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ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
PETER SINGER
In recent years a number of oppressed groups have campaigned
vigorously for equality. The classic instance is the Black Liberation
movement,which demands an end to the prejudice and discrimination that has
made blacks second-class citizens. The immediate appeal of the Black Liberation
movement and its initial,if limited,success made it a model for other oppressed
groups to follow. We became familiar with liberation movements for
Spanish-Americans, gay people, and a variety of other minorities. When a
majority group--women,began their campaign,some
thought we had come to the end of the road. Discrimination on the basis of
sex,it has been said, is the last universally accepted form of discrimination,
practised without secrecy or pretence even in those liberal circles that
have long prided themselves on their freedom from prejudice against
racial minorities.
One should always be wary of talking of 'the last remaining form of
discrimination' .If we have learnt anything from the liberation movements,we
should have learnt how difficult it is to be aware of latent prejudice in
our attitudes to particular groups until this prejudice is forcefully pointed
out.
A liberation movement demands an expansion of our moral horizons and an extension
or reinterpretation of the basic moral principle of equality. Practices that
were previously regarded as natural and inevitable come to be seen as the
result of an unjustifiable prejudice. Who can say with confidence that all
his or her attitudes and practices are beyond criticism? If we wish to avoid
being numbered amongst the oppressors, we must be prepared to re-think even
our most fundamental attitudes. We need to consider them from the point of
view of those most disadvantaged by our
[Part of this essay appeared in the New York Review of Books (5 Apr. 1973),
and is reprinted by permission of the Editor.
This version is an abridged form of an essay which was first published in
Philosophic Exchange vol. 1. no 5 (Summer 1974)]
attitudes,and the practices that follow from these attitudes. If we can make
this unaccustomed mental switch we may discover a pattern in our attitudes
and practices that consistently operates so as to benefit one group - usually
the one to which we ourselves belong - at the expense of another. In this
way we may come to see that there is a case for a new liberation movement.
My aim is to advocate that we make this mental switch in respect of our attitudes
and practices towards a very large group of beings: members of species other
than our own - or,as we popularly though misleadingly call them,animals.
In other words, I am urging that we extend to other species the basic principle
of equality that most of us recognize should be extended to all members of
our own species.
All this may sound a little far-fetched, more like a parody of other liberation
movements than a serious objective. In fact, in the past the idea of 'The
Rights of Animals' really has been used to parody the case for women's rights.
When Mary Wollstonecraft, a forerunner of later feminists, published her
Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792, her ideas were widely
regarded as absurd, and they were satirized in an anonymous publication entitled
A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes. The author of this satire (actually
Thomas Taylor, a distinguished Cambridge philosopher) tried to refute
Wollstonecraft's reasonings by showing that they could be carried one stage
further. If sound when applied to women, why should the all arguments not
be applied to dogs, cats, and horses? They seemed to hold equally well for
these 'brutes'. Yet to hold that brutes had rights was manifestly absurd;
therefore the reasoning by which this conclusion had been reached must be
unsound, and if unsound when applied to brutes, it must also be unsound when
applied to women, since the very same arguments had been used in each case.
One way in which we might reply to this argument is by saying that the case
for equality between men and women cannot validly be extended to non-human
animals. Women have a right to vote, for instance, because they are just
as capable of making rational decisions as men are; dogs, on the other hand,
are incapable of understanding the significance of voting, so they cannot
have the
right to vote. There are many other obvious ways in which men and women resemble
each other closely, while humans and other animals differ greatly. So, it
might be said, men and women are similar beings,and should have equal rights,
while humans and non-humans are different and should not have equal rights.
The thought behind this reply to Taylor's analogy is correct up to a point,
but it does not go far enough. There are important differences between humans
and other animals, and these differences must give rise to some differences,
in the rights that each have. Recognizing this obvious fact however, is no
barrier to the case for extending the basic principle of equality to non-human
animals. The differences that exist between men and women are equally undeniable,
and the supporters of Women's Liberation are aware that these differences
may give rise to different rights. Many feminists hold that women have the
right to an abortion on request.It does not follow that since these same
people are campaigning for equality between men and women they must support
the right of men to have abortions too. Since a man cannot have an abortion,
it is meaningless to talk of his right to have one. Since a pig can't vote,it
is meaningless to talk of its right to vote. There is no reason why either
Women's Liberation or Animal Liberation should get involved in such nonsense.
