chaps. 2–3). However, this objection ignores the performative import of truth commissions and misses the crucial point that atrocities are sustained by many interacting modes of silence, denial, and confected ignorance. The public confrontation of “open secrets” thus is psychologically intricate, and the meaning of public acknowledgements of atrocities varies accordingly (Cohen, 2001). It is true, as Palmer observes, that nonhuman animals can gain no direct psychological satisfaction from a procedure such as a truth commission. Moreover, the communicative differences between humans and other species affect the structure of interspecies solidarity. As Jean Harvey observes: Great attention and concern is owed the victims and their suffering, but they make no pronouncements others should defer to and there are no consultations where the approval of the victims must be given, not because we would not wish to do so, but because by the nature of the case it cannot be done. There is nothing in fact that places the victims in an “authoritative” role as distinct from a morally central one. (2007, p.30)

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But as with Palmer’s point, these implications should not be overstated. Such asymmetries do not rule out a constructive role for particular nonhuman animals and their “authority” as victims in a broader sense. It is possible to imagine forms of assisted political agency here—remembering as remembering with nonhuman animals—based upon the embodied testimony of nonhuman animals.10 Indeed, insofar as interspecies atrocities have been enabled by modes of denying the social presence of nonhuman animals, any truth commission should itself aspire to model the reincorporation of nonhuman subjectivity within the polity. Ongoing theoretical developments in nonhuman agency and representation will be central to any such initiative, and a truth commission could serve as the basis for a permanent office of cultural representation. Such a system would acknowledge that, even where nonhuman animals cannot participate in human discourse, they are profoundly affected by it, and so have a stake in their representation in history, the media, and human culture more broadly.11 What would remedial attention to nonhuman animal flourishing look like? Karen Emmerman (2014) is one of the only scholars to apply a theory of moral repair to nonhuman animals, and she identifies sanctuaries for animals used in farms and laboratories as a vital frontier for the work of atonement. This is not just a question of learning about evils and their effects on nonhuman victims, and doing what we can to aid them now. It is an obligation to learn, via embodied experience, the specific goods of nonhuman animal lives which evil disfigures and destroys. In Martha Nussbaum’s recent study of political emotions (2013), she argues that building a public culture of justice requires explicit attention to the emotional structure of political commitments, promoting love, compassion, and pride while grappling with “compassion’s enemies” in fear, shame, and disgust. Indeed, the contest of this psychology is 10

Discussing the model of communal decision-making practised at VINE Sanctuary, in which humans deliberate in a large barn in the presence of the sanctuary’s nonhuman residents, Donaldson and Kymlicka suggest that nonhuman animals “cannot articulate their views in discussion, but they are a presence, a reminder, and a check, on human deliberation” (2015, p.67). 11 Recent contributions to a media ethics for nonhuman animals are suggestive here; see, for instance, the proposal by Freeman, Bekoff, & Bexell (2011), and the media guidelines developed by Merskin and Freeman (2015).

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underwritten by Nussbaum’s own account of radical evil (2013, ch.7). Political emotions should be studied and exercised expansively in concrete instances of public speech and action: in rituals, stories, monuments, and the design of public spaces. Nussbaum takes the tragic and comic festivals of ancient Athens to be exemplary: Large modern nations cannot precisely replicate the dramatic festivals of ancient Athens, but they can try to understand their political role and find their own analogues—using political rhetoric, publicly sponsored visual art, the design of public parks and monuments, public book discussions, and the choice and content of public holidays and celebrations. (Ibid, p.261)

Nonhuman animals feature in Political Emotions only as indirect subjects. They teach us about the animal heritage of our own moral psychology: “By studying the other animals, we learn a great deal about common roots of compassion and altruism on which we can potentially draw” (Ibid, p.160). Nussbaum later suggests, in remarkably Kantian terms, that the formative lessons in “tragic spectatorship” in the modern world often come from stories about, and childhood experiences with, the death of nonhuman animals: “This loss typically prepares them for a later confrontation with human losses” (Ibid, p.276). Neither Nussbaum nor her commentators have connected her exposition of political emotions here to her prior work on interspecies justice. This is an unfortunate omission, since on Nussbaum’s account elsewhere, nonhuman animals are entitled as a matter of justice to “to a world public culture that respects them and treats them as dignified beings” (2004, p.316), and such commitments to interspecies justice must be guided and motivated by “imaginative sympathy” (2006). Bridging this gap by examining practices of interspecies mourning and remembrance offers a way for the political turn to engage with civic emotions, and so to begin a deeper investigation of the civic scaffolding of animal rights. Nonhuman animal rights activists have long employed tropes of mourning and remembrance, ranging from roadside tributes to vigils, “die-ins”, and days of remembrance, and a small literature now connects these sorts of acts to the ethics of mourning and witnessing—where the recovery of nonhuman animal lives as “grievable”, to use Judith Butler’s much cited

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formulation, is a foundational act for interspecies justice (e.g. Taylor, 2008; Stanescu, 2012; Gruen, 2014). As Lori Gruen argues: [R]ecognizing and engaging in mourning can be a way of moving toward justice, perhaps not just for humans but for other animals as well . . . Those not currently experiencing grief can help to support the creation of communal possibilities for mourning, take grief out of the private realm, and publicly help make the lives, deaths, and relations visible and meaningful. (Gruen, 2014, p.63)

Combining these resources, the political turn might expand the engagement with critical geography and the importance of public space for justice inaugurated in Donaldson and Kymlicka’s Zoopolis by consulting the critical literature on the material and symbolic “human rights landscape”, developing a vision for an “animal rights landscape” incorporating museums, monuments, public art, festivals, and other forms of convivial attention to the historical experiences of nonhuman animals.

13.5 Emotions and the Moral Imagination in Interspecies Justice Seeing nonhumans as subjects of justice and members of human communities in a robust sense demands, I suggest, an apprehension of our history, and the mobilisation of narrative and affect to sustain commitments to interspecies justice. I have argued that recent philosophical accounts of evil are a promising resource, despite their mutual lack of engagement with animal ethics, since they combine a framework for interpreting atrocities with a focus on the moral powers of perpetrators in relation to their victims. This avoids some of the pitfalls of earlier works that have sought to apprehend interspecies atrocities, enriching the moral vocabulary of interspecies justice while pointing to new fields of inquiry in memory studies, political emotions, and moral repair. The coherence of moral outrage depends on the conception of outrageous acts, and the language of atrocity is a significant and perhaps inescapable way of shaping this. Mary Midgley argues in defence of

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sentiment in moral reasoning that “real indignation is not just an emotional state, but one formed by and containing the thought of the special sort of outrage which calls for it” (1983, pp.42–43). The concept of atrocity evokes and constitutes just such a “special sort” of outrage, and the failure to extend it systematically to atrocious interspecies acts when it is ubiquitous in the inter-human case is, I suggest, not only a symptom of speciesism, but one aspect of speciesism’s social causes. Many people will readily, if hurriedly and non-specifically, acknowledge interspecies wrongs with a variety of epithets—some strong, and strongly felt; but in the serial mismeasure of language, Stanley Cohen identifies a structure of “interpretive denial”: “People who readily admit to themselves, their fellow citizens and even outsiders that ‘something bad is happening’ find it difficult to use the language of genocide, death squads or torture. Some ways of naming reality are not admissible” (2001, p.146). Claudia Card suggests a biting example from the realm of interspecies atrocities: “Some products not tested on animals are marked in the US ‘cruelty-free’. It would be a sign of moral progress to be able to mark, instead, products that are so tested as ‘torturecertified’” (2010, pp.233–234). All ways of naming reality present interpretive challenges. Bracing concepts all too easily become brittle, and the language and affect of outrage can end up stymying moral discourse and action. Perhaps talk about interspecies evils and atrocities will in fact not often be constructive for this reason. But properly formulated, even extreme emotions and language are an indispensable part of social action, and a thoughtful account of evil and its social causes may help to recover this sort of outrage from belaboured analogies and contested comparisons. Trained towards the tasks of remembrance and repair, moral horror can be a powerful resource for the civic imagination. The case of outrage also helps to illuminate the role of emotions and narratives in sustaining the prospect of interspecies justice. Extending Nussbaum’s account of political emotions in line with her own convictions about interspecies justice, I hold that ritual and rhetoric matter for interspecies justice, even where nonhuman animals cannot be interlocutors in any comparable sense. Accordingly, Donaldson and Kymlicka’s call for a new beginning—for “first contact all over again”

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(2011, p.258)—might itself be read within the storied rhetorical tradition of “public forgetting” (Vivian, 2010). Resisting the cultural tendency to define forgetting as the absence or failure of appropriate attention to the past, Vivian argues that public forgetting, like public remembering, is a political resource, crafted from ritual and rhetoric in a process of “commemorative restructuring and transformation” (Ibid, p.14). We should then be attentive to discourses of remembering and forgetting as complementary political resources, both engaged with the sentiments and stories that constitute public life. This does not mean that the history of interspecies atrocities—whether performatively remembered or forgotten—should be the definitive core of a culture of interspecies justice. As Donaldson and Kymlicka stress, the process of “expecting agency, looking for agency, and enabling agency” (2011, p.110) will shape the social horizon of enduring interspecies communities, and this is an experimental process borne out in personal relations with individual nonhuman animals. This is why it matters, as Donaldson and Kymlicka also contend, that we see nonhuman animals in sanctuaries, for instance, as “pioneers of a just future, rather than as ambassadors of an unjust present” (2015, p.68)—a remark that resonates here with Card’s admonition against a self-absorbed mode of guilt about evils (2002, p.207). At the same time, if we are to get people “excited” about animal rights (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011, p.257), then this means confronting the full suite of emotions evoked by, and constitutive of, interspecies solidarity. A fully fledged political theory of animal rights should consider the emotional bases of enduring justice, including the role of negative sentiments such as anger, sorrow, and contempt. I have employed the framework of interspecies atrocities here not in order to displace or attenuate constructive visions of the future of interspecies relations but to better explore the richness of their moral and psychological vocabulary. Thinking about the practice of moral repair in paradigmatic forms such as truth commissions and memorials suggests new tools for interspecies justice; moreover, it connects actual practices of mourning and remembrance pioneered by activists to political theories of animal rights. Focusing on the politics of memory, and on the intricacies of the moral relationships exemplified by the interpersonal apology, may also reveal new challenges or limits in the realisation of just interspecies community.

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It is reasonable to object that other matters must take conceptual priority for now. As Card recognises, even to grant ongoing interspecies evils the moral priority they deserve “would require enormous and farreaching changes in social organization and practice in Western culture” (2004, p.31). Moreover, a deep culture of interspecies justice with memories and traditions cannot be prescribed and must be forged in the long struggle against still expanding atrocities. In this case, my chapter still can be read as a speculative prompt: What would it mean for a society truly to begin to acknowledge the atrocities it has committed against nonhuman animals? What would it mean truly to be sorry, individually and collectively, for interspecies evils? If it is in fact difficult even to imagine a substantial public reckoning with this legacy, then this raises questions about the scope and stability of human commitments to a just interspecies community. I have suggested here that, asymmetries in the moral powers and communicative abilities of perpetrators and victims notwithstanding, the concepts and practices of historical justice in the face of atrocity could help to inform a robust interspecies politics of memory. If animal ethics has told us to stop, then we must now find ways to say “never again”.

Bibliography Adams, C. J., 1994. Bringing Peace Home: A Feminist Philosophical Perspective on the Abuse of Women, Children, and Pet Animals. Hypatia, 9(2), pp. 63–84. Adams, C. J., 2007. Caring about Suffering: A Feminist Exploration. In J. Donovan & C. J. Adams, eds., The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics. New York: Columbia University Press. Bankoff, G., 2010. A Curtain of Silence: Asia’s Fauna in the Cold War. In J. Mcneill & C. Unger, eds., Environmental Histories of the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baron-Cohen, S., 2011. The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty. New York: Basic Books. Brooks, R., 2006. The New Patriotism and Apology for Slavery. In E. Barkan & A. Karn, eds., Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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14 Animal Research and the Political Theory of Animal Rights Gardar Arnason

14.1 Introduction According to the radical abolitionist view, all human use of nonhuman animals is wrong and must be abolished, whether the nonhuman animals are used for farming, scientific research, testing of nonmedical products, education, blood sports, hunting, zoos, circuses, or even as nonhuman companions.1 In Zoopolis, Sue Donaldson and Will

This research was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) research unit grant FOR 1847. 1 By “the radical abolitionist view”, I, following Donaldson and Kymlicka, refer to views such as Gary Francione’s (2008) abolitionism. There are less radical abolitionist views, which would allow some nonexploitative use of nonhuman animals. Most prominent of the moderate abolitionist views is that of Tom Regan (1983), which focuses the abolitionist claim on the use of nonhuman animals in agriculture, science, and sport (in particular hunting and trapping).

G. Arnason (*) Institute of Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_14

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Kymlicka (2011, pp.43–44) distance themselves partly from the radical abolitionist view, in particular with respect to domesticated animals, but at the same time, they take a strict abolitionist view of nonhuman animal experimentation. In this chapter I argue that they reject nonhuman animal experimentation too quickly. Part of the problem is that they restrict their discussion of nonhuman animal experimentation to invasive medical research, in a way which is too narrow and morally prejudiced. Here I will understand “nonhuman animal experimentation” neutrally as any use of nonhuman animals for research and treat invasive medical research using nonhuman animals as a special case. In the first section (14.2), I consider the claim that nonhuman animals have a basic and inviolable right not to be experimented on. I argue that this claim, without any reference to harm or autonomy and with a neutral understanding of experimentation, has no plausible basis in Donaldson and Kymlicka’s view of nonhuman animal rights, nor in nonhuman animal rights theory in general, nor indeed does it, in this form, have a parallel in human rights. Nonhuman animal experimentation may be restricted in virtue of basic rights to life, liberty, and bodily integrity, but there is no basic right not to be experimented on. In the second section (14.3), I argue that the human nonexploitative uses of domesticated animals, which Donaldson and Kymlicka would allow in their political theory of nonhuman animal rights, can be extended to nonhuman animal experimentation. Since their citizenship framework involves a right to medical care, nonhuman medical research using nonhuman research subjects would be necessary. This, together with the acknowledgement of basic nonhuman animal rights, would drastically alter nonhuman animal experimentation as we know it, but not lead to its abolition. In the third section (14.4), I discuss some implications of nonhuman animal co-citizenship for nonhuman animal experimentation. One important implication concerns science policy: nonhuman animals would require representation within a democratic well-ordered science in order to protect and promote their rights and interests. This implication concerns not only nonhuman animal subjects of science but how any science project affects the interests of nonhuman animals. A second implication

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concerns research ethics, in particular with regard to the ability of nonhuman animals to voluntarily participate in research, the possibility of consent by proxy and the role of institutional safeguards. Together these two implications would put new and significant ethical restrictions on nonhuman animal experimentation, but not abolish it. The third and last implication I will consider concerns the potential duty to have nonhuman animals participate in research, provided other citizens do have such a duty. For the purpose of this discussion, I will grant Donaldson and Kymlicka that nonhuman animals have both basic negative rights, that are inviolable and universal, and group-differentiated positive rights. I will argue that negative basic rights do not imply the abolition of research on nonhuman animals, and that positive relational rights actually require research on nonhuman animals.

14.2 The Right Not to Be Experimented on In Zoopolis, Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011, p.4) describe a core premise of the nonhuman animal rights approach, namely that nonhuman animals have inviolable rights, which include basic moral rights to life and liberty, and also, among other more specific rights, a right not to be subjected to medical experimentation. They declare that they accept this core premise and go on, in the second chapter of their book, to describe and defend their theory of inviolable, universal rights for nonhuman animals, arguing that these basic rights also apply in the “hard case” of animal experimentation (Ibid, pp.43–44). In addition to the inviolable negative rights, nonhuman animals have positive relational rights. Humans have various sorts of direct duties toward nonhuman animals, depending on group membership. The central aim of the political theory of animal rights laid out in Zoopolis is to argue for positive rights for nonhuman animals, in particular that domestic animals should be accorded citizenship, liminal animals (nonhuman animals, such as some birds, squirrels and rodents, dependent on human settlements but not dependent on

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any particular human) should be accorded denizenship akin to human non-citizen residents, and wild animals should be seen as having their own sovereign territories. In this section, the focus is on negative rights, in particular the right not to be experimented on; in the next section I will come back to positive rights. Saying that nonhuman animals have inviolable rights means that their most basic interests “cannot be sacrificed for the greater good of others” (Ibid, p.19). One example of such an inviolable right, according to Donaldson and Kymlicka, is that a person cannot “be made a subject of non-consensual medical experimentation, no matter how much the knowledge gained from experimenting on her would help others” (Ibid). Donaldson and Kymlicka see inviolable rights of nonhuman animals as an extension of human rights. They do not attempt to provide a defence or a justification for human rights, merely noting that it is widely accepted that humans have inviolable rights (Ibid, p.20). Their argument for extending inviolable rights to nonhuman animals is based on selfhood. Any being who can have subjective experience of the world, who is sentient and conscious, who cares about how her life goes, where there is “someone home”, possesses selfhood. When we recognize others’ selfhood we simply know that they have inviolable rights, which we must respect (Ibid, pp.30–31): “Being an ‘I’—a being who experiences—represents a particular kind of vulnerability, calling for a particular form of protection from the actions of others, in the form of inviolable rights” (Ibid, p.33). What is important to note for the current discussion, regarding this strong view of nonhuman animal rights, is first the scope of inviolable rights, namely that they include all animals, human and nonhuman, where one can recognize a self, where there is “someone home” as they put it; and second, the equality of inviolable rights, namely that inviolable rights do not come in degrees but are the same and equally inviolable for all sentient beings. On this view, nonhuman rights are just as inviolable and universal as human rights. As Donaldson and Kymlicka recognize, inviolable rights are not absolute. There may be cases where we humans have to take nonhuman animal lives, just as there are cases where it is justifiable to take a human life. They point to self-defence, for example when nonhuman animals attack humans

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or pose a lethal risk. In such cases killing nonhuman animals may be justified. But it is not because their rights are violable, but rather because inviolable rights only hold in circumstances of justice and in these cases circumstances of justice do not exist with regard to those particular nonhuman animals. Circumstances of justice exist when we can respect the rights of others without putting our own lives at significant risk. Here the question arises whether experimentation on nonhuman animals is within circumstances of justice. It may seem that it is either their lives or ours. But as Donaldson and Kymlicka point out, this is not the case. If circumstances of justice do not exist, when it comes to scientific experimentation, then we would be equally justified in using human subjects for those experiments, which we clearly are not (Ibid, pp.41–43). They conclude that animal experimentation is a violation of the basic rights of nonhuman animals and that they must be abolished (Ibid, p.44). Although Donaldson and Kymlicka do not define what they refer to as “animal experimentation”, they are clearly thinking of research on nonhuman animals where their rights and interests are sacrificed for the greater good of humans. In this sort of research, the basic rights of nonhuman animals are violated within circumstances of justice. The failure to distinguish between nonhuman animal research that would respect the basic rights of nonhuman animals and research that would not, leads to their abolitionist view about animal research, which is in my view far too sweeping. It is a good thing to abolish unethical research, but we must be careful not to throw out the good with the bad. I propose therefore to use the more neutral term “nonhuman animal research” rather than “animal experimentation”. Even if the latter is understood as referring only to research that violates the basic rights of nonhuman animals, it can too easily be extended to cover all research on nonhuman animals, including research that is of direct benefit to them. Those who support a strong theory of nonhuman animal rights will recognize basic rights to life, liberty, and physical integrity, but is there a right not to be subjected to experiments, as Donaldson and Kymlicka claim? What is problematic about the current practice of nonhuman animal research is not the violation of a right not to be subjected to experiments, but rather violations of the right to life, when the nonhuman research subjects are killed; of the right to liberty, when the

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nonhuman research subjects are confined; and of physical integrity when the nonhuman research subjects are subjected to invasive or painful procedures. It is conceivable to conduct research on nonhuman animals that does not violate any of those rights. The clearest examples of such research are observational studies of wild animals in their natural habitat. Given the mere fact of selfhood, according nonhuman animals such basic rights as a right to life, liberty, and physical integrity may seem plausible, but it is not plausible that there is a right not to be subjected to experiments. In every case of nonhuman animal research, where we think that the basic rights of the nonhuman subjects are violated, we will find a violation of some right other than the supposed right not to be experimented on. I challenge the reader to come up with a case of nonhuman animal research, where the right not to be experimented on is violated, and no other right. I suggest there is no such case and conclude that there is no basic right not to be experimented on. One might object that humans have a right not to be experimented on and nonhuman animals must have that right too, basic rights being the same for everyone. There is, however, no such parallel in human rights. Earlier I quoted Donaldson and Kymlicka noting that persons cannot “be made a subject of non-consensual medical experimentation” (Ibid, p.19, emphasis mine), but even that is not quite true. Although informed consent is central to human research ethics in order to ensure respect for autonomy, sometimes humans are made a subject of medical experimentation without giving consent. This can be the case when people are unable to give consent, such as children, the intellectually disabled, or dementia patients. Nonconsensual research is sometimes conducted on trauma patients who are brought into emergency departments, where the patient is not in a state to give consent, there is no time to wait for her to regain that state, and there is no one else present who can give consent on the patient’s behalf. Furthermore, people may be subjected to research without consent, if the potential harm is considered negligible because of anonymity and the absence of physical interference. In all these cases, and in particular in the case of vulnerable subjects or where there is any risk involved, very strict conditions apply. I will come back to these conditions and the question of research ethics for nonhuman animals in section 14.4.2. The point of noting that

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research without consent does take place is that the consent requirement for the use of human subjects in research is important but not absolute, and humans do not have an inviolable right not to be subjected to nonconsensual experiments. Likewise, research on nonhuman animals may be restricted in virtue of basic rights to life, liberty, and physical integrity, but there is no basic right not to be experimented on. The very fact that nonhuman animals cannot give informed consent to being subjected to medical research does not necessarily exclude them from becoming research subjects.

14.3 The Use of Nonhuman Animals and Exploitation In the previous section I argued that according basic negative rights to nonhuman animals does not necessarily require an abolition of the use of nonhuman animals for medical research. It does not mean, however, that we can use nonhuman animals for medical research. If we come to the conclusion that humans should not interfere in nonhuman animal lives at all, in so far as that is possible, then of course we should not use nonhuman animals as research subjects. In Zoopolis, Donaldson and Kymlicka set out to establish positive, group-differentiated rights for nonhuman animals, thereby providing a political framework for the inclusion of nonhuman animals in society. This project is in opposition to the abolitionist movement, in particular extinctionism, the requirement to let domestic animals go extinct.2 At the core of this project is the construction of a co-citizenship framework for domesticated animals: Citizenship has multiple functions, and all of them are, in principle, applicable to animals. Citizenship operates to allocate individuals to 2

Since most domestic animals cannot survive independently in the wild, there is no ethical point in liberating them. All that we could do, according to extinctionists such as Gary Francione (2008), is to make sure they do not reproduce and eventually go extinct.

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territories; to allocate membership in sovereign peoples; and to enable diverse forms of political agency (including assisted and dependent agency). (Ibid, p.61)

Domesticated animals are to be made members of our political communities because of their relations of interdependence with humans. These relations are currently exploitative and oppressive for domesticated animals, but Donaldson and Kymlicka argue that the exploitation and oppression is contingent to and not inherent in these relations. According to them, the goal should not be to abolish all relations between nonhuman animals and humans but to make these relations just (Ibid, p.86). Part of their motivation for rejecting the abolitionist/ extinctionist approach is that they consider the approach “a strategic disaster” for the animal rights movement (Ibid, p.79), in particular since the keeping of nonhuman companions would have to be abolished as well. They note that it is exactly the relationship with nonhuman companions that often leads people to oppose the exploitation of nonhuman animals. They stress, however, that the abolitionist position must be rejected not merely for strategic reasons, but because it is “simply not intellectually sustainable” (Ibid).3 The membership of domesticated animals in our society entails positive rights, most importantly “rights of residency (this is their home, they belong here), the right to have their interests counted when determining the collective or public good of the community, and the right to shape evolving rules of interaction” (Ibid, p.90). The citizenship of domesticated animals is therefore not a metaphor nor merely some sort of an approximate standard, against which we measure the level of oppression or exploitation they are subjected to. Within this framework domesticated animals are quite literally our co-citizens. They have the same rights as human citizens, and not merely basic rights but also civil rights. In addition to rights of residency, rights to have one’s interests count and the right to have an equal say in human–nonhuman animal

3 Their main target here is Gary Francione (2008), who has advocated strongly for the abolition of all use of nonhuman animals and the controlled extinction of domesticated animals.

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interactions, co-citizenship of domesticated animals entails a right to medical care (see Ibid, pp.23, 142–143 & 275, n.33). Just as in the human case, however, providing medical care to domesticated animals is not possible without the development of diagnostic and therapeutic tools and those in turn require biomedical or veterinary research and research subjects. Therefore, an inclusive or non-abolitionist citizenship theory of nonhuman animal rights, which recognizes a duty to provide medical care to all citizens, cannot be abolitionist about nonhuman animal research. This is, in my view, a point that has been missed or ignored by the proponents of the citizenship theory of animal rights.4 It also follows from the citizenship framework, that if domesticated animals must be used for research, then that use must not be exploitative and it must respect the basic rights of the nonhuman animals involved. So although the citizenship framework cannot be abolitionist about nonhuman animal research, it is clear that the use of nonhuman animals for research would be drastically different from current practices.5 In order to avoid exploitation in general in human uses of nonhuman animals, we need “a set of criteria and safeguards intended . . . to ensure that the use remains confined within the mutual give and take of social life amongst members” (Ibid, p.91). A medical system is exactly an example of a system where some, as patients, can receive care only because others, as research subjects, have made themselves available as a sort of a resource for that system. What they take, in turn, is not necessarily the benefit of using that system, but the benefit of having access to that system in case they need it. So even if a research subject contributes to the medical system without ever needing to use it, that would not make that case exploitative, as long as he or she would have access. In section 14.4.2, I will attempt to describe in more detail under

To be fair, Donaldson and Kymlicka note that “most of” controlled lab experiments on nonhuman animals are unethical, implying that some of them may be ethical, and that learning about nonhuman animals “through careful observation and ethical interaction” is possible (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011, p.31, n.24). 5 Alasdair Cochrane (2007) comes to a similar conclusion, by way of arguing that an interest-based account of nonhuman animal rights would not provide sufficient grounds for a right to liberty for nonhuman animals. 4

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what circumstances nonhuman animals could be used for research assuming basic rights and the citizenship framework.

14.4 Implications of Citizenship for Domesticated Animals In this section, I will consider three potential implications of the citizenship framework. First, citizenship for domesticated animals entails “the right to have their interests counted when determining the collective or public good of the community” (Ibid, p.90), which means, more specifically, that their interests must be counted in science policy. Second, the need to use nonhuman animals for research in ways that is not exploitative and respects their basic rights requires nonhuman research ethics, which is radically different from current practice. Third, the citizenship framework may have the implication that domesticated animals ought to be used as subjects in biomedical research, provided other citizens have a duty to participate in biomedical research.

14.4.1 Science Policy for Nonhuman Animals Not only nonhuman ethics has seen a political turn in recent years. Since the 1990s, the philosophy of science has seen a significant interest in political approaches to the field. This “political turn” is motivated by political criticism of science, in particular feminist criticism but also criticism concerned with issues of race or disability. Acknowledging that science can be politically motivated, consciously or unconsciously, and also have political consequences, there have been attempts to outline a democratic science, where all groups within society have proper representation. One notable example of this is Philip Kitcher’s (2001, pp.117–135) idea of a “well-ordered science”. Kitcher’s model can help us see how the interests of nonhuman animals could count in democratic science policy, since it lays out how minorities and

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vulnerable members of society can be justly represented when we make decisions about the public good that is science. Kitcher imagines ideal deliberators, who represent different viewpoints within society. They make judgments about three main stages of the scientific process: agenda-setting, pursuit of investigations, and the translation of results into applications. The institutions governing science in our society should then make the sort of judgments that would arguably be made by ideal deliberators. The first of the three stages, the agenda-setting, is about deciding how resources are divided between different scientific projects. If nonhuman interests are represented during the process of ideal deliberation, one would expect that nonhuman citizens get their fair share of resources for scientific projects that will benefit them. It is probably safe to assume that current distribution of resources favours humans over nonhumans. Therefore, when the interests of nonhuman citizens are counted in the distribution of resources in actual science policy, we would probably see a considerable increase of resources dedicated to scientific investigations that benefit nonhuman citizens, such as biomedical research on domesticated animals. One worry is that the ideal deliberation, being a rational process, would only include the interests of rational individuals who are capable of self-conscious, abstract deliberation and would therefore not be representative of nonhuman citizens. This sort of an objection has been made against Kantian and contractarian theories (whether political or ethical), since they often seem to be focused on rational deliberation and hence only include those individuals who are capable of rational deliberation. The problem is not only that nonhuman animals are excluded from the moral or political realm but that also those humans who are not capable of rational deliberation seem to be excluded as well, including infants, dementia patients, and people with severe intellectual disabilities. Kitcher’s model appears to avoid this charge, however, since the requirement that the ideal deliberators represent all views and interests within society does not imply that the deliberators themselves belong to the groups whose views and interests are represented. The ideal deliberators must be unbiased with regard to the values and interests of different groups and individuals within society. They should therefore be able to take the interests of nonhuman citizens into account,

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without having to be nonhuman themselves, just as they can take the interests of children or the intellectually disabled into account without being children or intellectually disabled themselves.6 The second main stage of the scientific process, after the agenda has been set, is the actual pursuit of the investigations. At this stage there are two basic constraints, the investigations must be maximally efficient, producing the highest quality and quantity of scientific results given the resources available, and they have to be within the limits of morality, which would typically be codified in the laws, regulations, guidelines, and institutional procedures that can be collected under the label “research ethics”. The implication for nonhuman citizens in this case is that science policy must include research ethics which take the interests, and basic rights, of nonhuman citizens fully into account. The third main stage of the scientific process concerns the use of scientific results to invent and develop applications that benefit the members of society. The policy followed would be just what one would expect to be made by our ideal deliberators, who must include the interests of nonhuman citizens in their judgment. Assuming, again, that the current practice greatly favours human citizens, the consequence of nonhuman representation in science policy at this stage would lead to increased development of applications that benefit nonhuman citizens, including diagnostic and therapeutic applications to improve their health and well-being. If domesticated animals have full citizenship, then their interests would have to be included within well-ordered science or within any other just, democratic model of science. The implication is that their interests would have impact on all stages of the scientific process: the agenda-setting with its distribution of resources, the pursuit of scientific investigations within moral constraints, and the translation of scientific results into applications benefitting all citizens.

6 See also Donaldson and Kymlicka’s discussion of nonhuman animal representation in society (2011, p.154).

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14.4.2 Research Ethics for Nonhuman Animals Domesticated animals, as our co-citizens, would have a right to medical care, which implies that they will share both the burden and the benefits of the biomedical system. Although any political theory of animal rights, which includes at least some nonhuman animals in society, and the citizenship theory in particular, cannot be abolitionist about the use of nonhuman animals in research, it is clear from the preceding discussion that it would not allow most nonhuman animal research as it is currently practised. Nonhuman animal research is currently very utilitarian: A scientist who wants to use nonhuman animals for research must submit a protocol for ethical review (unless the nonhuman animals being used are invertebrates), in which it is showed, that the potential benefits (usually for humans) of the research outweigh the burden for the nonhuman animals. She must also show that it is not possible to obtain the results without the use of nonhuman animals, that the smallest number of nonhuman animals is used that will yield a statistically valid result, and that all suffering will be minimized. If these conditions are met, the research is considered ethically defensible, even if it involves suffering or death. If nonhuman animals are accorded basic rights, and domesticated animals are included in our society as co-citizens with a right to medical care, their use in research would have to be governed in much the same way research using humans is governed. One of the main pillars of human research ethics is respect for autonomy. The most important tool used to ensure respect for autonomy when research is conducted on humans is informed consent. Nonhuman animals, however, cannot give informed consent in any meaningful way. They cannot understand the nature of the procedures they will be submitted to, what the risks and potential benefits are, or whether the medical system and biomedicine is something they would like to contribute to at all. As I pointed out earlier, informed consent is important but not always absolutely necessary. Sometimes research is conducted on human subjects, who cannot give informed consent, such as children, dementia patients, people with severe intellectual disability, or people who have been admitted to emergency departments with severe trauma. In these cases, informed

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consent may be obtained from the closest relative or other legal guardian of the patient. These cases of research subjects, who cannot give informed consent, have two important features: first, the subject is considered vulnerable and, second, there have to be additional institutional safeguards in place. Currently, such institutional safeguards may consist in closer examination of the risks involved and what is done to minimize them, special care to protect the interests of the subjects, or measures to inform potential subjects, sometimes the general population, about the research in question, so that they can make it known in advance whether they would give consent or not. The vulnerability of a potential research subject will, in addition to calling for specific institutional safeguards, require the researcher to justify the use of that sort of subject.7 The usual justification will be that the research in question cannot be conducted on others. For example, some research on dementia can only be conducted with the participation of dementia patients. In that case a legal guardian, who has the task of guarding the patient’s interests, can consent on behalf of the patient. Similar arrangement could be appropriate for nonhuman research subjects; they would have a legal guardian who protects the interests of that research subject. Also, the vulnerability of the research subject has the consequence, that the research in question should be conducted on nonvulnerable subjects who can consent, if at all possible. This means that if it is necessary to conduct certain research on a disease suffered by, say, dogs, and that research can be conducted on healthy humans, then healthy humans should be used as subjects rather than dogs. Although nonhuman animals cannot give informed consent, they might be able to assent or dissent, similar to what is required of children subjects in research. Children, at least small children, cannot give fully informed consent, but they can have the procedures explained to them and indicate whether they will go along or not. This does not suffice as informed consent and cannot replace it, but it is usually considered necessary along with the informed consent of the legal guardian. Respect for nonhuman

7 It is not a novel idea to consider nonhuman research subjects vulnerable; see for example Johnson, 2013 and Johnson & Barnard, 2014.

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animal agency might work in a similar manner; the nonhuman animal can indicate whether he or she goes along with the procedures (Fenton, 2014; Kantin & Wendler, 2015). If the nonhuman animal indicates that he or she does not like what is going on, starts to struggle, or tries to remove himself or herself from the situation, this may be considered as a withdrawal of assent to participate in the research. In addition to autonomy and informed consent, the ethics of human research includes considerations of harms and benefits, as is also the case in current nonhuman animal research. In both cases there may be no benefits to the research subjects themselves, but the research itself must have enough potential benefit to justify both the burden to the research subjects and the use of resources. It is rather the harm side of the equation which differs and here the use of nonhuman research subjects would have to be brought up to the same standard as the use of human subjects. Nonhuman research subjects could not be killed, significantly harmed, or have their life or health put at significant risk. Neither could they be held in captivity, unless it was for their own good, but such paternalistic reasons also apply to some human subjects, such as those suffering from dementia.

14.4.3 Is There a Duty for Nonhuman Animals to Participate in Research? Often the participation in biomedical research is seen as supererogatory, beyond the call of duty. Those who participate in research are praiseworthy, but those who do not cannot be blamed. There are some, however, who have argued that humans have a duty to participate in biomedical research (see for example Harris, 2005; Rhodes, 2008). If this is the case, and domesticated animals are given full citizenship in our society, then this duty may apply to them as well. Nonhuman animals would not have a duty themselves to participate in research, as they are not moral agents and cannot have duties in the first place.8 The duty to participate in research would apply to nonhuman animals in the sense that guardians would have 8

Arguments have been made to the effect that some nonhuman animals are moral agents with (limited) moral obligations (Shapiro, 2006) or at least have moral abilities, which are expressed in

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a moral obligation to make nonhuman animals in their care available for research. Let me first consider the possible reasons for there being a duty to participate in research, following the discussion of Schaefer, Emanuel, and Wertheimer (2009). They discuss and reject two possible reasons for a duty to participate in research, beneficence, and justice, and then propose a third reason, based on a public goods argument. The first reason, that of beneficence, simply notes that by participating in research we benefit others in society and that we have a duty to benefit others when we can. This is too demanding, according to Schaefer, Emanuel, and Wertheimer (2009, p.67): It is good to benefit others, but there is obviously no end to it. A more promising argument is that if we have access to the medical system, but do not contribute to it, we are free riders. Enjoying the benefit of the medical system without carrying any of the burden is unfair and unjust. Therefore, we have a duty to contribute to biomedical research by participating. Schaefer, Emanuel, and Wertheimer reject this argument as well, on the grounds that participating in research does not relieve others from any of the burden of participating. The free rider argument is based on the justice requirement of sharing a burden fairly, but my participation in research, or failure thereof, makes no difference to the burdens others must bear (Schaefer, Emanuel & Wertheimer, 2009, p.68). The actual reason for there being a duty to participate in research, according to Schaefer, Emanuel, and Wertheimer, is that biomedical science is a public good—my use of it does not leave any less for others to use, and it is impractical to prevent others from using it. Their examples of public goods are “national security, a fireworks display, street cleaning, and clean air” (Ibid). Biomedicine is a public good in the same sense, it benefits all and its use by one person does not diminish its use for others. The problem with public goods is that there is no particular motivation to contribute to them, except through legal or moral duties. They conclude: “Because the enterprise of biomedical research produces the important benefit of medical knowledge that is an advantage to all, every individual

moral behaviour (de Waal, 1997). Still, I will assume here the more common view that nonhuman animals are not moral agents and cannot have duties.

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has an obligation to support that system of knowledge generation by participating in biomedical research” (Ibid, p.69). Now, it may seem plausible that healthy, non-vulnerable humans may have a duty to participate in research, but less plausible that vulnerable members of society would have such a duty. But can it be argued that those who cannot consent might nonetheless have a duty to participate in research? John Harris does argue just that, and also that their contribution should not be limited to research that benefits them or “their kind” directly: It is sometimes claimed that where consent is problematic . . . that research may be legitimate if it is for the benefit of the health needs of the subjects or of people with similar or related disorders . . . Surely any moral obligation I have to accept risk or harm for the benefit of others is not plausibly confined to those others who are narrowly like me. This is surely close to claiming that research should be confined to others who are “black like me” or “English like me” or “God fearing like me”? The most appropriate category is surely “a person like me”. (Harris, 2005, p.246)

Donaldson and Kymlicka understand “person” simply as a self, as someone who has his or her own subjective experience of the world. Harris does have a different understanding of “person”, namely someone who can consciously value his or her life, but the point is that research should not be confined to anyone but “persons”, regardless of species membership. The implication is that those who cannot consent, whether children, Alzheimer’s patients, or nonhuman animals (being persons on Donaldson and Kymlicka’s model), have a duty to participate in research and not only research which may benefit their kind but any research that benefits persons. Some of these humans, who cannot fully consent, and most if not all of the nonhuman animals have limited or no moral agency and have therefore no duties themselves. The duty to participate in research would in such a case be transferred to the guardian of the human or nonhuman animal in question.9 9 If participation in biomedical research is merely supererogatory, then the guardian (in both the human and nonhuman case) should only take the interests of her subject into account (and the subject’s previous wishes, if applicable). If research participation is a duty, the guardian must also consider the moral implications of not allowing the participation of her subject in research. The guardian would in that case be morally blameworthy for not allowing that participation, provided

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In any case, as full citizens, a duty to participate in research would apply to domesticated animals in so far as all members of society have such a duty. Although they could not understand or deliberately act on such a duty, it is a duty which their human guardians are capable of understanding and fulfilling.

14.5 Conclusion In this chapter I have not argued for or against the citizenship framework of Donaldson and Kymlicka, nor have I argued for or against the use of nonhuman animals in research. I have argued that if we accept the citizenship framework of Donaldson and Kymlicka, which includes at least some domesticated animals in our society as full members, then we cannot be abolitionist about nonhuman animal research. Acknowledging basic rights for nonhuman animals, as they do, does not exclude the possibility of using nonhuman animals for research. Giving some domesticated animals full membership in society, which entails a right to medical care, actually necessitates that they be available as research subjects in general, although it does not by itself confer a duty (on the respective guardian) to have any individual participate as a research subject. The citizenship framework has further implications, three of which I have outlined: The interests of nonhuman citizens must be taken into account in our science policy, which entails significant movement of resources from research benefitting humans to research benefitting nonhumans; the moral constraints on the use of nonhuman animals for research must be on par with the moral constraints on the use of humans for research; and in so far as there is a duty to participate in research, that duty will apply, perhaps indirectly, to nonhuman citizens as well. If we reject the radical abolitionist view and allow (nonexploitative) human–nonhuman animal relations, we have to allow nonhuman animal research as well, arguably both for human and for nonhuman benefit.

that the greater interests of the subject are not violated. I am not arguing for a duty to participate in research, but rather that if there is a good case for such a duty, then it applies to nonhuman subjects as well as human subjects.

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Bibliography Cochrane, A., 2007. Animal Rights and Animal Experiments: An InterestBased Approach. Res Publica, 13(3), pp. 293–318. de Waal, F., 1997. Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Boston: Harvard University Press. Donaldson, S. & Kymlicka, W., 2011. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fenton, A., 2014. Can a Chimp Say “No”? Reenvisioning Chimpanzee Dissent in Harmful Research. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 23(2), pp. 130–139. Francione, G., 2008. Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation. New York: Columbia University Press. Harris, J., 2005. Scientific Research is a Moral Duty. Journal of Medical Ethics, 31(4), pp. 242–248. Johnson, J., 2013. Vulnerable Subjects? The Case of Nonhuman Animals in Experimentation. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 10(4), pp. 497–504. Johnson, J. & Barnard, N. D., 2014. Chimpanzees as Vulnerable Subjects in Research. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 35(2), pp. 133–141. Kantin, H. & Wendler, D., 2015. Is There a Role for Assent or Dissent in Animal Research? Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 24(4), pp. 459–472. Kitcher, P., 2001. Science, Truth and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Regan, T., 1983. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rhodes, R., 2008. In Defense of the Duty to Participate in Biomedical Research. American Journal of Bioethics, 8(10), pp. 37–38. Schaefer, G. O., Emanuel, E. J. & Wertheimer, A., 2009. The Obligation to Participate in Biomedical Research. JAMA, 302(1), pp. 67–72. Shapiro, P., 2006. Moral Agency in Other Animals. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 27(4), pp. 357–373. Gardar Arnason is a researcher at the Institute of Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Tübingen, Germany. He works primarily on ethical and philosophical issues related to the life sciences and biomedicine, most of which fall within the areas of animal ethics, research ethics, and neuroethics.

15 Cross-Species Comparisons of Welfare Tatjana Višak

15.1 Introduction Assessments and comparisons of individuals’ welfare seem to be common in everyday life. We answer questions about how we are doing. We enquire about the welfare of others and do or do not believe the answers that we get. We compare welfare across times. It might, for instance, worry me that, due to some illness, my friend is worse off, these days, than she was last month. I might, furthermore, wonder whether my dog is better off in my family than he used to be when he was still living in the streets in Rumania. We also compare welfare across individuals. For instance, a father’s judgment that his daughter is currently worse off than his son might motivate him to give her some special attention. I might wonder whether my dog, with his playful and carefree life, is better off than I am.

T. Višak (*) Department of Philosophy and Business Ethics, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_15

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This chapter is concerned with comparisons of welfare across individuals, and in particular with cross-species comparisons of welfare (CSCs). First, I will introduce CSCs by way of an example (section 15.2). Second, I will illustrate the relevance of CSCs (section 15.3). Third, I will distinguish ethical from scientific or political questions with regard to CSCs (section 15.4). Fourth, I will present and evaluate three different ethical theories and their fundamentally different answers to the question of how to do CSCs (section 15.5). I will conclude, then, that the theory of welfare as self-fulfillment provides the most plausible account of CSCs. This account of welfare implies that a maximally well-off dog or squirrel is faring just as well as a maximally well-off human. An individual’s cognitive and emotional capacities do not necessarily determine how well off this individual can be. This is practically relevant on the assumption that the effects of our (possible) actions on welfare are relevant for what we have reason to do (section 15.6).

15.2 An Example Before considering an example of CSCs, we should be clear about the assumptions behind such assessments. First of all, it is assumed that animals of different species have a welfare level. This does not mean that all animals are subjects of welfare. For instance, hedonism holds that the amount of pleasure – usually understood broadly as enjoyment minus suffering – in an individual’s life determines the prudential value of this life. According to this account, only those who can experience enjoyment and/or suffering are subjects of welfare. Similarly, according to most accounts of welfare, nonsentient animals are not subjects of welfare. Since most animals are in fact very small animals, such as insects, which might well be nonsentient, arguably not all animals are subjects of welfare. But nevertheless, many of them – and certainly mammals, birds and some fish – are. A second assumption is that an animal’s welfare level can in principle be measured on a (semi) quantitative scale. Thus, we can at least rank an individual’s welfare level as low, medium, or high. A third assumption is that different animals, including animals

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from different species, can be measured and compared on a single scale. This means that we are talking about the same thing, welfare, in case of both humans and nonhuman animals. Are these assumptions warranted? It seems that they are. After all, both laypersons and experts can do CSCs without hesitation, apparently using a common scale across species (Bracke, 2006, p.63). Even legislation, for instance with regard to animal experimentation, requires weighing the discomfort of different species on a common scale. Furthermore, we use one word, “welfare,” for different species. Lastly, many moral theories require CSCs. These metaphysical, psychological, linguistic as well as political and ethical perspectives suggest that it is at least not wildly implausible to assume that CSCs make sense in principal. To be sure, there is some controversy about the possibility of CSCs on the basis of a particular account of welfare, namely preferentialism (Broome, 1998; Scanlon, 1991). But this discussion concerns possible difficulties for this particular theory of welfare, and not the impossibility of CSCs as such. So, I will assume that CSCs are possible in principle and indeed that theories of welfare should be able to handle them. Here is an example of an animal welfare scientist’s assessment of welfare across species. This example is taken from Marc Bracke’s paper “Providing Cross-Species Comparisons of Welfare With a Scientific Basis”, which was published in the journal of the Royal Netherlands Society for Agricultural Sciences, NJAS (Bracke, 2006). Bracke compares the welfare of different species of nonhuman animals that are kept in different husbandry systems. Among others, he compares the welfare of laying hens in battery cages and dairy cows on pasture. As depicted in Table 15.1, Bracke provides a list of needs such as food, water, and rest. (Bracke adds many other needs that are not shown here.) He uses a ranking scale from 1 (worst) to 4 (best) that indicates to what extent

Table 15.1 Fulfillment of needs as indicators of welfare Need

Laying hens in battery cages

Dairy cows at pasture

Food Water Rest

4, Ad libitum 4, Clean nipple, easy to reach 2, No perch; wire floor

4, Ad libitum 4, Clean trough in pasture 4, Proper surface, pasture

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each need is fulfilled. So, we see that the need for food and water is maximally fulfilled for both species in both systems. The need for rest is not entirely fulfilled in case of battery hens, since they have no perch and only a wire floor, which is not what they need in order to rest appropriately. Adding the scores for all needs gives us an animal’s welfare score. In order to refine the assessment, one can give more weight to more important needs. This results in a welfare score for dairy cows on pasture and for laying hens, which is the mean score of the overall need fulfillment. These welfare scores can be directly compared. In case of cows on pasture, the mean score, on the basis of all relevant needs, according to Bracke, is 3.19. In case of battery hens, it is 2.16. Bracke concludes, among other things, that dairy cows at pasture are better off than battery hens and he can explain why this is the case. This seems to be a common way of doing CSCs, even if it is not always done as explicitly as Bracke does it here.

15.3 The Relevance of CSCs Before we will look more closely at various proposals concerning how to do CSCs, let me say a few more words about their relevance in daily life. As I will point out in this section, CSCs are practically relevant, because they may and often do inform considerations of consumers, policy-makers and activists, as well as ethicists and many others. For instance, policy-makers formulate animal welfare considerations in species-specific rules. Since what one may or may not do to a member of an animal species is supposed to be related to the impact on the welfare of the individual in question, CSCs seem to be necessary. For instance, in the Netherlands, it is legally allowed to take calves but not piglets from their mother immediately after birth. Does this suggest that such a separation is more harmful for piglets than it is for cows? Most probably, the reason for this difference is the economical interest in milking the cow but not the sow. But

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since it is part of animal welfare legislation, one might at least question the difference in terms of the animals’ welfare. Likewise, the Dutch decision to ban mink farms on animal welfare grounds may raise the question whether mink are worse off than, for example, hens in cages. Again, other considerations may explain the ban on mink farming, such as the public opinion that fur, as opposed to eggs, is a luxury product. But if a certain treatment is forbidden for one species but not for others in animal welfare legislation, one might justify or question such rules by an appeal to CSCs. There are more examples of possible appeals to CSCs: consumers, for instance, may decide what nonhuman animal products to consume or to boycott on the basis of such assessments. One might, for instance, reject the use of meat, but still accept the use of wool on the basis of a comparison of the welfare of the animals that are used for these products. In general, one might want to decide what counts in favor of becoming a vegetarian or rather a vegan, on animal welfare grounds. Again, other considerations, such as the availability of alternatives, may play an important role. Still, animal welfare considerations may at least be part of such a decision. Similarly, animal rights or animal welfare activists may prioritize their campaigns on the basis of CSCs. For instance, they may decide to campaign against the use of great apes in invasive biomedical research or they may campaign against the use of elephants in circuses, rather than against the use of other animal species that suffer less in these practices. Again, other considerations may be relevant, for instance the expected success of the campaign. Here I do not want to defend the correctness of any particular CSC. The above-mentioned examples are just meant to illustrate their relevance. Ethicists as well appeal to CSCs. For instance, utilitarians aim at maximizing welfare. They need to know how to make the best use of their resources, such as time and money. So, they need, at least in principle, to compare the effects of various actions on welfare, and this often involves CSCs. Prioritarians may hold that the worst off individuals deserve our special attention and thus they need to determine how individuals fare as compared to each other. Egalitarians may strive for an equal distribution of welfare. Thus, they cannot do without CSCs either.

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But also other moral theories are likely to encounter situations where CSCs are asked for. This, of course, assumes that these normative theories consider the welfare of nonhuman animals as well as the welfare of humans.

15.4 Ethics, Science, and Politics What is the role of Ethics, as compared to Science and Politics, when it comes to CSCs? In section 15.2, I mentioned Marc Bracke’s proposal for doing CSCs in a scientific way. We saw that scientists propose indicators of welfare in order to calculate and compare welfare levels across species. Here is how Bracke divides the disciplinary roles: When science has established such an objective methodology to assess the welfare status of animals within and between different species as a factual issue, decision makers can then use the results of such factual welfare assessment as input in the ethical and political process of deciding what levels of welfare are acceptable, both individually and for society as a whole. (Bracke, 2006, p.64)

So, on this picture, scientists give us the facts about welfare, including CSCs, such as “this cow is bad off and this hen is even worse off”. Then ethicists discuss whether animal welfare matters and what follows from these CSCs for how we ought to act. These ethical considerations, in turn, can be considered input in the political process: individuals – as voters, policy-makers, consumers, and activists – can take these ethical considerations into account. But this is not the only place where ethics comes in. In order for scientists to find indicators of welfare, it is necessary to know what welfare is. This is an ethical question, not an empirical or a political one. The question of what makes an individual’s life good or bad for her belongs in the field of Ethics known as “Value Theory”. Specifically, it concerns prudential value. Theories of welfare aim at determining what the intrinsic prudential goods are. Hedonists about welfare, as mentioned earlier, hold

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that enjoyment makes an individual’s life good for her. All other goods are only instrumentally good: they are good to the extent that they bring enjoyment or prevent suffering. The more enjoyment and the less suffering, the better the life is for the individual who lives it. This is not meant to be a judgment about goodness simpliciter, i.e., goodness, all things considered. It is just a judgment about the individual’s welfare. Even if an individual is well off, her life may still be bad in other respects, for instance morally bad. But if the individual is well off, her life is good for her. In order to lead a good life, all things considered, being well off might not be enough. Perhaps, in order to lead a good life simpliciter, one must be moral besides being well off. In this chapter the focus is only on welfare. This does not mean that welfare is the only good, but it certainly is a good that is of considerable import. Note that my focus in this chapter is primarily on welfare at some point in time (i.e., synchronic welfare) rather than on lifetime welfare (i.e., diachronic welfare). Assessments of diachronic welfare are a bit more complicated, since you need to aggregate welfare across time and there is some controversy about how this ought to be done (Bradley, 2016; Velleman, 1991). I grant that for some practical considerations welfare across time is more relevant than welfare at a time, but this falls outside the scope of this chapter.

15.5 How to Do CSCs? In the remainder of this chapter, I want to show that different accounts of welfare have different implications with regard to CSCs. Ideally we need to apply the correct account of welfare and follow what this account says about CSCs. It is, however, controversial what the correct account of welfare is. There is no knockdown argument in favor of any particular account of welfare. The relevant discussion is about which account of welfare has the most plausible implications overall. In such an evaluation of accounts of welfare, we need to assess, among other things, the plausibility of their implications with regard to CSCs.

