by Jeroen Bouterse
The cover of Martha Nussbaum’s Justice for Animals (2023) shows a humpback whale breaching: a magnificent sight, intended to evoke both respect for the animal’s dignity, and interest in its particular forms of behavior. Here is a creature which has moral standing, without being a direct mirror of our human selves.
It is more than mere illustration of the argument. Nussbaum consciously relies on pathos as well as on philosophical reasoning: she announces from the outset that she seeks to awaken wonder and compassion in us with respect to our fellow animals, and productive outrage about how we treat them (9). No objection so far; our treatment of animals is, in many contexts (factory farming in particular), not at heart a philosophical issue, in the sense that there are no tenable metaphysical, anthropological, or ethical theories that can take a serious shot at justifying it. It is an issue that requires attention more than it requires deep or subtle thought.
This notwithstanding, Nussbaum also believes she has something to contribute on the theoretical side: several chapters of Justice for Animals are devoted to the case that her Capabilities Approach (CA) is more suitable than several alternatives in clarifying why and in what sense animals deserve moral consideration. The three alternatives she rejects are:
- That animals matter because they are like us (and to the extent that they are like us);
- the utilitarian perspective, that animals can experience suffering and pleasure, and this always counts (i.e. utilitarianism);
- the Kantian perspective, that animals, in pursuing goods, reveal themselves to be sources of value.
Of these three, she says the third (represented by Christine Korsgaard) is the closest to her own position, and her qualms about it are more metaphysical than ethical. The CA she herself defends is “about giving striving creatures a chance to flourish” (81). A theory originally centered around the capabilities of humans, it applies to animals because they are striving creatures, too. Though they strive for different things and this needs to be considered, there happen to be a lot of similarities: humans and other animals all strive for life, for instance, and for health, bodily integrity, and the use of our senses.
Is this indeed better than utilitarianism? Read more »