The extension of the basic principle of equality from one group to another
does not imply that we must treat both groups in exactly the same way,or
grant exactly the same rights to both groups. Whether we should do so will
depend on the nature of the members of the two groups. The basic principle
of equality, I shall argue, is equality of consideration ; and equal
consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment and different
rights.
So there is a different way of replying to Taylor's attempt to parody
Wollstonecraft's arguments, a way which does not deny the differences between
humans and non-humans, but goes more deeply into the question of equality,
and concludes by finding nothing absurd in the idea that the basic principle
of equality applies to so-called 'brutes'. I believe that we reach this
conclusion if we examine the basis on which our opposition to discrimination
on grounds of race or sex ultimately rests. We will then see that we would
be on shaky ground if we were to demand equality for blacks,women, and other
groups of oppressed humans while denying equal consideration to non-humans.
When we say that all human beings, whatever their race, creed, or sex, are
equal, what is it that we are asserting? Those who wish to defend a hierarchical,
inegalitarian society have often pointed out that by whatever test we choose
, it simply is not true that all humans are equal. Like it or not, we must
face the fact that humans come in different shapes and sizes; they come with
differing moral capacities , differing intellectual abilities, differing
amounts of benevolent feeling and sensitivity to the needs of others, differing
abilities to communicate effectively,and differing capacities to experience
pleasure and pain. In short, if the demand for equality were based on the
actual equality of all human beings, we would have to stop demanding equality.
It would be an unjustifiable demand.
Still, one might cling to the view that the demand for equality among human
beings is based on the actual equality of the different races and sexes.
Although humans differ as individuals in various ways, there are no differences
between the races and sexes as such.From the mere fact that a person is black,or
a woman, we cannot infer anything else about that person. This, it may be
said, is what is wrong with racism and sexism. The white racist claims that
whites are superior to blacks, but this is false - although there are differences
between individuals, some blacks are superior to some whites in all of the
capacities and abilities that could conceivably be relevant. The opponent
of sexism would say the same: a person's sex is no guide to his or her abilities,
and this is why it is unjustifiable to discriminate on the basis of sex.
This is a possible line of objection to racial and sexual discrimination.
It is not, however, the way someone really concerned about equality would
choose, because taking this line could, in some circumstances, force one
to accept a most inegalitarian society. The fact that humans differ as
individuals, rather than as races or sexes, is a valid reply to someone who
defends a hierarchical society like,say,South Africa, in which all whites
are superior in status to all blacks. The existence of individual variations
that cut across the lines of race or sex, however, provides us with no defence
at all against a more sophisticated opponent of equality one who proposes
that, say, the interests of those with IQ ratings above 100 be preferred
to the interests of those with IQs below 100. Would a hierarchical society
of this sort really be so much better than one based on race or sex? I think
not. But if we tie the moral principle of equality to the factual equality
of the different races or sexes, taken as a whole, our opposition to racism
and sexism does not provide us with any basis for objecting to this kind
of inegalitarianism -
There is a second important reason why we ought not to base our opposition
to racism and sexism on any kind of factual equality even the limited kind
which asserts that variations in capacities and abilities are spread evenly
between the different races and sexes: we can have
no absolute guarantee that these abilities and capacities really are distributed
evenly, without regard to race or sex, among human beings. So far
as actual abilities are concerned , there do seem to be certain measurable
differences between both races and sexes. These differences do not,of
course,appear in each case, but only when averages are taken. More important
still,we do not yet know how much of these differences is really due to the
different genetic endowments of the various races and sexes, and how much
is due to environmental differences that are the result of past and continuing
discrimination. Perhaps all of the important differences will eventually
prove to be environmental rather than genetic.
Anyone opposed to racism and sexism will certainly hope that this will be
so, for it will make the task of ending discrimination a lot easier; nevertheless
it would be dangerous to rest the case against racism and sexism on the belief
that all significant differences are environmental in origin. The opponent
of, say, racism who takes this line will be unable to avoid conceding that
if differences in ability did after all prove to have some genetic connection
with race, racism would in some way be defensible.
