Animals and Ethics in the History of Modern Philosophy

of 39 Animals and Ethics in the History of Modern Philosophy

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (wwwoxfordhandbookscom) (c) Oxford University Press 2013 All RightsReserved Under the terms of the licence agreement an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in OxfordHandbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy)Subscriber Zurich University date 06 September 2013

The Oxford Handbook of Animal EthicsTom L Beauchamp and R G Frey

Print publication date May 2012Print ISBN-13 9780195371963Published to Oxford Handbooks Online May-12Subject Philosophy Moral Philosophy Philosophy of ScienceDOI 101093oxfordhb97801953719630010001

Animals and Ethics in the History of Modern Philosophy

Aaron Garrett

DOI 101093oxfordhb97801953719630130003

Abstract and Keywords

This article examines the history of early modern philosophy principally inthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries It explains why early modernphilosophers and jurists seldom reflected deeply about animal life and whythe arrival of a decent theory of animal rights in early modern philosophywas a remarkable development It begins with the general backgroundof rights theory as it was developing in political philosophy It uses as aninstructive example eighteenth-century experimentalist Robert Boyle and histhesis that there is a duty to experiment on animals It describes the steadymovement toward both a rejection of Boyles view and toward the view thatwe have moral duties to animals It argues that this historical trend led tothe ldquoinventionrdquo of animal rights at the hands of Scottish moral philosopherFrancis Hutcheson

animal life animal rights early modern philosophy Robert Boyle Francis Hutcheson

Arguments for animal rights are sometimes seen as unique to our centuryTake the following quote from a recent book on French thought ldquoThetwentieth century began with Vladimir Lenins observation that makingan omelet meant breaking eggs it ended with the assertion of the rightsof chickensrdquo1 Its a funny remark but its clear that the author wishes tosuggest that what began as a tragedy ended as a farce It also suggests thereader draw the false inference that discussions of animal rights and evenanimal welfare are a pathological product of the unserious late twentiethcentury In this chapter Irsquom going to try to explain why it was difficult for

Page 2 of 39 Animals and Ethics in the History of Modern Philosophy


early modern philosophers and jurists to talk about animals as havingrights and why therefore a somewhat cogent theory of animal rights was aremarkable achievement

ldquoRights talkrdquo is ubiquitous in our culture and we could all give many storiesof questionable confused or incoherent invocations of rights We could alsogive examples of the abuse of rights language Philosophers can get quiteprecise about rights but they also are guilty of a lot of confusion It is notentirely philosophersrsquo fault or anyones fault that they talk about rights ina confused manner ldquoRights talkrdquo bridges law politics and morals and whatis taken as the definition of a right or a particular right in one area may nothold in another Even internal to these different arenas there are conflictsThere are natural rights acquired rights negative rights positive rightsHohfeldian rights rights that are right and rights that make a wrong and onand on

All said it is unsurprising given the confusion about rights that ascribinga confusing concept to nonhumans would be difficult and even highlyconfusing In addition to all the confusion there were also specific conceptualdifficulties for early modern philosophers jurists and political theories I willbegin by giving some general background on how early modern philosophersthought about rights and explaining why their conceptions made for specificproblems in ascribing rights to animals I will use the example of the greateighteenth-century experimentalist Robert Boyle and his grisly claim that wehave a duty to experiment in order to motivate my discussion and focus iton three specific problems that confronted the development of a coherenttheory of animal rights I will then describe two ways in which early modernmoral philosophers who wanted to argue that we have moral duties towardanimals tried to sidestep these problems I will next turn to the Scottishmoral philosopher Francis Hutchesons ldquoinventionrdquo of animal rights and showhow it responded to the problems I outlined previously

Just as Hutcheson developed his account of animal rights the assumptionsof the general framework for natural law and natural rights on which herelied began to be challenged In considering the challenges I will take a sideexcursus into a few philosophersrsquo considerations of the animal afterlife I willconclude by discussing the direction modern animal welfare discussions tookin the late eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century toward animalrevolution in parallel with the French Revolution and toward utilitarianismand practical ethics leading to the rise of animal welfare legislation in Britainand Germany Most of the story I will tell is British With a few exceptions



the most interesting modern European philosophical literature about animalwelfare (that I know of) was British

ldquoAn Occasional Reflection on Dr Charltons Feeling a Dogs Pulse at Gresham-Collegerdquo

In 1665 the statistician John Graunt gave the Royal Society what he claimedwas a rare and particularly lethal poison from Macassar2 Walter Charletonthe medical experimentalist and advocate of modern Epicureanism wassufficiently excited at the prospect of using the poison for comparativeanatomical experiments that he pocketed the box when no one was looking(against the explicit orders of the Royal Society) and began to use it inexperiments on dogs in his rooms3 Once they discovered what he had donethe Royal Society reprimanded Charlton recovered the poison and thenundertook its own experiments

This peculiar incident was sufficiently noteworthy that the poet SamuelButler wrote a parodymdashldquoAn Occasional Reflection on Dr Charltons Feeling aDogs Pulseat Gresham-College By R B Esqrdquomdashmaking fun of Charleton the great Boyle(ldquoR B Esqrdquo) and by extension the more pompous side of the Royal Society

Dr Charleton with his judicious Finger examines the arterialPulsation of its left Foreleg a civil Office wherein both Doctorand Dog Physician and Patient with equal Industry contestwho shall contribute most to the experimental Improvementof this learned and illustrious SocietymdashLittle doth the innocentCreature know and as little seems to care to know whetherthe ingenious Dr doth it out of a sedulous Regard of hisPatients Health or his own proper Emolument lsquotis enough tohim that he does his Duty and in that may teach us to resignourselves wholly to advance the Interests and Utility of thisrenowned and royal Assembly

All things considered the dog that Charleton experimented on may havebeen fortunate To take a representative sample of dog experiments in theRoyal Society from 1661ndash1667 dogs were bit by vipers poisoned by arrowshad their spleens removed were cut open alive with a bellows ldquothrust intothe windpiperdquo to see how long they might survive (including removing theribs and diaphragm) had holes drilled into them through which their nervescould be directly tickled had nutritive broths injected into their jugular veinshad their blood transfused and mixed with the blood with other dogs andsheep as well as had quantities of blood combined with sugared milk had



their vena cava and jugulars tied off so their heads swelled and more4 Laterthe experiments became more involved

Experimentation on live animals was not new as it went back to antiquityThe Royal Society was by no means the only modern proponent WilliamHarvey Marcello Malpighi and others had made important discoveriesabout the circulation system and about physiology through experimentson animals Furthermore experimentation on living animals in theseventeenth century was not distinctively connected to the new scienceits most influential early modern proponent Harvey was an early modernAristotelian5 Nor were the Royal Societys experiments the most ghoulishThere were vivisectionists in Port Royale who believed animals to besenseless beast machines incapable of feeling pain and commensuratewith this belief nailed animals to boards while mocking those who weresympathetic to the apparent suffering6 Finally some members of the RoyalSociety and spectators at the public demonstrations were put off by thecrueler experiments7

So what was Samuel Butler parodying By writing in Boyles grandiose stylehe seemed to be mocking the framework that Boyle and other members ofthe Royal Society used to justify their experiments Boyle followed FrancisBacons program laid out in the Novum Organum of providing carefulinductive and experimental histories of the natural and human world in orderthen to organize and conquer nature and to extend human power8 And heconceived of natural scientific experimentation as a means to understandcreatures that God had created so that the experimentalist could contributeto the mastery of nature and acquire ldquoa Power that becomes Man as a Manrdquo9

In other words God had made animals for experiments in that they are thereto excite our intellectual faculties so that we can master thecreation as God intended10 Charletons clandestine experiments were aviolation of the Royal Societys edicts but they also showed an abundantenthusiasm for the duties of the naturalist

To reject ldquodissecting Dogs Wolves Fishes and even Rats and Micerdquo due toldquoeffeminate squeamishnesserdquo11 was to pridefully look down on and diminishthe purpose of a part of Gods creation Not to experiment was to manifestthe worst vices from a Christian viewpoint Conversely the investigation ofand experimentation on creatures was a moral duty of a believing inquirer12

If God created man in part to be the master of nature and nature to bemastered by man then it was a duty to do whatever was necessary to



properly master nature That animals were created for man and that menwere their masters was a commonplace reading of scripture

Virtue rights and duties were the default way of conceptualizing morals inthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries In the picture tacitly acceptedby many philosophers and jurists rights duties and obligations pertainedto relations between superiors and inferiors God was the superior Godscreation the inferior and this distinction anchored all other duties Superiorrulers had rights over inferior subjects fathers governed the household andexercised rights over wives servants and children Children wives servantsand the governed all gave up something in their relationships to superiorsmdashthe ability to act as they might choose without being governedmdashbut theywere also getting something (at least in principle) that motivated them toperform their duties and submit to superiors

Duties had a close connection to rightsmdashto have a duty that one ought todischarge implied the rights necessary to discharge that duty A father has aduty to raise his children well and so he has a right over the children in orderto discharge the duty On some accounts the rights could only be exercisedinsofar as they helped to satisfy the dutymdashsending a child to their room inorder that they could become a responsible adult was as far as the rightwent In this case one might have a right against ones father if he wentbeyond what was permitted qua discharging his duties On other accountsthe right was less circumscribed it was a permission acquired by office orstation Conversely the presence of a right tended to imply some sort ofdutymdashthe right to property might imply the duty to make it fruitfulmdashbut notalways This was the normal sense of right held by countless early modernmoral philosophers albeit with great disagreements on the details