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So, let us see how different accounts of welfare propose to do CSCs and how plausible these proposals are. Since I cannot discuss all possible accounts of welfare here, I will focus on three theories whose implications with regard to CSCs differ in interesting ways. Individuals differ with regard to their cognitive and emotional capacities and it is an interesting question whether and, if so, how this affects their highest attainable welfare level. The three accounts of welfare that will be considered in what follows differ with regard to their acceptance of the following claims: The cognitive capacities claim (CCC): The highest attainable welfare level of an individual with stronger cognitive capacities is higher than the highest attainable welfare level of an individual with weaker cognitive capacities. The emotional capacities claim (ECC): The highest attainable welfare level of an individual with stronger emotional capacities is higher than the highest attainable welfare level of an individual with weaker emotional capacities.

As depicted in Table 15.2, the objective list account accepts both claims; hedonism accepts only one; and the self-fulfillment account of welfare rejects both claims. I will argue that the latter position is the most plausible one.

15.5.1 Objective List Account Proponents of the objective list account of welfare typically accept both the CCC and the ECC. They hold that some things are good for all Table 15.2 Acceptance (✓) or rejection (X) of CCC and ECC Account of welfare

Cognitive Capacities Claim(CCC)

Emotional Capacities Claim (ECC)

Objective list account Hedonism Self-fulfillment account

✓ X X

✓ ✓ X

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individuals, independently of what they like or desire. The items that they mention on their objective list of goods make for a better life, if they are realized in that life. Proponents of the objective list account might argue as follows: For the range of forms and levels of well-being that are in principle accessible to an individual is determined by that individual’s cognitive and emotional capacities and potentials. The more limited an individual’s capacities are, the more restricted his or her range of well-being will be. There are forms and peaks of well-being accessible to individuals with highly developed cognitive and emotional capacities that cannot be attained by individuals with lower capacities. (McMahan, 1996, p.7)

This implies that a dog that lives in ideal conditions for a dog and is as well off as a dog can be is still worse off than a maximally well-off adult human. This is because some of the items on the objective list of goods – say complex thinking or the appreciation of visual art – are not available to the dog. It does not matter that the dog does not need these things, does not care about these things, and cannot care about them. The dog is worse off, because some of the goods on the list can only be enjoyed by beings with higher cognitive or emotional capacities and are therefore unavailable to him. In fact, a dog may be worse off than a primate, even if the dog is nearly at his highest attainable welfare level while the primate is only halfway toward her highest attainable welfare level. Since the dog is worse off, the prioritarian would need to be particularly concerned about the dog and try to improve the dog’s welfare rather than the primate’s. Similarly, this account of welfare implies that the dog deserves more pity. This holds if we assume that those who are worse off – add, if you like, that their being worse off is not their fault – are more pitiable. Jeff McMahan, a prominent proponent of an objective list account of welfare, admits that these normative implications are implausible. McMahan proposes the technical term “fortune” and argues that the normal, happy, and healthy dog is not unfortunate in spite of his

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low level of welfare. According to McMahan, whether an individual is fortunate does not depend on her welfare level as such but rather on her welfare level relative to some standard. As a suitable standard, McMahan proposes the individual’s native potential. Thus, a normal, happy, and healthy dog is not unfortunate, because his welfare level is low in absolute terms, but high relative to his native potential for welfare. McMahan explains this move as follows: Why is it that, for example, a normal dog is not unfortunate despite its low level of well-being? . . . To answer these questions, we require an analysis of the notion that I have called “fortune” that indicates what the standard is against which an individual’s level of well-being is assessed in order to determine whether that individual is fortunate or unfortunate, or faring well or badly. (McMahan, 1996, p.10)

This implies that it is not an individual’s welfare level but her fortune that determines whether she is faring well or badly. This proposal for how to do CSCs has various counterintuitive implications. First, it makes a conceptual distinction between an individual’s welfare level on the one hand and whether the individual is faring well or flourishing on the other hand. This is unusual. Normally “faring well,” “welfare,” and “flourishing” are used as designating the same concept, both by laypeople and within academia. Second, McMahan’s proposal severs the intuitive conceptual link between poor welfare and reason for concern. Stephen Darwall (2002) says, roughly, that if someone we care about has poor welfare, we have a reason for concern: that is what welfare means. One need not entirely agree with Darwall in order to hold that the notion of welfare is related to our distribution of attention and concern. The objective list account as presented here does away with that link. Third, this proposal implies that of two individuals in exactly the same circumstances, with exactly the same experiences, one is unfortunate and the other is not unfortunate. One is a human being who had a normal potential at birth but lost it immediately afterward without ever using or developing it. The other is a human being who lost his normal native potential before birth or who, due to some congenital defect, never had such a potential. It seems

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odd that one of them should be flourishing and the other should be faring badly.

15.5.2 Hedonism As explained in section 15.4, hedonism holds that enjoyment makes an individual’s life better for her and suffering makes it worse. Hedonists consider it unimportant what the source of the enjoyment (or suffering) is. So, it does not matter, prudentially speaking, that a dog cannot appreciate visual art, as long as he can appreciate or enjoy anything. As Jeremy Bentham famously put it, “quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry”.1 Nevertheless, hedonists typically accept the emotional capacities claim. They hold, for instance, that an individual’s maximum welfare level is lower if it has a feebler capacity for experiencing pleasure (Lazari-Radek & Singer, 2014, p.350). Hedonism, thus understood, implies that certain nonhuman animals are necessarily worse off than normal adult humans, no matter how healthy and happy they are. It is unclear which nonhuman animals are supposed to have lower emotional capacities. It is not clear, for instance, whether a dog has feebler emotional capacities than a normal adult human. Singer mentions a snail as a possible example for such an animal (Ibid). I do not know whether snails are sentient at all, but let us just assume for the sake of argument that they are indeed sentient animals with relatively weak emotional capacities. This would entail that a perfectly happy and healthy snail is worse off than a perfectly happy and healthy human. If there is a conceptual link between a poor welfare level and a reason for concern, this entails that we have a reason to be concerned about perfectly happy and healthy snails. I find it hard to imagine that a snail can be happy at all, but if she can and if she is happy, I do not think that there would be a reason for concern. But perhaps we could reasonably pity snails for not having stronger emotional capacities 1

Bentham quotation given in J. S. Mill, 1974, Bentham. In John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism, on Liberty, and Essay on Bentham, ed. M. Warnock. New American Library, p.123.

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that would allow for even more complex or more intense enjoyment. This holds if we assume, as we did, that the individual in question lives in perfect circumstances and is as well off as she can be. In more realistic scenarios, of course, those with stronger emotional capacities can also experience more intense averse feelings. On the basis of hedonism, prioritarians and egalitarians would need to be specifically concerned with happy and healthy snails, because they were probably among the worse-off individuals. If one finds this implication odd, it might speak against hedonism or else against prioritarianism and egalitarianism. Furthermore, the fact, if it is one, that we cannot do much to make maximally happy snails better off anyway might justify that we are not bothering much about them, after all. If, however, it were possible to emotionally enhance them in order to allow them the experience of more pleasure, this would have a certain priority. In sum, I consider acceptance of the ECC less implausible than acceptance of the CCC, but still a bit odd.

15.5.3 Self-fulfillment Account The final account of welfare that I want to discuss is the selffulfillment account. It says, roughly, how well off an individual is depends on the extent of her self-fulfillment. Self-fulfillment, in turn, is a matter of happiness (i.e., emotional self-fulfillment) and success in identity-related projects (Haybron, 2008, p.192–194). This account already implies a certain standard, namely the individual’s self. Note that the self is not an essentialist or esoteric entity, but comprises the characteristics of the individual that determine her emotional nature and what her identity-related projects are. Independently of an individual’s emotional or cognitive capacities, the maximum score is the same for all individuals. A 100% selffulfillment scores, for example, 10 out of 10. Thus, on this account, the maximally well-off human would be just as well off as the maximally well-off dog or snail. This account captures major intuitions that underlie the above-mentioned rival accounts, but it avoids their problems. In line with

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hedonism and the objective list account, the self-fulfillment account can grant that the maximally well-off human has more of something than the maximally well-off dog or snail. The human may take pleasure in a greater variety of things; may have more complex needs, desires, and capacities; and may experience more pleasure in an absolute sense. In line with McMahan’s proposal, the self-fulfillment account relativizes these goods to some standard. The standard is the individual’s self. One might imagine the self as a jar: it does not matter how large or complex this jar is, but only to what extent it is filled. The account of welfare as self-fulfillment maintains the link between welfare and reason for concern and between a certain welfare level and faring well or poorly. It also avoids the problem of McMahan’s native potential account: like hedonism or a standard objective list account it judges both individuals in the example, the one who lost her native potential without ever using it and the one who never had it, as equally well off. After all, they are equally happy and successful in their identityrelated projects. Lastly, the self-fulfillment account of welfare seems compatible with the way in which laypersons and animal welfare experts tend to compare welfare across species: identifying needs and assessing the extent to which the various needs are fulfilled. One can include a weighing factor in order to capture the importance of various needs for the individual; and one should, ideally, identify the needs not only on the basis of the animal species to which an individual belongs but also on the basis of individual characteristics. The needs should be indicators of what makes the individual happy and what fulfills her identity-related projects. The self-fulfillment account of welfare is new and needs to be worked out in various respects. For instance, it needs to be determined how to distinguish self-development from self-loss. This is important, because individuals undergo changes with regard to their emotional nature and identity-related projects. Some of these changes are cases of self-development and thus compatible with self-fulfillment. Other changes amount to self-loss and are incompatible with self-fulfillment. I think that some autonomy requirement will do the trick. I would not appeal to a very demanding (Kantian) notion of autonomy here, since many selves are incapable of that kind of autonomy. Roughly, changes of self amount to self-loss if they are forced upon the

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individual, for instance by brainwashing. This can explain that a lobotomy would not make a perfectly happy and healthy child better off even if the resulting individual would be happy and satisfied. Since the prudentially relevant unity relation between the child before and after the lobotomy is not in place, the operation would not benefit the child, but harm him or her. It would not bring more self-fulfillment, but lead to self-loss. The self-fulfillment account of welfare may have counterintuitive implications when we are comparing lives of different lengths. Imagine a giant turtle that lives twice as long as a human. If both are as well off as they can be and thus experience a 100% self-fulfillment, it may follow that the giant turtle’s life is twice as good for the turtle as the human’s life is for the human. Whether it follows depends on how welfare is aggregated in order to determine lifetime welfare. According to some such proposals, the lives would be equally good at a time, but due to the turtle’s life’s greater length, it contains more welfare overall. This may seem counterintuitive. But is it? Welfare is about what is good or bad for the individual in question. A completely self-fulfilled turtle’s life is as good for the turtle as a completely self-fulfilled human’s life is for the human. The more welfare an individual’s life contains, the better the life is for the individual in question. So, a longer happy life is better for the individual than a shorter happy life. Upon closer inspection, I do not consider this implication implausible. Other accounts of welfare, such as standard versions of hedonism, also imply that the length of a life matters in this way. Note that this is an implication about welfare, but not as such an implication about what one ought to do. In order to answer the latter question, one needs to engage with normative ethics and not (only) with value theory.

15.6 Conclusion and Implications Summing up the main findings of this chapter, CSCs are practically important. They must be based on Ethics, particularly on value theory. Different accounts of welfare disagree about how to do CSCs, and they reach different verdicts about particular cases. The self-fulfillment

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account seems to me the most plausible account of welfare, as far as CSCs are concerned, even though it needs to be spelled out in further detail. Its plausible implications with regard to CSCs speak in favor of the self-fulfillment account of welfare, but implications regarding CSCs are only one relevant aspect in an overall assessment of accounts of welfare. Ultimately, such an overall assessment is needed, since we want to apply the correct account of welfare to CSCs. What, then, would a hedonist say about Bracke’s proposal for doing CSCs? Perhaps the hedonist would agree with the listed needs as indicators for the degree of enjoyment or suffering of an animal. However, the hedonist would not agree with the range of scores from 1 (worst) to 4 (best) for each need for different species. After all, according to hedonism, different species of animals have different capacities for enjoyment, due to different emotional capacities. Thus, the optimal fulfillment of a need for food could bring one species of animal much more pleasure than another. Perhaps hens and cows can do with the same maximum score – that depends on their emotional capacities. But animals with significantly different emotional capacities require different maximum scores for some or all needs, according to hedonism. In that regard, hedonists would disagree with Bracke’s proposal. A proponent of the objective list theory would disagree with Bracke’s list of needs as indicators for welfare. Proponents of the objective list account consider some things to be prudentially good, independent of the individual’s desires, capacities, or needs. Perhaps, for instance, complex thinking and the appreciation of visual art would be good for every individual. These goods should be listed, according to this theory, and missing out on them makes for a lower welfare level. Thus, the objective list account disagrees with the whole idea of basing welfare on the fulfillment of given needs, since some goods are considered to improve the lives of individuals if they are realized in these lives. And if an individual does not need these goods, this is so much the worse for the individual. Lastly, a proponent of the self-fulfillment account of welfare is likely to agree with some such list of needs as indicators for self-fulfillment. In any case, one would find indicators that point out whether the individual is happy and successful with regard to her identity-related projects.

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According to the self-fulfillment account of welfare, it is okay to use the same maximum score for each species, independently of cognitive or emotional capacities. Bracke is wrong to say that ethical considerations only become relevant after scientists have provided the welfare scores for animals of different species. As we saw, Bracke’s scientific method for doing CSCs is incompatible with some major accounts of welfare. If we find Bracke’s method plausible, this speaks against hedonism and the objective list account of welfare. If, however, we find these accounts of welfare plausible, this speaks against Bracke’s proposals. Thus, in order to determine how to do CSCs, we need to engage with Ethics. It is widely accepted within animal ethics and the animal movement that speciesism ought to be avoided. Speciesism refers to unjustified discrimination on the basis of an individual’s species. Peter Singer (1975) most influentially and convincingly argued that a given amount of suffering (measured, for instance, in terms of its unpleasantness) matters just as much, no matter who suffers and no matter to what species the suffering individual belongs. More generally, Singer (1975) argued that the effects of our actions on an individual’s welfare matter morally and matter equally, no matter whether the individual in question is a human or a squirrel. One could accept all of this, strive to take the welfare of nonhuman animals equally into account, and still, perhaps unwillingly and unknowingly, discriminate against them. This can happen if one errs with regard to CSCs. In this way, speciesism could, as it were, creep in via the backdoor. This could easily happen, if one simply assumed that one should save the human rather than the dog, because the dog has less welfare to lose. It could happen if one chose to benefit the human rather than the squirrel, because the squirrel’s welfare level was considered to be never as high as the human’s anyway, perhaps because of the squirrel’s weaker cognitive or emotional capacities. As I pointed out in this chapter, some ethicists propose to argue in this way and they might be wrong. Whether they are indeed wrong is an important question in value theory that deserves further attention. CSCs are not only

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theoretically interesting, however. They are also practically relevant in many daily situations, because they concern our reasons for action with regard to both human and nonhuman animals.

Bibliography Bracke, M., 2006. Providing Cross-Species Comparisons of Welfare with a Scientific Basis. NJAS, 54(1), pp. 61–75. Bradley, B., 2016. Is Death Bad for a Cow?. In T. Višak & R. Garner, eds., The Ethics of Killing Animals. New York: Oxford University Press. Broome, J., 1998. Extended Preferences. In C. Fehige & U. Wessels, eds., Preferences. Berlin: De Gruyter. Darwall, S., 2002. Welfare and Rational Care. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Haybron, D., 2008. The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of WellBeing. New York: Oxford University Press. McMahan, J. (1996). Cognitive Disability, Misfortune and Justice. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 25(1), pp. 3–35. Scanlon, T. M., 1991. The Moral Basis of Interpersonal Comparisons. In J. Elster & J. E. Roemer, eds., Inter-Personal Comparisons of Well-Being. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lazari-Radek, K. & Singer, P., 2014. The Point of View of the Universe – Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press. Singer, P., 1975. Animal Liberation. New York: Random House. Velleman, D., 1991. Well-Being and Time. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 72, pp. 48–77. Tatjana Višak is a researcher at the philosophy department of Mannheim University, Germany. She is the author of Killing Happy Animals – Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and the editor (with Robert Garner) of The Ethics of Killing Animals (Oxford University Press, 2016).

16 Population Dynamics Meets Animal Ethics: The Case for Aiding Animals in Nature Oscar Horta

16.1 Introduction Think for a moment of a nonhuman animal living in the wild, the kind of animal you would think the term “wild animal” would typically mean. What animal do you picture in your mind? When asked t`his, most people think of healthy, adult, big exotic mammals, such as lions, elephants, or whales, or maybe some other relatively big vertebrates. They often picture animals whose lives go more or less well, without any human causing them any harm. They assume this view is representative of the situation of nonhuman animals living in nature. This view is very common not only among the general public, but also among many animal activists, as well as among other people who are sympathetic to their cause. According to it, nonhuman animals are able

O. Horta (*) University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_16

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to live happy lives without humans, as long as we just leave them alone. They do not need our help for anything (Regan, 2004 [1983], preface; Balcombe, 2006; Morris & Thornhill, 2006). This chapter will examine whether this idyllic view of nature is right, in light not of our intuitions, but of what population dynamics and other findings in biology can tell us about how the lives of animals in nature really are. It will also consider whether we have reasons to support aiding nonhuman animals in the wild. In order to assess these questions, section 16.2 explains some of the ways in which animals suffer and die in the wild. Section 16.3 presents the evidence we have concerning the extent to which suffering and premature death is present in nature. Section 16.4 assesses some of the arguments that claim that animals in the wild are doing fine. Section 16.5 discusses the claim that we should not try to help nonhuman animals in need of aid in the wild because that would conflict with anthropocentric or environmental aims. Section 16.6 addresses the claim that intervening may do more harm than good. Section 16.7 presents some actual examples currently taking place of intervention helping nonhuman animals in the wild. Section 16.8 proposes some courses of action that seem to be the most promising ones in order to make a difference for nonhuman animals in need of aid in the wild. Finally, section 16.9 presents some conclusions that follow from previous sections.

16.2 Challenging the Idyllic View of Nature In nature nonhuman animals suffer for a number of reasons. We can all realize that this happens when natural disasters such as fires, floods, or droughts take place. But the fact is that animals also suffer for other causes on an everyday basis. Many of them starve to death, and others suffer from hunger, malnutrition, and thirst (Zimmerman, 2009; McCue, 2010). Other animals suffer and die victims of disease, injuries, or infections (Cooper, 1996; Wobeser, 2005). They also suffer and die due to harsh weather conditions, including cold, hot, and lack or excess of humidity (Gregory, 2004; White, 2008). They suffer during a cold night or under the rain as we would. They can

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also be attacked and eaten by other animals, including parasites and parasitoids that sometimes eat animals alive from within (Godfray, 1994; McGowan, 1997). All this is terribly painful for them, just as it would be for us. What is more, in addition to having to suffer physical pain, many animals also find themselves in situations in which they feel distress and psychological suffering. Their lives are stressful; they are often in very risky situations and feel fear (Moberg, 2013 [1985]). Many animals spend long times suffering due to these reasons during their lives. Others agonize to death because of them. The fact that many animals have to endure this fate is often overlooked. But in fact it is something that seriously challenges the idyllic view of nature. Some may argue that this need not be so, as in addition to those animals who suffer there are others who live happy lives. But others will conclude that the happiness of those other animals is not worth the terrible misery of others. Those holding this view would say that nature cannot be considered a paradise if some animals have to suffer terribly for it to exist. What about those who disagree and think that the agony of some animals is worth it as long as it brings joy to others? Those holding this view will support the idyllic view of nature if a condition applies. That is, for them nature will be a paradise if, even if there is suffering and premature death in nature, there is nevertheless significantly more happiness. But not if things are otherwise. If, instead, it is the case that most animals suffer in misery, we will have to conclude that the idyllic view of nature is wrong. So, in order to examine this problem, we need to assess how the lives of nonhuman animals typically are. This will be done in the next section.

16.3 What Population Dynamics Teaches Us about How the Lives of Nonhuman Animals in the Wild Really Are To assess properly how nonhuman animals do in the wild, we cannot proceed by considering what seems intuitive to us, or what we presume to be the case based on our own experience. That would not provide us

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with a sound basis to examine the problem. There is another way, however, to do this. We can consider the extent to which premature death and suffering prevail in nature by looking at what biology tells us. In particular, we can look at what life history theory can tell us about the life history characteristics different animals have, and at what population dynamics tells us regarding the proportion between the individuals that come into existence and those that make it to adulthood. When we do so, we can discover that the study of reproductive strategies is key here. If we examine what those disciplines tell us we will see that some animals reproduce by having just one offspring each time, in which they spend a great deal of parental care. The survival rate of their progeny is, as a result of this, very high. Among the animals reproducing in this way we can find some of the ones that usually come to people’s minds when they think of those nonhuman animals that live in the wild. They include, for instance, big mammals and birds such as ungulates, elephants, primates, cetaceans, and albatrosses. Unfortunately, however, the typical idea people have of “wild animals” is terribly unrepresentative. These animals are actually a tiny minority among those living in nature. The vast majority of animals follow a completely different reproductive strategy. They have huge progenies, consisting in hundreds, thousands, or even millions of offspring. Among viviparous animals, a female rodent, for instance, may give birth to more than a hundred babies during her life (Mendi, 1988). Among oviparous animals, some frogs can lay tens of thousands eggs (McAuliffe, 1978), and fish can lay millions of them – sunfish can lay up to 300 million eggs (Fraser-Bruner, 1951). How is it, we may wonder, that the population of all these animals does not multiply spectacularly in a very short time? The reason is very simple: almost none of them make it to adulthood. Their survival rates are extremely low. On average, in more or less stable populations, only one animal per parent reaches maturity. The rest of them die when they are very young. In many cases, they die shortly after coming into existence (MacArthur & Wilson, 1967; Stearns, 1992; Roff, 1992; Ng, 1995; Tomasik, 2015a [2009]; Horta, 2015 [2011]; Faria & Paez, 2015; Faria, 2016).

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This is easy to understand if we consider the way natural selection takes place, which is by certain individuals being chosen among all the ones that come into existence. This requires that more individuals are born than those who survive, in line with what we have just seen. Natural selection thus entails that many animals fail to make it. The fact that the animals who suffer this fate are so many in proportion to the ones who survive is due to the effectiveness of the strategy consisting in bringing into life many offspring. Because that strategy has been successful to increase fitness, it has been selected through natural history. It is very important to note, however, that this success has nothing to do with what is good for the individuals of those species who reproduce in this way. Rather, it just has to do with what is beneficial for the transmission of their genetic material. In fact, this aim is achieved at a terrible cost for the animals of these species. It means that most animals suffer extremely premature deaths. If death is a harm (as most of us think) that deprives us of all the goods our lives could contain (Nagel, 1970; McMahan, 2002; Broome, 2004; Bradley, 2009), then that means these animals are harmed significantly by dying at the very beginning of their lives. Moreover, because they die when they are so young, their lives contain very little opportunities for happiness or pleasure. However, they frequently include significant suffering, as their deaths are often painful. Many starve to death, are eaten alive by parasites or predators, or die in other arduous ways. As a result, their lives contain much suffering and little pleasure. To be sure, this does not happen in all cases. Many eggs are predated before a sentient animal gets out of them. Some animals die quickly in a painless way. Others are probably not sentient when they die (this may happen in the case of some invertebrates with very simple nervous systems). But in many cases they do have a physiology that allows them to be sentient.1 So they do suffer, in some cases a great deal, before they die.

1

On the sentience of nonhuman animals in general, see Allen, 1998; Griffin, 2001; Gregory, 2004; Broom, 2014; on the sentience of animals who typically reproduce by laying very large numbers of eggs, see Smith, 1991; Mather, 2001; Sneddon, 2004; Braithwaite, 2010.

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This has devastating consequences for the idyllic view of nature. What we have seen indicates that the vast majority of the animals of most animal species die shortly after coming into existence and are likely to have lives that contain more suffering than pleasure. What follows from this is shocking but straightforward: we must conclude that suffering and death overwhelmingly prevail over pleasure and happiness in nature. Due to this, we can conclude something else. If nonhuman animals’ interests matter, then we have reasons to be concerned with this. Therefore, we have reasons to intervene to aid nonhuman animals in the wild if we can (Gompertz, 1997 [1824]; Sapontzis, 1987; Ng, 1995; Cowen, 2003; Fink, 2005; Morris & Thornhill, 2006; Nussbaum, 2006; [2009]; Horta, 2010a; 2015 [2011]; Sözmen, 2013; Cunha, 2015; Faria & Paez, 2015; McMahan, 2015; Pearce, 2015; Torres, 2015; Faria, 2016; a review of the literature is available in Dorado, 2015).2

16.4 The Belief that Nonhuman Animals Do Not Need Our Help Despite the reasons presented in the previous section, there are many people who have the intuition that in nature nonhuman animals do fine or at least not as bad as it might seem in light of what we have just seen (see Balcombe, 2006; Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011; positive views of nature also appear to be assumed in Dunayer, 2004; Adams & Donovan, 2007; Hadley, 2015). There are several reasons they can present to try to avoid the conclusion that the idyllic view of nature is wrong (see in particular Regan, 2004 [1983], preface; Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011, for objections see Cochrane, 2013; Horta, 2013; Mannino, 2015). We will now see what seem to be the main ones.

2 Other theorists who have also argued in favor of intervening in nature with some restrictions and without questioning the idyllic view of nature include Næss, 1991; Kirkwood, Sainsbury & Bennett, 1994; Kirkwood & Sainsbury, 1996; Bovenkerk, et al., 2003; Hadley, 2006; Palmer, 2010; Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011.

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16.4.1 The Claim that in the Wild Animals Succeed in Matching the Challenges They Face There is a relatively widespread view according to which animals are perfectly equipped and used to life in the wild, so even though they face many challenges they regularly face them with success. This view is based on the fact that, while species extinctions occur naturally all the time, many species nevertheless persist through long times. The assumption is that this means that their members are managing to survive. The problem with this line of reasoning, unfortunately, is that it mixes up what happens to species and what happens to individuals. Animal species go on existing, as animal populations (or, to be more precise, animal metapopulations, i.e., groups of different populations of animals classified in the same species) survive. But the fact that animal metapopulations do not become extinct does not mean their members are living good lives. It just means that some of them have managed to reproduce. However, an animal may be able to reproduce even if there are important sources of pain and distress in her life. What is more important: as we have seen, many animals, most of them in fact, fail to reproduce simply because they fail to survive and reach maturity. The idea that nonhuman animals succeed in meeting the challenges they have to face in nature is thus very wrong. Most of them fail terribly, perish due to the hardships of the challenges they face in nature, and suffer a great deal due to that.

16.4.2 The Claim that in the Wild Nonhuman Animals Are Free According to another relatively common view, the fact that nonhuman animals in the wild do not live under human control makes their lives good ones. This view assumes that living free means living a good life. Such a claim is highly questionable too, for two reasons. First, this claim is assuming a conception of what it really means to be free that is far too narrow. Consider the distinction between negative liberty (“freedom from”) and positive liberty (“freedom to”).

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Nonhuman animals in nature cannot really be said to enjoy any of these two forms of freedom. To start with, even if it were possible to say that they enjoy negative liberty because they are not in captivity, they would still not enjoy positive liberty, as they would lack the means to pursue their more basic aims. Moreover, nonhuman animals being killed in nature shortly after coming into existence can hardly be said to be enjoying negative liberty. Negative liberty cannot be reduced to not being in captivity. It also includes freedom from other external sources of harm affecting the most basic interests of an individual (including those concerning her or his existence itself). We would not enjoy negative liberty if we lived in a society in which it were fully legal for others to maim us, rape us, or kill us, even if there were no prisons in it. Likewise, nonhuman animals in nature cannot be considered to be enjoying negative liberty either, as they are continually harmed in those ways due to external sources. Even if they may be free from the harms humans may inflict upon them, they are not free from other sources of harm. In addition to this, it must be pointed out that even if it were correct that nonhuman animals living in nature are free, that would not mean they are leading good lives. Many views consider that while being free can be a very good thing, it can only be so instrumentally. These positions claim that being free is positive because it is useful for us to enjoy other things that are the ones that are intrinsically valuable for us, such as avoiding suffering or enjoying happiness. So being free is pointless for nonhuman animals if it does not help them at all to achieve these things, as it is the case in nature in most of the cases. Other views consider being free as something intrinsically good. But none of them considers it to be the only intrinsically good thing. Such a view would be implausible. Rather, these positions claim that there are several things that can be positive or negative for us, and that being free is one of them. But if this is so, then these views have to conclude that a life filled with suffering and containing little positive well-being cannot be good, even if it includes some freedom as well. Even accepting the claim that nonhuman animals living in the wild are free, these views would have to deny they are living good lives, given how bad their lives are in all other respects. All this setting aside, of course, that as we have seen we have

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reasons to deny they really are free. They are only free from (direct) human harms, not free tout court.

16.4.3 The Claim that in the Wild Animals Can Flourish Another argument claims that nonhuman animals can only really flourish if they are left to live their own lives in the drama of life in the wild. This view would assume that it is only by living like this that animals can fulfill their own nature. This view, however, is far too optimistic. What we have seen in previous sections shows that most animals cannot really fulfill their own potential, given that the majority of them die shortly after coming into existence. Whatever fulfilling one’s own potential is, it seems clear that it cannot be possible to do it if one dies a few hours or days after one has started to live. On any sound account of what it means to flourish, no one dying in misery shortly after coming into existence can be said to be flourishing. This means the vast majority of animals do not flourish.

16.4.4 The Claim that in the Wild Animals Can Deal with Pain Finally, according to yet another view, even if nonhuman animals in the wild have to face terrible situations, they can nevertheless deal with them in ways we or domesticated nonhuman animals would not be able to, because they are used to that, as that is how life in the wild is. This argument cannot succeed either. Nonhuman animals living in the wild have nervous systems that are very similar to those possessed by those that domesticated ones have. It is implausible that those nervous systems can allow the latter but not the former to feel suffering. As for the claim that being accustomed to endure significant hardships may make one more able to stand suffering, this may be correct to some extent. But even if this is so, it is not something that should lead us to give up the conclusion reached in the previous section. To start with, note that this can only affect one of the harms

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suffered by animals in nature, which is the suffering they endure, and not the premature loss of their lives. In addition, we must also note that even if it were true that in similar situations nonhuman animals in the wild suffer less than some domesticated nonhuman animals, this does not mean they do not still suffer terribly. In fact, being able to cope better with suffering is likely to make a very limited difference when it comes to standing excruciating suffering such as the one many animals face in the wild due to disease, parasites, predation, injuries, extreme cold, etc., in particular when they agonize to death. Finally, we must bear in mind that this argument cannot be applied in any way in the case of animals dying in pain shortly after coming into existence. The reason is very simple: they do not live for long enough to get accustomed to suffering. As these animals are the majority of those who exist, we can see that this factor seems to make a small difference in the amount of suffering there is in nature. Considering all this, we have to conclude that, unfortunately, the claim that suffering and early death is widespread in the wild, and that it vastly prevails over happiness, stands as correct. This means that if there is any way we can help them and reduce the harms they suffer we have strong reasons to do so. Despite this, there are several views that oppose helping nonhuman animals in the wild. Some of them appeal to the defense of opposing values, which may be the promotion of human interests or of environmentalist aims. Others claim that intervention may help some animals but cause more harm to others. The next sections will examine them in turn.

16.5 Disregard for the Interests of Nonhuman Animals Many people hold the view that the interests of human beings count for more than those of other animals. We might think that this view could justify our disregard for what happens to nonhuman animals in the wild. We humans have our own aims which involve managing the environment

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in accordance to our needs and ideals, and concern for nonhuman animals should not make us change our agenda regarding this. This argument cannot justify disconcern for nonhuman animals in the wild, however, for two reasons. First, the only view that would entail that conclusion would be one that gave not just priority to human interests, but no weight at all to the interests of nonhuman animals. This is because the harms that nonhuman animals suffer in the wild are so overwhelming that if their interests count for something (even if just a little), their whole weight considered altogether would be tremendous, and should definitely drive us to do something about it. The huge magnitude of the harms suffered by animals in nature can only be considered morally negligible if what happens to nonhuman animals does not matter at all. Second, the view that human interests count for more than those of other animals can be rejected as an instance of speciesism, that is, a discrimination against those who do not belong to a certain species (Ryder, 2010 [1970]; Horta, 2010b). It has been extensively argued in the animal ethics literature that if an animal has an interest, the species she belongs to is an irrelevant circumstance. This claim is based on the very intuitive assumption that our decisions should be made according to those criteria that are relevant for that which those decisions are about. If this is so, then we can argue that when it comes to taking someone’s suffering or pleasure into account what should matter is simply whether she can feel suffering and pleasure. In other words: whether she is sentient. This is also the reason why other features such as cognitive capacities or relations of sympathy, which are not what determines that someone is sentient, should not be the criteria to take someone’s interests into account. If these arguments are right,3 then we should not dismiss the interests that nonhuman animals living in the wild have in being helped, just as we would not do it if they were humans.

3

Note that these arguments are widely accepted among animal ethicists (see for instance Sapontzis, 1987, Pluhar, 1995; Bernstein, 1998, 2015; Cavalieri, 2001; Horta, 2010b; Aaltola, 2012).

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In other cases, it is argued that we should not aid nonhuman animals in nature because that would mean disrupting ecosystems and would therefore go against what environmentalist views would prescribe (Sagoff, 1984; Callicott, 1989; Rolston, 1992; Hettinger, 1994). However, that would mean not taking seriously the interests of nonhuman animals. Virtually no one would want to promote the conservation of ecosystems or biodiversity by putting the vast majority of humans in the situation in which nonhuman animals are. Few would accept putting humans to live lives with more suffering than well-being and to die shortly after coming into existence for the sake of environmentalism. Accepting something like this just when nonhuman animals are affected appears to be just a case of speciesism.

16.6 Fear of Doing More Harm to Other Animals Critics of aiding nonhuman animals can present another objection. They can fear that if we intervene in the wild that may help some nonhuman animals but harm others. This may happen easily, for instance, if there is competition between the nonhuman animals we aid and other animals, as it occurs if they eat the same food. Other, more significant conflicts may arise when we consider not competitive relations, but antagonist ones, if for example the nonhuman animals we aid predate upon others. If the harms done unto others exceed the benefits to those we benefit, we clearly have reasons not to intervene to aid. But even if some forms of intervention to help nonhuman animals may not be advisable in some situations, there can be other cases in which it can work successfully. Opponents of aiding nonhuman animals can respond to this that the negative effects on other animals may be unanticipated ones. Moreover, they can claim that those effects may turn out to be very negative, much more so than the good previously done, and potentially disastrous. There are several things that must be mentioned regarding this, though. The first one is that this does not give us reason not to try to aid nonhuman animals in nature but to try to learn how to do it as best as possible. As we will see subsequently, this entails that we should work in

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order to try to acquire the knowledge needed for this. One thing is important to note, though. The knowledge we already have can lead us to conclude that the best way to intervene is not to focus on what happens to some animals in particular, but by considering the big picture instead. We need to deal with ecosystemic relations, and the aim of intervention must be to bring about ecosystems in which there is less, rather than more, suffering. The second one is that we should bear in mind that humans are already intervening in nature. In fact, they are doing it all the time. There are two different kinds of motivations these measures typically have. Sometimes they intervene to further environmental aims, as it happens when some nonhuman animals are killed because they are not native to some area, or to protect some other organisms (including nonsentient ones such as plants) whose survival they are threatening (Shelton, 2004). The reintroduction of predators in order to promote the conservation of ecosystems, which is harmful for the translocated predators and in particular for their prey, is another example of this (Horta, 2010a). In many other cases, humans intervene in nature for purely anthropocentric reasons. Humans build houses, roads and other facilities, mine, grow crops, and design the environment they want to be surrounded by in the ways that suits them better, to name just some of the most obvious forms of intervention. What the conclusions reached in previous sections imply is that the defense of the interests of nonhuman animals should be taken into account too when it comes to consider how to intervene. Finally, the third point that needs to be made here is that those who fear intervention may have disastrous effects are probably overlooking the actual situation of nonhuman animals right now. As we have seen, the overwhelming majority of sentient animals in nature appear to be dying in misery. The situation they are suffering really is disastrous. So appeals to disastrous scenarios work in both directions. In fact, we must note that while the disasters that could follow from informed intervention are possible ones, the disasters that follow from nonintervention are actual ones. Still, it is true that a possible unforeseen disaster could make the situation even worse. But we must bear in mind that, given the huge dimension of the disaster that nonhuman animals are currently suffering, in order to be even worse such a disaster should be really gigantic.

