Our thinking about non-human animals is, at best, confused. Many of us claim to “love” animals. But the same person can, and often does, say: “I love my dog who is a member of my family” and “I love a good steak.” These are very different uses of “love.” But most of us don’t see the dissonance.
The purpose of this course will be to think critically about our moral and legal thinking about non-human animals.
In the first session, we will explore Western thinking about animals up to the 19th century. We will see how non-human animals were excluded from the moral and legal community based on their claimed spiritual or cognitive inferiority, or because they were considered as analogous to machines that had no interests.
We will then examine the animal welfare framework that developed in the early 19th century (in Britain initially and that spread throughout the West) and supposedly brought animals into both the moral and legal community by recognising their moral and legal right not to be subject to “unnecessary” suffering. The animal welfare theory is the one that most people accept: they think that it is morally acceptable to use and kill animals as long as we do not impose “unnecessary” suffering on them and treat them “humanely.” We will see how the animal welfare framework fails because animals are chattel property—they are things we own—and “necessary” suffering becomes that level of suffering that is needed to use animals in an economically advantageous way for purposes that may not be necessary at all. We will see that animal welfare is an economic concept and not a moral one, and that it provides little protection for animals.
We will then go on to explore the primary ethical frameworks that have tried to address the failure or inadequacy of the animal welfare position through the development of different approaches to non-human personhood. To say that animals are or may be “persons” does not mean that they are human; it means that they, like humans, have a morally significant interest in continuing to live. That is, “persons,” whether human or non-human, are those beings who have a morally significant interest in their lives apart from their interest in not suffering. These frameworks include: utilitarianism, rights theory, the abolitionist approach, the feminist ethic of care, the "political turn," and the "justice" model.
We will then consider several uses of animals and ask whether they can be justified. These include the use of animals for food, biomedical research, and the practice of domestication.
In the final session, we will discuss the relationship between human rights and non-human rights.