Civil Society, Capitalism and the State by Colin Tyler

Author:Colin Tyler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, social philosophy, political philosophy, Thomas Hill Green, T.H. Green, liberal socialism, freedom, common good, rights, civil society, capitalism, the state, state action, metaphysics, self-realisation, practical philosophy, true good, social ontology, value pluralism, morality, moral freedom, eudaimonic kingdom of ends, social justice, conscience, citizenship, cunning of reason, spiritual determinism, Mazzini, Mazzinianism, humanity, duties, obligations, natural rights, Fichte, community, punishment, sovereignty, Greenian state, political obligation, state intervention, democracy, rebellion, cultural diversity, dissent, spiritual determinism, political economy, property, utility, free trade, cooperatives, trade unions, welfare state, technostructure, welfarism, socialism, Robert Owen, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, William Morris, Arnold Toynbee, D.G. Ritchie, L.T. Hobhouse, R.H. Tawney
ISBN: 9781845405564
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

V - The Environment, Animals, the Disabled and the Unborn

From this examination of the philosophical foundations of Green’s theory of rights and duties, it should be clear that certain sorts of entity can never possess rights or duties, due to the very logic of Green’s position. This section will examine the most obvious and important of these frequently controversial exclusions: the natural environment, animals, the irredeemably severely mentally disabled and the irredeemably severely insane. They are all excluded because they are inherently incapable of self-realisation: that is, of making themselves truly free.

The environment is not a purposive agent (unless one believes in some form of mysticism) and so cannot possess any rights or duties. [128] Certainly, people may have a right and even a duty to protect their natural environment. Yet, the validity of such a right or duty can only be derived from the need for such an environment to exist as a precondition of the self-realisation of persons and, for Green at least, this means individuals only. No matter how important it is to people, Nature as such cannot possess rights or duties. [129] A less extreme conclusion holds in the case of animals. Green makes two claims in this regard, although these claims merge into one another. Firstly, he argues that animals do not possess the capacity for self-consciousness and so cannot be moral entities. [130] Elsewhere, he makes the weaker claim that animals cannot possess rights or duties in human societies because humans are precluded from communicating with them and, therefore, we cannot recognise them as being capable of pursuing a common good in the morally relevant sense. Importantly, in part this means that we have no reason to think of them as purposive agents. [131] Green claims that even if they are capable of moral action, they cannot form part of our ethical community and we cannot form part of theirs, even when they learn to react habitually, say, to the ringing of a dinner bell. [132] In both cases, animals fail to meet the interrelated conditions which any rights-holder must fulfil. An animal is akin to ‘a thing’. [133] For example, in the course of his discussion of punishment, Green argues that,

‘The whipping of an ill-behaved dog is preventive, but not preventive in the sense in which the punishment of crime is so because (1) the dog’s ill-conduct is not an intentional violation of a right or neglect of a known obligation, the dog having no conception of rights or obligations, and (2) for the same reason the whipping does not lead to an association of terror in the minds of other dogs with the violation of rights and neglect of obligations.’ [134]

Green’s position in relation to animals is less plausible than it is in relation to the environment. Rodman points out Green fails to mention the animal protection legislation which was passed at the same time as the other measures referred to in his Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract. [135]

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