It would be folly for the opponent of racism to stake his whole case on a
dogmatic commitment to one particular outcome of a difficult scientific issue
which is still a long way from being settled. While attempts to prove that
differences in certain selected abilities between races and sexes are primarily
genetic in origin have certainly not been conclusive, the same must be said
of attempts to prove that these differences are largely the result of
environment.At this stage of the investigation we cannot be certain which
view is correct, however much we may hope it is the latter. Fortunately,
there is no need to pin the case for equality to one particular outcome of
this scientific investigation. The appropriate response to those who claim
to have found evidence of genetically- based differences in ability between
the races or sexes is not to stick to the belief that the genetic explanation
must be wrong, whatever evidence to the contrary may turn up: instead we
should make it quite clear that the claim to equality does not depend on
intelligence, moral capacity, physical strength, or similar matters of fact.
Equality is a moral ideal, not a simple assertion of fact. There is no logically
compelling reason for assuming that a factual difference in ability between
two people justifies any difference in the amount of consideration we give
to satisfying their needs and interests. The principle of the equality of
human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans:
it is a prescription of how we should treat humans.
Jeremy Bentham incorporated the essential basis of moral equality into his
utilitarian system of ethics in the formula: 'Each to count for one and none
for more than one.' In other words, the interests of every being affected
by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as the
like interests of any other being. A later utilitarian, Henry Sidgwick, put
the point in this way.
''The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point
of view (if I may say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other."
More recently , the leading figures in modern moral philosophy have shown
a great deal of agreement in specifying as a fundamental presupposition of
their moral theories some similar requirement which operates so as to give
everyone's interests equal consideration - although they cannot agree on
how this requirement is best formulated.
It is an implication of this principle of equality that our concern for others
ought not to depend on what they are like, or what abilities they possess
- although precisely what this concern requires us to do may vary according
to the characteristics of those affected by what we do. It is on this basis
that the case against racism and the case against sexism must both ultimately
rest; and it is in accordance with this principle that speciesism is also
to be condemned. If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not
1 Methods of ethics (7th edn.), p. 382.
2 For example. R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (Oxford, 1963) and J. Rawls,
A Theory of Justice (Harvard, 1972); for a brief account of the essential
agreement on this issue between these and other positions. see R. M. Hare,
'Rules of War and Moral Reasoning', Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 1,
no. 2 (1972).
entitle one human to use another for his own ends, how can it entitle humans
to exploit non-humans?
Many philosophers have proposed the principle of equal consideration of
interests, in some form or other , as a basic moral principle; but, as we
shall see in more detail shortly , not many of them have recognized that
this principle applies to members of other species as well as to our own.
Bentham was one of the few who did realize this. In a forward-looking passage,
written at a time when black slaves in the British dominions were still being
treated much as we now treat non-human animals , Bentham wrote :
"The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those
rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of
tyranny . The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin
is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the
caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number
of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the of the
os sacrum , are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive
being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable
line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But
a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational , as well
as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even
a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question
is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they
suffer?"3
In this passage Bentham points to the capacity for suffering as the vital
characteristic that gives a being the right to equal consideration. The capacity
for suffering - or more strictly , for suffering and/ or enjoyment or happiness
- is not just another characteristic like the capacity for language , or
for higher mathematics. Bentham is not saying that those who try to mark
'the insuperable line' that determines whether the interests of a being should
be considered happen to have selected the wrong characteristic. The capacity
for suffering and enjoying things is a pre-requisite for having interests
at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests
in any meaningful way. It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the
interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a schoolboy. A stone
does not have interests because it cannot suffer.Nothing that we can do to
it could possibly make any difference to
3 Introduction to the Principles of morals and Legislation, eh. XV11.
its welfare A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being
tormented, because it will suffer if it is.
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 being,
the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally
with the like suffering-in so far 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 This is why the limit
of sentience (using the term as a convenient, if not strictly accurate, shorthand
for the capacity to suffer or experience enjoyment or happiness) is the only
defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others. To mark this
boundary by some characteristic like intelligence or rationality would be
to mark it in an arbitrary way. Why not choose some other characteristic,
like skin colour?
The racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to
the interests of members of his own race, when there is a clash between their
interests and the interests of those of another race. Similarly the speciesist
allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests
of members of other species.
4 The pattern is the same in each case.Most human beings are speciesists.
I shall now very briefly describe some of the practices that show this.
For the great majority of human beings,especially in urban,industrialized
societies, the most direct form of contact with members of other species
is at meal-times : we eat them. In doing so we treat them purely as means
to our ends. We regard their life and well-being as subordinate to our taste
for a particular kind of dish. I say 'taste' deliberately - this is purely
a matter of pleasing our palate.There can be no defence of eating flesh in
terms of satisfying nutritional needs, since it has been established beyond
doubt that we could satisfy our need for protein and other essential nutrients
far more efficiently with a diet that replaced animal flesh by soy beans,
or products derived from soy beans, and other high-protein vegetable
products.5
4 I owe the term 'speciesism' to Richard Ryder,
5 In order to produce 1 lb. of protein in the form of beef or veal, we must
feed 21 lb of protein to the animal.
Other forms of livestock are slightly less inefficient,but the average ratio
in the US is still 1 : 8.
It has been estimated that the amount of protein lost to humans in this way
is equivalent to 90 per cent of the annual world protein deficit. For a brief
account, see Frances Moore Lappe, Diet for a Small Planet (Friends of The
Earth/Ballantine, New York, 1971), pp 4-11
It is not merely the act of killing that indicates what we are ready to do
to other species in order to gratify our tastes The suffering we inflict
on the animals while they are alive is perhaps an even clearer indication
of our speciesism than the fact that we are prepared to kill them.6 In order
to have meat on the table at a price that people can afford,our society tolerates
methods of meat production that confine sentient animals in cramped, unsuitable
conditions for the entire durations of their lives Animals are treated like
machines that convert fodder into flesh,and any innovation that results in
a higher 'conversion ratio' is liable to be adopted As one authority on the
subject has said, 'cruelty is acknowledged only when profitability ceases'
.7
Since,as I have said, none of these practices cater for anything more than
our pleasures of taste , our practice of rearing and killing other animals
in order to eat them is a clear instance of the sacrifice of the most important
interests of other beings in order to satisfy trivial interests of our own.
To avoid speciesism we must stop this practice,and each of us has a moral
obligation to cease supporting the practice.Our custom is all the support
that the meat industry needs. The decision to cease giving it that support
may be difficult, but it is no more difficult than it would have been for
a white Southerner to go against the traditions of his society and free his
slaves: if we do not change our dietary habits, how can we censure those
slave-holders who would not change their own way of living?
The same form of discrimination may be observed in the widespread practice
of experimenting on other species in order to
6 Although one might think that killing a being is obviously the ultimate
wrong one can do to it, I think that the infliction of suffering is a clearer
indication of speciesism because it might be argued that at least part of
what is wrong with killing a human is that most humans are conscious of their
existence over time, and have desires and purposes that extend into the
future-see, for instance, M,Tooley 'Abortion and Infanticide', Philosophy
and Public Affairs, vol. 2, no. 1 (1972). Of course, if one took this view
one would have to hold-as Tooley does -that killing a human infant or mental
defective is not in itself wrong, and is less serious than killing certain
higher mammals that probably do have a sense of their own existence over
time.
7 Ruth Harrison, Animal Machines (London, 1964). For an account of farming
conditions see my Animal Liberation
(New York. 1975).
see if certain substances are safe for human beings, or to test some sychological
theory about the effect of severe punishment on learning, or to try out various
new compounds just in case something turns up .
In the past, argument about vivisection has often missed this point, because
it has been put in absolutist terms: Would the abolitionist be prepared to
let thousands die if they could be saved by experimenting on a single animal?
The way to reply to this purely hypothetical question is to pose another:
Would the experimenter be prepared to perform his experiment on an orphaned
human infant, if that were the only way to save many lives? (I say 'orphan'
to avoid the complication of parental feelings, although in doing so I am
being over-fair to the experimenter , since the non-human subjects of experiments
are not orphans) If the experimenter is not prepared to use an orphaned human
infant, then his readiness to use non-humans is simple discrimination, since
adult apes, cats, mice, and other mammals are more aware of what is happening
to them, more self-directing and, so far as we can tell, at least as sensitive
to pain, as any human infant There seems to be no relevant characteristic
that human infants possess that adult mammals do not have to the same or
a higher degree (Someone might try to argue that what makes it wrong to
experiment on a human infant is that the infant will, in time and if left
alone, develop into more than the non-human , but one would then, to be
consistent , have to oppose abortion, since the foetus has the same potential
as the infant-indeed, even contraception and abstinence might be wrong on
this ground, since the egg and sperm, considered jointly also have the same
potential.In any case, this argument still gives us no reason for selecting
a non-human,rather than a human with severe and irreversible brain damage,
as the subject for our experiments)
The experimenter,then,shows a bias in favour of his own species whenever
he carries out an experiment on a non-human for a purpose that he would not
think justified him in using a human being at an equal or lower level of
sentience, awareness, ability to be self-directing, etc. No one familiar
with the kind of results yielded by most experiments on animals can have
the slightest
doubt that if this bias were eliminated the number of experiments performed
would be a minute fraction of the number performed today.
Experimenting on animals, and eating their flesh, are perhaps the two major
forms of speciesism in our society. By comparison, the third and last form
of speciesism is so minor as to be insignificant, but it is perhaps of some
special interest to those for whom this article was written.I am referring
to speciesism in modern philosophy.
Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through,
critically and carefully, what most people take for granted is, I believe,
the chief task of philosophy, and it is this task that makes philosophy a
worthwhile activity Regrettably, philosophy does not always live up to its
historic role.Philosophers are human beings and they are subject to all the
preconceptions of the society to which they belong. Sometimes they succeed
in breaking free of the prevailing ideology:more often they become its most
sophisticated defenders So, in this case, philosophy as practised in the
universities today does not challenge anyone's preconceptions about our relations
with other species. By their writings, those philosophers who tackle problems
that touch upon the issue reveal that they make the same unquestioned assumptions
as most other humans, and what they say tends to confirm the reader in his
or her comfortable speciesist habits.
I could illustrate this claim by referring to the writings of philosophers
in various fields-for instance , the attempts that have been made by those
interested in rights to draw the boundary of the sphere of rights so that
it runs parallel to the biological boundaries of the species Homo Sapiens
, including infants and even mental defectives, but excluding those other
beings of equal or greater capacity who are so useful to us at meal-times
and in our laboratories. I think it would be a more appropriate conclusion
to this chapter, however, if I concentrated on the problem with which we
have been centrally concerned, the problem of equality.
It is significant that the problem of equality, in moral and political
philosophy, is invariably formulated in terms of human equality. The effect
of this is that the question of the equality of other animals does not confront
the philosopher, or student , as an issue itself- and this is already an
indication of the failure of philosophy to challenge accepted beliefs. Still,
philosophers have found it difficult to discuss the issue of human equality
without raising, in a paragraph or two, the question of the status of other
animals.The reason for this, which should be apparent from what I have said
already, is that if humans are to be regarded as equal to one another, we
need some sense of 'equal' that does not require any actual, descriptive
equality of capacities, talents, or other qualities.If equality is to be
related to any actual characteristics of humans,these characteristics must
be some lowest common denominator pitched so low that no human lacks them-but
then the philosopher comes up against the catch that any such set of
characteristics which covers all humans will not be possessed only
by humans. In other words, it turns out that in the only sense in which
we can truly say,as an assertion of fact, that all humans are equal, at least
some members of other species are also equal -equal , that is , to each other
and to humans If, on the other hand, we regard the statement 'All humans
are equal' in some non-factual way, perhaps as a prescription, then, as I
have already argued, it is even more difficult to exclude non-humans from
the sphere of equality.
This result is not what the egalitarian philosopher originally intended to
assert Instead of accepting the radical outcome to which their own reasonings
naturally point, however, most philosophers try to reconcile their beliefs
in human equality and animal inequality by arguments that can only be described
as devious.
