Kant Animal Captivity

Philosophers supporting the use of Animal Captivity

I will now move onto arguments supporting the use of animal captivity. I am starting with Kant, who provides a strong argument for animal captivity. Kantian Ethics holds the view that we do not have any direct ethical duties to non-human animals. We only owe ethical duties to rational beings, and non-human animals are not included in this group. The value humanity comes from our capacity to be governed by autonomous, rational choices. Since non-human cannot be part of this, Kant believes we can do as we please with them. This can be demonstrated in Kant’s ‘Political Writings’ when he argues,

When [man] first said to the sheep, ‘the pelt which you wear was given to you by nature not for your

For Kant, we can use non-human animals as we desire, because we are rational beings who are superior to them. Kantian Ethics encourages the view that we should not treat human beings as ends in themselves, ‘act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.’ (Kant, 2012, p.41) However, since non-human animals do not apply to this, Kant believes we have the right to treat them as ends and so we can keep them captive. Kant believes that the only reason we should avoid being cruel to animals is that in doing so we might develop cruel habits that we would inflict on other people. Therefore, it is for our own benefit rather than for the welfare of the animal itself. This proves that for Kant, non-human animals do not possess any rights. This associates with the view that humans have little, if any duty to non-human animals because humans are more important. Therefore, if keeping animals in zoos serves any educational or entertainment purposes, which many claims it does, we can ethically do it according to

In his essay ‘Three Wrong Leads in a Search for an Environmental Ethic: Tom Regan on Animal Rights, Inherent Values, and Deep Ecology’, Partridge claims that Singer and Regan both miss a significant element to the nature of rights: they only have a moral basis, not a biological basis. For Partridge, how alike human beings and other animals are in terms of biology is irrelevant. What matters instead is that other animals show no capacities of rationality or self-conscious, which is what makes us moral. For Partridge, this consequently excludes other animals from being rights