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Note, finally, that the concept of disaster we should use here must be different from the one we’re used to hearing. We’re all familiar with the idea of environmental disaster, a concept used to name ecological disruptions significantly changing the ecosystemic relations previously existing in a certain area, or entailing the elimination of a certain ecosystem and its substitution by another very different one. These, however, are different from disasters for the animals themselves. From the point of view of the animals involved, a disaster scenario is one in which they are terribly harmed. So, consider some successful environmental conservation effort entailing very significant harms for animals. That would be a great achievement from an environmental viewpoint, but it would be a disaster from the point of view of nonhuman animals. In contrast, consider some significant environmental disruption entailing a radical transformation of a certain ecosystems (that is, an environmental disaster) that ends up bringing out a scenario in which animals are better off. That would certainly not be a disaster from the point of view of nonhuman animals. There is another way, however, in which intervention for the sake of nonhuman animals may be risky for other animals. There can also be a fear that concern for animals’ suffering in the wild can be used by defenders of nonhuman animal exploitation. They can argue that it is justified to keep nonhuman animals to harm them for our own benefit as the lives they would otherwise have in the wild would be worse. So, the argument would go, by pointing out how bad the lives of nonhuman animals in nature are we may be justifying nonhuman animal exploitation. It might be thought that the response to this claim would be that many nonhuman animals exploited by humans have lives as bad, or worse, than those of animals suffering in the wild. However, the truth is that this is often not so, and in fact this response would be beside the point. The main point to consider here is a simpler one. It is, rather, that the fact that some individuals are faring bad is no justification to harm other individuals. We do not consider that it would be justified to enslave some human beings because there are other human beings whose lives are worse than the ones that our slaves would have. The same should happen in the case of nonhuman animals. In fact, the same reasons why the situation of animals in the wild should concern us (that they have interests we should take into

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account) are reasons to oppose animal exploitation, and vice versa. There is no reason to take into account the interests of nonhuman animals only when they are being exploited and not when they are being harmed for other reasons, such as natural ones.

16.7 Examples of Actual Interventions Helping Nonhuman Animals in the Wild Currently Carried Out Now that we have examined the arguments for and against aiding nonhuman animals in the wild we can look at some actual examples of how this is being done today. There are many ways humans intervene for the sake of nonhuman animals in nature (Animal Ethics, 2016). Some just concern some individual animals, as it happens in those cases in which they are rescued from ponds, frozen lakes, floods, beaches on which they are stranded, etc. (see for instance Hartman, 2011; ONE News, 2015). In other cases, efforts are carried out to give nonhuman animals a more permanent assistance, as it happens in the case of rescue centers in which sick, injured, or orphaned animals are taken care of (see for instance Bovenkerk, et al., 2003; Delahay, et al., 2009; Australian Bat Clinic, 2016). At a wider scale, massive wild animal vaccination has also been carried out in the last decades, thus helping many nonhuman animals, even if mainly out of anthropocentric reasons. Many diseases nonhuman animals suffer in the wild can be transmitted to domesticated nonhuman animals or to human beings themselves. Swine flu can be passed by wild boars to farmed pigs. Tuberculosis can be passed by mammals living in nature to farmed mammals too. Rabies can be passed by animals such as coyotes, wolves, and raccoons to dogs and humans. Ebola can be passed by great apes to humans, etc. In order to avoid this, many nonhuman animals living in the wild have been vaccinated against these diseases (Koenig, et al., 2007; Buddle, et al., 2011; Fausther-Bovendo, et al., 2012; Rupprecht, et al., 2003). In fact, animal vaccination programs in the wild have been going on for several decades. Rabies, for instance, has been eradicated from huge areas of Europe and North America after extensive vaccination of animals during many years.

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Other forms of intervention have saved animals from hunger and starvation. There are National Parks and other protected areas all around the world of which certain nonhuman animals are considered to be an essential part, attracting tourists and scientific interest. Due to this, in situations in which their survival is threatened by lack of food (due, for instance, to harsh winters or droughts), they are provided with food in order to ensure that they do not perish (see for instance Reuters, 2002; CVB News Service, 2012). Even if these programs have been carried out to benefit human beings, their success shows that it is perfectly feasible to implement them for the sake of nonhuman animals themselves. Moreover, it shows that other similar programs could also be developed and implemented in the future. All this shows that helping nonhuman animals in nature successfully is not a rosy dream. It is an actual possibility right now. It is perfectly feasible. More than that, it is something we have been doing already. So feasibility is not the issue at stake here. The key factor here is our will to do it. We can help nonhuman animals; whether or not we do it is not a matter of whether or not we can do it, but of whether we want to do it.

16.8 What Should Be Done? Considering what the current situation is regarding both how nonhuman animals are faring and the attitudes of the public toward it, there are several things we can do in order to make a difference for the animals suffering and dying in nature.

16.8.1 Supporting current efforts to help nonhuman animals in need of aid in the wild and spreading the word about the many ways in which this can be done This will make it possible that more people know that intervening for the sake of nonhuman animals is feasible. It will be very useful in order to challenge the claim that it is not possible to help animals in the wild and to increase concern for them.

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16.8.2 Challenging speciesism A main reason why nonhuman animals in nature are not being helped is that nonhuman animals in general are disregarded. This is due to the speciesist thinking according to which only human beings are fully morally considerable. Challenging this view will be helpful to increase concern for nonhuman animals in the wild. In addition, of course, it will also help to fight their exploitation by humans.

16.8.3 Spreading concern for all sentient beings and letting the public know about the difference and the contradictions between this concern and environmentalist aims This task is closely connected to the previous one. Many people believe that respecting nonhuman animals is somehow connected with supporting environmental aims such as the conservation of ecosystems and species, or with concern for all living beings. We have seen above, however, that this is not so. In fact, environmental views may oppose measures that help nonhuman animals and support measures that harm them. Due to this, it is important to argue that sentience should be the sufficient and necessary criterion for moral consideration, and that we should not harm or refrain from benefiting nonhuman animals for the sake of nonsentient entities such as ecosystemic wholes or species.

16.8.4 Promoting the work needed to learn more about how the lives of animals are in the wild and how to help them We have some knowledge at this point on life history theory and on how ecosystemic relations are that allow us to make informed predictions of how certain courses of action can benefit or harm animals. But we still need to learn much more. If we want to know how to best help animals

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living in the wild, it is crucial to carry out the research needed to know in what ecosystems the situation of animals is worse, which animals are in need of more help and what is the best way to help them. This would allow us to be much more able to intervene in ways that are beneficial for sentient beings. It is important to bear in mind that the knowledge we already have indicates that those ways would not consist in helping certain animals in an isolated manner, but in bringing about ecosystems with less, rather than more, animal suffering and death, even if that means significant transformations of the suffering maximizing ecosystems currently existing. Many environmentalists are likely to oppose this, as they are concerned with the conservation of entities ecosystems, landscapes, and biodiversity. But, as we saw earlier too, that aim can hardly justify that trillions of sentient beings have to endure hellish conditions.

16.8.5 Challenging the idyllic view of nature and supporting intervention to aid animals in the wild As long as people think that nonhuman animals live great lives in the wild, they will have no motivation to support that they be aided. The obvious result of this is that these animals will not be aided. This is why the most important task we can carry out in favor of animals in nature is probably to challenge the view that they do not need to be aided. To do this successfully, it is very useful to show that suffering and premature death vastly prevail in the wild over happiness. This is not a necessary condition in order to help animals. What should matter for that is just that there are animals suffering and dying, regardless of whether they are a majority or not. However, letting activists and the public in general know that most nonhuman animals suffer this fate will show them the terrible urgency of this cause. Moreover, it will help to outweigh arguments opposing intervention by appealing to other values, such as anthropocentric or environmentalist ones.

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16.9 Conclusion and Implications The main aim of this chapter has been to show that the idyllic view of nature as populated by big happy adult mammals and other vertebrates is a fantasy. Most animals are small ones who come into existence just to die shortly often, in most cases in ways that are very likely to be quite painful. Their lives are likely to contain much suffering and little or no pleasure. Only a few survive, and those who do (including the big ones people picture when asked to think of an animal living in the wild) must also face many threats and sources of suffering. The conclusion that follows from this is that suffering vastly prevails over happiness in nature. So, if nonhuman animals’ interests count for something, we have reasons to intervene to stop as much as we can the harms they suffer. This is not an intuitive conclusion. Due to this, we can expect that opposition to aiding animals in the wild will be strong. This means our work on behalf of the animals who suffer in the wild is not going to be easy. It might be tempting to give up and work to achieve easier aims (such as the end of circuses with nonhuman animals or the use of nonhuman animals for fur). But the situation of animals in the wild is so dramatic and affects a number of animals so huge that we have very strong reasons not to surrender and to keep pushing to help them. We must bear in mind that sentient animals living in nature outnumber in several orders of magnitude those humans interact with, including those they exploit (Tomasik, 2015b [2009]). In addition, we must note that spreading concern for animals in the wild can be actually easier than other tasks animal activists are concerned with. It is not harder, for instance, than spreading veganism, which we should nevertheless go on carrying out. We should promote veganism since the use of nonhuman animals as resources harms them terribly, and it is therefore morally unacceptable (and note, in addition, that by promoting veganism we can also challenge speciesism more easily). But we must bear in mind that, while many animal activists see veganism as much easier to accept than helping nonhuman animals in nature, this is not so in the case of the general public. The general public does not have the same attitudes

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that vegan animal activists have. Eating animal products strikes most people as justified because they are used to see it as normal, as something that is done by everyone including the people they love and think of as good people. So the idea that we should not do so is counterintuitive to them. In addition, they are reluctant to accept veganism because doing so implies a change in their behavior which many of them do not want to engage in. Instead, the idea of helping nonhuman animals in need of aid in the wild is often counterintuitive to the general public too, as veganism is, but is less demanding to them. This happens as in most cases it does not require a change in their behavior. So it is easier for the general public to accept. This point, I must insist, should not stop us from spreading veganism. For the reasons mentioned earlier, the promotion of veganism should be an essential part of our activism for nonhuman animals. Rather, what this point indicates is that animal activists defending veganism should not refrain from doing activism for the sake of animals in the wild either. Animal activists are courageous when they defend the nonhuman animals people eat; they should have the same courage to defend that we intervene for the sake of animals in the wild. They should not refrain from defending animals in the wild for fear that the public will disagree and react in hostile ways, just as they do not refrain from spreading veganism even if the risk of getting hostile reactions is higher then. In both cases, nonhuman animals need our help badly; and in both cases, it is cost effective to do activism on their behalf. So we should take action.

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Donaldson, S. & Kymlicka, W., 2011. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donovan, J. & Adams, C. J., eds., 2007. The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics: A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press. Dorado, D., 2015. Ethical Interventions in the Wild: An Annotated Bibliography. Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism, 3, pp. 219–238. Dunayer, J., 2004. Speciesism. Derwood, MD: Ryce Publishing. Faria, C., 2016. Animal Ethics Goes Wild: The Problem of Wild Animal Suffering and Intervention in Nature. PhD thesis. Barcelona: Pompeu Fabra University. Faria, C. & Paez, E., 2015. Animals in Need: The Problem of Wild Animal Suffering and Intervention in Nature. Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism, 3, pp. 7–13. Fausther-Bovendo, H., Mulangu, S. & Sullivan, N. J., 2012. Ebolavirus Vaccines for Humans and Apes. Current Opinion in Virology, 2, pp. 324– 329. Fink, C. K., 2005. The Predation Argument. Between the Species, 13(5), pp. 1– 16. URL: digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol13/iss5/3 (Accessed 21/4/12). Fraser-Bruner, A., 1951. The Ocean Sunfishes (Family Molidae). Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), 1, pp. 89–121. Godfray, H. C. J., 1994. Parasitoids: Behavioral and Evolutionary Ecology. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gompertz, L., 1997 (1824). Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press. Gould, S. J., 1994. Nonmoral Nature. In his Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History. New York: W. W. Norton, pp. 32– 44. Gregory, N. G., 2004. Physiology and Behaviour of Animal Suffering. Ames: Blackwell. Griffin, D. R., 2001. Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hadley, J., 2006. The Duty to Aid Nonhuman Animals in Dire Need. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 23, pp. 445–451. Hadley, J., 2015. Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals. London: Lexington Books. Hartman, K. I., 2011. Deer Rescued from Middle of Frozen Lake in Canada. Digital Journal, (15th, December). URL: www.digitaljournal.com/article/ 316149 (Accessed 24/11/15).

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Hettinger, N., 1994. Valuing Predation in Rolston’s Environmental Ethics: Bambi Lovers versus Tree Huggers. Environmental Ethics, 16, pp. 3–20. Horta, O., 2010a. The Ethics of the Ecology of Fear against the Nonspeciesist Paradigm: A Shift in the Aims of Intervention in Nature. Between the Species, 13(10), pp. 163–187. URL: digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol13/iss10/ 10 (Accessed 17/5/13). Horta, O., 2010b. What is Speciesism? Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 23, pp. 243–266. Horta, O.. 2013. Zoopolis, Intervention and the State of Nature. Law, Ethics and Philosophy, 1, pp. 113–125. Horta, O., 2015 (2011). The Problem of Evil in Nature: Evolutionary Bases of the Prevalence of Disvalue. Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism, 3, pp. 17– 32. Kirkwood, J. K. & Sainsbury, A. W., 1996. Ethics of Interventions for the Welfare of Free-Living Wild Animals. Animal Welfare, 5, pp. 235–243. Kirkwood, J. K., Sainsbury, A. W. & Bennett, P. M., 1994. The Welfare of Free-Living Wild Animals: Methods of Assessment. Animal Welfare, 3, pp. 257–273. Koenig, P., Lange, E., Reimann, I. & Beer, M., 2007. CP7_E2alf: A Safe and Efficient Marker Vaccine Strain for Oral Immunisation of Wild Boar against Classical Swine Fever Virus (CSFV). Vaccine, 25, pp. 3391–3399. MacArthur, R. H. & Wilson, E. O., 1967. The Theory of Island Biogeography. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mannino, A., 2015. Humanitarian Intervention in Nature: Crucial Questions and Probable Answers. Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism, 3, pp. 109–120. Mather, J. A., 2001. Animal Suffering: An Invertebrate Perspective. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 4, pp. 151–156. McAuliffe, J. R., 1978. Biological Survey and Management of Sport-Hunted Bullfrog Populations in Nebraska. Lincoln: Nebraska Game & Parks Commission. McCue, M. D., 2010. Starvation Physiology: Reviewing the Different Strategies Animals Use to Survive a Common Challenge. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology – A Molecular and Integrative Physiology, 156, pp. 1–18. McGowan, C., 1997. The Raptor and the Lamb: Predators and Prey in the Living World. New York: Henry Holt and Company. McMahan, J., 2002. The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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McMahan, J., 2015. The Moral Problem of Predation. In A. Chignell, T. Cuneo & M. Halteman, eds., Philosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments on the Ethics of Eating. London: Routledge. Mendi, M., 1988. The Effects of Litter Size Variation on Mother-Offspring Relationships and Behavioural and Physical Development in Several Mammalian Species (Principally Rodents). Journal of Zoology, 215, pp. 15–34. Moberg, G. P., ed., 2013 (1985). Animal Stress. New York: Springer. Morris, M. C. & Thornhill, R. H., 2006. Animal Liberationist Responses to Non-Anthropogenic Animal Suffering. Worldviews, 10, pp. 355–379. Nagel, T., 1970. Death. Noûs, 4, pp. 73–80. Ng, Y.-K., 1995. Towards Welfare Biology: Evolutionary Economics of Animal Consciousness and Suffering. Biology and Philosophy, 10, pp. 255–285. Nussbaum, M. C., 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Næss, A., 1991. Should We Try to Relieve Clear Cases of Suffering in Nature? Pan Ecology, 6, pp. 1–5. ONE News, 2015. Beached Whale Swims off into the Sunset after Six Hours Beached in Auckland. OneNewsNow (26th, August). URL: www.tvnz.co.nz/ one-news/new-zealand/beached-whale-swims-off-into-the-sunset-after-sixhours-in-auckland-q07559.html (Accessed 11/10/15). Palmer, C. A., 2010. Animal Ethics in Context. New York: Columbia University Press. Pearce, D., 2015. A Welfare State for Elephants? A Case Study of Compassionate Stewardship. Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism, 3, pp. 133–152. Pluhar, E. B., 1995. Beyond Prejudice: The Moral Significance of Human and Nonhuman Animals. Durham: Duke University Press. Regan, T., 2004 (1983). The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press. Reuters, 2002. Zambia Distributes Food to Starving Wildlife. SOS Rhino (18th, October). URL: www.sosrhino.com/news/rhinonews101802.php (Accessed 12/10/15). Roff, D. A., 1992. Evolution of Life Histories: Theory and Analysis. Springer Science & Business Media. Rolston III, H., 1992. Disvalues in Nature. The Monist, 75, pp. 250–278. Rupprecht, C. E., Hanlon, C. A. & Slate, D., 2003. Oral Vaccination of Wildlife against Rabies: Opportunities and Challenges in Prevention and Control. Developments in Biologicals, 119, pp. 173–184.

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Ryder, R. D., 2010 (1970). Speciesism: The Original Leaflet. Critical Society, 2, pp. 1–2. Sagoff, M., 1984. Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce. Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 22, pp. 297–307. Sapontzis, S. F., 1987. Morals, Reason, and Animals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Shelton, J.-A., 2004. Killing Animals that Don’t Fit in: Moral Dimensions of Habitat Restoration. Between the Species, 13(4), pp. 1–21. URL: digitalcom mons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol13/iss4/3 (Accessed 20/5/13). Smith, J. A., 1991. A Question of Pain in Invertebrates. Institute for Laboratory Animal Research Journal, 33, pp. 25–32. Sneddon, L. U., 2004. Evolution of Nociception in Vertebrates: Comparative Analysis of Lower Vertebrates. Brain Research Reviews, 46, pp. 123–130. Stearns, S. C., 1992. The Evolution of Life Histories. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sözmen, B. I., 2013. Harm in the Wild: Facing Non-Human Suffering in Nature. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 16, pp. 1075–1088. Tomasik, B., 2015a (2009). The Importance of Wild-Animal Suffering. Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism, 3, pp. 133–152. Tomasik, B., 2015b (2009). How Many Wild Animals Are There? Essays on Reducing Suffering. URL: reducing-suffering.org/how-many-wild-animalsare-there (Accessed 12/12/15). Torres, M., 2015. The Case for Intervention in Nature on Behalf of Animals: A Critical Review of the Main Arguments against Intervention. Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism, 3, pp. 33–49. Wobeser, G. A., 2005. Essentials of Disease in Wild Animals. New York: John Wiley and Sons. White, T. C. R., 2008. The Role of Food, Weather and Climate in Limiting the Abundance of Animals. Biological Reviews, 83, pp. 227–248. Zimmerman, D., 2009. Starvation and Malnutrition in Wildlife. Indiana Wildlife Disease News, 4, pp. 1–7. Oscar Horta teaches moral philosophy at the University of Santiago de Compostela, in Spain. His main fields of research are speciesism and the moral consideration of animals living in the wild. He has also been involved in vegan and antispeciesist advocacy since the mid-90s and is a member of Animal-Ethics.org.

17 Afterword Carol J. Adams

This is an afterword with resistance at its heart. Its concern is the asked question and the unasked question. The editors ask, “Has the animal movement failed and why?” The unasked question is “Have we understood the way that a racist patriarchal worldview influences everything about the animal movement?” The first question, the asked question in this anthology, is earnest and hopeful. If we can identify how the animal movement has failed, then we can propel its successes and achieve our goals of ending the oppression of other animals. The contributors offer insightful and thoughtful essays that examine the “political turn” in animal theory and the animal movement. But who constitutes this animal movement? Let me be more specific: where do we find women’s voices? Has there not always been a different kind of political turn in theory and activism? A turn from, not toward?

C.J. Adams (*) Independent scholar, Richardson, Texas, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_17

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Despite 40 years of feminist thinking about, and responding to, intersectional oppression represented especially in ecofeminist theory and work by feminists articulating a feminist ethic of care (a theoretical approach that clearly unites the political and ethical), when the issue is other-than-human animals, intersectional oppression remains undertheorized. We are often reminded of the ethical theories of liberation and rights, of the words of either Peter Singer or Tom Regan. Writers talk about the history or theory of the animal movement as though it were a debate between liberation (utilitarianism) and rights (deontological). Both arise from the same Enlightenment presumptions about the individual, atomized subject (see Donovan & Adams, 2007). We could argue that Open Rescues, Trap Neuter and Release, no-kill shelters, Farm Sanctuaries, hunt sabs, and the growth in recognizing cognitive abilities in nonhuman animals should be considered from an ethic of care perspective. How nonhuman animals live and die through industrial farming has been known since at least 1964, with the publication of Ruth Harrison’s Animal Machines. Her book could have joined Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in shaping the perspective of environmental activists. Sadly, it did not influence them to include industrial agriculture. The following year, in October 1965, novelist Brigid Brophy’s “The Rights of Animals” appeared in The Sunday Times. We could argue that Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (1975) is a third-generation animal movement book arising from a book review (Singer, 1973) of the 1971 anthology Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans edited by Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch and John Harris. Their book’s initial inspiration was Brophy’s essay. I understand that Singer found an audience substantially larger than his intellectual forebears. But by dating the modern animal movement from Singer’s book, women (Harrison and Brophy among others) are lost to view. In addition, the early feminist concern for other animals that can be found in writings from 1972 to 1975 is overlooked (see Fraiman, 2012). But, the animal movement, like the patriarchal world in which it exists, lifts up fathers (whether Singer or Regan or others) and disowns its mothers, those little old ladies in sneakers that male activists

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continually assert the movement has superseded. In 2008, Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society of the United States, further masculinized the phrase and the movement: “‘We aren’t a bunch of little old ladies in tennis shoes,’ Pacelle says, paraphrasing his mentor Cleveland Amory, an animal rights activist. ‘We have cleats on’” (Jones, 2008). We live in a world in which men are seen as human, women are seen as women, and in this, as closer to the other animals. I’m not alone in offering this analysis (mine can be found especially in Neither Man nor Beast, but also The Pornography of Meat). If anyone doubted that, the events during the 2016 United States Presidential campaign season confirmed it as forcibly as an unwanted hand grabbing for a woman’s genitals. Indeed, that is what we learned the Republican sexual assault candidate for President had done repeatedly. After a video was released on October 7th that contained an audio of Trump discussing women as sexual objects (absent referents in my theory [1990/2015]), millions of women tweeted their first experience of sexual assault in 140 characters. Millions. Their stories previously submerged and silent, surfaced. These two images were tweeted to me during the week after the Trump video went viral. In the video, Trump fragments women, discussing their body parts—legs or breasts—and referring to a woman’s breast implants. Figure 17.1, from a restaurant in Manchester, England, reflects the viewpoint that women’s breasts exist for others to view and comment upon and should conform to a certain standard of firmness. Figure 17.2, “Miss Tender NY” from a company called “Master Purveyors” (say that name quickly and discover the pornography of meat) juxtaposes two mythological females. Miss Liberty in a pastoral setting (white washing factory farming) and a sexualized female crowned the winner of a beauty contest. Donald Trump called one Miss Universe “Miss Piggy” (animalizing her) and “Miss Housekeeping” (radicalizing her). The “master” in Master Purveyors evokes two masteries (at least): Scott Silk, who photographed it, observed “the dynamic between the chickens and their owners compared to women competing in beauty contests and the men who own/MC/judge them”.

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Figure 17.1 “Yard and Coop”. Photo of the names given to “cuts” of a chicken’s body that reflects the overlapping of human women and nonhuman animals. Photo courtesy of Faridah Newman (Manchester, England, 2016)

Each of these images reminds us of the ongoing positioning of women and the other animals as overlapping absent referents and the insidious perpetuation of dominance through representations. Trump has shown, as well, that white men are seen as human, and people of color are seen as less than human, racialized representatives of animalized qualities. They, too, are cast as closer to the species

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Figure 17.2 “Beauty Contest Winner”. Photo of a chicken dressed as a beauty contest winner on the back of a truck of a meat company specializing in “prime meats” that reflects the overlapping of human women and nonhuman animals. Photo courtesy of Scott Silk (New York, USA, 2016)

line (Posner & Neiwert, 2016). Aph Ko offers an important insight, “The animalization of beings labelled or framed as ‘sub-human’ suggests that ‘animal’ is itself a racial opposite to the glorified white species. This means that ‘whiteness’ signifies not only race and skin tone, but also an ideal way of being. ‘Animal’ signifies a different type of racial citizenship that’s informed by characteristics from those labelled ‘sub-human.’” (Ko & Ko, forthcoming)

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The animal movement has often seen species as additive to other social justice issues, not embedded within and interrelated. Again, Aph Ko: The idea that oppressions manifest separately and then randomly “connect” at different points is exactly the problem I’m having with the animal rights movement and most other mainstream social justice movements. . . . In our movements, we have been organizing and theorizing around the literal physical bodies of the oppressed, rather than going to the root of these oppressions conceptually. . . . Naturally, their oppressions might physically resemble one another because they have a common oppressor. They are not being oppressed because they are “like” each other. They are being oppressed because they have been labelled as “less-than-human” where human is defined as the superior and ideal white species. To keep “comparing” these literal/physical oppressions to one another to show how they are the same is tautological. (Ko, 2016, emphasis in the original)1

If we trace the animal movement only as far back as Singer’s book, what is lost is not just the women’s voices, but the role of feminism and specifically ecofeminism in offering some of the earliest insights into interconnected oppressions. In the chapter, “Groundwork”, in our Ecofeminism anthology, Lori Gruen and I explore the history of interconnected activism and theory (Adams & Gruen, 2014). Yet, Singer’s inaccurate framing of animal liberation teleologically (first there was Black Liberation, then Gay Liberation, then Women’s Liberation, now there is Animal Liberation) became embedded in an understanding of the movement. Oppression is not additive, and movements are not teleologically related. Oppression is interconnected, as must be resistance to it. pattrice Jones articulates this insight: Social and environmental justice activists must come to understand how speciesism is foundational to intra-species oppression, setting the terms of and helping to maintain the many ways that people exploit each other and 1

See also Ko & Ko, forthcoming.

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the earth. At the same time, animal advocates must come to understand that every act of abuse or injustice against animals occurs within social and material circumstances that cannot be adequately addressed without an understanding of intersectionality (Jones, 2013).

We need to be deliberately and carefully engaged with intersectional work. For instance, activists and theorists in the animal movement often refer to growth in population. It has been shown that educating girls and women is one of the most important actions we can do to address issues of population. In addition, reproductive justice concerns must be articulated: “a woman cannot make an individual decision about her body if she is part of a community whose human rights as a group are violated, such as through environmental dangers or insufficient quality health care” (Ross, 2011). The question of failure and success—and how to move from the former and propel the latter—troubles me. I know this anthology accomplishes so much more than attempts to discuss that question— and in this it is both helpful and provocative. I respect and admire the work of each of these contributors. But I grapple with and resist as much as I appreciate what is attempted here and want to stay with this troubling state of affairs. One of the central features of Western existence is the objectification and use of other beings in creating the experience of subjectivity. Toni Morrison in Playing in the Dark points out that for nineteenth-century whites, their definition of freedom required reminds of its opposite— slavery (Morrison, 1992, p.39). “It was not simply that this slave population had a distinctive color; it was that this color ‘meant’ something—the not free and the not me” (Ibid, p.49). I think of a recent history of abolitionism that argues for a radical new understanding of it: It wasn’t an antebellum movement; it was a radical, interracial, 100-year struggle that can be traced back to the American Revolution and extended beyond the Civil War. Manisha Sinha’s The Slave’s Cause shows how black resistance was central to abolitionism, rather than the stereotypical assumptions about bourgeois liberalism being at its heart. In addition, “the cause of the American slave became intertwined with that of democracy, civil liberties, and the emancipation

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of women and labor” (Sinha, 2016, p. 4). During the first half of the nineteenth century, American slavery changed dramatically as it expanded, with cotton replacing tobacco as the product requiring slave labor, and forced migration, torture. Increased production demands on individual enslaved persons prevailed (see Baptist, 2014). Was abolitionism failing when new slave states were added to the United States? Did abolitionism fail because racism prevailed past the Civil War and into contemporary society (Kendi, 2016), resulting in Slavery by Another Name (Blackmon, 2008)? Asking that question is asking the wrong question. Let this afterword serve as a reminder of the claim that a feminist, antiracist understanding is required for the animal movement. It’s not whether it has failed or succeeded—here we may be caught within logocentrism and linear thinking—it’s whether the animal movement can dream of, describe, and enact within itself, liberation freed from a racist patriarchy. Among the activisms responding to and situated within an intersectional framework, I find the LGBTI sanctuary, VINE,2 which, for instance, among many other activisms, was the first to rehab former fighting roosters. Before VINE, each and every rescued rooster continued to be a victim of rigid notions of masculinity because roosters seized from cockfights or from breeds of fighting cocks were always euthanized (Jones, 2004). Brighter Green is a public policy action tank “that works to raise awareness of and encourage policy action on issues that span the environment, animals, and sustainability”. Based in New York, it works internationally with a focus on the countries of the global South and brings to its work “a strong commitment to ensuring and expanding equity and rights” (Brighter Green, 2016).3 They have produced important research on the globalization of the meat industry and are initiating a new venture, Vegan America, which will unite theory and activism, “gathering research, consulting experts and thought-leaders, convening seminars, crunching

2 3

See the VINE website, http://vine.bravebirds.org/, for further details. Accessed 15/10/16. See the Brighter Green website, http://brightergreen.org/, for more details. Accessed 15/10/16.

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numbers, delving into data to extrapolate trends, and presenting possibilities. Our aim, simply put, is to present a vision of a United States that doesn’t systemically exploit animals—marine, land, or air—for human use”. Seeing veganism not only as a public policy goal and “means of mitigating and adapting to climate change, but [it] conceptualizes how we’ll need to think: about potable water, land use, fossil fuels, energy sources, population pressures, where we live, the rights of the individual and liberal democracy (broadly conceived) in a time of mass migrations and collapsing nation states” (Vegan America Project, 2017).4 I think as well of the “A Well-Fed world” which combines hunger relief and animal protection (A Well-Fed World, 2016),5 and the Food Empowerment Project, which focuses on veganism, farm worker rights, abuse in the chocolate industry, and lack of access to healthy foods (Food Empowerment Project, 2016).6 Because the contributors are diverse and sophisticated, their contributions often seem to leapfrog over the question that troubled me; as I also did in this afterword. My thanks to the editors, who knew I was troubled and offered me this platform for articulating my thoughts.

Bibliography Adams, C. J., 1990 (2015). The Sexual Politics of Meat. London: Bloomsbury Revelations. Adams, C. J., 1994 (2015). Neither Man nor Beast: Feminism and the Defense of Animals. New York: Lantern. Adams, C. J., 2004 (2015). The Pornography of Meat. New York: Lantern. Adams, C. J. & Gruen, L. 2014. Groundwork. In C. J. Adams & L. Gruen, eds., Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth. New York: Bloomsbury.

4

See the Vegan America Project website, veganamericaproject.com/, for more details. (Available Spring 2017). 5 See the A Well-Fed World website, http://awfw.org/, for more details. Accessed 15/10/16. 6 See the Food Empowerment Project website, http://www.foodispower.org/, for more details. Accessed 15/10/16.

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A Well-Fed World, 2016. Home. URL: awfw.org/ (Accessed 15/10/16). Baptist, E. E., 2014. The Half has Never been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic Books. Blackmon, D., 2008. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. New York: Random House. Brighter Green, 2016. Home. URL: brightergreen.org/ (Accessed 15/10/16). Donovan, J. & Adams, C. J., eds., 2007. The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics: A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press. Food Empowerment Project, 2016. Home. URL: www.foodispower.org/ (Accessed 15/10/16). Fraiman, S., 2012. Pussy Panic versus Liking Animals: Tracking Gender in Animal Studies. Critical Inquiry, 39(1), pp. 89–115. Jones, M., 2008. The Barnyard Strategist. New York Times Magazine, October 24. Jones, p., 2004. Mothers with Monkeywrenches, In S. Best & A. J. Nocella, eds., Terrorists or Freedom Fighters: Reflections on the Liberation of Animals. New York: Lantern Books. Jones, p. 2013. Intersectionality and animals. VINE Sanctuary News. URL: blog.bravebirds.org/archives/1553 (Accessed 14/10/16). Jones, p. 2016. VINE Sanctuary. URL: vine.bravebirds.org/ (Accessed 14/10/16). Kendi, I. X., 2016. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. New York: Nation Books. Ko, A., 2016. Afrofuturism and Black Veganism: Towards a New Citizenship. URL: aphro-ism.com/2016/04/27/video-afrofuturism-black-veganism-andcitizenship-politics/ (Accessed 14/10/16). Ko, A. & Ko, S., Forthcoming. Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters. New York: Lantern Books. Morrison, T., 1992. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Harvard University Press. Posner, S. & Neiwert, D., 2016. How Trump took Hate Groups Mainstream: The Full Story of his Connection with Far-Right Extremists. Mother Jones. URL: www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/donald-trump-hate-groupsneo-nazi-white-supremacist-racism (Accessed 14/10/16). Ross, L., 2011. Understanding Reproductive Justice. Trust Black Women. SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. URL: www.trust blackwomen.org/our-work/what-is-reproductive-justice/9-what-is-reproduc tive-justice (Accessed 14/10/16). Singer, P., 1973. Animal Liberation. The New York Review of Books, 20(5) (April, 5th).

