Immanuel Kant On Animal Rights

Whether or not animals should have rights has been an ongoing ethical debate in the philosophical community. Some argue that humans have higher intellectual capabilities and thus have more worth, while others say that every living being has equal inherent worth, but both arguments play a part concerning environmental issues.

Immanuel Kant, an 18th century German philosopher, claimed that humans are rational beings because they are capable of understanding what is morally right and morally wrong. And as rational beings, humans must be treated as ends, never solely as means. Through this, value is not only placed on humans, but also on the means humans use to an end, and so depending on the end a person wants, their means and values of those means are conditional and may differ from someone else’s determining of value. While objects and irrational beings have conditional worth, humans beings alone have inherent worth and must respect each other because of the worth.

As they can only be regarded as means, Kant argues that animals do not have worth in and of themselves so while people aren’t obligated to respect them, it is a duty to humanity to treat them kindly. When people care for and treat animals with respect, it helps them care for and treat other people with respect. But it must be kept in mind that humans are rational

But animals can never give their informed consent because they cannot be informed. Humans do things in the best interest of animals, even when the animals do not like it; a dog does not want to go to the veterinary clinic because it does not understand that it is what’s best. But if the same rights were given to the both the dog and the human, then the human would not be able to take the dog to the vet because the dog would refuse to go and the human would have to respect