Fellow Creatures: Kantian Ethics and Our Duties to Animals

Abstract

She has published extensively on Kant, and about moral philosophy and its history, the theory of practical reason, the philosophy of action, and personal identity.Her two published books are The Sources of Normativity (1992) and Creating the Kingdom of Ends (1996).When [man] first said to the sheep, "the pelt which you wear was given to you by nature not for your own use, but for mine" and took it from the sheep to wear it himself, he became aware of a prerogative which. ..he enjoyed over all the animals; and he now no longer regarded them as fellow creatures, but as means and instruments to be used at will for the attainment of whatever ends he pleased. Immanuel Kant 1Any action whereby we may torment animals, or let them suffer distress, or otherwise treat them without love, is demeaning to ourselves.Immanuel Kant 2 Human Beings as Ends-in-ThemselvesPerhaps no theme of Kant's ethics resonates more clearly with our ordinary moral ideas than his dictum that a human being should never be used as a mere means to an end."You are just using me!" is one of the most familiar forms of moral protest.Nearly any modern person, asked [79] 1. CBHH 8:114, p. 225.Kant's ethical works are cited in the traditional way, by the volume and page number of the standard German edition, Kants Gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Royal Prussian (later German) Academy of Sciences (Berlin: