Philosophy for Animals

In my last semester of undergrad, I took a class on Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.

I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of an ethical theory other than Utilitarianism. With my introduction to animal rights being Peter Singer (arguably not an animal rights philosopher), I knew the basic ideas of Utilitarianism and was dissatisfied with its lack of rights-based protections for individuals. Kantianism seemed like the next thing to look into. I had also heard frequently that Kantian ethics had informed much of modern-day bioethics, including the Belmont Report (post on that coming soon), and it turned out that my bioethics professor was going to be teaching the Kant class, so I signed up.

(I was also dying to know if Kant genuinely thought that lying to a murderer at your door would be immoral. Apparently he did)

My impression of Kant was that he had come up with some argument for how an objective moral theory could be logically proven without just saying “because God said so”, and that his moral theory could account for the moral instincts I felt, like that sacrificing one person for the greater good was immoral. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)

Kant’s overall purpose in this book is to outline a “pure” moral philosophy– i.e. one that is not rooted in human experience. He calls this the “supreme principle of morality.”

Kant’s formulation of the categorical imperative attempts to encapsulate this supreme principle of morality. The book is deceptively difficult, despite its sub-hundred-page length, and I won’t summarize the full thing here (See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Kant) since this post is focused on relatively small claim within the book.

Rational Beings as Ends in Themselves

When describing the basis for the categorical imperative, Kant argues that a supreme principle of morality would have to rest on the idea of humans—and rational beings more broadly—as ends in themselves.

“Now I say that the human being and in general every rational being exists as an end in itself, not merely as a means to be used by this or that will at its discretion; instead he must in all his actions, whether directed to himself or also to other rational beings, always be regarded at the same time as an end.”
– GMS 428

The reason why rational beings alone are awarded this consideration is expanded upon throughout the book, but the gist of it is that rational beings can conceptualize of and follow moral laws. According to Kant, rational beings have an inherent worth.

From this, Kant lays out a distinction between persons and things.

“Beings the existence of which rests not on our will but on nature, if they are beings without reason, still have only a relative worth, as means and are therefore called things, whereas rational beings are called persons”

– GMS 428

It’s pretty clear in context that Kant does not count non-human animals as rational beings. Thus, under his moral system, if we were to interpret it strictly, their rights and interests would not have inherent worth.

However, he was also writing in the 18th century, over 72 years before Darwin’s theory of evolution. Certainly, we know a lot more about non-human animals now.

A few things stuck out to me as potential modern objections to this, especially in the context of animal rights.

First, it seemed unjustifiable to consign non-rational beings to a lower moral standing, especially when the definition of “rational being” is very human-centric.

Even with this human-centric definition of rationality, though, I wondered if it could be shown that at least some non-human animals DO act as rational beings. We don’t know what animals are thinking, and who’s to say they are never acting according to representations of laws?

Modern Adjustments to Kant

I knew there were many neo-Kantian philosophers who had theories of animal rights. I wondered how they went about adapting this persons vs. things delineation, though—did they argue for further moral obligations towards non-rational beings, did they merely argue that respect for animal rights benefits rational beings, or did they perhaps argue that animals were rational beings?

Honestly, I found myself most curious about the third question. Could there not be a definition of “rational being” under which non-human animals would qualify?

In a future post, I will be discussing one animal rights neo-Kantian, Christine Korsgaard, and her book Fellow Creatures.