Allegri, Francesco

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511.2December 2023Ethical Models for the Animal QuestionEdited by Francesco AllegriSTUDIES AND RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONSThe Affective Turn in Animal Ethics 9Ralph R. AcamporaAnimal Ethics and the Problem of Direct Conflict: Why Current 25 Theories Can’t Offer SolutionsCarla TurnerAdvocating for a Political Vegan Feminism: A Rebuttal to Val Plumwood 41 and Donna Haraway’s Criticisms of Ethical VeganismAndrea Natan FeltrinIl sublime delle stenelle. Riflessioni sull’estetica del whalewatching 63Riccardo CraveroCOMMENTS, DEBATES, REPORTS AND INTERVIEWSBetter Descartes than Aristotle: Talking about Those Who Deny 85 Moral Consideration to AnimalsFrancesco AllegriAuthor Guidelines 93Relations – 11.2 - December 2023https://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ - Online ISSN 2280-9643 - Print ISSN 2283-3196Relations – 11.2 - December 2023https://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ - Online ISSN 2280-9643 - Print ISSN 2283-319685Better Descartes than AristotleTalking about Those Who Deny Moral Consideration to AnimalsFrancesco AllegriUniversità degli Studi di SienaDOI: https://doi.org/10.7358/rela-2023-02-allf  allegri2@unisi.itIn this short paper I want to advance a provocative thesis. The French philosopher René Descartes has always been considered by animal rights defenders as the greatest enemy of animals, because he even denies them the ability to feel (a conception that in recent years has been advocated by Peter Carruthers). In reality, if we compare his ethical views on animals with those of another important symbol of the denial of moral status to non-human sentient beings, namely Aristotle, the French philosopher comes out better. Because the latter seems to endorse – albeit dubiously – the moral principle according to which it is wrong to make sentient beings suffer and kill, rejected instead by Aristotle and with him by a good part of the Western philosophical tradition. To grasp this point, I would say to start with what I have elsewhere (Allegri 2021, 104) called the “Minimal Pro-Animal Argument” (here-after MPAA). In fact, what does it mean to deny non-human animals any moral consideration (an aspect that unites Aristotle and Descartes)? It means not giving any moral weight even to their suffering. That is, it means not accepting the following reasoning:it is directly wrong to procure unnecessary suffering to sentient beings 1non-human animals are sentient beingsit is directly wrong to procure unnecessary suffering to non-human animals 1  “Directly” because even those who deny moral status to animals can, for indirect reasons, censure the act of causing them (gratuitous) suffering; “unnecessary” because even those who ascribe moral status to animals accept that a cat or dog can be made to suffer for justified reasons (for example, when they need to be injected by the veterinarian). Relations – 11.2 - December 2023https://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ - Online ISSN 2280-9643 - Print ISSN 2283-3196Francesco Allegri86Both Aristotle and Descartes reject the conclusion of this argument. But they do so for different reasons. Let us see which ones, starting from Aristotle.Aristotle certainly accepts the second premise of MPAA. In his opinion animals feel, because they have a sensitive soul: this is what distinguishes them from plants which instead, having only a vegetative or nutritive soul (the least noble form of soul), move, grow, reproduce, but have no sensations (An. Β2, 413 b 2; Γ11, 434 a - Γ12, 434 b; Pol. I, 2, 1253a, 11; I, 5, 1254b, 24-25) 2. Despite this, he seems to deny non-human animals any direct moral relevance. In the pages of his texts we find no moral consideration for the other sentient beings. On the con-trary. In the Nicomachean Ethics he asserts that there is neither friendship nor justice towards that which is inanimate. Nor is there any towards a horse or an ox, nor towards a slave, as a slave. For there is nothing in common between the master and the slave: in fact, the servant is an instrument endowed with a soul and the instrument is an inanimate slave. (Eth. Nic. VIII, 11, 1161 b, 1-5)The fact that for Aristotle there cannot be friendship between men and animals (indeed, between free men on the one hand and slaves and the rest of things on the other), since there is nothing in common between them, is all the more significant if we take into account the importance