Our Tragic Flaw

Last week, Nicholas Kristof published a great column on animal rights. He writes:

I’m referring to the stunning passage in California, by nearly a 2-to-1 majority, of an animal rights ballot initiative that will ban factory farms from keeping calves, pregnant hogs or egg-laying hens in tiny pens or cages in which they can’t stretch out or turn around. It was an element of a broad push in Europe and America alike to grant increasing legal protections to animals.

Spain is moving to grant basic legal rights to apes. In the United States, law schools are offering courses on animal rights, fast-food restaurants including Burger King are working with animal rights groups to ease the plight of hogs and chickens in factory farms and the Humane Society of the United States is preparing to push new legislation to extend the California protections to other states.

I address the question of animal rights in my book Our Tragic Flaw (pp. 165-172). In his column, Kristof quotes Jeremy Bentham's ethical question:

Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher who 200 years ago also advocated for women’s rights, gay rights and prison reform [...] responded to Kant’s lack of interest in animals by saying: “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

This is the very question Hindu and Buddhists ask when they extend their compassion to "all sentient beings."

I myself believe that the question of suffering is beside the point--or, rather, that the nature of suffering is so subtle and intricate that we are bound to make errors when trying to answer Bentham's question, "Can they suffer?"

In my view, everything that exists has an equal claim to the bounty of existence. So, whether we consider a person, a pig, or a pine tree, we have no greater right to destroy or harm them than they have to destroy us.

This opens an ethical can of worms, since all living things prosper by consuming resources (which is to say, destroying things). Obviously, there is a balance to be struck.

Read the passage of my book (cited above) to find out more about how I try to strike such a balance.