Normalising-the-Unthinkable-Report

5.15. It would be a mistake to minimise the influence of this teaching of St Thomas. In relation to animals,Thomistic formulations have held sway for subsequent centuries of Christian thought. His idea that animals haveno mental life and do not act by conscious will, but by ‘nature’ or ‘instinct’, has been persuasive right up to thepresent day.5.16. St Thomas’s negative theology undoubtedly contributed to a dismissive Christian view of animal welfare.Historic Catholic moral textbooks deny that humans have any direct duties to animals. The Dictionary of MoralTheology, written as recently as 1962, explains why:Zoophilists [animal lovers] often lose sight of the end for which animals, irrational creatures, werecreated by God, viz., the service and use of man. In fact, Catholic moral doctrine teaches thatanimals have no rights on the part of man. (Palazzini, 1962, p. 73)5.17. Notice how animals are deemed to have no independent worth other than their service to human beings.Their end (telos) is understood entirely in instrumentalist terms. It should not come as a surprise then to discoverthat Pope Pius IX, in the nineteenth century, reputedly forbade the opening of an animal protection office in Romeon the grounds that humans had duties to other humans but none to animals (Gaffney, 1986, pp. 149, 159–160).5.18. Although the Christian tradition is very diverse and comprises many traditions that are favourable to animals,the dominant voices in Western Christianity have laid great emphasis upon instrumentalism. But it is not onlywithin the Christian tradition that instrumentalist attitudes have persisted. Immanuel Kant, for example, held that‘inasmuch as crops (for example, potatoes) and domestic animals are products of human labour, at least as faras their quantity is concerned, we can say that they may be used, consumed, or destroyed [killed]’ (Kant, 1965, pp.345–346). Kant divides the moral universe into persons and things: persons are rational beings, and things arenon-rational beings. Morality is, on this view, a reciprocal relationship among persons; thus, we have no moralobligations to animals, understood as non-rational beings. Kant’s fundamental moral principle – the categoricalimperative – is that persons are to be treated as ends in themselves, not merely as means to an end. Thisprinciple does not apply to our interactions with animals because they are things, or mere means to human ends.5.19. It does not follow, however, that we may not hold some indirect duties to animals insofar as some humaninterest is involved. Aquinas held that cruelty to animals may be wrong if it dehumanises the perpetrator (Aquinas,1945, pp. 220–224). Kant judged likewise: ‘Our duties towards animals are merely indirect duties towardshumanity’. He provided an example of how it would not be wrong to kill a dog who could no longer provideservice, but the owner must be careful not to stifle humane feelings since ‘he who is cruel to animals becomeshard also in his dealings with men’ (Kant, 1963, pp. 239–241). Some contemporary Kantians, such as ChristineKorsgaard, have attempted to include animals in the moral universe by considering what animals would consentto if they could consent (Korsgaard, 2011).5.20. Again, the obvious weakness in instrumentalism is its circularity. We know that animals are slaves becausethey are enslaveable. As such, the argument seems to be little more than the working out of the notion thatmight is right – that power is its own justification. Both anthropocentrism and instrumentalism reject the idea thatwe have direct duties to animals and that we should consider their interests independently of human wants orneeds. Moreover, it is not obvious (as it was for Aristotle and Aquinas) that there exists (or should exist) a rationalhierarchy in the world such that the rationally ‘inferior’ should exist for or serve the ‘superior’. At the very least,the contrary implication should be enjoined – namely, that the species blessed with greater rationality shoulddemonstrate that ‘superiority’ (if such there be) by a particular regard for the weak of all species. As AlexanderPope argued, ‘I cannot think it is extravagant to imagine that mankind are no less, in proportion, accountable forthe ill use of their dominion over creatures of the lower rank of beings, than for the exercise of tyranny over theirown species’ (Pope, 1950, pp. 159–165).The challenge to dualism5.21. By ‘dualism’ in this context, we mean the tendency to distinguish and separate humans from other animalsin terms of a binary ‘us’ and ‘them’. In dualistic perspectives, animals are invariably judged inferior to humans.A Report by the Working Group of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics25