DEBATE
Is it right to accord dignity to animals?
Human dignity is regarded as an absolute. That’s the broad consensus. But the dignity of animals is a matter of debate. Is it meaningful to offer such a guarantee in the Swiss Constitution?
Image: zVg
Image: zVg
The dignity of human beings is injured when they are degraded or humiliated. Something similar applies to animals. They are broken; no longer in a position to use their abilities to experience their environment. We know about ‘breaking in’ horses – in other words, breaking their will. We do the same to Spanish Galgos, a sensitive type of greyhound that is used for coursing and betting. They are trained ruthlessly, kept in inadequate conditions and disposed of prematurely. Galgos that have been rescued are wretched bundles of fear, their abilities for ever impaired thereafter. Pigs for fattening also suffer in their overweight, manipulated bodies. They are crammed into small spaces, fattened, inseminated and castrated, then driven away for slaughter. Their whole lives are simply broken.
According to the Law on animal welfare, the dignity of animals may be weighed up against other considerations. That is problematical, but for our arguments here, let’s take this as a given. The use of animals in research has to be justified, and their dignity protected. Animal tests should be reduced in number, replaced by alternatives wherever possible, and their means refined.
These 3R principles (‘replace, reduce, refine’) should also be applied to livestock, because their dignity is systematically violated. It’s not only about the suffering we cause them, but also about the fact that we completely instrumentalise their lives, limit their abilities, break them and kill them. Livestock can also be replaced by alternatives, their numbers reduced, and we can improve how we keep them. Injuring their dignity is not just a moral scandal, but simply stupid when we consider the climate crisis and pandemics.
Markus Wild is a professor in theoretical philosophy at the University of Basel and researches into animal ethics, consciousness, and the history of philosophy.
Although it’s in our Constitution and the Law on animal welfare, animals should not be accorded dignity. Not because they are morally irrelevant, or because we should be allowed to do with them as we wish. But because we thereby accord animals a moral status that they just do not possess.
Beings have ‘dignity’ when it can be taken from them by subjecting them to humiliating or degrading treatment. For them to have dignity, they have to have self-respect and be aware of themselves as beings who are worthy of respect from others. But animals do not have this ability, not even our closest relatives, the apes, which at least have some degree of self-awareness. Self-respect means comprehending what others owe us; an understanding of ourselves as a being that can assert claims of its own against others.
It is possible to understand the legally defined dignity of animals as something different from the dignity accorded to human beings. That could well be fit and proper. But in this case, why do we use the same concept for both animals and humans? The problem with this is that dignity entails normative claims that animals cannot make. Human dignity is not simply something that has to be taken into account, as the Constitution states; it is inviolable. According to the Law on animal welfare, however, animal dignity may be weighed up against other values. If animals were accorded true dignity, we wouldn’t even be allowed to keep them as livestock, not even in humane, animal-friendly conditions. And a gamekeeper would not be allowed to kill them when they are sick or injured, let alone for purposes of population control.
We should rather use a word other than ‘dignity’ to describe our imperative moral duties towards animals – a word that could better describe the moral status of animals. Perhaps we need to use different concepts for different animals. Because not all animals have the same moral status. We owe apes unquestionably more than we do ants or gnats.
Peter Schaber is a professor of applied ethics at the Centre for Ethics at the University of Zurich, and focuses on topics such as assisted suicide, consent and instrumentalisation.
Image: zVg
An eagle seems dignified to us; a duck less so. Yet by ‘animal dignity’ we don’t mean their appearance, but something that is inherent in the animals themselves. This ‘something’ is aptly described in the Swiss Law on animal welfare as ‘inherent value’. In other words, animals don’t just have value for us, but also for themselves. An animal has inherent value because it leads a life, uses its abilities to experience its environment, seeks out what is pleasant, and tries to avoid the unpleasant.
The dignity of human beings is injured when they are degraded or humiliated. Something similar applies to animals. They are broken; no longer in a position to use their abilities to experience their environment. We know about ‘breaking in’ horses – in other words, breaking their will. We do the same to Spanish Galgos, a sensitive type of greyhound that is used for coursing and betting. They are trained ruthlessly, kept in inadequate conditions and disposed of prematurely. Galgos that have been rescued are wretched bundles of fear, their abilities for ever impaired thereafter. Pigs for fattening also suffer in their overweight, manipulated bodies. They are crammed into small spaces, fattened, inseminated and castrated, then driven away for slaughter. Their whole lives are simply broken.
According to the Law on animal welfare, the dignity of animals may be weighed up against other considerations. That is problematical, but for our arguments here, let’s take this as a given. The use of animals in research has to be justified, and their dignity protected. Animal tests should be reduced in number, replaced by alternatives wherever possible, and their means refined.
These 3R principles (‘replace, reduce, refine’) should also be applied to livestock, because their dignity is systematically violated. It’s not only about the suffering we cause them, but also about the fact that we completely instrumentalise their lives, limit their abilities, break them and kill them. Livestock can also be replaced by alternatives, their numbers reduced, and we can improve how we keep them. Injuring their dignity is not just a moral scandal, but simply stupid when we consider the climate crisis and pandemics.
Markus Wild is a professor in theoretical philosophy at the University of Basel and researches into animal ethics, consciousness, and the history of philosophy.
Image: zVg
Although it’s in our Constitution and the Law on animal welfare, animals should not be accorded dignity. Not because they are morally irrelevant, or because we should be allowed to do with them as we wish. But because we thereby accord animals a moral status that they just do not possess.
Beings have ‘dignity’ when it can be taken from them by subjecting them to humiliating or degrading treatment. For them to have dignity, they have to have self-respect and be aware of themselves as beings who are worthy of respect from others. But animals do not have this ability, not even our closest relatives, the apes, which at least have some degree of self-awareness. Self-respect means comprehending what others owe us; an understanding of ourselves as a being that can assert claims of its own against others.
It is possible to understand the legally defined dignity of animals as something different from the dignity accorded to human beings. That could well be fit and proper. But in this case, why do we use the same concept for both animals and humans? The problem with this is that dignity entails normative claims that animals cannot make. Human dignity is not simply something that has to be taken into account, as the Constitution states; it is inviolable. According to the Law on animal welfare, however, animal dignity may be weighed up against other values. If animals were accorded true dignity, we wouldn’t even be allowed to keep them as livestock, not even in humane, animal-friendly conditions. And a gamekeeper would not be allowed to kill them when they are sick or injured, let alone for purposes of population control.
We should rather use a word other than ‘dignity’ to describe our imperative moral duties towards animals – a word that could better describe the moral status of animals. Perhaps we need to use different concepts for different animals. Because not all animals have the same moral status. We owe apes unquestionably more than we do ants or gnats.
Peter Schaber is a professor of applied ethics at the Centre for Ethics at the University of Zurich, and focuses on topics such as assisted suicide, consent and instrumentalisation.