As an example, I take William Frankena's well-known article,'The Concept
of Social Justice'. Frankena opposes the idea of basing justice on merit
, because he sees that this could lead to highly inegalitarian results Instead
he proposes the principle that , ....all men are to be treated as equals,
not because they are equal , in any respect, but simply because they are
human. They are human because they have emotions and desires , and are able
to think , and hence are capable of enjoying a good life in a sense in which
other animals are not." 8
But what is this capacity to enjoy the good life which all humans have ,
but no other animals? Other animals have emotions and desires, and appear
to be capable of enjoying a good life. We may doubt that they can think-although
the behaviour of some apes,
8 In R. Brandt (ed.), Social Justice (Englewood Cliffs, 1962), p.
19
dolphins , and even dogs
suggests that some of them can-but what is the relevance of thinking?
Frankena goes on to admit that by 'the good life' he means 'not so much the
morally good life as the happy or satisfactory life' , so thought would appear
to be unnecessary for enjoying the good life ; in fact to emphasize the need
for thought would make difficulties for the egalitarian since only some people
are capable of leading intellectually satisfying lives, or morally good lives.
This makes it difficult to see what Frankena's principle of equality has
to do with simply being human.Surely every sentient being is capable
of leading a life that is happier or less miserable than some alternative
life, and hence has a claim to be taken into account. In this respect the
distinction between humans and non-humans is not a sharp division, but rather
a continuum along which we move gradually, and with overlaps between the
species, from simple capacities for enjoyment and satisfaction, or pain and
suffering, to more complex ones.
Faced with a situation in which they see a need for some basis for the moral
gulf that is commonly thought to separate humans and animals, but can find
no concrete difference that will do the job without undermining the equality
of humans, philosophers tend to waffle. They resort to high-sounding phrases
like 'the intrinsic dignity of the human individual'.9 They talk of the
'intrinsic worth of all men' as if men (humans?) had some worth that other
beings did not,10 or they say that humans, and only humans, are 'ends in
themselves' , while 'everything other than a person can only have value for
a person' .11
This idea of a distinctive human dignity and worth has a long history; it
can be traced back directly to the Renaissance humanists,for instance
to Pico della
Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man. Pico and other
humanists based their estimate of human dignity on the idea that man possessed
the central, pivotal position in the 'Great Chain of Being' that led from
the lowliest forms of matter to God himself; this view of the universe, in
turn, goes back to both classical and Judaeo-Christian doctrines. Modern
philosophers
9 Frankena, op. cit., p. 23.
10 H. A. Bedau, 'Egalitarianism and the Idea of Equality. in Nomos IX: Equality
.
ed. J R. Pennock and J W. Chapman, New York, 1967
11 G. Vlastos, 'Justice and Equality. in Brandt, Social Justice, p 48
have cast off these metaphysical and religious shackles and freely invoke
the dignity of mankind without needing to justify the idea at all .Why should
we not attribute 'intrinsic dignity' or 'intrinsic worth' to ourselves? Fellow
humans are unlikely to reject the accolades we so generously bestow on them,
and those to whom we deny the honour are unable to object. Indeed, when one
thinks only of humans, it can be very liberal, very progressive, to talk
of the dignity of all human beings. In so doing, we implicitly condemn slavery
, racism, and other violations of human rights We admit that we ourselves
are in some fundamental sense on a par with the poorest, most ignorant members
of our own species. It is only when we think of humans as no more than a
small sub-group of all the beings that inhabit our planet that we may realize
that in elevating our own species we are at the same time lowering the relative
status of all other species.
The truth is that the appeal to the intrinsic dignity of human beings appears
to solve the egalitarian's problems only as long as it goes unchallenged
Once we ask why it should be that all humans-
including infants, mental defectives, psychopaths, Hitler, Stalin, and the
rest-have some kind of dignity or worth that no elephant,
pig, or chimpanzee can
ever achieve, we see that this question is as difficult to answer as our
original request for some relevant fact that justifies the inequality of
humans and other
animals. In fact, these two questions are really one: talk of intrinsic
dignity or moral worth only takes the problem back one step, because any
satisfactory defence of the claim that all and only humans have intrinsic
dignity would need to refer to some relevant capacities or characteristics
that all and only humans possess. Philosophers frequently introduce ideas
of dignity, respect, and worth at the point at which other reasons appear
to be lacking, but this is hardly good enough.Fine phrases are the last resource
of those who have run out of arguments.
[Ref:Audio:"Do Elephants Weep?" 3]
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