The moral status of animals: a relational approach

Abstract

There are many accounts ascribing moral status to animals, most of them departing from what we take to justify moral status for human beings and discussing similarities and differences. In order to frame our obligations for promoting the interests of others, we first have to understand the basis for moral obligation. Christine Korsgaard (2005) suggests that self-reflection on normative issues is the defining characteristic of human morality. Arguably, this sets human persons apart from other living beings inhabiting this planet, including some belonging to the human species, and is the basis for according moral worth. Allen Wood has argued that we have reason to include human beings who lack the capacity of self-reflection in the moral community as they have some part in rational nature (Wood and O’Neill, 2008). Apparently, this position implies that there is a moral gulf between humans and other animals. But neo-Kantians as Wood, O’Neill and Korsgaard have argued that several of the elements that we find to be of moral consideration for persons, are such that we also share with animals and are part of the basis for human normative reflection. We should therefore accord them some moral status and count animal desires and needs to be morally significant. Assuming this account gives an acceptable basis for moral consideration of animals, it does not give any specific indications of what kind of moral duties we have towards animals, beyond that we should avoid causing unnecessary suffering and restrictions on their life-space. I will suggest a relational extension of this approach to the moral status of animals, based on existing interactions between humans and animals. Animals form an inescapable part of human life-worlds, and belong to our value systems. Human beings form different kind of relationships with different animals – domestic and non-domestic. We express respect, awe, compassions, disdain and contempt for animals, thus emphasizing their likeness with and difference from humans. We regard them as having particular natures or ways of life. Some are more important for our understanding of our own life than others. All these relations provide basis for moral arguments regarding what we do owe animals, suggesting a middle way between the commodification witnessed in industrial husbandry and the moral status suggested in animal rights approaches.