Kantian Ethics and the Animal Turn. On the Contemporary Defence of Kant’s Indirect Duty View

摘要

Criticism of Kant’s position on our moral relationship with animals dates back to the work of Arthur Schopenhauer and Leonard Nelson. Against this, Kantians have continued to defend Kant’s view that animals lack a moral status. Kant’s contemporary defenders have, however, highlighted extensive practical consequences for the protection of animals in favor of Kant’s position. This paper explores the argument from these extensive duties to animals in Kant’s ethics and seeks to show that Kantians underestimate essential differences between Kant and his rivals today (including proponents of animal rights and utilitarians) on both a practical and fundamental level. It also argues that those defending Kant tend to neglect theory-immanent problems in Kant’s ethics arising from unfounded value assumptions and unconvincing arguments for the denial of animal moral status. It is suggested that although the human-animal relationship was not a central concern of Kant’s, examination of the animal question within the framework of Kant’s ethics helps us to gain conceptual clarity about his duty concept and the limitations of the reciprocity argument, i.e., the notion that morality is a system of reciprocal relationships.