Here’s a quick summary of Kant’s views on animals. Rational beings, to include most human beings, are ends in themselves. This implies that rational beings deserve a certain sort of respect: we shouldn’t use them as “mere means”; we should only act in ways that are consistent with recognizing them as having “absolute value,” as being valuable in themselves. Nonhuman animals, by contrast, aren’t ends in themselves; they have only instrumental value, which is the value that something has in virtue of what it can get for us, not in virtue of what it is. As a result, we have no obligations to animals, though we sometimes have obligations regarding animals. In other words, there is nothing that you have a moral obligation to do for, or refrain from doing to, an animal for its own sake. If you want to deny an animal water, letting it die a slow death from dehydration, you haven’t wronged the animal. Still, though, you may have done something wrong. Kant thought that we can act in ways that deform our characters, disposing us to be less moral in our dealings with other rational beings. insofar as mistreating animals has that deforming effect on us, we should be humane in our dealings with them. And insofar as it doesn’t, we may do as we wish.

In Christine Korsgaard’s new book, Fellow Creatures, she argues for a different sort of Kantianism. The crucial move is to appreciate the significance of two senses of being an “end in itself.” On the one hand, you can be an end in yourself because you are rational — that is, you have the capacity to act for the kind of reasons that all rational beings regard as binding on them as well. On the other, you can be an end in yourself if all rational beings have a duty to take what’s good for you as being good, period. That is, you can be an end in yourself if what’s good for you is a constraint on the actions of all rational beings. Of course, if you are an end in yourself because you are rational, then it’s also true that what’s good for you is a constraint on the actions of all rational beings. But Kant thought that this was the only way that what’s good for you could serve as a constraint. Korsgaard denies this. On her view, animals are the kinds of beings for whom things can be good and bad, and once we recognize this, we need to rethink our relationship(s) with them:

…what is special about human beings is not that we are the universe’s darlings, whose fate is absolutely more important than the fate of the other creatures who like us experience their own existence. It is exactly the opposite: What is special about us is the empathy that enables us to grasp that other creatures are important to themselves in just the way we are important to ourselves, and the reason that enables us to draw the conclusion that follows: that every animal must be regarded as an end in herself, whose fate matters, and matters absolutely, if anything matters at all (169).

Korsgaard’s defense of all this is detailed and philosophically rich, and her book is a wonderful contribution to discussions about animal ethics and Kantian ethics generally. It’s required reading for anyone in these conversations, and will no doubt shape them for many years to come.

I wonder, however, whether most of the shaping will be related to relatively new topics — such as the appropriate response to wild animal suffering, and vexed questions about how to relate to companion animals. In more developed areas, such as the ethics of eating, familiar problems loom, even though the well-trodden areas are the ones where Korsgaard seems to be most confident. Consider, for instance, what she says about the consumption of animal products:

The question is… about you and a particular animal, an individual creature with a life of her own, a creature for whom things can be good or bad. It is about how you are related to that particular creature when you eat her, or use products that have been extracted from her in ways that are incompatible with her good. You are treating her as a mere means to your own ends, and that is wrong (233).

This is provocative way of thinking about the ethics of eating, one worth serious attention. But is it true that in eating animal products, you use a particular animal as a mere means to your own ends? It’s certainly true that producers use animals as means to their own ends when they kill them. It’s much less clear whether you do the same thing as a consumer. After all, we should be careful about the assumption that Korsgaard seems to need: namely, that using an animal product is tantamount to using an animal. In the case of using dead human bodies, that’s a plausible claim. For instance, if someone uses a person’s skin to make a lampshade, he’s used that person in an objectionable way. But presumably, that’s because we have expectations and desires about how our bodies will be treated upon our demise, and by ignoring those expectations and desires, we convey that they weren’t worthy of our respect, that their wishes don’t constrain us in the normal way. However, animals don’t have any desires about how their bodies are treated after their deaths — or, at least, there is no reason to think that they have any such desires — and so whatever link there may be between the use of a dead animal body and the use of the animal, it isn’t so straightforward. Put another way, it’s very clear that we shouldn’t use living animals as mere means; however, because animals don’t have the kind of interests in the fates of their dead bodies that we have, it isn’t clear why we shouldn’t use dead animal bodies as mere resources. So, it isn’t clear why, by eating part of a dead animal’s body, you treat her as a mere means.

Korsgaard might reply that there’s a completely obvious sense in which you are using her as a mere means: you paid someone to kill her. But that isn’t obvious. If anything, you paid someone to kill some future animal, not the one on your plate. The one on your plate was dead long before you made any decisions at the grocery store. And given some plausible assumptions about the insensitivity of the market to the behavior of any particular consumer, there is nothing you did that explains why she was harmed, nor anything you could have done to prevent her from being harmed. Indeed, many consumers recognize this situation when they reflect on their choices. They say: “What’s happening to animals is terrible, and if I could do anything about it, I would. But I can’t, and so other considerations win out when it comes to my food choices.” Perhaps people who say such things are being disingenuous: maybe they wouldn’t do anything even if they could. But until we establish that, it isn’t clear why we should say that you are using a particular animal as a mere means.

Plainly, there’s more to say here. And none of this is meant to disparage Korsgaard’s approach to animal ethics or her approach to the ethics of eating specifically. Instead, it’s just a reminder of the difficulty of these well-worn issues. It’s plausible that eating animals is a morally objectionable way of using them, but it will take more work to explain why, exactly, that is.

© 2019 Bob Fischer

Bob Fischer teaches philosophy at Texas State University. He’s the editor of The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat (Oxford, 2015; with Ben Bramble) and College Ethics: A Reader on Moral Issues That Affect You(Oxford, 2017). He’s also the author of several essays on animal ethics, moral psychology, and the epistemology of modality.