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Rawls, Animals and Justice: New Literature, Same Response

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Abstract

This article seeks to revisit the relationship between Rawls’s contractarianism and the moral status of animals, paying particular attention to the recent literature. Despite Rawls’s own reluctance to include animals as recipients of justice, and my own initial scepticism, a number of scholars have argued that his theory does provide resources that are useful for the animal advocate. The first type takes Rawls’s exclusion of animals from his theory of justice at face value but argues that animals can still be protected within a moral realm independently of justice, or indirectly through the motivations of human contractors. The second type adapts his theory in a way that enables animals to be included within a contractarian theory of justice. It is argued, though, that none of the responses offered is successful in providing a sphere of protection for animals from within Rawls’s contractarian theory. It is doubtful if Rawls’s intention was for animals to receive a significant degree of protection within a moral realm independently of justice, and equally doubtful if the contractors in the original position would be motivated to act on behalf of animals. In the case of the second, whilst Rawlsian resources can be utilised to justify the attempt to amend the veil of ignorance so as to include animals, these are not dependent on a contractural agreement. Similarly, placing emphasis on social-co-operation as a means of incorporating animals into a theory of justice is flawed, not least because, paradoxically, it works for domesticated animals whilst they are being exploited.

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Notes

  1. A direct duty to animals can be contrasted with an indirect duty. According to an indirect duty view, the protection of animals does not come about because they are regarded as having intrinsic value, but because (some) humans regard the protection of animals as being part of a good (human) life. Thus, whereas a direct moral object is ‘something to which moral consideration is paid’ an indirect moral object is ‘something about or concerning which moral consideration is paid’ (Morris 1998, p. 191).

  2. Rowlands takes this distinction from Kymlicka (1993). Hobbes was clear that the social contract could not include animals. ‘To make covenants with brute beasts’, he wrote, ‘is impossible, because not understanding our speech, they understand not, nor accept of any translation of right, nor can translate any right to another; and without mutual acceptation, there is no covenant’ (quoted in Fellenz 2007, p. 107). A contemporary version of the Hobbesian contract is provided by David Gauthier, and he comes to the same conclusion that: ‘Animals, the unborn, the congenitally handicapped and defective, fall beyond the pale of a morality tied to mutuality’ (Gauthier 1986, p. 268). Narveson (1983) excludes animals on the same grounds. He writes: ‘Contractarianism leaves animals out of it…They are, by and large, to be dealt with in terms of our self-interest, unconstrained by the terms of hypothetical agreements with them. Just exactly what our interest in them is may, of course, be matter for debate; but that those are the terms on which we may deal with them is, on this view of morality, overwhelmingly indicated’ (Narveson 1983, p. 58).

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their incisive comments on a first draft of this article. The piece was researched and written whilst I was the holder of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship and I would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for its support.

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Garner, R. Rawls, Animals and Justice: New Literature, Same Response. Res Publica 18, 159–172 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-011-9173-z

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