I became a vegetarian in 2009 for purely prudential reasons. Owing to a loss of income, I thought it was better to give up meat because it would last longer with my wife as the sole meat-eater. Also, I would spend less on it as a result. This conclusion was supported by an unrelated idea, from The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, which says it takes 21 days to install a new habit. So, my initial vegetarianism was partly an experiment and partly a cost-saving idea.
When I started cycling in 2015, it became clear that diet was important, specifically protein. So, I gave up vegetarianism to improve my protein intake. Indeed, I racked up impressive mileage in months thereafter. But a few years later, in 2019, I became vegan again after a braai. I looked at my plate and there was a mountain of meat, which seemed wrong. A few years later, this time in 2023, I was on a cycling trip from Musina to Cape Town. Again, finding protein was hard. This was especially so because I was hosted at people’s homes. Burdening them with my dietary issues seemed unjustifiable, especially given that protein was much needed. So, I ate meat opportunistically. After the journey, I became a vegetarian (no longer vegan) with a few exceptions.
My exception to meat-eating is now social. I generally do not eat meat. However, I eat meat when I am at a braai, when out with friends or when I am a guest. Note, however, that my complicated relationship with meat is not philosophical, it is just a reflection of my being a complicated person. Some philosophers would argue that my relationship with meat is complicated precisely because I lack an underlying ethic.
In this newsletter, I will share two such ethics: first, I will discuss Peter Singer’s account of animal welfare and how he says we should treat animals, and by extension, how we should think about eating them. Then I will discuss Paul Taylor’s radical view regarding how humans ought to relate with all living things, not just animals.
Peter Singer: The Animal Welfare Movement
In the 1970s, America was undergoing a cultural revolution of sorts. All the hippies were out of the closet, experimenting with LSD, challenging status quos and pushing boundaries in many ways. Among the threads of this mass movement emerged the idea that it is chauvinistic to treat animals and the environment as if they belonged to us (humans).1
This view collided with the long-standing Christian idea that God created man in his image and said, “Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”2 Perhaps an argument can be made that this was a further manifestation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s prophecy, that “God is dead” and that we killed him. In effect, Nietzsche was saying the moral Northstar of humanity was dead. In light of this, humanity risked descending into the chaos, which was the case for the first half of the 20th Century, unless other moral principles are created or found (somehow).
It is in this spirit, I speculate, that philosophers of the 60s and 70s sought to create, among others, an ethic for the environment. Among the proponents of this new ethic was Peter Singer. In his book Animal Liberation (1975), which has not only sold millions of copies but has revised our intuitions on the treatment of animals, Singer argues that the only morally relevant property for moral consideration is the capacity to suffer.3 Given that all sentient beings suffer the same way, it follows that the same suffering of one being ought to draw the same moral consideration as the same suffering of another being.
In effect, sticking a knife into Johnny, according to Singer, should draw the same moral consideration as sticking it into Sam, not because they share any factual characteristics, but only because they will suffer in the same way. Given that all sentient beings feel the same pain as humans, it follows that sticking the same knife into a cat or a cow ought to draw the same moral consideration as with Johnny or Sam. In this regard, both humans and non-humans have the same moral standing, grounded in pain and suffering, and worthy of equal consideration where equal pain and suffering is concerned.
Importantly, Singer does not say we must treat all sentient beings the same way. Pigs must be treated differently from humans because they are characteristically different. However, where moral considerations are concern, they must be regarded in principle the same way.
The implication is that harming other creatures (with the capacity to suffer) without giving them due consideration is wrong. For instance, keeping animals in cages (to feed humans) causes immense suffering to them and this is wrong according to Singer. Also, keeping animals to, as it were, steal their products (like eggs, milk or honey) is also wrong because they suffer as a result. Thus, Singer advocates not only a vegan diet but a vegan lifestyle.
Respect for the Nature
Some philosophers take an even tougher stance than Singer. Enter Paul Taylor who holds that it is not just animals that have moral standing, but all living things, plants included have it.4 So, Taylor says, in effect, that plants and animals deserve the same kind of respect as humans. I will examine his argument in what follows. But first, I want to lay the groundwork for environmental ethics that undergirds Taylor’s thinking.
Imagine, for a moment, that you are the last person on earth and that you have a bomb that can destroy the planet. Suppose further that the bomb is so powerful that all life would die instantly without inflicting any pain or suffering. In other words, you do not have to worry about Singer’s concern for pain and suffering. Also, you don’t have to worry about the fact that humans benefit from the environment because you are the last person on the planet.
It strike me (and Richard Routley, the philosopher who came up with this thought experiment) that there would be something wrong with blowing up the planet.4 It seems if one were to shift one’s perspective from a human-centred view of nature and think as a member of the environment, a case could be made against blowing up the planet. This suggests that there is something about the planet that has value that I worth preserving or perhaps just leaving alone.
Taylor’s project is to explain the nature of this intrinsic value and how we ought to relate to it. On his account, the all living things are best understood (morally) as a teleological centre of life. Telos refers to the study of ultimate aims. Thus, the way to understand living things is in terms of the fact that they all aim at something: they aim at living and not dying, they aim at achieving their biological potential, and they aim at multiplying. From this view, living things can be harmed or protected in terms of their telos. In other words, a living thing has a welfare justified in terms of life going favourably or unfavourably for it. In relation to moral agents, like humans, we can make life go well or poorly for living things in relation their telos. That is to say, living things have an interest and we can treat them according to it, and not according to our interests. Another way of framing it is to say all living things are ends in themselves and should not be used as a mere means.
Thus, we see that Taylor draws heavily on Kantian logic. The full justification for his claim is quite dense and complicated. If you are a nerd like me, you can read on, but if not, you can skip to the next section for the broader discussion, more related to the topic at hand.
To truly appreciate Taylor, we must first understand the philosophical framework from which he draws, Kantian Ethics. According to Immanuel Kant, widely regarded as among the most important philosophers in recorded history, morality is grounded in rationality. This means there are properties in a rational being that have intrinsic value; they have something about them that is valuable for and by itself and whose value requires no further justification. For Kant, this is The Good Will.
To explain the Good Will, Kant offers the analogy of the shopkeeper, of which I will take liberties in rendering it. Suppose there was a shopkeeper attending to an incompetent customer, perhaps a child or a tourist. The shopkeeper would be obliged to treat the customer fairly, that is, sell the goods at the regular price and give them the right change because it is right to do so. In other words, if the shopkeeper treats the customer fairly because of fear of being found out or any other prudential reasons, he would not deserve moral praise. To this end, an act can accord with the morally right thing to do without being morally praiseworthy. An act is morally praiseworthy if it is done out of duty to do the rationally right thing to do.
The Good Will is the property in rational beings that makes it possible to do the right thing for its own sake, regardless of prudential considerations, inclinations or preferences. In light of this, it is the nature of rational beings to set ends (or goals) out of personal inclinations – or to have hypothentical imperatives. In other words, moral agents are free to do anything they want. However, surely there are things that are morally wrong to do. Kant proposes that those things that are morally wrong violate the principle of rationality. In other words, doing them is necessarily irrational.
Some things, however, can be rationally wrong but not morally wrong. So, the things that are morally wrong are those things that are not only irrational, but undermine the rational capacities of other beings as well. In other words, they disregard the fact that other beings have hypothetical imperatives deserve the right to pursue them. It seems, therefore, that although all rational beings can hold hypothetical imperatives, there must be a limiting principles that prevent Agent A from undermining Agent B. Kant calls these principles, The Categorical Imperative.
Under the Categorical Imperative, autonomous moral agents can do anything they want provided they do not undermine the humanity in themselves and others or use others as a mere means. In this regard, humanity refers to properties in rational beings that are good for their own sake, perhaps The Good Will. The possession of these properties imply having an inalienable value that must be respected. Using others as a mere means refers to disregarding the fact that they can also set ends, that is, they act for their own sake as well. In other words, one must recognise that a rational autonomous moral agent is not just a thing: first, moral agents have intrinsic value because they possesses the the Good Will, second, they deserve respect because they are self-legislating (that is, they set ends for themselves)
In short, we respect other rational beings not because of what they are in this instance, but what they are capable of as autonomous beings. Taylor latches onto this capacity to become. However, he takes issue with Kant limiting moral standing to rational beings. This would imply, drawing on an earlier analogy, that animals and plants do not have intrinsic value. In other words, there would be nothing inherently wrong with the last man blowing up the planet.
So, Taylor revises Kant’s grounding of moral standing on rationality. Instead, Taylor proposes the idea of a teleological centre of life. Teology refers to the study of ultimate aims. Thus, Taylor refers to the observation that all living things tend towards fulfilling ultimate aims: they aim at living (and not dying), they aim at reaching their full potential as biological entities, and they aim at maximising their prospects of procreation. This telos, inherent in all living things including humans, is the grounds for having interests, a welfare, well-being or a good. I will refer to these properties as a welfare, but careful not to imply any mental state or attitudes inherent in beings that possess these properties.
Thus, we have an ethic grounded in the mere fact of being alive. At the risk of repeating myself, I will clarify further the grounds for this ethic. How is it that the mere fact of being alive warrants respect? Taylor says being alive entails having two properties, wellbeing and inherent worth. I have already touched on what wellbeing is, but what is important is that it induces moral considerability by a normal functioning moral agents. One of way of explaining this is with an analogy. Supposing you are walking past a street and a dog unexpectedly barks and gives you a fright. In this case, you have the capacity to react frightfully, but the fright is triggered by the dog because of how it sounds. In other words, the dog’s bark has an inherent property that, when encountered by a being with certain capacities, creates a certain effect. So, similarly, an entity with a welfare (grounded as a life-centred telos) brings about a certain considerability in a functioning moral agent.
A moral agent that encounters an entity with a welfare necessarily views such an entity in terms of there being a right and wrong way to treat it because embedded in the welfare is the fact that a state of affairs can go right or wrong for the entity. The distinction Taylor draws, although in passing, is that when a moral being causes a change in the welfare of an entity then we can speak of such an intervention in terms of harm or promotion, that is, we can speak of it in moral terms. It seems, although not explicitly mentioned by Taylor, that the coincidence of intentionality (as a property) in the moral agent and the welfare (as a property) in a living entity creates the conditions for moral judgement.
Here, I understand intentionality in Kantian terms, that is, the capacity to set ends. Welfare is the property that entails viewing an entity possessing such a property in terms of right and wrong. It follows that to view an entity in terms of right and wrong because of the properties inherent in the entity is necessarily to assume a disinterested posture. In other words, suppose I want to kill that chicken and eat it. Because the chicken has properties whereby my encounter with it makes me view it in terms of the good of (or for) the chicken inherent in the chicken for the sake of the chicken, then I must at least consider whether killing the chicken is the morally right thing to do. In other words, the chicken has a dignity (or a value) that warrants respect (or taking it seriously).
Now, we are back to the Kantian formulation of ends: act always to respect humanity and never to use others as a mere means. Indiscriminately killing the chicken would be to disrespect it, according to Taylor. But so would ripping out flowers from a flower bed. On the face of it, it seems one can take a strong view that any harmful (or counter productive) interaction with living things is impermissible. This would imply that harming plants to eat them is just as bad as harming a human being.
But in Taylor’s defence, he does not speak strictly in terms of impermissibility. Taylor, rather, advocates for the respect for nature. I take it he means taking nature seriously, acting appropriately in relation to nature, and never simply using it as a mere means. In other words, one ought to adopt certain attitudes in relation to nature, which Taylor articulates as follows: (1) seeking to promote the good of organisms for their own sake, (2) presuming that it is a duty to promote the good of organisms for their own sake, (3) having positive or negative feelings in relation to life going well or poorly according to organisms.
Back to the Chicken. Perhaps Taylor does not prohibit killing the chicken and eating it. On the other hand, Taylor urges us to appreciate and take seriously that the chicken is about to give up something intrinsically valuable. Therefore, for arguments stake, suppose it has just laid eggs; or perhaps it has little chicks following it around. It would follow, in such circumstances, that the chicken deserves additional consideration befitting its conditions. Of course, this applies to all living things, forests, the fish in the oceans and the animal kingdom as a whole.
Taylor wants us to believe that we are not as special as we might think; we are not the top of the food chain. Instead, like all living things, we are members of the biotic family. As such, we ought to realise that nature, of which we are full members, deserves as much respect as we give members of our species.
Discussion
These accounts support the initial objection that the Christian idea of lording over nature leads to chauvinism. If we believe we are superior, as argued by Roughtley, we believe that we can do with nature what we please. But it is quite obvious that we cannot do with nature as we please. In the first instance, without nature we will also cease to exist. That is, we are wholly dependent on nature.
But philosophers do not want to regard nature only for its instrumental value, they argue that aspects of nature have intrinsic value, which is justifiable in terms not unique to humans. For Singer, all animals with the capacity to feel pain have the same moral standing as humans – that is, they have a welfare and an interest grounded in sentience. In light of this, Singer argues that like interests ought to count for like consideration. If it feels pain then it is a member of the moral community; if it suffers then it deserves in principle the same moral consideration.
Taylor, takes it a step further in arguing that what humans find morally relevant in other humans exists in all living things. Moral relevance, according to Taylor, is grounded in being a teleological centre of life – in having a welfare and tied to that, inherent worth. It follows from this account that all living things have moral standing that is fundamentally the same as humans. Like wise, it is incumbent on us especially as moral agents to revise our sense of superiority and recognise that nature deserves as much respect as we do for its own sake.
So, we arrive at the conclusion we are not lords of nature, as construed in the Bible. Perhaps that passage is better understood in terms of stewardship. both accounts argue that it is wrong to kill animals for fun in the same way that it is wrong to kill another human being for fun. According to these thinkers, if I am take liberties, picking flowers (for Taylor) and slaughtering farm animals (for Singer) is no different from murder and we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, if not for disrespecting nature, certainly for speciesism.
Conclusion
When it comes to diet, both Taylor and Singer are vegan. Taylour exited the meat-eating club in spectacular fashion by declaring that, “As of today I will never eat animal products of any kind. Never again will an animal have to die in order to keep me alive.” Singer, on the other hand, said, “Our future selves will consider meat eating to be barbaric,” I guess in the same way that we think slavery is barbaric.
What’s your take?
References
[1] Routley, R.S. (2013) ‘Is there a need for a new, an environmental ethic?’, Proceedings of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy, 1, pp. 205–210.
[2] Bible. (n.d.). The Holy Bible, Genesis 1:26–28.
[3] Singer, P. (2009) Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement. Updated ed. edition. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
[4] Routley, R.S. (2013) ‘Is there a need for a new, an environmental ethic?’, Proceedings of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy, 1, pp. 205–210.
[5] Taylor, P.W. (1981) ‘The Ethics of Respect for Nature’, Environmental Ethics, 3(3), pp. 197–218. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics19813321.
[6] Dillon, R.S. (2022) ‘Respect’, in E.N. Zalta and U. Nodelman (eds) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall 2022. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/respect/(Accessed: 6 November 2024).
