Just Hierarchy by Daniel A. Bell

Author:Daniel A. Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2019-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

The contemporary utilitarian thinker Peter Singer elaborated Bentham’s insights into a theory of animal liberation: “All animals are equal [to humans].” Since “the taking into account of the interests of the being, whatever those interests may be—must, according to the principle of equality, be extended to all beings, black or white, masculine or feminine, human or nonhuman” and “the capacity for suffering and enjoyment is a prerequisite for having any interests at all,” therefore “if a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like suffering—in so far as rough comparisons can be made—of any other being.”10

Singer’s theory has been hugely influential—his book Animal Liberation has sold over half a million copies, and it has become the bible of the animal liberation movement—but it has also been hugely controversial because he denies the value of sacred or inviolable human rights. His view that animals are the equals of humans—combined with the utilitarian maxim that an act or policy is justified if it can maximize the happiness and reduce the suffering of the largest number—would seem to justify the killing of babies in a persistent vegetative state or of elderly people in the advanced stages of a degenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s if it promotes happiness and reduces overall suffering in the human world and the animal kingdom. Singer does accept that the lives of higher beings—“persons” that have rationality or self-consciousness—are more important than mere sentient beings, with the implication that if we came across a child and a dog drowning and we could only save one, we would be under a moral obligation to save the child. But for Singer, not all persons are humans, and some humans are not persons. An adult chimpanzee can exhibit more self-consciousness, more personhood, than a newborn human infant. So if we came across a newborn infant with severe disabilities who had no family and a mature chimp with complex family and social ties and we could only save one of them, we might be under an obligation to save the chimp: “Killing them [infants], therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings. No infant—disabled or not—has a strong claim to life as beings capable of seeing themselves as distinct entities existing over time.”11 Such views radically conflict with the considered intuitions of (most) people in modern societies. Infanticide may have been common in ancient Greece, but it is repulsive today. For one thing, advanced medical care can cure (or improve) some of the disabilities of babies. And we can grow into people with rich social ties: Human beings are not just beings, we are human becomings.12 Singer is working with a strangely static view of what it means to be a fulfilled and flourishing person. More surprisingly, perhaps, Singer’s utilitarian theory may also be inimical to the

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