QuestionsDo animals matter as much as we do?"A general duty of humanity" towards beasts
Do animals matter as much as we do?A duty of compassion

"A general duty of humanity" towards beasts

The duty of humanity towards animals; the horror of cruelty

Michel de Montaigne 1533 · 1592'Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice': our customs are not the measure of everything.
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What it claims

We have towards beasts "a general duty of humanity": kindness and benevolence, and the refusal of cruelty, even if justice proper is owed only to men.

Why

Animals live, feel and share our lives: we owe them at least kindness.

The same idea through history
Plutarque100Montaigne cites Plutarch, who had scruples about selling to the butcher, for a small profit, an ox that had served him for a long time. Plutarch is one of his guides on this subject.
Michel de Montaigne1580"Of Cruelty": virtue is more than good nature, and cruelty, even towards beasts, is the most hateful thing. Montaigne extends to every creature that feels a kindness he nevertheless refuses to confuse with justice.
Arthur Schopenhauer1840Schopenhauer makes pity the foundation of all morality and extends it without reserve to animals. Montaigne had done so before him, but as a feeling of humanity, not as a principle.
In short

""A general duty of humanity" towards beasts" is an argument by Michel de Montaigne (Essays, II, 11 "Of Cruelty" (1580); II, 12 "Apology for Raimond Sebond", 1580) on the question "Do animals matter as much as we do?" (answer: a duty of compassion). Its claim: We have towards beasts "a general duty of humanity": kindness and benevolence, and the refusal of cruelty, even if justice proper is owed only to men. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 2 objections, 0 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Essays, II, 11 "Of Cruelty" (1580); II, 12 "Apology for Raimond Sebond"
Valid with an implicit premise

In "Of Cruelty", Montaigne states his horror of cruelty, the thing he hates most. He extends it to animals: he cannot bear to see a beast killed without need, and he thinks that taking pleasure in their suffering shows an inclination to inhumanity. He does not say that animals are our equals. He says that we owe justice to men, and "graciousness and benignity" to other creatures that are capable of it. His argument is modest and human: beasts live, feel, play with us, and are not as far from us as our pride believes. In the question "Do animals matter as much as we do?", he defends the "A duty of compassion" camp.

P1Beasts live and feel, and we are not as far above them as we believe. Looked at closely, they resemble us much more than our presumption admits.
P2Between them and us there is "a certain commerce and mutual obligation": we live together, we play together, and we have no fewer reasons to respect them than other men have to respect us.
P3 · implicit premiseWhen a sensitive being lives with us in such a commerce, we owe it at least kindness, that is, not to ill-treat it.
Therefore we have towards beasts "a general duty of humanity": kindness and benevolence, and the refusal of cruelty, even if justice proper is owed only to men.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds a case where beasts feel and live with us, yet we owe them no kindness at all: a tie in fact is not enough to create a duty. P3 is what passes from "there is a commerce" to "we must be kind".
The argument is valid with the hidden premise P3. P1 and P2 say that beasts feel and that there is a real tie between them and us. But a duty follows from this tie only if we add P3: a sensitive being we live with deserves at least kindness. Montaigne does not write P3 in this form, but he draws the conclusion: "We owe justice to men, and graciousness and benignity to other creatures." Whoever rejects the conclusion can challenge P1 (beasts would be machines), or P3 (nothing obliges us towards a being that is not a person).
Analogy. We do not owe a neighbour and a stranger the same. But we owe at least politeness to a neighbour we have lived beside for years, even if we do not owe what we owe to family. For Montaigne, beasts are fellow lodgers in the palace: not equals, but not things.

Objections

2

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

René Descartes 1637 · attacks premise 1

He argues that beasts have no mind at all: what they do better than we do proves not that they think, but that "it is nature which acts in them according to the disposition of their organs", as a clock counts the hours more exactly than we do. If beasts are like machines, the resemblance and tie Montaigne speaks of fall away.

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No reply possible: objection raised in 1637, after the author's death (1592).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Disputed. Descartes writes more than half a century after Montaigne and cannot reply to him. The basic disagreement is whether beasts feel anything. Montaigne holds it as evident from daily commerce ("who knows whether my cat does not make more sport of me than I of her?"). Descartes relies on a theory of mind that most life sciences now reject, but it weighed heavily for a long time (our summary).
Immanuel Kant 1797 · attacks the conclusion

He agrees with Montaigne on cruelty but changes the reason. Being violent and cruel to animals is contrary to man's duty to himself, because it blunts the sympathy with their suffering, a disposition that serves morality towards other men. Animals thus receive only indirect duties.

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1797, after the author's death (1592).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Disputed. Both agree on the result (do not be cruel) and disagree on the ground: for Montaigne the beast itself deserves kindness; for Kant it is our humanity that is at stake. If compassion serves morality only because the animal's suffering matters, Kant's position seems to assume Montaigne's; a Kantian replies that it is a duty to ourselves and that this is enough (our summary).