The early modern natural law works of Hugo Grotius Samuel PufendorfRichard Cumberland and many others were structured around fundamentalduties and rights (some natural some not) which anchored more and morefine-grained rights and duties The web of rights duties and obligation thatarose through human interaction made up the natural law and natural rightsview that allowed humans to get along socially and to prosper The best civillaws that is legal codes of actual states expressed backed and promotedthese natural laws With the advent of John Lockes Second Treatise onGovernment this way of talking about rights was supplemented with thelanguage of natural rightsmdashfor example that a child had a basic right to theconditions that would allow him or her to become a rational moral adult or aman had a right to property insofar as it extended his natural right



to person Lockean natural rights were closely connected to this picture Tohave a natural right was to have a set of rights duties and obligations linkedto the relation between God and man or to put it differently natural rightswere also given to fulfill duties and obligation (I will return to this below whenI discuss the right to happiness)

A desire to unify moral virtues rights duties religion and natural philosophywas not unique to Boyle It was and would continue to be the obsession ofmany if not most of the brightest lights in the European Republic of LettersCutting-edge natural philosophy had more than a whiff of impiety at best Forexample Spinoza and Hobbes were proponents of the new science and heldnotoriously unorthodox religious views their mechanistic accounts of natureseemed to imply a world at odds with the God of scripture

The Dividing Lines between Humans and Animals

As just hinted interest in the moral standing of animals was connectedwith the wider project of modern philosophers in trying to understand themental capacity of animalsmdashfrom cockles to orangutans and often tacitlypresuming a great chain of beingmdashorder to capture what was distinctivelyhuman Animals were the touchstone for discovering what human natureis13 Human nature was (mostly) considered what is not animal or at leastnot merely what is animal Certain humansmdashwomen and members of ethnicor racial groupsmdashwere further categorized according to whether they weremore or less human Unsurprisingly when advocates for the equality ofwomen and for abolition pleaded their cases they often invoked animalssometimes arguing for a common cause through suffering and sometimesstressing that it was abhorrent that animals were treated better than womenand slaves14 Conversely the standing of animals was discussed in relationto other ldquoinferiorsrdquo

With the growth in understanding of natural history in particular thepublication and dissemination of Buffons massive and massively influentialHistoire Naturelle animal ethology had become a more and moresophisticated diagnostic of and justification for complex theories of humannature In the second half of the eighteenth century Jean-Jacques Rousseauand following him Lord Monboddo (James Burnett) and John Oswald (who Iwill discuss later) argued that the basic sentiments prior to the perfection ofhuman mental faculties are either crucial to natural morality (Oswald) or leadto immorality when suppressed or effaced (Rousseau and Monboddo)15 ForMonboddo following Rousseau fanciful travel reports of orangutans (a catch-



all term for higher primates) became the decisive test case for the humanessence Orangutans were speechless humans so languagewas not essential and orangutan women were modest so humans wereoriginally modest and only became depraved through society Descriptions ofldquowild childrenrdquomdashchildren who spent their formative years in the wild or whollyunsocializedmdashprovided confirmatory evidence

Monboddos interpretation of the evidence was idiosyncratic and wishfulto say the least but the pivotal diagnostic role of animals (or in the caseof orangutans barely-not-animals) for understanding humansrsquo mental andmoral nature was (and still is) ubiquitous The extreme Cartesian positionmaintained by Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld was mostly viewedas an outlier example of excessive metaphysical enthusiasm Most authorsof abiding influencemdashMichel Montaigne Thomas Hobbes Pierre Bayle HenryMore Ralph Cudworth G-W Leibniz Christian Wolff John Locke DavidHume and many others (including Scholastic authors and Aristotelians)mdashascribed some sort of mental capacity to animals that was similar toor possibly even identical to lower human mental capacities All used themental and social capacities of animals to call into question human specialstanding Almost all held that humans had superior capacity althoughsome notably Montaigne Pierre Charron Hobbes Benedict SpinozaBernard Mandeville Hume Baron DrsquoHolbach Denis Diderot and JulienOffray de LaMettrie criticized (in differing degrees) the ranking of differentcapacities as drawing on illicit anthropomorphic prejudice and by extensionconventional morality

For a good example of this last consider Mandevilles parable of the Romanmerchant and the lion in his Fable of the Bees The merchant having washedup on a foreign shore encounters a lion who agrees that he will not eat themerchant if a good reason is given why he shouldnrsquot After the merchantargued that due to his greater reason and his immortal soul he is superiorthe lion responded

If the Gods have given you Superiority over all Creaturesthen why beg you an Inferior hellip Savage I am but no Creaturecan be callrsquod cruel but what either by Malice or Insensibilityextinguishes his natural Pity hellip lsquoTis only Man mischievousMan that can make death a sport hellip Ungrateful and perfidiousMan feeds on the Sheep that clothes him and spares not herinnocent young ones whom he has taken into his care andcustody If you tell me the Gods made man Master over all



other Creatures what Tyranny was it then to destroy them outof Wantonness16

The lion went on to skillfully dispose of all of the merchants arguments andconcluded by underscoring his first criticism in the quote above by eating themerchant

Mandevilles viewpoint was exceptional The game for most as it wasfor Rousseau (who cited Mandeville in his discussion of natural pity) andMonboddo was in defining wherein the difference lay between human andnonhuman animals them it was likely to lie in a particular mental faculty17

Bayles famous article ldquoRorariusrdquo in his Dictionary Historical and Critical wasone of the most celebrated examples of line dividing Nominally he treatedthe life of Hieronymous Rorarius18 and his arguments that animals were morerational than humans Where was the line Memory Language Or closer toRousseau a refinedmoral sense Self-consciousness and reflection If animals lacked the moralsensemdashas Hume heldmdashbut morals rested on a sense then perhaps whatwas distinctive about us was not being elevated far beyond the animalworld to a transcendent realm If they lacked the capacity for reflectionmdashas Shaftesbury Leibniz and many others heldmdashthen perhaps what wasdistinctively human transcended the animal realm

Notably our moral duties toward animals might look similar in practicewhether one accepted Humes or Kants or Lockes or Leibnizs distinction(although perhaps not Rousseaus) but the justification of our duties toanimals and other humans and the account of human morals and reason onwhich it rested would of course be drastically different So although thesediscussions had consequences for what sort of standing animals had thestanding of animals and our moral duties merited barely a mention until themiddle of the eighteenth centurymdashand even until very recently these matterswere still peripheral

This was for a clear reason As previously mentioned most authors acceptedthat to have an obligation or a duty demanded that one understand thenatural or positive law from which the obligation or duty derived As Hobbesstated concerning the civil law

the law is a command and a command consistethin declaration or manifestation of the will of him thatcommandeth by voice writing or some other sufficientargument of the same we may understand that the commandof the Commonwealth is law only to those that have means to



take notice of it Over natural fools children or madmen thereis no law no more than over brute beasts19

Even if animals had some sort of mental capacity they did not havesufficient intellect to understand rules and laws much less their justificationsInfants did not understand laws and rules either but we had rights overthem insofar as they would grow up to be capable of understanding Animalswere at best like eternal infants and at worst natural enemies so theydid not fit well into this scheme Consequently the discussions about thedifferences between men and animals did little to explain our moral dutiesto animals insofar as they did little to fit animals into the prevalent naturalrights picture Admittedly this was not what the discussion of the differencesbetween animals and humans was intended to do

Indirect Duties Skepticism and the Sense of Humanity

As Irsquove noted Boyle viewed experimentation on animals as a central dutyof man and of a Christian and he attempted to harmonize it within theframework Irsquove just described Men were superior to animals by virtue ofreason and their rank increation and so they had rights over animals and permissions and duties toexperiment The permissions and rights were held in order to discharge ourduties to God and to others

Notice that all this holds of a general right over creation it does not holdspecifically of animals Human relations to animals in specific were muchharder to bring within the virtue duty and rights language whether it wasa right to experiment on animals or an animal right The general problemsfor early modern philosophers with applying rights to human relations withanimals can be seen by returning to Butlers parody of Charleton and Boyleand particularly Butlers claim that ldquoDoctor and Dog Physician and Patientwith equal Industry contest who shall contribute most to the experimentalImprovement of this learned and illustrious Societyrdquo I will point to threeproblems which I will call the cognition problem the motivational problemand the relational problem

First a dog would only ldquocontestrdquo to be experimented on if it couldunderstand the aims of the experiments and was sympathetic with theRoyal Society But dogs do not understand the aims of experiments and arepresumably not sympathetic with learned societies Much of the line dividingdescribed in the section above focuses on the cognitive differences betweenanimals and humansmdashthat animals lacked understanding or language One



of the tacit presumptions of the natural law picture I have just described isthat one was only obligated if one was able to understand the obligation Andto have an obligation or a duty demanded that one understand the naturalor positive law from which the obligation or duty derived If one does notunderstand a law one cannot be held responsible for breaking it or upholdingit Animals were presumed to be incapable of breaking or upholding laws ofhaving moral duties and obligations and consequently of having rights

The second problem which I call the motivational problem is alsobrought out by this passage from Butler Butler cast the relation of dogto experimenter as between physician and patient A patient allows aphysician rights over his or her body in order to get well patients aremotivated by health to grant the physician the right to undertake a painfulprocedure The natural law picture was almost always anchored by self-interested motivations In this world you obey the laws of sociability becausethey educe to your happiness You do not disobey civil laws for fear ofpunishment And you obey the laws of morality because if you do you willbe rewarded in the next life and if you do not you will be punished Thedog would only ldquocontestrdquo to be experimented on if motivated but clearlyMacassar poison was not conducive to its health More generally if animalswere to be brought into the natural law picture as bearers of rights anddischargers of duties then they would need to have a proper motivation