in Aristotelian ethics of cultivating the value of friendship for the full realization of the human being. Quite in line with this approach, in Aristotle we find a first theoriza-tion of the instrumental use of animals also in scientific research. Thus, if it is a question of understanding the origin and path of the vascular system, one must not make the mistake of those who have studied live and slimmed humans or animals that are already dead (Hist. An. III, 2, 511b), because in this way the veins cannot be seen. In such a case, “obser-vation is difficult, and it is possible to collect adequate information, if one has a real interest in these problems, only on animals killed by suf-focation after having made them lose weight” (Hist. An. III, 3, 513a). It is  2  According to DeGrazia, however, Aristotle, while attributing sentience to animals, denies them the possession of beliefs (DeGrazia 1996, 153, n. 58). In truth, there are pas-sages in Aristotle’s biological texts that seem to refute this interpretation. For example, in Historia animalium he states that “many animals participate in memory and the ability to learn” (Hist. An. I, 1, 488b, 20) and that “a certain capacity for intellectual understand-ing” presents “in many animals similarities with man” (Hist. An. VIII, 1, 588a, 18-22). The English translation of these and subsequent passages from Aristotle is mine.Relations – 11.2 - December 2023https://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ - Online ISSN 2280-9643 - Print ISSN 2283-319687Better Descartes than Aristotletrue that sometimes in his biological writings Aristotle compares humans to animals, highlighting the affinities between them. And in Parts of Animals, he goes so far as to say: “If […] someone finds the observation of other animals unworthy, he should judge the observation of himself in the same way” (Part. An. I, 5, 645a, 22). But in ethical and political texts his attitude takes on different connotations. As is well known, in the Politics, for example, we read thatplants are made for animals and animals for man, the domestic ones so that he can use and feed on them, the wild ones, if not all, at least the major-ity, so that he can feed on them and use it for other needs, take clothes and other tools from it. (Pol. I, 8, 1256b) Here Aristotle theorizes that conception which from Kant onwards has usually been called external finalism (while the finalism of biological processes is called internal). This perspective, which will find its full real-ization with Stoicism and Christianity, outlines a hierarchical ladder in which each step – symbolizing a level of being – has its purpose outside itself, in the higher step-level for which it has been preordained, until it reaches the stage of man, which is the highest level of reality, the entities of all the underlying stages being instruments at his service. Returning to our main theme, we can therefore say that Aristotle rejects the conclusion of MPAA because, while accepting the second premise of the argument, he refuses the first.What is the situation in Descartes? The French philosopher has always been accused of denying the second premise of MPAA. Indeed, there are several elements in the Cartesian texts that support this accu-sation 3. But Descartes does not always maintain that animals are devoid of sensitivity with the same conviction. Among other things, it is a thesis that the French philosopher mainly presents in unprinted writ-ings (and especially in letters) rather than in published texts. It cannot be explicitly found even in the Discours de la Méthode (Discourse on the Method, 1637), where it is expressly stated (in the fifth part) that animals are devoid of reason, not so much that they are devoid of awareness 4.  3  This is an option that before Descartes had already been advocated by the Spanish physician and theologian Gomez Pereira in the book Antoniana Margarita (1554) and of which in ancient times traces can be found in the Corpus Hermeticum (Landucci 2002, 45; Clark 2011, 46). 