I propose we rethink the ethical in terms of human-animal intertwining, in terms of how ‘we echo through one another, such that the relation between the human and animality is not a hierarchical relation, but lateral.
SAM BEN-MEIR: ‘In standard rationalistic approaches to animal ethics (often employed by animal rights and welfare advocates), moral consideration is incrementally extended out from an established human ‘moral club’ to grant moral status to ‘others’… I suggest that we should question the presupposition that humans can and should attempt to define criteria for the moral consideration of the non-human (or more-than-human) world. In what follows, I argue that we would do better to adopt a position of genuine ethical openness; which means acknowledging that we can never settle our attitude to the other – that “my knowledge of others may be overthrown” as Stanley Cavell puts it, and “even that it ought to be.”
I suggest that we should be skeptical of drawing up criteria for something’s being worthy of moral consideration. Instead of ensuring that nothing is capable of disturbing our ‘good conscience’, the inter-animal ethics I propose recognizes our fallibility, as well as the limits of our knowledge and understanding. In short, it recommends that we remain wary of our natural complacency, as well as malleable and receptive to the other who might address us from anywhere, at any time…
I propose we rethink the ethical in terms of human-animal intertwining, in terms of how ‘we echo through one another, such that “the relation between the human and animality is not a hierarchical relation, but lateral.” This involves recognizing that there is no human order as such in isolation from the semiotic networks – networks of meaning – that connects us inextricably to other living things…
By suspending the standard rationalistic approaches to animal ethics, in which moral consideration is incrementally extended out from some pre-established human moral core, we are afforded the opportunity to ground ethics in a non-dual and forward-thinking ontological model. In contrast to the inherently hierarchical relation between the human and animal, I propose that a ‘laterality’ becomes recognizable in our carnal empathy and web-like intertwining with animals…
In closing, it seems incumbent on us to view living entities ‘within the widest of intellectual and spiritual horizons.’ This means viewing and treating the animal as a living whole, an irreducible way of being-in-the-world that cannot be grasped through the physio-chemical description of life alone. It also means acknowledging that our humanity implies an already existing continuity with the non-human, that we inhabit a shared meaningful world with other living things, which itself is constitutive of our humanity’. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEO: