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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Animals are in the news these days. As so often, the world of the image and the soundbite encourages muddle, and we need to take a step back if we are to sort and integrate our conflicting ideas and emotions Let me begin with a popular caricature of the animal-lover: he, or more probably she, keeps a garden full of goats and chickens; she takes a break at weekends to liberate the odd rat from its laboratory; and she spends the little spare time she has left in campaigning to save the rainforests. The caricature, however, soon begins to reveal its contradictions when we are faced with a concrete problem. Take, for example, the release of mink into the countryside by members of the Animal Liberation Front In this case, the people most affected, and most angered, by this action were those directly involved in the welfare of animals: farmers, conservationists and pet-owners. The problem with the ‘liberation’ of mink is, precisely, that it is bad for other animals; and it clearly reveals that concern for the welfare of animals is a complex business. Our lack of clarity about this complexity is the main reason why debate about issues such as fox-hunting has proved so confused and inconclusive.
In this article I shall describe three types of animal-lover, whom I shall nickname, for reasons that will become obvious, Libbie, Connie and Aggie. In exploring how, in their different ways, these three care for animals, I examine different possible ways of understanding the Christian claim that creatures are good.
1 The main arguments can be found in Peter Singer Animal Liberation (1975, second edition, Thorsons 1991), Regan, T. The Case for Animal Righrs (University of California Press 1983)Google Scholar and Clark, S.R.L. The Moral Status of Animals (OUP 1984)Google Scholar. Theological discussion has been pioneered by Andrew Linzey, e.g. in Christianity and the Rights of Animals (SPCK 1987); see also Linzey, A. and Yamomoto, D. Animals on the Agenda (SCM 1998)Google Scholar. Anyone who is unconvinced that we do in fact have moral duties to animals should read Mary Midgley's excellent Animals and Why They Matter (University of Georgia 1983).
2 The fox‐hunting debate provides an ironic example of this. It is not clear that fox‐hunting does in fact increase the overall amount of animal suffering. It is clear, however, that its opponents find particularly distasteful the apparent cruelty of the hunters. In other words, a primary motivation for opposing foxhunting is that cruelty in human beings is a bad thing, irrespective of its consequences for animals. This is the precise ground upon which Aquinas opposes cruelty to animals, something for which he has been roundly condemned by animal‐loving philosophers.
3 See Elliot, Robert and Gare, Arran Environmental Philosophy (Open University Press 1983)Google Scholar, Attfield, Robin The Ethics of Environmental Concern (Blackwell 1983)Google Scholar, Holmes Rolston 111 Environmental Ethics (Temple University Press 1988), Armstrong, Susan J. and Botzler, Richard G. Environmental Ethics (McGraw‐Hill Inc. 1993)Google Scholar.
4 See Mary Anne Warren ‘The Rights of the Nonhuman World’ in Elliot and Care. My overall argument builds on Warren's integration of environmentalism and animal rights.
5 Fortunately, however, science is ahead of philosophy here; increased biological understanding of animal welfare (see e.g. Marian Dawkins, ‘The scientific basis for assessing suffering in animals’ in Peter Singer (ed.) In Defence of Animals (Blackwell 1985)) has contributed to legislation; while limited cooperation is developing between fanners and conservation bodies. Improved theory can only encourage such collaboration.
6 Nichmachean Ethics VIII, 1156a. 22 ff.
7 I simply note here a serious problem. It is arguable that there is no urichanging nature of a specific type of animal. More seriously still, stock‐ breeding aims to change an animal precisely in order to make it more useful to human beings. A pig may be bred with so little intelligence and initiative, and so much fat, that it seems to have become little more than raw material for our ends. The concept of an animal's nature is a difficult one, but 1 suspect that we need to hang on to it if there are to be any ethical limits to the treatment of animals. Indeed, we need to be able to identify both a flourishing specimen even of a highly‐bred animal, and the point at which selective breeding for utilitarian purposes so distorts the animal's nature as to constitute cruelty.
8 My account brings out the ways in which a farmer's relationship with his animals is mutually beneficial. Compare Stephen Budiansky's The Covenant of the Wild (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1992), which argues suggestively that we did not (and indeed would not have been able to) domesticate wild animals intentionally. Rather, human beings and certain animals co‐evolved in an essentially co‐operative relationship.
9 Pp. 175 ff.
10 Vicki Hearne offers a memorable philosophical reflection on horse‐ and dog‐training in AdamS Task (Heinemann 1986), see especially pp. 84ff.
11 ‘At times’: perhaps the traditional integration of certain times of slaughter into the liturgical calendar acknowledged both the seriousness of this ‘tragic element’ and the fact that our license to kill without guilt is a gift not to be received lightly or immoderately.
12 Strict vegetarians will argue that the farmer is always wrong to raise animals for meat. Their own arguments, however. may lead them to recognise that there are better and worse ways of raising animals, and that some meatfanners share some, though not all, of their ethical concerns.
13 Artist and Tradesman (Paulinus Press, 1984).
14 Richard Grove's fascinating book Green Imperialism (Cambridge U.P. 1995) tells the story.
15 I have sketched elements of such an ethics in Flawed Beauty and Wise Use: Conservafion and the Christian Tradition (Blackfriars Publications 1995) and ‘Can we ever be satisfied’, Priests and People, February 1998.
16 I am greatly indebted to comments from Fr David Albert Jones O.P., in particular for my discussion of Aggie.
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