Animals face a global crisis, dominated entirely by human presence across land, sea, and air. No non-human creature escapes this pervasive influence, which frequently results in wrongful harm. This harm manifests through various channels: the systemic cruelty of the factory meat industry, the illegal practices of poaching and game hunting, widespread habitat destruction, pervasive pollution of air and oceans, and the often-overlooked neglect of companion animals we claim to cherish. Understanding and addressing human responsibility towards animals is paramount.
This issue, while seemingly modern in its scale, has deep historical roots. For roughly two millennia, philosophical traditions in both the West and the East have condemned human cruelty towards animals. The Hindu Emperor Ashoka (c. 304–232 BCE), after converting to Buddhism, documented his efforts to abstain from meat and avoid practices harmful to animals. In ancient Greece, Platonist philosophers like Plutarch (46–119 CE) and Porphyry (c. 234–305 CE) authored detailed arguments against such cruelty, highlighting animals’ intelligence, social capabilities, and urging dietary and lifestyle changes. Despite these early calls for compassion, they were largely ignored, even within philosophical circles. Most humans persisted in treating animals as mere objects, their suffering deemed insignificant, with occasional exceptions made for pets. Consequently, innumerable animals endured cruelty, deprivation, and neglect over centuries.
An Overdue Ethical Reckoning
Today, we confront a long-overdue ethical obligation: to engage with arguments previously dismissed, to acknowledge suffering wilfully ignored, and to act upon the readily available knowledge of our detrimental practices. However, contemporary circumstances provide unprecedented reasons to address these wrongs. Firstly, human dominance has intensified exponentially over the last two centuries. In Porphyry’s era, while animals suffered when killed for food, their lives up to that point were relatively natural. The modern factory farming industry, which treats animals merely as future meat, confining them in deplorable, cramped, and isolated conditions until premature death, did not exist. Wild animals were hunted, but their habitats were not systematically destroyed for human settlement or invaded by poachers profiting from the slaughter of intelligent beings like elephants and rhinoceroses. While humans have always fished, and whales have long been hunted commercially, the oceans were not choked with plastic debris that animals fatally ingest. The pervasive noise pollution from undersea oil drilling (including drilling sounds and seismic air bombs) did not disrupt the communication essential for social marine creatures reliant on hearing. Birds were hunted, but survivors didn’t suffocate from air pollution or fatally collide with illuminated urban skyscrapers. In essence, the scope of past human cruelty and neglect was comparatively limited. Today, new forms of animal cruelty constantly emerge, often unrecognized as such because their impact on intelligent lives is scarcely considered. Thus, we bear not only the historical ethical debt but also a new, exponentially growing moral burden.
Book cover for ‘Justice for Animals’ by Martha Nussbaum, highlighting the theme of ethical responsibility towards animals.
Expanding Cruelty, Universal Complicity
The expanding reach of human cruelty means virtually everyone is now involved. Even individuals who avoid factory-farmed meat likely use single-use plastics, rely on fossil fuels extracted from beneath oceans and polluting the air, inhabit areas once home to elephants or bears, or live in high-rise buildings lethal to migratory birds. The depth of our collective entanglement in harmful practices demands that every conscientious person consider how we can enact change. Assigning blame is less critical than accepting that humanity shares a collective duty to confront and resolve these problems.
“The extent of our own implication in practices that harm animals should make every person with a conscience consider what we can all do to change this situation.”
While this discussion focuses on the loss and deprivation experienced by individual creatures—each one mattering—the issue of species extinction is intrinsically linked. Species themselves do not suffer, but extinction invariably involves immense suffering for individual animals: the polar bear starving on a melting ice floe, unable to hunt; the orphaned elephant grieving the loss of care and community as its species dwindles; the mass deaths of songbird species from unbreathable air. When human activities drive species toward extinction, the remaining individuals endure squashed, thwarted lives filled with suffering. Furthermore, diverse ecosystems, crucial for animal well-being, depend on the existence of these species.
Extinctions occur naturally, and even then, preserving biodiversity might warrant intervention. However, scientists concur that current extinction rates are one thousand to ten thousand times higher than the natural background rate (acknowledging significant uncertainty due to incomplete knowledge, especially regarding fish and insects). Globally, about a quarter of mammal species and over 40 percent of amphibian species face extinction threats. This includes various bears, Asian elephants (endangered), African elephants (threatened), tigers, six whale species, gray wolves, and countless others. Over 370 animal species are listed as endangered or threatened under the US Endangered Species Act criteria (excluding birds, which have a similarly long list). Asian songbirds are nearly extinct in the wild due to the lucrative luxury trade. Numerous other bird species have recently vanished. Meanwhile, international treaties like CITES, intended to protect birds and other creatures, remain largely ineffective and unenforced. This backdrop of human indifference to biodiversity frames the individual animal suffering explored here.
The Weight of Knowledge: Understanding Animal Lives
A further reason compels an end to past ethical evasion: our vastly increased knowledge of animal lives, even compared to just 50 years ago. We now understand far too much to offer the glib excuses of the past without shame. While thinkers like Porphyry, Plutarch, and Aristotle recognized animal intelligence and sensitivity, humanity often “forgot” these insights. For centuries, many people, including philosophers, regarded animals as “brute beasts”—automata lacking subjective experience, emotions, social structures, or even the capacity for pain.
Recent decades, however, have witnessed an explosion in sophisticated research across the animal kingdom. Our understanding extends beyond long-studied primates and companion animals to encompass creatures harder to study, such as marine mammals, whales, fish, birds, reptiles, and cephalopods. We know, through rigorous observation and experimental work, that all vertebrates and many invertebrates subjectively experience pain and possess a felt perspective on the world. We know they experience emotions (fear being widespread), with many capable of complex feelings like compassion and grief. We know diverse animals, from dolphins to crows, can solve complex problems and utilize tools. We recognize their intricate social organizations and behaviors. More recently, research reveals these social groups are not just sites for enacting inherited routines but arenas for complex social learning. Species as varied as whales, dogs, and many birds clearly transmit crucial aspects of their repertoire socially, not merely genetically.
Ethical Imperatives and Systemic Failures
The ethical implications of this research are profound. The traditional line distinguishing our species (“intelligent,” “emotional,” “sentient”) from “brute beasts” is no longer tenable. Nor can we easily separate animals we already consider somewhat “like us” (apes, elephants, whales, dogs) from supposedly unintelligent others. Intelligence manifests in multiple fascinating forms; birds, through a different evolutionary path, have developed many abilities similar to humans. Even invertebrates like the octopus display surprising cognitive capacities, recognizing individual humans and solving complex maze problems using sight to guide an arm towards food. Recognizing this complex reality must reshape our ethical thinking. Caging a “brute beast” might seem akin to placing a rock in a terrarium, but that perception is false. We are deforming the existence of intelligent, complexly sentient life forms. Every animal strives for a flourishing existence, equipped with social and individual abilities to navigate life’s challenges. Human actions systematically thwart this striving, which is inherently wrong.
Despite the undeniable need to acknowledge our ethical duties to animals, we lack adequate intellectual tools for meaningful change. This constitutes the third reason for immediate confrontation: we have constructed a world where two powerful agents of progress—law and political theory—offer little or no assistance to animals. Legal systems, both domestic and international, address companion animals to some extent but largely ignore others. In most nations, animals lack legal “standing”—the status to initiate a legal claim when wronged. While animals cannot file claims themselves, neither can many humans (children, individuals with cognitive disabilities, and realistically, most people lacking legal knowledge). Everyone needs advocates. Yet, unlike humans (including those with lifelong cognitive disabilities), animals do not legally count and cannot have claims brought on their behalf. Our legal systems are designed to exclude them.
Law reflects prevailing theories. Racist theories produced racist laws; sexist theories produced sexist laws. Undeniably, most human political thought globally has been anthropocentric, excluding animals. Even theories ostensibly offering help often rely on flawed understandings of animal lives and aspirations. As a philosopher and political theorist deeply engaged with law, the hope is that a clearer understanding of human responsibility towards animals can begin to rectify this profound systemic failure.
Copyright © 2022 by Martha Nussbaum. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