4  In this context his opponents are Montaigne and Charron, who had attributed rational capacities to non-human animals (Landucci 2002, 39-54; Mori 2010, 96-99). Relations – 11.2 - December 2023https://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ - Online ISSN 2280-9643 - Print ISSN 2283-3196Francesco Allegri88It makes its appearance in explicit terms in the “Letter to Plempius” (13 September 1637) and comes to light publicly in the fourth responses to the Meditations, until it takes on more doubtful contours in the last letters (especially in the “Letter to More” of 5 February 1649) 5. For example, in the “Letter to the Marquis of Newcastle” (23 Novem-ber 1646) Descartes asserts that non-human animals agissent naturellement et par ressorts, ainsi qu’une horloge, laquelle montre bien mieux l’heure qu’il est, que notre jugement ne nous l’enseigne. Et sans doute que, lorsque les hirondelles viennent au printemps, elles agissent en cela comme des horloges. Tout ce que font les mouches à miel est de même nature, et l’ordre que tiennent les grues en volant, et celui qu’observent les singes en se battant. (Descartes 2009b, 2352) 6According to the French philosopher, non-human animals perform all their actions and live their lives in the same way in which we carry out certain gestures that do not pass through our consciousness, because we are distracted, overthinking (for example, when we drive the car along usual routes, our mind often wanders thinking about other things, but we still do many operations: we steer, change gears, put on the indicator, etc.): satis expresse ostendam me non putare bruta videre sicut nos, dum sentimus nos videre; sed tantummodo sicut nos, dum mente alio avocata, licet objecto-rum externorum imagines in retinis oculorum nostrorum pingantur, et forte etiam illarum impressiones in nervis opticis factæ ad diversos motus membra nostra determinent. (Descartes 2009a, 424) 7 The basic reason why, according to Descartes, animals are not sentient is linked to the ontological dualism developed by the father of analytical geometry, for whom reality is composed of two types of substances, res cogitans and res extensa, which are entirely irreducible and definable one  5  On the doubts of the late Descartes, see Landucci 2002, 50-51. 6  Non-human animals “act naturally or mechanically, like a clock, which tells the time much better than our judgement teaches us. And perhaps when the swallows arrive in spring they act like a clock. Everything that bees do is of the same nature, so is the order that cranes keep in flight, and what monkeys observe when they fight”. The English translation of these Cartesian passages is mine. 7  “I believe that brutes see like us not when we feel we see, but only when, our mind being turned elsewhere, we feel nothing at all about external objects, even if their images are depicted in the retinas of our eyes, and perhaps even though their impressions, made in the optic nerves, cause our limbs to move in different ways”.Relations – 11.2 - December 2023https://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ - Online ISSN 2280-9643 - Print ISSN 2283-319689Better Descartes than Aristotleby negation of the other (so that what is extended does not think and what thinks is not extended). While, not only inorganic nature, but also the phenomena of life can be explained entirely in terms of res extensa (this is the great difference from Aristotle, for whom life requires a soul; whereas for Descartes even biological phenomena require only matter and local movement), all manifestations of thought presuppose the res cogitans, i.e. the presence of something totally different from matter: an immaterial mind (which, being entirely distinct from physical things, does not follow the same fate and is immortal). Among the forms of thought Descartes also includes awareness itself, that is, the capacity to feel. This extremely broad meaning of thought finds its justification in Descartes’ preliminary metaphysical approach, the cogito ergo sum, foun-dation of all other knowledge. Because it is thought as “awareness of ”, i.e. in its formal and non-content-related value, which makes the meditating subject certain of existing. This is the truth (the only truth) that cannot be doubted (even if the sensations, and all the other thoughts, had no correspondence in reality, it remains an indubitable certainty that I feel them). Now, while both res cogitans and res extensa are present in human beings, all the other inhabitants of the Earth – and not only the inor-ganic reality and the vegetal world, but also the animal world – consist exclusively of res extensa. Non-human animals, therefore, not having a res cogitans (not being immaterial minds), do not possess any manifestation of thought. In addition to being unable to reason, they are also unable to feel (i.e. to have states of consciousness: to experience pleasure, pain, etc.) 8. But what is Descartes’ attitude towards the first premise of MPAA? Here comes