Do animals matter as much as we do?
Suffering, rights, meat and human dignity
Do animals matter as much as we do? Philosophers give 4 main answers: their suffering counts equally, they have rights, a duty of compassion and humans first. AskPhilosophy presents 17 arguments, from Mahāvīra (enseignement recueilli dans l'Ācārāṅga Sūtra) to Martha Nussbaum, reconstructed step by step, logic-checked and verified word for word against their original texts.
The 4 possible answers
Each column is one way of answering the question: what it holds and the philosophers who defend it. Click a column to see only its arguments.
Equal suffering counts equally, whatever the species.
Mahāvīra (enseignement recueilli dans l'Ācārāṅga Sūtra), Jeremy Bentham, Peter Singer, John Stuart Mill
Animals are not things: they have rights that cannot be sacrificed for our benefit.
Tom Regan, Christine Korsgaard, Martha Nussbaum
We owe them kindness and must not be cruel, without them being our equals.
Schopenhauer, Moses Maimonides, Michel de Montaigne, Plutarque…
Only rational beings matter in themselves; our duties towards animals are indirect.
Aristote, René Descartes, Kant, Peter Carruthers
The arguments
Click an argument to see it step by step, with the objections and replies.
Their suffering counts equally
Equal suffering counts equally, whatever the species.
4 argumentsAll beings love life and shun pain
Every being that feels loves life and shuns pain as I do: what I do not want to suffer, it does not want either, whatever its form.
Can they suffer? The only question that matters
What counts morally is the capacity to suffer, not to reason or talk: many animals can suffer, as we do.
Speciesism: counting everyone's interests, whatever the species
Only the capacity to suffer matters, not the species: otherwise some humans would be less protected than animals.
Refusing to count animals is refusing to count serfs: a practice that causes animals more pain than it gives men pleasure is immoral
Excluding animals because they are not "our own" is the reasoning that once excluded slaves and serfs.
They have rights
Animals are not things: they have rights that cannot be sacrificed for our benefit.
3 argumentsThe subject-of-a-life: animals have rights, not just interests
Animals who are subjects of a life have a value of their own and must never be treated as mere resources.
Animals are ends in themselves: we owe them rights
What makes our aims matter is that things can be good or bad for us, and animals are in the same position.
Justice is owed to every sentient animal: it must be able to flourish in its own way
Every sentient animal strives to live well in its own way; injustice is thwarting that striving, and animals cannot defend themselves.
A duty of compassion
We owe them kindness and must not be cruel, without them being our equals.
6 argumentsPity, the foundation of morality, extends to animals
The only truly moral motive is compassion, and it extends to all suffering, including that of animals.
The animal's pain is like ours: one does not slaughter mother and young on the same day
A mother's love for her young comes from a faculty animals share, not from reason: so her pain is like ours.
"A general duty of humanity" towards beasts
Animals live, feel and share our lives: we owe them at least kindness.
For a little flesh, we deprive a being of light and life
We have plenty to eat without killing: eating flesh takes a living being's life from it without any necessity.
The first step: no longer killing in order to eat
Moral life is a ladder: it starts with temperance, and temperance starts with no longer killing needlessly in order to eat.
Between man and animal, a difference of degree and not of kind
Animals feel pleasure, pain, love and memory as we do, to a lesser degree: our widening sympathy should therefore extend to them.
Humans first
Only rational beings matter in themselves; our duties towards animals are indirect.
4 argumentsNature makes plants for animals and animals for man
Nature makes nothing in vain: if plants feed animals and animals serve man, nature must have made them for that.
Beasts are machines: they have no thought
If an animal had thoughts, it would show them through words or signs; none ever has, even the best endowed.
Our duties to animals are indirect: they are duties to ourselves
Animals are not rational beings, but cruelty toward them weakens the compassion in us that serves morality.
Morality is a contract between rational beings: animals have no direct rights
If morality is the set of rules rational beings would agree among themselves, only rational beings have direct rights.
Other philosophers' positions arrive as profiles are completed. No position is presented as the winner.