Christine M. Korsgaard presents a compelling new view of humans' moral
relationships to the other animals. She defends the claim that we are
obligated to treat all sentient beings as what Kant called
"ends-in-themselves". Drawing on a theory of the good derived from
Aristotle, she offers an explanation of why animals are the sorts of
beings for whom things can be good or bad. She then turns to Kant's
argument for the value of humanity to show that rationality commits us
to claiming the standing of ends-in-ourselves, in two senses. Kant
argued that as autonomous beings, we claim to be ends-in-ourselves
when we claim the standing to make laws for ourselves and each other.
Korsgaard argues that as beings who have a good, we also claim to be
ends-in-ourselves when we take the things that are good for us to be
good absolutely and so worthy of pursuit. The first claim commits us
to joining with other autonomous beings in relations of moral
reciprocity. The second claim commits us to treating the good of every
sentient creature as something of absolute importance. Korsgaard
argues that human beings are not more important than the other
animals, that our moral nature does not make us superior to the other
animals, and that our unique capacities do not make us better off than
the other animals. She criticizes the "marginal cases" argument and
advances a new view of moral standing as attaching to the atemporal
subjects of lives. She criticizes Kant's own view that our duties to
animals are indirect, and offers a non-utilitarian account of the
relation between pleasure and the good. She also addresses a number of
directly practical questions: whether we have the right to eat
animals, experiment on them, make them work for us and fight in our
wars, and keep them as pets; and how to understand the wrong that we
do when we cause a species to go extinct.
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Our Obligations to the Other Animals
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780191068386
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
OUP Oxford
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter