Animal Welfare and Human Values

Index

314 Animal Welfare and Human Values there is both an individual as well as a species nature and a moral as well as an immoral nature. Not all cats in all circumstances will make similar decisions. Anyway any attempt to use 'instinct' as an explanation of such behaviour would have to recognize that the same concept would then become applicable to similar human behaviour. Singer insists that the failure of one animal species to consider the interests of another species, e.g., by killing for food, is irrelevant to our ethical considerations. Animals, Singer believes, "are not themselves capable of making moral choices."13 If this were so, the distinction between human and non-human animals would be one of kind not of degree—and much of the animal rights case would carry a great deal less weight. To the contrary, in fact, animal sympathizers, Singer included, tell us that non-human animals only kill what they need to survive, that only humans kill for sport, and we are surely—and rightly—told this as a reprimand against human arrogance and insensitiviry to other sentient beings. In such instances are we not in fact being told that animal morality is higher than human morality? If only humans have the faculties necessary to consider ethical questions and behave accordingly, as Singer believes, then there is an unbridgeable gulf between human and other animals. If, on the other hand, our ethical reasoning is a raising to the level of consciousness what we already know, what already exists within us as a part of our human and animal nature—and which exists in other forms in other species—then the difference between ourselves and other species is only one of degree and circumstance, even though the differences of degree and circumstance are extensive and even if only humansdeliberate self-consciously about ethical issues. If we follow Singer's reasoning, we can only be ethical by moving away from our animal toward our differentiatingly human, from our communitarian toward our individual, natures—the degree of individuality of which is at least as cultural as it is human. On the other hand, if we recognize our essential similarity with other sentient beings we can better come to comprehend ourselves as members of a community—more correctly, of several hierarchically ordered communities—and thus understand our obligations to our fellow beings—both human and non-human—in a hierarchical manner. The contemporary predominance in Western civilization of considerations of individual interests in human relationships is not of itself an indication of a greater concern with human dignity but instead reflects a particular, not necessarily superior, cultural condition and the role of liberal individualist thinkers within it. If considerations of individual justice were to dominate those of community, the belonging aspects, the most fundamental interpersonal aspects, of humankind would be rele13 Singer, Animal Liberation, p. 225. Epilogue: Ode to Sensibility 315 gated to insignificance through the diminution and impoverishment of essentially shared relationships. In the invocation of our primal sympathy,in giving conscious expression to our unconscious collective identity, in refining our sensibilities, so we become the best we can be both as humans and as animals. As the undeserved but necessary police force of the ecology, humans must practise the poh'ce motto of "To Serve and Protect"—-but must leave wildlife undisturbed unless circumstance warrants intervention in the interests of those it is our responsibility to protect. In refining our sensibilities it is within our souls that we must search to rediscover our unconscious identity with all of life. That identity has been blurred ever since the onset of Western civilization among the classical Greeks some 2,700 years ago. But it has never been erased. Now that we face the gravest ecological perils it is an identity more readily aroused, for present circumstances encourage us to understand it as a necessity for our own continued well-being as well as that of those who share the planet with us. This page intentionally left blank Select Bibliography Abella, Irving. "The Making of a Chief Justice: Bora Laskin, The Early Years." Law Society of Upper Canada Gazette 24 (1990): 187-95. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Turin: Caramello, 1952. Attenborough, David. The Trials of Life: A Natural History of Animal Behavior. Boston: Little Brown, 1990. Audubon, John James. Audubon's Birds of North America. Secaucus: WeUfleet, 1990. Bacon, Francis. Essays. London: R. Chiswell et al...