Abstract
Animal ethics in its liberal, analytic style of academic writing can suffer from a form of excessive individualism that lacks a full view of life as experienced by many animals. A range of arguments against using and enclosing animals, or in favour of certain (pre)conditions of captivity, can be found to have a tendency to focus on generic and isolated individual organisms. In its most extreme form, this type of ethical thought sets up a truncated notion of the animal as separate from their conspecifics, limits animal interests to the desires of solipsistic individuals, fails to appreciate meaning that may emerge in human-animal relations , and renders invisible a range of concerns of animal ethics in view of the communal character of animal lives. Through a critical reading of the previous four chapters, this one will trace the extent to which reasoning in terms of welfare, freedom, capabilities or dignity may lead to granting attention and value to (many) animals as the idiosyncratic, relational, sociable beings which many of them are. Or can be, even in captivity , and even in the age of humans.
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Notes
- 1.
We already commonly grant animals that they may be suffering from loneliness—think of the requirement of providing a single horse with a goat.
- 2.
Whereas most parents come to realize having children also involves a serious infringement of one’s autonomy—as becoming a parent produces an ambivalent dynamic of self-realization and loss of individuality.
- 3.
In a sad twist of irony, it seems especially the species which are endangered due to their body parts being considered an aphrodisiac who tend to be administered Viagra to foster their breeding activities (see for example: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2921925/How-rhino-got-horn-Zoo-couple-given-animal-viagra-struggling-breed-naturally-ll-hear-patter-not-tiny-footsteps.html).
- 4.
Which was a dubious practice anyway of course, assuming the wild is beyond the human, and displacing local and indigenous human communities to make it so.
- 5.
Others have discussed this more critically, in terms of biopolitics (e.g. Biermann and Mansfield 2014; Srinivasan 2014; Chrulew 2011). Emphasizing how, in the name of populations and the preservation of life, all kinds of harm are deemed legitimate to produce viable populations and save genetically or otherwise defined (sub)species. Conserving sets of genes as the key to species survival and biodiversity to be released again in some future restored Eden.
- 6.
One could wonder why we do not define the purpose of zoos as entertainment of their animal inhabitants rather than human visitors.
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Driessen, C. (2016). Comment: Caring for Captive Communities by Looking for Love and Loneliness, or Against an Overly Individualist Liberal Animal Ethics. In: Bovenkerk, B., Keulartz, J. (eds) Animal Ethics in the Age of Humans. The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44206-8_19
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