Abstract

Kant claims that we have a duty to avoid inflicting unnecessary suffering on animals because doing so damages our own humanity and hardens us to human suffering. I argue that this theory of indirect duties to animals is weak because it rests on an empirical claim that may not be true, and because it encourages us to exploit what Kant sees as a mistaken analogy between humans and animals, when it would be more consistent for Kant to advise us not to make this mistake at all. Since Kant's indirect-duty theory fails, Kant's followers must choose between accepting a theory which permits no duties with regard to animals at all or constructing a new theory within the Kantian framework. I attempt to do the latter. First, I analyze Kant's doctrine of animal minds, showing that although Kant regards animals as possessing sensibility, he denies that they have understanding or reason. I suggest that the evidence points to animals having at least understanding and possibly some prudential reason, but that they do not possess reason in the full sense required for moral agency. I argue that animals, although they do not set their own ends and thus cannot be regarded as ends-in-themselves, do have ends that are given to them by nature. As beings with ends, they stand between mere things that have no ends, and rational beings that are ends-in-themselves. I propose a broader version of Kant's kingdom of ends, in which rational beings respect the ends of all other beings that have them, including animals and other moral patients. The moral status of animals would still be dependent on the existence of rational beings , but our duty to take their ends into account would be a direct duty to them, rather than being a covert duty to human beings