Tutorial # 6. Deontologism at Work. Kant on Animals

Second Formulation of the Categorical Imperative:
Humanity as an End in Itself
(see Shafer-Landau, Ethical Theory. Introduction to part IX)

- Good Will: Motivation to do one's duty for its own sake.
- Only rational and autonomous beings have a will.
- Autonomy: The capacity to form goals free of external constraints/influence.
- Rationality: The faculty to reason appropriately about the implications of one's goals.
- Autonomy and Rationality generate the moral demand to treat others with respect.

Principle of Humanity:
"Act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only"

+ Immanuel Kant "We Have No Duties to Animals"
(from Lectures on Ethics - in Ethical Theory. An Anthology, pp. 395 - 396)

"If a man shoots his dog because the animal is no longer capable of service, he does not fail in his duty to the dog... but his act is inhuman and damages in himself that humanity which it is his duty to show towards mankind. If he is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealing with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."

"... so far as animals are concerned, we have no direct duties. ... Our duties towards animals are merely indirect duties towards humanity."

"Vivisectionists. who use living animals for their experiments, certainly act cruelly, although their aim is praiseworthy, and they can justify their cruelty, since animals must be regarded as man's instruments."