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Sinha, M., 2016. The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition. New Haven: Yale University Press. Vegan America Project, 2017. Home. URL: veganamericaproject.com Carol J. Adams is a feminist-vegan advocate, activist, and independent scholar and the author of numerous books including The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory, now in a Bloomsbury Revelations edition celebrating its 25th anniversary. It has been translated into German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Portuguese, French, and Spanish. She is the coeditor of several important anthologies, including most recently Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth (with Lori Gruen). The Carol J. Adams Reader: Writings and Conversations 1995–2015 appeared in the fall of 2016. Her writings are the subject of two recent anthologies, Defiant Daughters: 21 Women of Art, Activism, Animals, and The Sexual Politics of Meat and The Art of the Animal: 14 Women Artists Explore The Sexual Politics of Meat, in which a new generation of feminists, artists, and activists respond to Adams’ groundbreaking work. www.caroljadams.com

Index

A A Theory of Justice, 33, 179 Aaltola, Elisa, 6, 13, 247–272 Abolitionism, 193, 195, 327n1, 397, 398 Adams, Carol, 16–17, 290, 291, 313, 314, 370, 391–399 Agency/agents, 11, 12, 33, 35, 37, 42–47, 65, 67, 76n5, 77, 79, 79n5, 81, 83, 103, 151, 164, 167n20, 186, 190, 202–206, 208–210, 214–217, 219, 222, 227, 228, 230, 232–234, 238, 241–243, 249, 258–260, 269, 271, 272, 285, 286, 296, 298, 314, 317, 318, 322, 341, 341n8, 343 Ag-Gag Laws, 282 Ahimsa, 116, 228, 228n1, 231, 234–235, 243

Albatrosses, 368 Anarchism, 3, 239 Anarchy, State and Utopia, 98 Animal Liberation, 102, 228, 289, 392, 396 Animal Liberation Front (ALF), 229, 237 Animal Machines, 392 Animals, Men and Morals, 392 Anthropocentrism, 5, 6, 10, 11, 17, 90, 140, 177–197, 202, 263–265, 269–270, 272 Apes, 40, 47–49, 68, 69, 184, 351, 379 Aquinas, Thomas, 82 Aristotle, 46, 65, 77, 181, 187, 242 Arnason, Gardar, 2n3, 14–15, 327–344 Atrocities, 6, 14, 122, 305–323

© The Author(s) 2017 A. Woodhall, G. Garmendia da Trindade (eds.), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3

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Index

B Baboons, 213 Bats, 40n1 Bears, 37, 122, 128, 159, 162, 217 Bees, 131, 212 Bekoff, Marc, 37, 214, 215 Bentham, Jeremy, 28, 74n1, 357, 357n1 Best, Steve, 124 Birds, 122, 212, 221, 228, 329, 348, 368 Boars, 379 Bonobos, 215, 309 Bookchin, Murray, 123, 124, 130–133, 143 Brophy, Brigid, 392 Bullfighting, 122 Bulls, 122

C Callicott, J. Baird, 376 Camels, 194 Caney, Simon, 151, 165 Care Ethics, 26 Carson, Rachel, 392 The Case for Animal Rights, 29–30, 99, 102, 290 Cats, 122, 299 Cavalieri, Paola, 375n3 Cetaceans, 48, 368 Chickens, 83, 121, 132, 154, 160, 194, 236, 263, 264, 393–395 Chimpanzees, 183, 309 Chipmunks, 167 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 181, 183–185 Circuses, 122, 195, 327, 351, 383

Citizenship, 36, 215, 242n14, 292, 328, 329, 333–344, 395 Civil disobedience, 5, 12, 230, 234, 236–241, 237n11 Climate change, 128, 149, 151, 158–159, 162, 165, 286, 399 Clinton, Hillary, 276–277, 279 Cochrane, Alasdair, 3, 3n, 152n4, 152n5, 161n15, 190n2, 292, 335n5, 370 Coetzee, John, 310 Companion nonhuman animals, 35, 66, 90, 156, 160, 203, 217, 289, 327, 334 Comstock, Gary, 6–9, 39–69 Consciousness, 25, 40, 40n, 41, 45, 46, 52, 54, 57, 58, 58n, 59, 62, 65, 66, 68, 114, 122, 128, 186, 195, 298 Constructivism, 201 Contractualism, 30–36 Cooke, Steve, 3, 152n5, 161n15, 244n16 Corvids, 48 Cosmopolitanism, 6, 10–11, 150, 151, 162–170 Cows, 40, 105, 121, 154, 202, 204, 205, 219, 252, 263, 349, 350, 352, 361 Coyotes, 83, 306, 379 Cross-species comparisons of welfare, 347–362

D Darwin, Charles, 39, 40, 68, 69 de Beauvoir, Simone, 126, 127 Deer, 83, 154

Index

405

Deontology, 42n3, 68, 244, 392 Derrida, Jacques, 201, 242 Descartes, René, 74, 178, 179 de Waal, Frans, 37, 40, 184, 191, 342n8 Dialogue, 11, 12, 201–224 Direct action, 241, 241n13, 242 Discourse theory, 206–208 Dogs, 122, 194, 203, 204, 212, 214, 215, 217, 222, 284, 340, 379 Dolphins, 167, 212 Donaldson, Sue, 2n2, 3, 21, 22, 97, 112, 152n4, 167n20, 169, 201–203, 208, 209, 215, 217, 219, 292, 297, 307, 309, 318n10, 320–322, 327, 327n1, 328–334, 335n4, 343, 344, 370, 370n2 Donovan, Josephine, 370, 392 Drongos, 212 Dunayer, Joan, 370 Duties/Obligations, 5, 8–11, 15, 22, 24–31, 35, 36, 77, 82, 98, 99, 101, 102, 106, 151–153, 152n5, 159, 161, 162, 164, 165, 168–170, 179, 180, 182, 184–187, 192–197, 219, 318, 329, 335, 336, 341–344

Emotions, 5, 6, 13, 14, 29, 48–50, 55, 57–60, 68, 189, 190, 211, 215, 216, 232, 243, 244, 247–251, 254–259, 261, 266–269, 271, 272, 290, 306–309, 311, 315, 318–323, 348, 354, 355, 357–359, 361, 362 Empathy, 75, 85, 90, 137, 144, 255, 264, 265 Environmental ethics, 100 Environmentalism, 376 Ethics, 3, 5, 9, 11, 14, 17, 18, 21–37, 74, 97–100, 106, 111, 113–117, 124, 201, 214, 241, 244, 251–253, 257, 263–265, 269–272, 277, 279, 289, 291, 292, 305, 306, 309, 314, 318n10, 319, 320, 323, 329, 332, 336–341, 348–353, 362, 365–384, 391, 392 Ethology, 195, 202, 214, 219 Evolution, 6, 9, 17, 73–95 Evolutionary biology, 17, 74 Existentialism, 139, 142 Experimentation (human), 6, 329, 330, 332 Experimentation (nonhuman animal), 14–15, 327–344

E Eagles, 47 Ecofeminism, 289, 396 Ecosocialism, 128–130, 132 Elephants, 48, 122, 194, 195, 212, 351, 365, 368 Elk, 83

F Factory farming, 121, 160, 265, 282, 286, 308, 312, 393 Far-persons, 8–9, 39–69 Feinberg, Joel, 82n9 Feminism, 4, 8, 16, 201, 290, 291, 336, 392, 396

406

Index

Fish, 50, 53, 54, 57, 116, 121, 154, 163n18, 263, 297, 348, 368 Foucault, Michel, 123, 133 Foxes, 241 Francione, Gary, 101n2, 184–185, 189, 192–195, 293, 314n8, 327n1, 333n2, 334n3 Freeman, Carrie, 318n11 Free-roaming nonhuman animals, 15, 16, 18, 209 Frey, R. G., 52 Frogs, 368 Fur trade, 155

G Gandhi, Mohandas, 12, 227–244 Garner, Robert, 3, 3n3, 97, 102, 152n4, 201, 208, 291–293 Geese, 221–224 Globalization, 398 Global justice, 10, 11, 149–152, 152n5, 161–163, 166, 168, 170, 171 Goats, 83 Godlovitch, Roslind, 392 Godlovitch, Stanley, 392 Gorillas, 48, 49 Grandin, Temple, 41 Great apes, 40, 47, 48, 68, 69, 351, 379 Gruen, Lori, 290, 291, 320, 396 Guinea pigs, 122

H Habermas, Jürgen, 201, 202, 205–210, 216

Hadley, John, 3, 113, 244n16, 370, 370n2 Haraway, Donna, 202–205, 209, 214, 216, 219 Harrison, Ruth, 392 Hedonism, 15, 348, 354, 357–362 Hobbes, Thomas, 109 Holocaust analogy, 310 Horses, 122, 154, 182, 279 Horta, Oscar, 6, 16, 66n1, 152n5, 365–384 Hribal, Jason, 202, 204, 208, 218 Human chauvinism, 124 Humanism, 6, 10, 121–145 Hume, David, 92, 93n16 Hunting, 83, 156, 209, 221, 241, 248, 254, 277, 308n1, 312, 327

I Inherent value, 29, 100–102, 108, 109, 290 Insects, 348 Interests, 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 17, 22, 24, 29–31, 35, 75–87, 91–95, 104, 106–111, 151, 152n3, 159, 162, 163, 165, 167, 167n20, 169–171, 183, 185, 191, 192, 194, 196, 201, 202, 207, 223, 228, 233, 234, 236, 267, 282, 283, 285–287, 290, 296, 298, 299, 311, 314n7, 315n9, 328, 330, 331, 334, 336–338, 340, 343n9, 344, 350, 372, 374–376, 379, 380, 383 Interspecies atrocities, 14, 305–323

Index

Interspecies deliberation, 12, 201–224 Interspecies ethics, 5, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18, 272, 306 Interspecies humanism, 140 Interspecies justice, 14, 305–307, 311, 315, 319–323 Interspecies republicanism, 217 Interspecies solidarity, 317, 322 Interspecies studies, 3, 4, 8, 11, 16, 17 Intervention, 5, 16, 109n8, 161, 161n15, 167n20, 204–206, 210, 223, 366, 374, 376–380, 382 Irvine, Leslie, 160

J Joy, Melanie, 137 Justice, 9–11, 14, 15, 17, 33, 102, 106, 107, 110, 112, 132, 149–171, 179, 180, 184, 192, 201, 202, 207, 209, 214, 215, 220, 223, 238, 265, 277, 290–292, 305–308, 311, 316, 318–323, 331, 342, 396, 397

K Kant, Immanuel, 78, 79, 82, 135, 178–186, 191 Kheel, Marti, 290 Kierkegaard, Søren, 190 King Jr, Martin Luther, 242 Kropotkin, Peter, 131 Kymlicka, Will, 2n2, 2n3, 3, 21, 22, 28, 31, 97, 112, 152n4,

407

167n20, 169, 201–203, 208, 209, 215, 217, 219, 292, 297, 307, 309, 318n10, 320–322, 327n1, 328–334, 335n4, 343, 344, 370

L Left humanism, 6, 10, 121–145 Leopards, 47 Levinas, Emmanuel, 139 Liberalism, 97, 117, 165n19, 206, 233, 397 Liberation, 3, 8, 10, 13, 73–95, 122, 124, 125, 133, 144, 248, 251–256, 263, 265, 269, 270, 272, 296, 392, 398 Libertarianism, 6, 103n5, 111–113, 117 Linzey, Andrew, 289 Lions, 122, 365 Locke, John, 187

M Machan, Tibor, 98, 100, 101, 109n8, 113 Marcuse, Herbert, 138, 141–144 Marxism, 10, 124, 126, 130, 133, 135, 233 Marx, Karl, 122–125, 128–130, 136, 137, 143 McMahan, Jeff, 68, 99, 102n4, 355, 356, 359, 369, 370 Meat-Eating, 98, 101 Meijer, Eva, 2n3, 6, 11–13, 201–224 Memory, 6, 14, 29, 44, 47–50, 58, 59, 63–66, 305–323

408

Index

Metahumanism, 138 Mice, 122, 286 Midgley, Mary, 320 Milburn, Josh, 2n3, 6, 9, 97–117 Milligan, Tony, 2, 6, 12, 227–244 Minks, 351 Monkeys, 47, 83 Moral agency/agents, 37, 42, 43, 45–47, 67, 103, 164, 214–215, 249, 258, 269, 271, 272, 341, 341n8, 343 Moral considerability, 256, 381 Moral crusades, 14, 280, 283–288, 293–298 Moral emotions, 5, 6, 13, 247, 248, 251, 256, 257, 267, 268 Morality (as evolved), 9, 31, 73–95, 208, 214, 215, 249, 252, 253, 255, 257–261, 265, 272, 338 Moral responsibility, 257, 313

N Næss, Arne, 370n2 Nagel, Thomas, 40n1, 98, 104, 161, 168, 369 Narveson, Jan, 98, 99n1, 100, 108–110, 112 Natural disasters, 159–162 Nature/more-than-human world, 5, 16, 18, 365–384 Near-persons, 45–52, 57–60, 68 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 86n13, 87n14, 178 Nonhuman animal movement, 2, 6, 13, 16, 391–399 Non-persons, 58–60, 100

Non-relational cosmopolitanism, 165, 166 Nozick, Robert, 6, 9, 10, 97–117 Nussbaum, Martha, 3, 14, 97, 109, 152, 165n19, 242, 268, 308n2, 318–319, 321, 370

O Objective list account of welfare, 354–357, 359, 361, 362 Open rescue, 5, 12, 13, 227–244 Orangutans, 39, 40, 43, 46, 47, 68, 183 Orcas, 195, 281 Ostriches, 154 O’Sullivan, Siobhan, 3, 292

P Palmer, Clare, 26, 306, 307, 317, 318 Parrots, 48, 212 Penguins, 159 Pepper, Angie, 6, 10, 11, 149–171 Persons/personhood, 5, 8, 9, 11, 33, 34, 39–69, 76, 88, 89, 100, 104, 110, 115, 139, 180–186, 237, 248–250, 254, 258, 261, 332, 342, 343 Phenomenology, 81n8 Pierce, Jessica, 37, 214–215 Pigeons, 154 Pigs, 41, 43–46, 52–57, 68, 69, 121, 154, 252, 263, 264 Plato, 81, 135, 242 Pluhar, Evelyn, 99, 375n3

Index

Polar bears, 159 Political Turn, the, 2–17, 97, 101, 117, 201–224, 275–299 Political turn, the (in advocacy), 305–323, 391 Political voices, 11, 201, 285 Politics/political theory, 21–37, 73–95, 201–224, 247–271, 305–323, 327–344 Ponies, 122 Posthumanism, 122n4, 124, 145 Poststructuralism, 123, 126, 145, 201 Prairie dogs, 212 Predation, 83, 374 Predation problem, 83 Preferentialism, 349 Primates, 122, 184, 212, 213, 229, 355, 368

Q Quasi-persons, 68

R Rabbits, 122 Raccoons, 379 Rachels, James, 99 Rats, 122, 286 Ravens, 212 Rawls, John, 30, 32–34, 98, 179, 184–186, 236, 237n11 Regan, Tom, 3, 29–30, 99–101, 208, 289, 290, 327, 366, 370, 392 Relational cosmopolitanism, 164 Republicanism, 206, 207, 217

409

Rights (human/nonhuman animal), 21–37, 97–117, 177–197, 327–344 Rodents, 329 Rolston, Holmes, 376 Roosters, 398 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 134, 187, 207, 217 Rowlands, Mark, 6, 8, 21–37, 166, 236 Ryder, Richard, 285n2, 289, 375

S Sanders, Bernie, 239, 275–279, 298 Sapontzis, Steve, 6, 9, 73–95, 370 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 76, 122, 123, 126, 135, 139, 140 Satyagraha, 5, 12, 13, 227–244 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 85, 178 Scotton, Guy, 2n3, 6, 14, 305–323 Sea lions, 159 Seals, 159 Self-fulfillment account of welfare, 354, 358–360 Sentience, 8, 22, 57, 185, 196, 220, 290, 369n1, 381 Sentimentalism, 5, 30 The Sexual Politics of Meat, 145, 399 Shame, 5, 6, 13, 139, 231, 247–272, 311, 315, 316 Sharks, 154 Sheep, 83, 91 Silent Spring, 392 Singer, Peter, 3, 28, 29, 52, 68, 102, 208, 285, 289, 290, 317, 357, 362, 392, 396 Smith, Kimberley, 3, 292

410

Index

Smuts, Barbara, 202, 209, 213–216, 219 Snails, 357, 358 Snakes, 47 Social movements, 280, 283–284, 286–289, 293–298 Societies (human), 8, 22, 130, 208 Societies (interspecies), 201–224 Societies (nonhuman animal), 208–210, 288, 333, 336–339 Sovereignty, 22, 36 Speciesism, 99–101, 166, 285, 321, 362, 375, 376, 381, 396 Species overlap argument, the, 187 Squid, 212 Squirrels, 51–53, 57, 329, 348, 362 Stallwood, Kim, 2n3, 13, 14, 275–299 Steiner, Gary, 6, 11, 13, 177–197 Subjects-of-a-life, 29 Sunfish, 368 Sztybel, David, 310

V Value, 9, 15, 29, 44, 50, 52, 58, 60–67, 74–78, 83, 86, 92–94, 97–117, 128, 141, 142, 153, 155, 180, 181, 201, 210, 227, 228, 231, 249, 250, 253, 257, 259–263, 265, 343, 352, 360 Varner, Gary, 40–53, 57, 58, 67, 68 Veganism, 5, 11, 13, 98, 101n2, 115, 132, 180, 195–197, 248, 255, 256, 269–271, 296, 383, 384, 399 Vervet monkeys, 47 Višak, Tatjana, 15, 347–363 W Weisberg, Zipporah, 6, 10, 121–145 Welfare, 2, 15, 22, 29, 47, 112, 165, 183, 193–195, 254, 282, 283, 288, 289, 291, 295, 347–362 Welfarism, 2, 193, 195, 265 Whales, 365 Wise, Steven, 183, 291, 309 Wolves, 83, 379

T Terrorism, 151, 229, 282, 313 Tigers, 122 Turtles, 360

Y Young, Iris Marion, 201, 210, 211, 216

U Ungulates, 368 Utilitarianism, 26, 28, 42, 68, 102, 111, 289, 290, 392

Z Zoopolis, 21, 22, 292, 297, 320, 327, 329, 333 Zoos, 67, 122, 156, 160, 161, 327