Are Animals Equal to Humans?
In late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century philosophy, if animals were seen as worthy of protection at all, then typically they were seen as objects, not as subjects, of the law. Philosophers showed why it might be in the interest of humanity to treat animals decently and reasoned that people had obligations against animals, though not to them. Krause demurred. From the outset, he integrated a theory of animal rights into his philosophy of freedom.
This move stood in deliberate contrast with the anthropocentric take on nature predominant in his time and era.19 Even so, Krause’s argument was not biocentric. Natural entities do not make their axiological status explicit. Instead, Krause opted for an anthropo-relational approach. This is, however, theoretically demanding: While striving to understand nature according to its own laws, an external and absolute perspective (a God’s-eye view) cannot be attained; we are always situated within nature. Nature must, that is to say, be reflected on from the particularly human perspective and, at the same time, with critical awareness of the limits this very perspective entails. We are to regard and respect other life-forms as living according to their own freedoms, while keeping in mind that, as far as we know, the human being is the only creature on earth aiming at such unbiased conceptions of other beings.20
Having derived his ethics from a phenomenology of human freedom, Krause probed whether the categories for the moral evaluation of animal life could be gleaned likewise. Certainly, we cannot enter directly into the mental horizon of animals.21 Yet, indirectly, we may infer that what is true of our own body as a self-recursive physical entity might also hold for animals.22 Just as our body has faculties for self-awareness (e.g., proprio-perception) and self-determination (e.g., spatial self-direction) that function independently of higher forms of cognition, likewise animals appear to display such incorporated forms of self-determination (i.e., bodily freedoms) and “we assume that they know themselves in certain ways, sense themselves, and strive to maintain and perfect their selfhood according to sensory ends.”23
A glance at our own pets teaches us, according to Krause:
That these beings show all those idiosyncrasies which express the lowest level of the spiritual personality; they feel themselves, feel pleasure and pain, they have representations and fantasy, as is well known they determine themselves according to social concepts, since within various individuals of the same species they nevertheless recognize the same species, e.g., just as every man distinguishes himself as man, so every animal accordingly discerns its own species. They are therefore spiritual beings.24
And this suffices, for Krause, to justify calling animals persons.25
Krause’s concept of personality deviates from the stern standards of Kantian moral philosophy, whereby only subjects capable of directing themselves via the moral law are considered persons.26 Krause instead preferred to lower the bar for the ascription of personhood, as he believed “everyone will agree that rights instantly must be expanded and extended to each life-form with whom we cohabitate which we recognize as a self-centered being capable to relate to itself in cognitive, emotional, and volitional acts.”27 As a consequence, Krause expressly recognized animals not only as objects of human law but, due to their inherent capacity for self-determination, also as subjects of germane right: “Right exists without regard to the person. No person has a privilege (no one anticipates the right of another), but every person has his or her right. This is just as true… of the simplest (qui capere valet, capiat!) animals.”28
The Kantian distinction is, however, not obliterated. In Krause’s thinking, it resurfaces as a discrimination between higher and lower types of persons. Animals rank as persons of a lower status because they do not display the human ability to recognize self-transcending rules and norms, since “they determine themselves only according to finite sensory impulses and not according to eternally infinite concepts.”29 Fully developed human beings can relate reflectively to their basic faculties (i.e., they are capable of feeling their feelings, willing their willing, thinking their thinking, but also feeling their thinking, willing their feeling, and reasoning their willing). Thus, human beings can autonomously criticize and (re-)direct themselves, according to moral laws.30 Within “the sphere of our experience” we thus legitimately regard the human being as the only form of life to whom belongs freedom in that most elevated sense.31
To be clear, the difference between humans and animals is not grounded upon actual mental accomplishments. In contrast, Krause thought that quite often there is not such a huge empirical difference between the accomplishments of intelligent animals and those of certain human beings who, willingly or not, live reduced to the realm of mere sensuality. What counts for the species difference is, however, rather the potential form of reflective self-determination—an ethical freedom, toward which only human beings (can) develop. Accordingly, humans and animals are not only gradually different from one another but categorically so, “in their entire essence.”32 Unlike animals, mentally and/or physically limited human beings belong to a species of reflectively autonomous beings; disability may inhibit the articulation of parts of their human nature, but it does not amount to a privation of said nature.33
Since animals are, as far as we know, incapable of self-reflective and ethical freedom, they lack rights that adhere to this particular level of freedom:34
As soon as one considers the animal as a self-inward being possessing self-consciousness and self-feeling, one demands that man should also be just towards animals. But no one will talk about an animal justice which animals themselves practice. That is because one does not consider the animal capable of grasping the idea of justice in order to make justice its end. Thus, one says: Man should be the guardian of all animals and man considers the entire animal kingdom as in need of legal representation and rightly so.35
The legal subordination arises, to be sure, not because animals cannot demand their rights; children, minors, and the mentally ill are also often unable to do so.36 Animals possess rights distinct from those of humans. Yet their rights are not any weaker. Just as with human beings whose autonomy is limited (e.g., children, disabled, and senile persons), legal guardianship is required for animals so that “the contingent conditions of the completion of their purely animalistic life are guaranteed.”37
In Krause’s view, animals possess a right to a self-determined life that deserves protection insofar as they (unlike predators, at times) do not violate higher-level (i.e., human) rights.38 Which obligations does this right impose upon humanity? Krause answered: whatever humans may enforce upon others of their kind (e.g., the elimination of unlawful violence) may also be done to every being on a lower level of freedom. If we are allowed to limit and regulate by law the use of our shared environs, then we are also allowed to limit the habitat of animals, as long as their rightful interests are also respected. As humans may recycle their own organic waste products (e.g., hair, nails), they are entitled to do the same with animal offal. Krause also thought it might be possible to use animal labor “for reasonable purposes” and, in the process, curtail animals’ natural freedom of movement.39 Such a use, he contended, does not automatically impinge upon the respective animal’s right to freedom if it serves acceptable ends and does not distress the animal, since we are wont to make similar use of human labor.40
More far-reaching rights, however, appear problematic. Does the inequality between animals and humans in terms of freedom also entail unequal rights? Are humans, for instance, who must not kill one another for the purpose of nourishment, allowed to eat animals? Only insofar, stated Krause, as “without such killing humanity on earth could not exist, unless some other form of nourishment were found.”41 Krause believed this justification rarely applied. Most people, he held, already had access to vegetarian food of adequate quantity and quality.
While animals “have a right to bodily well-being, to absence of pain, and to requisite nutrition,” Krause did not say humanity must constantly strive to assure a most comfortable existence for every life-form on earth.42 As a general rule, animals are quite capable of taking care of their own well-being, obtaining their own food, avoiding pain, etc. But if one takes animals out of their original habitat, or if one limits them and so impairs their capacity for self-care, the obligation to provide species-appropriate treatment and nutrition ensues.43 This conclusion, Krause hoped, would concur with a pervasive “feeling of justice towards animals” that “cannot be eradicated” from the human mind.44