Field trips
- instructions
- field trip brainstorming
- Bible
- Aristotle (4th century BC)
- Rene Descartes (1596-1650) [day-CART]
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) [rhymes with "font"]
- Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
- Peter Singer (wrote 1970s onward)
- Tom Regan (wrote 1970s onward)
- Does Descartes think animals have ... reason, emotion, sensation?
- Are they any modern Cartesians or is this an outmoded view of animals?
I. Never treat persons as a means only, but always also as ends in themselves.
II. Act only on a policy that you could and would want all other persons to follow.
Why must we treat persons this way? they have a special dignity because of their
- self-awareness
- rationality
- capacity for morality
Thus, persons are owed respect. This is the basis for all our specific duties.
- No, they don't have these features, don't have dignity, aren't owed respect.
"Baumgarten speaks of duties towards beings
which are beneath us and beings which are
above us. But so far as animals are concerned,
we have no direct duties. Animals are not self-
conscious and are there merely as a means to an
end. That end is man." (para 24)
"Our duties toward animals are merely indirect duties
toward humanity. Animal nature has analogies
to human nature, and by doing our duties to
animals in respect of manifestations of human
nature, we indirectly do our duty towards
humanity." (para 24)
- Our apparent duties to animals are actually duties to humans.
- They're indirect duties to humans because the action involves an animal
This woman has no duty at all TO THE CAT
She has a duty TO HUMANITY that involves the cat.
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Why do we have a duty TO HUMANITY to be kind to animals?
"Thus, if a dog has served his master
long and faithfully, his service, on the analogy
of human service, deserves reward, and when
the dog has grown too old to serve, his master
ought to keep him until he dies. Such action
helps to support us in our duties towards human
beings, where they are bounden duties." (para 24)
"If a man shoots his dog because
the animal is no longer capable of service, he
does not fail in his duty to the dog, for the dog
cannot judge, but his act is inhuman and
damages in himself that humanity which it is
his duty to show towards mankind." (para 24)
"If he is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice
kindness toward animals, for he who is cruel to
animals becomes hard also n his dealing with
men. We can judge the heart of a man by his
treatment of animals. Hogarth depicts this in
his engravings. He shows how cruelty grows
and develops. He shows the child’s cruelty to
animals, pinch the tail of a dog or a cat; the
then depicts the crown man in his cart running
over a child; and lastly, the culmination of
cruelty in murder. He thus brings home to us in
a terrible fashion the rewards of cruelty, and
this should be an impressive lesson to children." (para 24)
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Did Kant care about ANIMALS at all?
"The more we come in contact with animals and
observe their behavior, the more we love them,
for we see how great is their care for their
young. It is then difficult for us to be cruel in
thought even to a wolf. Leibnitz used a tiny
worm for purposes of observation and then
carefully replaced it with its leaf on the tree so
that it should not come to harm through any act
of his. He would have been sorry—a natural
feeling for a humane man—to destroy such a
creature for no reason." (para 24)
Bottom line (end of para 24)
- Should care for your dog, even in old age
- Vivisection can be justified
- "cruelty for support" cannot be justified
- Demoters -- give animals very low status
- Humane traditionalists -- we have limited duties to animals but do owe them some consideration
- Animalists -- raise the status of animals, possibly to human-animal equality