Kant is very controversial for his views on animal ethics. He states that since animals aren’t rational so they don’t deserve direct moral consideration, and committing a cruel act to an animal is only bad in so far as it is bad for yourself. How does having a capacity for rationality make you worthy of moral consideration. More importantly why does Kant make the argument that rationality is the basis of moral consideration. I simply don’t get it.
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Distinguish these two ways you can be “bad”, or “doing badly”.
You can be in pain. Animals can also be in pain, and if you commit a cruel act to an animal the animal will be bad in this sense (just like it’d be in a bad state if a hawk tore into its flesh for a snack).
Ok, second way: you can act wrongly. You can be blameworthy for your actions. you can have a guilty conscience. You can be a bad person. none of this is true for the hawk: we can be moral SUBJECTS in a way animals can’t.
Here’s a conjecture (probably the more contentious part of Kant’s view, when you think about it–and it’s at the root of the view about animals): the reason why your actions reflect on you morally speaking in a way they don’t reflect on animals has something to do with your rationality. without this capacity, non-human animals aren’t moral subjects: morality isn’t addressed to them.
Now, to get to the animals not deserving “direct moral consideration”, you need a thesis to the effect that only moral subjects can, properly speaking, have things owed to them. In other words, direct duties are only duties towards moral subjects—other rational persons, and yourself as a rational person. That doesn’t mean you can go around treating animals willy-nilly, callously, etc., on Kant’s view though. You’d still be a shitty person, morally speaking, if you do, and Kant has a story to tell for that. But animals can’t make moral demands on you directly.. they don’t have the right kind of status. only other people can do that.
What would the alternative view be? You owe all animals respect directly? On what authority? God’s? The animals? Why only fluffy mammals and not insects? Denying that animals are deserving of direct “moral consideration” stems from the conjecture that the source, and also authority, of morality is ultimately rooted in our rationality. But they do get “moral consideration” in Kant’s view, it’s just that the explanation for why is fairly circuitous.
(not ELI5, obviously, but hopefully this fills in the gaps with ChatGPT’s answer 😉
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