Finally Butlers doctorpatient analogy points to the difficulty of specifyingthe relation between man and animals The basic natural law duties wereGod to man men to other men in civil society men to self father to childhusband to wife and master to slave or servant These relations were allpresumed either to be basic rationally provable furniture of the world orubiquitous to any and all human society There were also rights acquired overproperty and animals were sometimes propertyBut most moral philosophers of the period including Boyle (like manyscientists today) held that painful experiments on animals were onlywarranted insofar as they were useful to or necessary to human interestsand this theory pointed to the fact that there was a difference in kindbetween duties to animals and duties to shrubs or cornfields The restrictionof the experimenters right over the animal had something to do with thewelfare feelings or experiences of the animal which were unlike a restrictionon the use of stone or a plant But then how do we make sense of therelation between men and animals Parents to children Masters to servants



Given these problems it would seem reasonable to give up entirely onconsidering our moral relations to animals within a natural law theoryThere were two common approaches that attempted to sidestep the threeproblems The first was to argue that we only have indirect duties to animalsas an extension of or in order to discharge our direct duties to humans andGod This would deny that animals have any rights (only their owners and thelike do) while at the same time restricting our conduct toward them And itwould circumvent the problems I have mentioned above

The position was usually justified like this if we are cruel to animals withoutwarrant we will be more likely to be cruel to other humans Therefore wehave an indirect obligation to not be cruel to animals in order dischargeour duties to not be cruel (or become cruel) to humans to whom we have adirect obligation On the indirect-duty account there are no more problemsof cognition motivation or relation than there are of any obligation thathumans have to one another

If the obligations consequently are indirect and justified through obligationsto other humans (or to fully rational beings) then animalsrsquo inability tounderstand the natural law is unproblematic

Today this position is widely associated with Immanuel Kant whose specificarguments rested on unique moral justifications in terms of his notion ofrational agency and duty but the claim that we have an indirect duty towardanimals that can be justified via a duty to humanity could be found in awide range of authors20 Allestree Pufendorf21 and other writers criticizednon-justified cruelty to animals to rule out pointless cruelty Allestree forexample argued for a close connection between cruelty to animals and thevice of pride and so cruelty to animals undermined virtuous conduct insofaras it undermined the virtues connected with successful discharge of ourduties to self God and neighbor22

This line of argument was usually premised on a decisive mental and moraldifference between men and animals Kant suggested that animals lackreason and so lack freedom and are wholly in the world of necessity andsentiment But if some animals perhaps not cockles but dogs or primatesdo not drastically differ from us mentally and morally then this similaritymight have consequences for their moral standing Perhaps animals can bemoral and even acquire virtues Perhaps we have obligations due to sharedconcerns that have to take their standpoints into view Or we might havedirect obligations to animals by virtue of the fact that they suffer and thusavoid what seemed implausible in the indirect-duty viewmdashthat the suffering



might have no direct moral value in and of itself in guiding our duties Thislatter thesis was central to utilitarian arguments concerning animal welfarestanding

The problem with this position for many of the authors who sought a differentsort of justification is that there seemed to be a gap between the manner ofjustification and the moral motivation I want to stop animals from sufferingbecause I feel compassion for their suffering and wish to alleviate it andnot solely because I want to treat other humans well We seem not to berecognizing what is morally important in responding to animal suffering Inthe words of Christian-utilitarian Soame Jenyns ldquothe carman drives his horseand the carpenter his nail by repeated blowsrdquo23 but as Jenyns recognizedthere is a salient difference between the two acts of driving One impactsthe welfare of a sentient creature and the other does not and this differencewould seem to be a crucial part of what we are responding to To paraphrasea famous recent expression from Bernard Williams the indirect justification isldquoone thought too manyrdquo

A second less common approach argued that animals were capable ofexhibiting or even of acquiring moral virtues and also side-stepped thenatural law picture Up to the mid-eighteenth century arguments for animalvirtue were almost always associated with skepticism The early modernskeptics use of animal virtue had its origin in the ldquoargument from differencesin animalsrdquo the first of the ten modes for undermining dogmatism taughtby Sextus Empiricus in the Outlines of Pyrrhonism24 Sextusrsquo argumentativetechniques mainly drew on the differences between humans and animalsto undermine dogmatic naϯve realist theories of perception an argumenttechnique used to great effect by Berkeley However Sextus also noted thesimilarities between animal and human practical reasoning and behaviorto show that animals were capable not only of reason but virtues such asbravery as well Sextus leveled the arguments from similarity particularlyagainst the Stoics and used them to undermine dogmatisms about thedivinity of reason and human special standing Hume would use similararguments in a few pivotal portions of A Treatise on Human Nature and AnEnquiry Concerning Human Understanding25

The primary purpose of Sextusrsquo first mode was to undermine dogmaticphilosophical beliefs and attain a state of ataraxia or carelessness Humeand others of a skeptical temper like Diderot and LaMettrie on the otherhand used skeptical arguments and techniques at least partially in theservice of positive claims about the nature of human inference and the



psychology of the emotions and passions Insofar as humans are similarto animals an explanation of human behavior that does not outstrip thenaturalistic explanations given of animal behavior is all that is warrantedmethodologically and can become the basis for a naturalistic account of manIn this way early modern skepticism became closely allied to naturalismFor Sextus to establish any facts about animal reason or morals wouldbe dogmatism and counter to the goal of ataraxia Montaignes famousldquoApology for Raymond Sebondrdquo and Pierre Charrons De La Sagesse werethe touchstones of and repository for the modern appropriation of Sextusrsquotechnique drawing on our similarities with animals to destabilize humanpride The ldquoApologyrdquo in particular was deeply equivocal about securingknowledge but elsewhere Montaigne made it clear that he had a positiveposition concerning the moral standing of animals that displayed astrong affinity for animals and a deep-seated distaste for cruelty He went sofar as to assert that

There is a certain respect and an obligation [Fr devoir] ofhumanity in general which link us not only to beasts whichhave life and feelings but even to trees and plants We owe[Fr devons] justice to men and grace and benignity to theother creatures who are able to receive them If there is someinterchange between them and us and some mutual obligationI am not afraid to admit that my nature is so puerile that Icannot easily refuse an untimely gambol to my dog wherever itbegs one26

The condemnation of cruelty and the argument for compassion is alsoapparent in the passage quoted above from Mandeville who appears to havebeen deeply influenced by Montaigne Mandeville concluded his discussionof the lion and the merchant with a description of the violent slaughter of aldquolarge and gentle Bullockrdquo

What Mortal can without Compassion hear the painfulBellowings intercepted by his Blood the bitter Sighs thatspeak the Sharpness of his Anguish and the deep soundingGrones with loud Anxiety fetchrsquod from the bottom of his strongand palpitating Heart hellip When a Creature has given suchconvincing and undeniable Proofs of the Terrors upon him andthe Pain and Agonies he feels is there a Follower of Descartesso inurrsquod to Blood as not to refute by his Commiseration thePhilosophy of that vain Reasoner27



As with the indirect-duties model both Mandeville and Montaigne avoidedthe three problems as well The cognition problem was made beside thepoint insofar as the emotion of compassion was felt by humans and animalsalike was sufficient for the obligation and did not require any higher levelcognition The motivation problem was solved insofar as the motivationto fulfill ones duties was the natural motivation to compassion sharedby humans and animals which created a moral bond between animalsand humans There was no obvious problem with this relation AlthoughMandeville followed Montaigne in giving compassion pride of place in moralshe like most others did not take up the notion of a natural duty and basicrespect for trees and plants (Charron is a notable exception) Montaignesdistinction between justice as owed to men and gentleness and kindness asderived from the sense of humanity was taken up influentially by HumeAccording to him

Were there a species of creatures intermingled with menwhich though rational were possessed of such inferiorstrength both of body and mind that they were incapable ofall resistance and could never upon the highest provocationmake us feel the effects of their resentment the necessaryconsequence I think is that we should be bound by thelaws of humanity to give gentle usage to these creaturesbut should not properly speaking lie under any restraint ofjustice with regard to them nor could they possess any right orproperty exclusive of such arbitrary lords Our intercourse withthem could not be called society which supposes a degreeof equality but absolute command on the one side andservile obedience on the other Whatever we covet they mustinstantly resign Our permission is the only tenure by whichthey hold their possessions Our compassion and kindness theonly check by which they curb our lawless willAnd as no inconvenience ever results from the exercise of apower so firmly established in nature the restraints of justiceand property being totally useless would never have place inso unequal a confederacy

This is plainly the situation of men with regard to animalsand how far these may be said to possess reason I leave it toothers to determine28

Hume goes on to compare this status to that of barbarous nations andwomen Hume like Montaigne admits that animals are rational and again



like Montaigne sees that fact as incidental to our gentle usage of themUnlike Montaigne the relation is not strictly moral in the sense that a relationof justice is nor is it rooted in a general fellow feeling

Hume incorporates another important and surprising theme in this passageHobbes and Spinoza held that we had absolute dominion over animals andthey had absolutely no moral claims or standing as against us Accordingto Hobbes although we are very similar in reason to animals they lacklanguage and so we cannot make covenants with them Since moralityarises from covenant we cannot have any moral obligations to them UnlikeHobbes and like Montaigne Hume held that our compassion kindness andthe ldquolaws of humanityrdquo should stop us from making grim use of animals

Many philosophers and popular theologians would have agreed that crueltywas vicious and impermissible The difference is that for Montaigne kindnessto living creatures as backed by the sense of humanity was a fundamentalperhaps the fundamental obligation and we owed benevolence to animalsnot just for us but due to a standing they had qua living beings Humewas more equivocal A century later Lawrence Sterne would personifyMontaignes attitude in Tristram Shandys Uncle Toby Finding himselfin a room with a fly Toby chooses not to swat it and opens the windowexclaiming ldquoThis world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and merdquo

Montaignes notion of an obligation of humanity in general anchored bythe unity of all living beings had resonances with Hellenistic authors suchas Porphyry but was independent of the early modern rights duties andvirtue talk explicated above Mandevilles centering of compassion was andis compelling but it seems to provide little in terms of directives besidesldquobe compassionaterdquo So the problem remained How could one reconcile thetheologically tinged special standing of man and the framework of specificrights and duties with an argument that we have direct duties to animals orthat animals even have rights For this we must turn to the Scottish moralphilosopher Francis Hutcheson

Rights

To make sense of ldquoanimal rightsrdquo within a natural rights theory onemust explain how animals could have standing in and of themselvesmdashaprecondition of their possessing natural or acquired rights as opposed tohumans simply having rightsover themmdashand how humans could have direct obligations to animals byvirtue of this standing Also the theory would optimally not undermine



human standing and would fit in well with our ordinary moral intuitions aboutanimals and about ourselves As should now be clear this is no means aneasy set of conditions to satisfy

The natural place to start was by drawing a distinction betweendomesticated and wild animals I take ldquodomesticatedrdquo in a broad sense asincluding all animals that are kept by humans for human benefitmdashwhetherpets kept for pleasure or farm animals kept for meat wool milk and labor29

Most of the animals that the Royal Society experimented on were dogssheep and cats presumably either owned by the experimenters or caughtstrays There was concern in the eighteenth century for wild animals inparticular there was outcry against bear baiting (as well as the baitingof domestic animals such as bulls) in Englandmdashtormenting tied up bearswith dog packs and weaponsmdashand the barbarity of the practice was seento have a bad moral effect To again quote Samuel Butler ldquoFor if bear-baiting we allow what good can reformation dordquo30 But domestic animalspresented a more obvious basis for a rights argument Insofar as animalswere domesticated they formed a domestic community with man It wasrelatively common to argue that animals gained a benefit by virtue of beingdomesticated and some argued further that their sacrifice at our tableswas just recompense31 But to argue that their inclusion in our householdchanged their standing was novel that they were part of the household justas wives children and servants were Domestic status would allow them tobe treated as discharging duties to the domestic unit and consequently aspossessing some sort of right against their masters This was an importantalthough we shall see not the sole basis for Francis Hutchesons argumentsfor ascribing rights to animals by virtue of their standing32

Hutcheson viewed domestication as providing adventitious or acquired rightsby virtue of the animalsrsquo contribution to the domestic economy allowingthem to attain the rank of servant or natural slave The idea of acquiringdomestic standing and becoming a form of natural servant was beautifullyexpressed by Thomas Reid

Animals that are created by the bounty of heaven to partakeof the Entertainment but on account of the Inferiority of theirNature may be considered as Servants to Man and to beserved after Man hellip But even the brute Animals who serve usat this entertainment must not be neglected They must havetheir Entertainment and Wages for the Service they do us33



Reid was tendering a further suggestion also made by Hutcheson that allanimals not just domestic animals were servants to man and thus should beallowed their entertainments In other words we have no right to interferewith the pleasures or needs of animals if they do not conflict in a significantway with our own needs and we have a positive duty to reward animals fortheir contribution to the welfare of the household

First though one might ask whether these analogies are anything more thananalogy An iron skillet may contribute in some sense to the welfare of ourhouseholdbut it does not merit moral standing The moral standing of animals must bedue to the fact that they have desires and a need of welfare that is similarto that of humans In a note appended to a revised version of his Inquiry inresponse to the criticism that if our moral evaluations depended on a sensethen animals insofar as they possessed senses might be capable of virtueHutcheson admitted that ldquothinsplsquotis plain there is something in certain Tempersof Brutes which engages our Liking and some lower Good-will and Esteemthorsquo we do not usually call it Virtue nor do we call the sweeter dispositions ofChildren Virtue and yet they are so very like the lower Kinds of Virtue thatI see no harm in calling them Virtuesrdquo34 In other words a courageous dogpossesses a virtue albeit in a manner far lower than the way in which anadult human possesses a virtue The dog is more akin to a courageous child

That animals were like children capable of lower virtue although toddlersin perpetua and thus of being part of a moral community gave Hutchesona way to combine the traditional image of man as steward of nature withthe radical idea of animal virtue now put to a non-skeptical purpose It alsohad strong intimations of one of the central Messianic passages in scriptureIsaiah 116 that ldquothe wolf will lie down with the lamb hellip and a little childshall lead themrdquo The importance this passage for radicals can be seenin William Blake among others As in Reids example man governed thedomestic community with his superior virtues and moral sense and guided ittoward moral ends Through mans stewardship and domestication animalsthus became incorporated in something larger with moral significance Theirtalents and virtues are developed toward a superior goal Of course some ofthese talents might be for producing wool some for making milk and somefor being delicious when roasted and served with mint jelly (here Blake mightdissent)

Still this approach gave Hutcheson a response to both the cognition and themotivation problems Animals were motivated by the benefits of community



and they were stewarded due to their lack of cognitive capacity in ways thatpromoted their interests To put it differently animals could avail themselvesthrough the community of human guidance and human cognitive capacityHutcheson was not unique in stressing the importance of communitybetween humans and animals The Danish philosopher Friederik ChristianEilschov also developed arguments ldquofor a moral community of man andanimals under natural lawrdquo35 Like Hutcheson he argued that it was by virtueof community that moral relations were governed by natural law

In his System of Moral Philosophy a massive posthumously publishedwork Hutcheson develops his argument for animal rights most extensivelyAdventitious rights governed in a moral community are only one justificationHutcheson also provides more straightforwardly Christian-utilitarian36

arguments God desires that all creation be happy and there be a minimumof painmdashthat there be the greatest happiness for the greatest numbermdashandthis holds of animals as well

These considerations would clearly shew that a great increaseof happiness and abatement of misery in the whole mustensue upon animals using for their support the inanimate fruitsof the earth and that consequently it is right they should usethem and the intention of their Creator37

The welfare of creation dictated that animals too possessed a rightto happiness or at least that it was right that they sought happinessHutcheson invoked right explicitly in the correlative discussion of theavoidance of pain

Brutes may very justly be said to have a right that nouseless pain or misery should be inflicted on them Menhave intimations of this right and of their own correspondingobligation by their sense of pity lsquoTis plainly inhuman andimmoral to create to brutes any useless torment or to deprivethem of any such natural enjoyments as do not interfere withthe interests of men lsquoTis true brutes have no notion of rightor of moral qualities but infants are in the same case andyet they have their rights which the adults are obliged tomaintain38

It was commonly held that ldquono useless pain or miseryrdquo should be inflictedon animals but Hutcheson expressed this as a right commensurate with therights of infants and derived from a right to happiness all things being equalwhich all sentient beings share Men recognize this obligation via their moral



sense of pity and recognize the obligations it entails In violating the rightthey deny the clear testimony of their moral sense Hutcheson thus arguedthat domestic animals have adventitious rights but ultimately backed by (orrooted in) the natural right to happiness shared by all sentient beings

Brute Theodicy

Hutcheson stressed that ldquono useless pain or misery should be inflicted onrdquoanimals But what was the guide to usefulness It was commonly and oftentacitly assumed that there was a hierarchy of beings ldquothe great chain ofbeingrdquo and that although no suffering was good in and of itself the sufferingof creatures on the lower rungs of being could be permissible if it wasldquousefulrdquo to a creature of the higher ranks39 It also fit well with a commonresponse to a variant of the theodicy problem why should anyone sufferin a world guided by divine providence and governed by a benevolent andomnipotent God The potential answer was that the degree of sufferingcorresponded to rank and that suffering of a creature of lower rank for theinterests of a creature of higher rank was permissible under some or manycircumstances

This problem was highlighted by Samuel Johnson in a review of SoameJenynss Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil In the 1780s Jenynspublished one of the most powerful essays against animal cruelty ldquoOnCruelty to Inferior Animalsrdquo40 In the essay Jenyns attacked all manners ofsport that derived pleasure from animal suffering including hunting bearand bull baiting and cockfighting ldquothe majestic bull is tortured by everymode which malice can invent for no offence but that he is gentle andunwilling to assail his diabolical tormentorsrdquo41 On Jenynss account self-defense and humane slaughter for food purposes were permissible butdelight in torment was savagery

Earlier in A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil (1757) Jenyns hadargued that it is permissible or even necessary for subordinate creatureson the great chain of being to suffer for the pleasure of those higher up ifthey promoted utilitymdasha Christian-utilitarian variant on utilitarian sacrificeJenyns saw that this was an unruly consequence and tried to explain it byan analogy with taxes All must pay their taxes in order that the good of thewhole might be served and any one set of payments may be substituted foranother

In a review in the Literary Magazine now much more famous than Jenynssbook Samuel Johnson savaged Jenyns on the grounds that if inferiors might



suffer merely for the pleasure of superiors this would ramify up to angelicintelligences in a sort of grand guignol

