Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Failure to Recognize Animal Rights Violates Justice
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- Viewing Animals as Property Negatively Impacts How People Treat Each Other
Failure to Recognize Animal Rights Violates JusticeVALUE OF LIFE MUST BE ASSERTED – ARGUMENTS OTHERWISE USE THE LOGIC OF NAZISM Steven M. Wise, Professor Animal Rights Law at the Harvard Law School, 2000, “Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals” Questia p. 66 The core question is this: Are things or beings or ideas valuable because we value them or because they are inherently valuable? If nonhuman animals, or humans, are valuable only because we value them, then they must lack value when we don't, and we must face the fact that Adolph Eichmann, Adolph Hitler, and the killing doctors of Hadamar, who did not value many kinds of human beings, were correct. It would then follow that the Final Solution, legal in Nazi Germany, was neither illegal nor unjust. Instead, it was the judges at Nuremberg and Frankfurt and Jerusalem who acted illegally and unjustly. On the other hand, if humans, or nonhuman animals, are inherently valuable, then we ignore their value at the dreadful price of acting toward them with monumental injustice. In the first century B.C., Cicero wrote that "there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different law now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times." 13 "Wicked and unjust statutes," he claimed, "were anything but law." 14 Natty Bummpo, the hero of James Fenimore Cooper Leatherstocking Tales of life on the eighteenth-century American frontier, earthily said, "When the colony's laws, or the king's laws, run a'gin the laws of God, they got to be onlawful, and ought not to be obeyed." 15 While the Frankfurt judge almost certainly had never heard of Natty Bummpo, he may have had Sophocles or Cicero on his mind, perhaps on his desk, when he wrote in judgment of the killing doctors of Hadamar. If they were right, then slavery was wrong even if everyone thought it was right. Then Hans and Sophie Scholl and the judges of Nuremberg and Frankfurt and Jerusalem were right and the Nazis were wrong. The Confederates were wrong and Mr. Lincoln was right. Viewing Animals as Property Negatively Impacts How People Treat Each OtherIMPOSSIBLE TO VIEW ANIMALS AS MERE RESOURCES WITHOUT IT INFECTING HOW WE VIEW EACH OTHER Mark Rowlands, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, 2002, Animals Like Us, p. 196 There are many problems with viewing the world and the things in it a simply resources. The arrogance involved is, of course, breathtaking. But, from the point of view of human beings, there is a more pressing drawback. It is impossible to view the world and everything in it primarily as a resource without this infecting the way we view each other. This is the logical culmination of the resource-based view of nature: humans are part of nature, and therefore humans are resources too. And whenever something—humans or otherwise—is viewed primarily a resource, things generally don’t go well for it. The logic of the situation, and its implications for human beings, is exemplified in our treatment of animals. Almost every facet of this treatment screams out the idea that they are nothing more than renewable resources. They are things to be eaten, things to be experimented on, things to be stared at, hunted or killed for our entertainment. In most countries, farm and laboratory animals are classified, in law, as property. A recent attempt by Compassion in World Farming and other animal welfare groups to have animals reclassified as “sentient beings”—a change that would have enormous ramifications for the way animals are raised and transported—was recently thrown out of the European High Court because of the anticipated economic consequences. What makes this particularly staggering is that animals are sentient creatures is undeniably true. In the European Union, apparently, truth comes a poor second to profit. However, when you are talking about fundamental ways of conceptualizing and understanding the world, what goes around comes around. The instrumental view of animals necessarily infects our views of humans. In philosophy, the industry term for the logic that characterizes the development of a situation is dialectic. This final chapter, then, examines the dialectic by which the instrumental view of animals becomes transformed into an instrumental view of human beings, and the unfortunate consequences this transformation yields.
Mark Rowlands, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, 2002, Animals Like Us, p. 212 We are literally killing ourselves, and killing each other. We foul our water, our air and our food. The great killers of today—cancer and heart disease—are increasingly inflicted on us by the corporations that churn chemicals out into our air, our rivers and our groundwater, and by the food producers that pile our plates full with food high in fat and laced with poisonous chemical cocktails. Do we fight this? Do we rage against what is being done to us and to our world? On the contrary, our complicity in the dialectic is unquestionable. What are we in this great scheme of things? Acceptable losses. As long as not too many of us die, then our deaths are an acceptable trade-off for economic gain and material luxury. Environmental degradation on an unprecedented scale? Ditto. In the gestell everything is a resource –ourselves and our world included. Everything is up for grabs, anything can be traded off against anything else. And, in this process, a loss—whether human or environmental –that is not too great, and which procures something else that is valued more, is an acceptable one. We are acceptable losses. Why don’t we do anything about it? Because, implicitly, we have come to understand and accept this fact. Not only do we understand other people as resources, this is also how we understand ourselves. This is the culmination of the resource-based view of the world; the logic of the gestell. We are simply one resource against others. Our position is hopeless, and we are, consequently, helpless. We are not responsible for what we do, and what we let others do to us, because we are just acceptable losses. Why should we pretend otherwise? We are killing ourselves, and killing each other. If I were religiously inclined—which I am not—I would be tempted to describe these as our sins. And what do we do with sins? We get someone else to take our sins upon them. Whether they want to or not! Animals can suffer for us, not only for those things that have been thrust upon us, but also for those things that we have brought upon ourselves. They suffer for our smoke-induced lung cancer, for our obesity-induced heart disease, for the sloppy and irresponsible way we have used antibiotics. We, their self-styled masters, are lazy and stupid and, above all, ungrateful. But that’s OK. If anything, these are just other sins, and someone, or something, else can be made to take our sins upon them, and suffer so that we might not have to. Jesus is, apparently, live and well, but somewhat unwilling this time around. He’s living as a Draize rabbit, and LD-50 mouse, a heroin monkey, and a smoking dog. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.43 Mb. Share with your friends:
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