the surprise, because the French philosopher, unlike Aristo-tle, seems to believe that if non-human animals were sentient, it would be morally problematic to mistreat them. That is, he seems to subscribe to this premise of the “Minimal Pro-Animal Argument”, and even to go further. In fact, in a passage in the “Letter to More” he asserts that his denial of animal sentience non tam crudelis est erga belluas quam pia erga homines […] quos nempe a cri-minis suspicione absolvit, quoties animalia comedunt vel occidunt. (Descartes 2009c, 2624) 9 8  For the metaphysical conception that forms the theoretical background to these theses, see Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia (1641). 9  “is not so much cruel towards beasts, as benevolent towards men […], who are absolved from suspicion of crime every time they eat or kill animals”.Relations – 11.2 - December 2023https://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ - Online ISSN 2280-9643 - Print ISSN 2283-3196Francesco Allegri90Namely, Descartes is telling us that if animals felt then, not only might it be wrong to make them suffer, but it might even be wrong to kill them! This is not a negligible achievement. Descartes appears on the way to sub-scribe to the moral principle that it is unjust to suppress the life of sentient beings. By contrast, this thesis is far from being asserted by Aristotle, who, although fully convinced of the sentience of non-human animals, does not seem to ascribe moral significance to this fact, not even in the mini-mal terms of attributing a weight to their suffering, so as to censor the human actions that cause it. As is known, quite a different attitude was to be taken by his main disciple, Theophrastus, who can be considered one of the first and most important animal rights defenders of antiquity. Since Descartes subscribes to this principle, not accepted by Aristotle and by a large part of the Western tradition (which, although aware of the sensitivity of non-human animals, showed disregard for their suffer-ing and death), it seems to me that such a negative attitude towards the French philosopher by the defenders of the animal cause is excessive and that between Descartes and the prevailing approach following Aristotle (full awareness of animals’ ability to perceive pain, but moral indifference with respect to this) Descartes is to be preferred.REFERENCESAllegri, Francesco. 2021. “Unitarianism or Hierarchical Approach for Moral Status? A Very Subtle Difference”. Relations. Beyond Anthropocentrism 9: 91-107.Clark, Stephen R.L. 2011. “Animals in Classical and Late Antique Philosophy”. In The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp and Raymond G. Frey, 35-60. Oxford: Oxford University Press.DeGrazia, David. 1996. Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Descartes, René. 2009a. “Letter to Plempius” (3 October 1637). In René Descartes. Tutte le lettere 1619-1650, a cura di Giulia Belgioioso, 422-438. Milano: Bom-piani.Descartes, René. 2009b. “Letter to the Marquis of Newcastle” (23 November 1646). In René Descartes. Tutte le lettere 1619-1650, a cura di Giulia Belgioioso, 2346-2353. Milano: Bompiani.Descartes, René. 2009c. “Letter to More” (5 February 1649). In René Descartes. Tutte le lettere 1619-1650, a cura di Giulia Belgioioso, 2614-2625. Milano: Bompiani.Landucci, Sergio. 2002. La mente in Cartesio. Milano: FrancoAngeli.Mori, Gianluca. 2010. Cartesio. Roma: Carocci.Relations – 11.2 - December 2023https://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ - Online ISSN 2280-9643 - Print ISSN 2283-319691Better Descartes than AristotleCopyright (©) 2023 Francesco Allegri Editorial format and graphical layout: copyright (©) LED Edizioni Universitarie This work is licensed under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives – 4.0 International LicenseHow to cite this paper: Allegri, Francesco. 2023. “Better Descartes than Aristotle: Talking about Those Who Deny Moral Consideration to Animals”. Relations. Beyond Anthropo-centrism 11 (2): 85-91. doi: https://doi.org/10.7358/rela-2023-02-allfRelations – 11.2 - December 2023https://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ - Online ISSN 2280-9643 - Print ISSN 2283-3196

Better Descartes than Aristotle: Talking About Those Who Deny Moral Consideration to Animals

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Better Descartes than Aristotle: Talking About Those Who Deny Moral Consideration to Animals

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