As we drown whelps and kittens they amuse themselvesnow and then with sinking a ship and stand round the fieldsof Blenheim or the walls of Prague as we encircle a cockpithellip As they are wiser and more powerful than we they havemore exquisite diversions hellip which undoubtedly must makehigh mirth especially if the play be a little diversified with theblunders and puzzles of the blind and deaf42

In Johnsons hands Jenyns became the advocate of a sort of proto-Sadeantheodicy where the wise gain pleasure from torturing the weak and torturethem well due to their superior wisdom and skills Given that Jenyns is nowbest known for his pamphlet attacking the British tax policy in the coloniesit is more than a bit ironic that here he pleaded for a kind of taxation withoutrepresentation43

Some philosophers sought a measure of divine rectificatory justice foranimals given the quantity and degree of their suffering and argued foran animal afterlife In his Palingeacuteneacutesie philosophique ou ideacutees sur lrsquoeacutetatpasseacute et sur lrsquoeacutetat futur des ecirctres vivans (1769ndash70) the Swiss naturalistCharles Bonnet argued that in this best of all possible worlds all beings wouldeventually attain perfected states Just as humans would become spirituallyelevated so also animals would acquire perfected intellects and perhaps beable to hold their tormenters accountable in the next world This rested onthe assumption that animals had eternal souls which Bonnet argued for atlength despite the controversy surrounding the claim

Bonnets argument pointed out the conflict between two strongly heldbeliefs about the natural worldmdashthe metaphysical principle of continuitygoverning its grading by degree from top to bottom and the religious belief inhuman singularity that the difference between men and animals is a radicaldistinction of kind Bonnets Leibniz-inspired stress on continuity of naturaldegrees led him to abandon the denial of an animal afterlife that reinforcedthe differences in kind These arguments of Bonnets were championed inthe English-speaking world by no less than John Wesley demonstrating onepoint of the great breadth of interest in theological questions concerninganimals44

Lancashire clergyman Richard Dean provided powerful negative argumentsagainst La Mettrie Descartes Malebranche and other advocates of brute



mechanism to establish that animals had souls and positive arguments thatdivine justiceand benevolence demanded an animal afterlife Dean had a particularly keensense of the ldquomany pinching hardshipsrdquo of the poor and the weak and thecruelty of the Calvinist doctrine of original sin for men and animals born tosuffer45 Shortly before he wrote An Essay on the Future Life of Brutes hehad taken up a farm and both his father and young wife had died46 so frontand center in his own life were the afterlife animals and divine justice Indefending his position Dean claimed like Hutcheson that animals werecapable of morality ldquothere are Brutes which would sooner be hanged thanpilfer and steal under the greatest Temptations hellip that take up Attachmentsand profess Friendshipsrdquo47 More powerfully he said that

Certain it is that a future Life of Brutes cannot be absolutelydenied without impeaching the Attributes of God It reflectsupon his Goodness to suppose that he subjects to Pains andSorrows such a Number of Beings whom he never designs tobeatify hellip It reflects on his Justice to suppose that he destroyswithout a Recompense Creatures that he has brought intosuch a State of infelicity and in some Measure capacitated foreverlasting Happiness48

Utility and Practical Ethics

Deans argument rested on a presumption of divine justice that justice forinnocent brutes must be forthcoming if God is good Hutchesons argumentsalso rested on a providentially governed world unified by a good God Divinebenevolence sought the happiness of all creatures and divine justice allowedfor moral communities such that all creatures might aspire to happinessand perfection What Dean credited to the afterlife Hutcheson optimisticallyfound in our social world

Consequently Hutcheson maintained that animal pleasure and painthough meriting less consideration than human pleasure and pain andnot connected to reason or higher intellectual faculties ought to betaken account of as part of the general happiness and that we naturallyrecognize the moral importance of animal pain and pleasure through oursense of pity Furthermore domesticated animals also acquired standingthrough incorporation in moral communities that gave them further specialadventitious rights as well as the status of servant The three problems werethus resolved The cognition problem was again deemed irrelevant Rightswere either due to the capacity to feel pain and pleasure or to a beings



contributions to the domestic community for which that being should garnerwages and entertainments Animals were motivated to be part of thesecommunities insofar as they benefited and their virtues were perfectedthrough them And finally the relation between man and animal was aswidely recognized as any traditional natural law relation and had a similarsocial genesis through the rise of sociable communities furthering interests

The dominance of the natural law picture was coming to an end at thetime that Hutcheson was formulating these arguments in response to itHutcheson was one of the major figures in this shift as was Hume In factHutcheson did not published A System in his lifetime although he did publisha shorter version of some of the main arguments and it is sometimesspeculated that the non-publication was due to the young Humes criticismof Hutchesons use of providence to stitch together the natural law doctrineshis moral sense theory and his version of utilitarianism

One can also see these conflicts in a tension in Hutchesons idea of animalrights In the end isnrsquot it the natural right to happiness and the senseof pity that does most of the work as it had for Mandeville The wholeargument seems to rely on the ldquoright to happinessrdquo which is supported by abenevolent deity and ordered by providence But if there is no surefire wayto know that providence is benevolent or is at all then how can we be sureof this general right to happiness Arenrsquot the acquired rights just additionalentitlements as dictated by communities bootstrapping on the basic rightto and desire for happiness Hutcheson admitted that in times of scarcitythe rights could disappear Is this in essence not a natural law picture butrather a confused precursor of utilitarianism with a lot of fancy footwork anda heavy dose of sentimentalism

Today arguments for animal welfare are commonly associated with JeremyBentham and his famous footnote in the Introduction to the Principles ofMorals and Legislation

The day has been I grieve to say in many places it is notyet past in which the greater part of the species underthe denomination of slaves have been treated by the lawexactly upon the same footing as in England for examplethe inferior races of animals are still The day may comewhen the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rightswhich never could have been withholden from them but by thehand of tyranny The French have already discovered that theblackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should



be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentorIt may come one day to be recognized that the number ofthe legs the villosity of the skin or the termination of theos sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning asensitive being to the same fate What else is it that shouldtrace the insuperable line Is it the faculty of reason orperhaps the faculty of discourse But a full-grown horse ordog is beyond comparison a more rational as well as a moreconversible animal than an infant of a day or a week or evena month old But suppose the case were otherwise whatwould it avail The question is not Can they reason nor Canthey talk but Can they suffer49

Unlike Hutchesons defense of animal rights Benthams arguments relyon nothing beyond the primacy of seeking happiness and avoiding painand that all pain avoiders and happiness seekers should be taken accountof by rational legislators Henry Salt the important animal reformer andauthor of Animalsrsquo Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress (1892)a book which Peter Singer referred to as ldquothe best of the eighteenth- andnineteenth-century works on the rights of animalsrdquo50 claimed that ldquotoJeremy Bentham in particular belongs the high honour of first asserting therights of animals with authority and persistencerdquo51

Bentham used ldquorightrdquo in the sense of a law or rule backed by sanctions notin the natural law sense Salt saw in Bentham the germ of a notion of animalrights which he identified with Herbert Spencers Millian liberty rightmdashthateach individual was at liberty to do what they wished provided they did notinterfere with the equal liberty of others52 This is not what Bentham wasarguing for but as we have seen passages in Hutcheson and Reid seemed toembrace something very close to this notion of right Indeed Salt maintainedthe distinction between wild and domestic animals in a manner very similarto Hutcheson Although he seemed to be unaware of Hutchesons workhe argued that all animals wild and domestic had a basic right to non-interference and liberty in seeking their happiness53

Salt clearly wished to ally himself with the most secular elements of animalrights advocacy but his position seems very close to the work of the Churchof England clergyman Humphry Primatt During the years in which Benthamwrote the Principles and well before its publication Primatt provided aparallel set of arguments in The Duty of Mercy and the Sin of Cruelty to BruteAnimals The work was a founding work of the animal advocacy movement



of the early nineteenth century pioneered by Lewis Gompertz (foundingmember of the SPCA and the Animalsrsquo Friend Society for the Prevention ofCruelty to Animals)54 Richard Martin (animal activist and namesake of one ofthe first pieces of British animal welfare legislation)55 the great abolitionistWilliam Wilberforce and others

Primatt argued in no equivocal terms that animalsrsquo capacity to feel pain andtheir desire for happiness delimited our conduct toward them

we are all susceptible and sensible of the misery of Pain anevil which though necessary in itself and wisely intended asthe spur to incite us to self-preservation and to the avoidanceof destruction we nevertheless are naturally averse to andshrink back at the apprehension of it Superiority of rank orstation exempts no creature from the sensibility of pain nordoes inferiority render the feelings thereof the less exquisitePain is pain whether it be inflicted on man or on beast and thecreature that suffers it whether man or beast being sensibleof the misery of it whilst it lasts suffers Evil56

Many of Primatts arguments were found in his predecessors Like DeanPrimatt pointed out that the unjustifiable belief that animals were madefor man together with bad religion were heavily to blame Like Reid andHutcheson he argued that animals had a right to wages (that is resourcesincluding food rest ease and comfort) and we had a reciprocal duty not todeny them their due in the sense of not interfering with the satisfying of theirnatural enjoyments and needs57 All of these arguments were ably backedby scriptural quotations and Primatt did assume a general providentialismwith a benevolent deity But Primatts novelty was due to the fact that hiscore arguments as above needed no providentialist justification Pain is painwhoever experiences it and that alone is sufficient for moral obligation andlegislation

Primatt also provided a novel twist on the logic of the great chain of beingthat pulled him away from utilitarian justifications As men were superior toanimals to treat them cruelly was worse ldquothan the cruelty of Men unto Menrdquoand wasthe functional equivalent to ldquofury and barbarity on a helpless and innocentBaberdquo58 In other words a moral act was reprehensible in proportion to thepower capacity and reason of the agent and the distance between theagents power capacity and reason and the power capacity and reason ofthe sentient object of the agents action This justification drew on a basic



moral intuition (as well as on scripture) that there is something deeply wrongwith harming the weak which the Christian duty of mercy disallowed in anovel and compelling way

Primatts work was disseminated by John Toogood in The CountryClergymans Shrovetide Gift to his Parishioners The Duty of Mercy and theSin of Cruelty to Brute Animals went through multiple editions and then wasrepublished in association with the founding of the SPCA (1824) It was alsoconnected to the political activism concerning the inhumane conditions offarm animals test subjects and pets which resulted in Martins Act (1821ndash22) the Cruelty to Animals Act (1835) and eventually a vivisection act(1876) Salt put Primatt with Bentham Mandeville and a number of theother authors I have discussed as a foundational figure of animal rights anddrew on him directly in his discussions of the rights of domesticated animalsalthough as I have suggested above he did not fully see the importance andnovelty of Primatt (as he had not seen the importance of Hutcheson)59

As noted Bentham was interested in concrete animal legislation and Primattwas as well Lawrences A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on Horsesand on the Moral Duties of Man towards the Brute Creation was perhaps thegreat extended masterpiece of arguments for the need for animal rightsnot as philosophical fancies but as enshrined in laws Unlike many of theworks discussed above it grew out of detailed first-hand knowledge of thelives of animals and offered practical means to alleviate their sufferingsLittle is known about Lawrence other than from his writings60 Lawrencediscussed everything from shoeing to veterinary medicine to the equestrianarts to hunting and hacking to horse physiology to purchase and sale in APhilosophical and Practical Treatise In ldquoOn the Rights of Beastsrdquo he arguedthat there could only be one justice for men and animals and explicitlycriticized Hume because he failed to argue that if men deserved justice thenso did animals61

Lawrence argued that even if philosophers might accept arguments foranimal rights or animal standing ldquothe bare acknowledgment of the rightwill be but small avail to the unfortunate objects of our solicitude unlesssome mode of practical remedy can be devisedrdquo62 Instead of philosophicalarguments a change in laws was needed according to Lawrence

The grand source of the unmerited and superfluous miseryof beasts exists in my opinion in a defect in the conditionof all communities No human government I believe hasever recognized the jus animalium which surely ought to



form a part of the jurisprudence of every system founded onthe principles of justice and humanity hellip Experience plainlydemonstrates the inefficacy of mere morality to preventaggression and the necessity of coercive laws for the securityof rights I thereby propose that the Rights of Beasts beformally acknowledged by the state and that a law be framedupon that principle to guard and protect them from acts offlagrant and wanton cruelty whether committed by theirowners or others63

Like Bentham Lawrence stressed the inefficacy of rights talk unless enactedthrough legislation Lawrence though proposed specific laws and thecreation of inspectors of animal markets to enforce them Among the strikingpositions Lawrence argued for were that ldquoexperimental torturesrdquo on liveanimals were absolutely impermissible64 and that euthanizing animals waspreferable to ldquothe mistaken humanity of those tender-hearted persons whoturn adrift a poor dog or cat which they choose not to keeprdquo65

Thomas Youngs An Essay on Humanity to Animals was also a practical worka conduct manual intended to prescribe in detail how one ought to treatanimals including bees Young concentrated his discussion on teachingchildren to respect animals Like William Blake Young was concerned bythe mistreatment of pets ldquoWhat right have we to tame such animals asbirds squirrels and hares and to cage and confine some of them thusdebarring them from the unrestrained exertion of the energies of theirnatures and depriving them of many enjoyments which a benevolent Creatorhad provided for them and all this merely for the sake of amusementrdquo66

Young supplemented arguments with careful descriptions of cruelty androusing passages from literary works in order to educate his readers

With Young and Lawrence we see a transition toward a practical animalrights movement that would flourish in the nineteenth and twentieth centuryThis transition was connected to the practical turn in discussions of abolitionwomens rights and other issuesmdashin Lawrences case spurred on by theFrench Revolution and the belief that through legislation the lot of animalscan be bettered

Animal Revolution

Yet although Lawrence and Young argued for humane slaughter they didnot argue for ethical vegetarianism They were what we might call animalliberals not animal radicals The most radical animal welfare argument of the



later eighteenth century and perhaps until the late nineteenth or twentiethcentury was offered by the Scots Jacobin John Oswald who saw the changeof the standing of animals as part of a wholesale transformation of society

Oswald served as a lieutenant in India returning to Britain by land and inthe process picking up a few languages and becoming acquainted with theldquoHindoo religionrdquo and the vegetarian philosophy As a journalist in Londonhe published the radical journal the British Mercury became friends withTom Paine and James Mackintosh moved to Paris in 1790 became a Frenchcitizen soon after and the commander of the Parisian pikemen in Vendeacuteewhere he died in action in 179367

Unlike almost all of the authors I have described Oswald was an atheist whowas deeply influenced by Rousseau His arguments in his work The Cry ofNature or An Appeal to Justice on behalf of the Persecuted Animals (1791)which he signedldquoJohn Oswald Member of the Club des Jacobinesrdquo are accordingly notderived from Christian duties to mercy and also do not regularly invokerights Instead Oswald provides a history of human self-alienation as arisingfrom the denial of the universal sentiment of pity The argument drawson a wide range of sources from Plutarch and Porphyry to translations ofIndian texts to Rousseau According to Oswald the connection betweenreligious animal sacrifice and the establishment of political authorities ledto the interconnection of undemocratic regimes cruelty to animals andbad religion Through the religious use of animal sacrifice men came todeny their pitymdashthe ldquorooted repugnance to the spilling of bloodrdquo Over timethis sacrifice became custom and the customary subordination of animalsufferingmdashfor example the practice of keeping abattoirs and butchers awayfrom everyday commerce and life so that people could eat meat withouthaving to feel the pitymdashpaved the way for the animal experimentationpracticed by the Royal Society68 By denying animal suffering and pushingsuffering animals out of sight men deny their true nature and engage inunsatisfying cruelty toward men and animals Through alienating animalsuffering men eventually alienated themselves in much the terms Rousseaudescribed in the Second Discourse Abattoirs and vivisection went hand inhoof with war class stratification and many other ills The only solution waswholesale transformation of present society so that humans could live inpeace with animals one another and themselves

Oswald also argued at length for the nutritional superiority of a vegetariandiet and that meat eating resulted in physical debilitation and decay The



only solution would be social revolution and any human social revolutionmust necessarily be animal revolution as well The Cry of Nature directlyinspired the printer George Nicholsons On the Conduct of Man to InferiorAnimals (1797) which drew on a wide range of medical and anthropologicalevidence (as well as literary example) to argue like Oswald that humansrsquoprimeval and healthiest diet was vegetarian

By the end of the eighteenth century discussions of ethical vegetarianismand animal welfare merited parody The great Plato translator ThomasTaylormdashwho was apparently quite fond of animals69mdashpenned the satirical AVindication of the Rights of Brutes70 It drew on some of Porphyrys strongestarguments for vegetarianism comingled with calls for humans to learn animallanguage and chapters entitled ldquoThat Magpies are naturally Musicians OxenArithmeticians and Dogs Actorsrdquo

Taylor concluded that it was only a short step from animal rights to the rightsof ldquovegetables minerals and even the most apparently contemptible clodof earthrdquo and Godwinian anarchy wherein ldquogovernment may be entirelysubverted subordination abolished and all things every where and in everyrespect be common to allrdquo71 Taylors primary target was Godwins wife MaryWollstonecraft and her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Taylors pointis that if Wollstonecrafts questionable arguments for womens rights wereaccepted then animal rights (and literal mineral rights) would soon follow aswell and this was a reductio ad absurdum

As Peter Singer notes in his ldquoPrefacerdquo to Salts Animal Rights many of thearguments that Taylor thought were so ridiculous as to result in a reductioarenow widely accepted72 As was often the case throughout the history ofthe discussion of the moral standing of animals they were connectedwith the standing of women children and non-European peoples Theearly advocates of animal rights such as Martin and Wilberforce werealso abolitionists and in some cases feminists notably Lewis GompertzBenthams footnote makes explicit reference to racism and HutchesonsSystem also included arguments for the equality of women and againstslavery If animal welfare was the last to be a widespread social movementalthough it was by the nineteenth century the basic arguments for it were ofa piece with the advocacy for the rights welfare and standing of subalterngroups that rose in the middle and late eighteenth century It is notable thatHenry Salt begins his bibliography of animal rights with Mandeville in the



eighteenth century Most every original argument for animal welfare andanimal rights has its roots in this ferment73

Suggested Reading

Boddice Rob A History of Attitudes and Behaviours toward Animals inEighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain Anthropocentrism and theEmergence of Animals Lampeter Edwin Mellen 2008Find This Resource

bull Find it in your Librarybull Worldcatbull Google Preview

Garrett Aaron Animal Rights and Animal Souls 6 vols Bristol ThoemmesPress 2000 (Many of the texts discussed including Oswald Primatt Deanand Young are reprinted here)Find This Resource


mdashmdashthinsp ldquoFrancis Hutcheson and the Origin of Animal Rightsrdquo Journal of theHistory of Philosophy 45 (2007) 243ndash65Find This Resource


Guerrini Anita ldquoAnimal Experimentation in Seventeenth-Century EnglandrdquoJournal of the History of Ideas 50 (1989) 391ndash407Find This Resource


mdashmdashthinsp Experimenting with Humans and Animals From Galen to Animal RightsBaltimore Md Johns Hopkins University Press 2003Find This Resource




Harrison Brian ldquoAnimals and the State in Nineteenth-Century EnglandrdquoEnglish Historical Review 88 (1973) 786ndash820Find This Resource


Harrison Peter ldquoThe Virtues of Animals in Seventeenth-Century ThoughtrdquoJournal of the History of Ideas 59 (1998) 463ndash84Find This Resource


Hutcheson Francis A System of Moral Philosophy Glasgow A Foulis 1755Find This Resource


Jenyns Soame ldquoOn Cruelty to Inferior Animalsrdquo In Disquisitions on SeveralSubjects London 1782Find This Resource


Kean Hilda Animal Rights Political and Social Change in Britain since 1800Chicago University of Chicago Press 1998Find This Resource


Lawrence John A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on Horses and on theMoral Duties of Man towards the Brute Creation 2 vols London 17961798Find This Resource




Maehle Andreas-Holge ldquoThe Ethical Discourse on Animal Experimentation1650ndash1900rdquo In Doctors and Ethics The Earlier Historical Setting ofProfessional Ethics ed Andrew Wear Johanna Geyer-Kordesch and RogerFrench pp 203ndash51 Amsterdam Rodopi 1993Find This Resource


Mandeville Bernard Fable of the Bees Edited by F B Kaye 2 volsIndianapolis Ind Liberty Fund 1988Find This Resource


Montaigne Michel de Complete Essays Translated by M A Screech LondonPenguin Books 1987Find This Resource


Rosenfield Leonora From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine Animal Soul inFrench Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie Oxford Oxford University Press1940Find This Resource


Salt Henry S Animal Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress ClarksSummit Pa Society for Animal Rights Inc 1980Find This Resource


Thomas Keith Man and the Natural World Changing Attitudes in England1500ndash1800 New York Pantheon 1983Find This Resource

bull Find it in your Library



bull Worldcatbull Google Preview

Wolloch Nathaniel ldquoChristiaan Huygenss Attitude toward Animalsrdquo Journalof the History of Ideas 61 (2000) 415ndash32Find This Resource


mdashmdashthinsp Subjugated Animals Animals and Anthropocentrism in Early ModernEuropean Culture Amherst Mass Humanity Books 2006Find This Resource


Notes

(1) Julian Bourg From Revolution to Ethics May 1968 and ContemporaryFrench Thought (Montreal McGill-Queens University Press 2007) p 38Find itin your Library Thanks to Josh Cherniss for this quotation

(2) An expert later denied that it was the right poison which may explainwhy when the Royal Society undertook the experiment the ldquopoisonrdquo did notaffect the dog to whom it was administered See Thomas Birch The Historyof the Royal Society of London vol 2 (London 1760) pp 47 318Find it inyour Library

(3) Emily Booth ldquoA Subtle and Mysterious Machinerdquo The Medical World ofWalter Charleton (1619ndash1707) (Dordrecht Springer 2005) p 125Find it inyour Library

(4) Birch History of the Royal Society of London vol 1 pp 31 288 486509 vol 2 pp 84 118 164 203

(5) See Anita Guerrini Experimenting with Humans and Animals From Galento Animal Rights (Baltimore Md Johns Hopkins University Press 2003)Find itin your Library chap 2

(6) Nicolas Fontaine Memoires pour servir agrave lrsquohistoire de Port Royal vol2 (Cologne 1738) pp 52ndash53Find it in your Library Fontaines memoire is



very sympathetic to the Port Royaliens so theres little reason to doubt hisgruesome descriptions of vivisection Cited in Leonora Rosenfield FromBeast-Machine to Man-Machine Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartesto La Mettrie (Oxford Oxford University Press 1940) p 54Find it in yourLibrary

(7) Hooke carried out many of Boyles experiments On Hookes distastefor vivisection see Anita Guerrini ldquoAnimal Experimentation in Seventeenth-Century Englandrdquo Journal of the History of Ideas 50 (1989) 401ndash2Find it inyour Library

(8) Francis Bacon The New Organon ed Lisa Jardine and MichaelSilverthorne (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2000) pp 33ndash34Findit in your Library

(9) ldquoSome Considerations Touching the Usefulness of Experimental NaturalPhilosophyrdquo in Robert Boyle Works vol 1 (London 1744) p 429

(10) Boyle Works vol 1 p 432


(12) There is a particularly strong statement to this effect in ldquoAn EssayInquiring Whether and How a Naturalist Should Consider Final Causesrdquo inBoyle Works vol 4 p 519

(13) See Aaron Garrett ldquoHuman Naturerdquo in The Cambridge Historyof Eighteenth-Century Philosophy ed Knud Haakonssen (CambridgeCambridge University Press 2006) pp 160ndash233Find it in your Library

(14) See ldquoSophiardquo in Woman not Inferior to Man (London 1739)

(15) See Jean-Jacques Rousseau ldquoDiscourse on Inequalityrdquo in TheDiscourses and other Early Political Writing ed and trans V Gourevitch(Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1997) p 152Find it in your LibraryJames Burnett (Lord Monboddo) Of the Origin and Progress of Language 2nded 6 vols (Edinburgh 1774ndash92)Find it in your Library John Oswald The Cryof Nature or An Appeal to Mercy and Justice on behalf of the PersecutedAnimals in Garrett ed Animal Rights and Animal Souls vol 6Find it in yourLibrary

(16) Bernard Mandeville Fable of the Bees ed F B Kaye vol 1(Indianapolis Liberty Fund 1988) pp 178ndash80Find it in your Library



(17) Indeed Rousseau was criticizing the tendency of many of hispredecessors to locate what was distinctively human in cognitive capacityand social achievements and arguing that what is best about us is closer tothe wholly emotional world of animals

(18) Hieronymus Rorarius Quograved Animalia bruta ratione utantur meliugravesHomine (1648) Bayle The Dictionary Historical and Critical of Mr PeterBayle ed and trans Pierre Des Maizeaux 2nd ed 5 vols (London 1734ndash38Find it in your Library fac New York Garland 1984) ldquoRorariusrdquo

(19) Hobbes Leviathan ed Edwin Curley (Indianapolis Hackett 1994)Find itin your Library ch 26

(20) Immanuel Kant Lectures on Ethics trans Peter Heath and ed PeterHeath and J B Schneewind (New York Cambridge University Press 1997)27Find it in your Library 413 (p 177) 27 458ndash60 (pp 212ndash13) 27 710 (pp434ndash35) Kant The Metaphysics of Morals [Part II The Metaphysical Principlesof Virtue]trans Mary J Gregor as in Kant Practical Philosophy ed PaulGuyer and Allen W Wood (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1996) 6443Find it in your Library (p 564) and see the chapters by Tom Beauchampand Christine Korsgaard in the present Handbook

(21) Cf Pufendorf De jure naturae et gentium [On the Law of Nature andNations] ed and trans C H Oldfather and W A Oldfather 2 vols (OxfordClarendon Press 1934)Find it in your Library vol 1 fac of 1688 ed vol 2translation at 444

(22) Richard Allestree (attributed author) The Whole Duty of Man (London1713) p 215Find it in your Library

(23) Soame Jenyns ldquoOn Cruelty to Inferior Animalsrdquo in Disquisitions onSeveral Subjects (London 1782) p 14Find it in your Library

(24) Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism trans R G Bury (CambridgeMass Harvard University Press 1939) 1114Find it in your Library

(25) A Treatise of Human Nature ed David Fate Norton and Mary J Nortonvol 1 (Oxford Clarendon Press 2007) 134 2112 2212 and An EnquiryConcerning the Principles of Morals ed Tom L Beauchamp (OxfordClarendon Press 1998) sect 9

(26) ldquoOn Crueltyrdquo Complete Essays trans M A Screech (London PenguinBooks 1987) p 488 (translation modified) Throughout the essay Montaigne



condemns humansrsquo cruelty to one another and to animals but does notargue that cruelty to animals is less of a vice than cruelty to humans (or thatit is a vice insofar as it leads to cruelty to humans)

(27) Mandeville Fable pp 180ndash81 The force of Mandevilles condemnationmay be in part autobiographical Mandeville was a Leiden-trainedphysician and his college dissertation was a Cartesian argument thatanimals do not feel it was entitled ldquoDisputatio Philosophica De BrutorumOperationibusrdquo (1689) See Mandeville Fable p 181 n 1

(28) David Hume An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals ed Tom LBeauchamp (Oxford Oxford University Press 2006) sect 3 p 18Find it inyour Library

(29) The distinction between wild and domesticated can get complicatedvery quickly On the complexities involved see Clare Palmers chapter in thisHandbook

(30) Samuel Butler Hudibras II516ndash17 first published London 1684 AndfurtherndashndashrdquoNow a sport more formidable Had rakrsquod together village rabblelsquoTwas an old way of recreating Which learned butchers call bear-baitingrdquoI675ndash78

(31) For example the widely read dissenting theologian Phillip Doddridgeldquoin hellip beasts being designed for the use of men we may as well grantthat species might be debased to a lower kind of life for his instruction andcomfort as that such multitudes of individuals should be daily sacrificed tohis supportrdquo A Course of Lectures on the Principal Subjects in PneumatologyEthics and Divinity (London 1763) p 348Find it in your Library

(32) For a much more detailed development of these arguments see AaronGarrett ldquoFrancis Hutcheson and the Origin of Animal Rightsrdquo Journal of theHistory of Philosophy 45 (2007) 243ndash65Find it in your Library

(33) Knud Haakonssen ed Thomas Reid Practical Ethics (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1990) pp 204ndash5Find it in your Library

(34) Francis Hutcheson An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beautyand Virtue in Two Treatises rev ed ed Wolfgang Leidhold (IndianapolisInd Liberty Fund 2008) p 254Find it in your Library

(35) Haakonssen ed Thomas Reid p 379 n 3 See also Carl Henrik KochldquoMans Duties to Animals A Danish Contribution to the Discussion of the



Rights of Animals in the Eighteenth Centuryrdquo Danish Yearbook of Philosophy13 (1976) 11ndash28Find it in your Library

(36) It is anachronistic to call Hutcheson a utilitarian even a Christianutilitarian but by this label I mean that he uses arguments consistent witha theologically interpreted greatest happiness principle Early ldquoutilitariansrdquosuch as John Gay were both influenced by and critical of Hutcheson SeeJohn Gay ldquoPreliminary Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle ofVirtue or Moralityrdquo Utilitarians and Religion ed James E Crimmins (BristolThoemmes Press 1998) pp 34ndash35Find it in your Library

(37) Francis Hutcheson A System of Moral Philosophy (Glasgow A Foulis1755) IIIviiiFind it in your Library

(38) Hutcheson System of Moral Philosophy IIIviiii

(39) That there were settled ranks in the human world as well as the naturalworld was a pervasive belief in eighteenth-century thinking as well SeeEmma Rothschild Economic Sentiments Adam Smith Condorcet and theEnlightenment (Cambridge Mass Harvard University Press 2001)Find it inyour Library on two of the few philosophers who criticized this picture

(40) The essay was republished in extract in 1826 by Lewis Gompertz thefounding member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals andactivist vegan two years after the pioneering societys founding

(41) Jenyns Disquisitions on Several Subjects p 17

(42) See Samuel Johnson ldquoReview of Soame Jenynsrdquo in Animal Rights andAnimal Souls ed Aaron Garrett 6 vols (Bristol Thoemmes Press 2000) vol4 pp 64ndash65Find it in your Library

(43) Soame Jenyns The Objections to the Taxation of our American Coloniesby the Legislature of Great Britain Briefly Considerrsquod (London 1765)Find itin your Library

(44) See Charles Bonnet Conjectures concerning the Nature of FutureHappiness (London 1792) A2Find it in your Library

(45) Richard Dean An Essay on the Future Life of Brutes (London 1768)2nd ed I p 73Find it in your Library in Garrett ed Animal Rights andAnimal Souls vol 2



(46) David Allan ldquoDean Richard (bap 1726 d 1778)rdquo Oxford Dictionaryof National Biography (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004)Find it in yourLibrary

(47) Dean Essay on the Future Life of Brutes II p 69 in Garrett ed AnimalRights and Animal Souls vol 2

(48) Dean Essay on the Future Life of Brutes II pp 72ndash74 in Garrett edAnimal Rights and Animal Souls vol 2

(49) Jeremy Bentham An Introduction to the Principles of Morals andLegislation ed JH Burns and H L A Hart (Oxford Oxford University Press1982)Find it in your Library chap 17 sect1 4 note

(50) Singer adds that Salts book ldquoanticipates almost every point discussedin the contemporary debate over animal rightsrdquo Singer ldquoPrefacerdquo to HenryS Salt Animal Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress (1892reprint Clarks Summit Pa Society for Animal Rights Inc 1980) pp 136ndash53Find it in your Library

(51) Salt Animal Rights Considered p 5


(53) ldquoYet surely an unowned creature has the same right as another to livehis life unmolested and uninjured except when this is in some ways inimicalto human welfarerdquo Salt Animal Rights Considered p 47

(54) Lucien Wolf ldquoGompertz Lewis (17834ndash1861)rdquo rev Ben MarsdenOxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford Oxford University Press2004)Find it in your Library online ed httpwwwoxforddnbcomviewarticle10934

(55) Richard D Ryder ldquoMartin Richard (1754ndash1834)rdquo Oxford Dictionaryof National Biography (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004)Find it in yourLibrary online ed httpwwwoxforddnbcomviewarticle18207 (accessedMay 2008)

(56) Humphry Primatt The Duty of Mercy and the Sin of Cruelty to BruteAnimals (London 1776) p 7Find it in your Library In Garrett ed AnimalRights and Animal Souls vol 3

(57) Primatt Duty of Mercy pp 150ndash51



(58) Primatt Duty of Mercy pp 35 46

(59) See Salt Animal Rights Considered pp 136ndash53

(60) He wrote a number of pamphlets supporting the French Revolution andhe was consulted by Richard Martin in connection with the introduction ofMartins Act See Sebastian Mitchell ldquoLawrence John (1753ndash1839)rdquo OxfordDictionary of National Biography (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004)Findit in your Library online ed httpwwwoxforddnbcomviewarticle16181

(61) John Lawrence A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on Horses and onthe Moral Duties of Man towards the Brute Creation (London 17961798) 1127Find it in your Library This is not to imply that his criticism of Hume wason target

(62) Lawrence Philosophical and Practical Treatise 1 122ndash23

(63) Lawrence Philosophical and Practical Treatise 1 123

(64) ldquoIt has been said that the world could not have either gold sugar orcoals but at the expense of human blood and human liberty The world inthat case ought not to have either gold sugar or coals The principle admitsof no qualificationsrdquo Lawrence Philosophical and Practical Treatise 1133

(65) Lawrence Philosophical and Practical Treatise 1160

(66) Thomas Young An Essay on Humanity to Animals (London 1798) p178Find it in your Library in Garrett ed Animal Rights and Animal Soulsvol 5

(67) T F Henderson ldquoOswald John (c1760ndash1793)rdquo rev Ralph A ManogueOxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford Oxford University Press2004)Find it in your Library online ed httpwwwoxforddnbcomviewarticle20922 (accessed May 2006)

(68) Oswald condemned the experimentalists whom he referred to as theldquosons of sciencerdquondashndashwith very strong rhetoricndashndashldquoye that with ruffian violenceinterrogate trembling nature who plunge into her maternal bosom thebutcher knife and in quest of your nefarious science the fibres of agonizinganimals delight to scrutinizerdquo John Oswald The Cry of Nature p 33 inGarrett ed Animal Rights and Animal Souls vol 6Find it in your Library



(69) Andrew Louth ldquoTaylor Thomas (1758ndash1835)rdquo Oxford Dictionary ofNational Biography (Oxford Oxford University Press 2004)Find it in yourLibrary online ed httpwwwoxforddnbcomviewarticle27086

(70) Porphyry and Taylor are both discussed in the chapter by Stephen R LClark in this volume

(71) Thomas Taylor A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes (London 1792) p103Find it in your Library

(72) Singer ldquoPrefacerdquo in Salt Animal Rights Considered vii

(73) Thanks to Knud Haakonssen Charles Griswold Irina Meketa CarolGruber the audience at the Three Arrows Schmooze and the editors of thisvolume



early modern philosophers and jurists to talk about animals as havingrights and why therefore a somewhat cogent theory of animal rights was aremarkable achievement

ldquoRights talkrdquo is ubiquitous in our culture and we could all give many storiesof questionable confused or incoherent invocations of rights We could alsogive examples of the abuse of rights language Philosophers can get quiteprecise about rights but they also are guilty of a lot of confusion It is notentirely philosophersrsquo fault or anyones fault that they talk about rights ina confused manner ldquoRights talkrdquo bridges law politics and morals and whatis taken as the definition of a right or a particular right in one area may nothold in another Even internal to these different arenas there are conflictsThere are natural rights acquired rights negative rights positive rightsHohfeldian rights rights that are right and rights that make a wrong and onand on

All said it is unsurprising given the confusion about rights that ascribinga confusing concept to nonhumans would be difficult and even highlyconfusing In addition to all the confusion there were also specific conceptualdifficulties for early modern philosophers jurists and political theories I willbegin by giving some general background on how early modern philosophersthought about rights and explaining why their conceptions made for specificproblems in ascribing rights to animals I will use the example of the greateighteenth-century experimentalist Robert Boyle and his grisly claim that wehave a duty to experiment in order to motivate my discussion and focus iton three specific problems that confronted the development of a coherenttheory of animal rights I will then describe two ways in which early modernmoral philosophers who wanted to argue that we have moral duties towardanimals tried to sidestep these problems I will next turn to the Scottishmoral philosopher Francis Hutchesons ldquoinventionrdquo of animal rights and showhow it responded to the problems I outlined previously

Just as Hutcheson developed his account of animal rights the assumptionsof the general framework for natural law and natural rights on which herelied began to be challenged In considering the challenges I will take a sideexcursus into a few philosophersrsquo considerations of the animal afterlife I willconclude by discussing the direction modern animal welfare discussions tookin the late eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century toward animalrevolution in parallel with the French Revolution and toward utilitarianismand practical ethics leading to the rise of animal welfare legislation in Britainand Germany Most of the story I will tell is British With a few exceptions

























































































Rights



























Brute Theodicy






















































Animal Revolution

















Suggested Reading














































Notes



















































































































































































Rights



























Brute Theodicy






















































Animal Revolution

















Suggested Reading














































Notes




















































































































Brute Theodicy






















































Animal Revolution

















Suggested Reading














































Notes












































































































































Animal Revolution

















Suggested Reading














































Notes










































































































Suggested Reading














































Notes






























































































































Notes



























































































Animals and Ethics in the History of Modern Philosophy

Documents

Transcript of Animals and Ethics in the History of Modern Philosophy