Fellow Creatures

Over the last several decades, Christine Korsgaard has produced a tightly woven body of moral philosophy that incorporates strands from philosophy of mind and history of philosophy as well. Fellow Creatures deepens and extends this body of work and also provides an overview of her previous work. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Korsgaard's philosophy or anyone who is concerned about the ethics of our treatment of animals.Fellow Creatures is a strikingly honest engagement with a broad range of work in animal ethics and the problems that this work addresses. Korsgaard's approach to the literature is both constructive and charitable. She builds on progress that has been made by others, signaling her disagreements when this is important for clarifying a claim or argument. The book is not an exercise in point-scoring or in correcting the mistakes of others. When Korsgaard is uncertain of her conclusions or unsure about what to say, she says so. The writing is conversational and clear. In short, this book is a model of how to write and practice philosophy.In part 1, “Humans and the Other Animals,” Korsgaard rejects the idea that humans are morally superior to other animals while endorsing the view that humans are different from animals in ways that matter. Chapter 1 develops the key concept of “tethered value”: “Everything that is important is important to someone” (15). On this view, value is irreducibly “perspective-dependent” (168): it is not “impersonal,” and the good cannot be aggregated. Tethered value implies that judgments of comparative value between people and other animals are incoherent, for “there is no place to stand and make” such judgments, “at least...with any plausibility” (15). Nevertheless, a concept of “absolute goodness” can be retained that is consistent with tethered value: what is of absolute goodness is what is good for everyone. In chapter 2, Korsgaard distinguishes two senses of ‘good’: the “functional sense” (e.g., good of its kind), and the “final sense” (e.g., good worth having, realizing, or bringing about for its own sake). All living organisms have functional goods, but only animals have final goods. Final goods are a source of moral standing. Conscious experience is a final good that is also an absolute good since it is “in itself good for people and animals alike” (16). Humans are different from other animals in that they actively constitute their selves while animal self-constitution is passive, a distinction she goes on to explain in chapter 3. Although animals are self-conscious (since conscious experience and self-consciousness are entwined and matters of degree), intelligent, and can be agents, they respond to the world instinctively (39). Humans, on the other hand, “regard themselves as the source of our actions..., regard it as up to us who and what we are.... We have a ‘practical identity’ that we create for ourselves” (46). Chapter 4 goes on to argue that these (and other) differences between humans and animals do not constitute grounds for thinking that humans are superior to other animals. “Ethical life,” according to Korsgaard, “is an attempt to bring some unity or harmony into our various evaluative perspectives, by choosing those ends that are good for all of us” (74).Part 2, “Immanuel Kant and the Animals,” explicates and assesses Kant's views regarding animals and revises them in a way that Korsgaard thinks is more in keeping with his theory. According to Kant, humans have moral standing because they are rational, but animals are not rational and so do not have moral standing. Consequently, our duties to humans are direct, but our duties to animals are indirect. In chapter 5, Korsgaard considers a general argument that has been given against views that hold that there is a property possessed by all and only humans in virtue of which they have moral standing. This “Argument from Marginal Cases” concludes that, for all such properties on offer (including rationality), either some humans lack the property or some animals have it. When aimed at Kant this argument is misdirected, according to Korsgaard, since on his view rationality is not a property which a being may or may not have. Rationality is rather a way of functioning, and “a creature who is constructed to function...by reasoning but who is still developing or has been damaged [i.e., a ‘marginal case’] is still a rational creature” (85). Creatures are, on this view, atemporal, and so their moral standing is not something that is acquired or lost but rather “belongs to you as a creature whose life it is” (86). This bold claim has far reaching implications and is, according to Korsgaard, the foundation of Kant's view that we have direct duties only to humans. Korsgaard divides the claim that we have direct duties to humans but only indirect duties to animals into two parts: first, that we cannot owe duties directly to other animals, and second, that the grounds for our duties to treat other animals well is the effect of doing so on our own characters. Chapter 6 argues against the second claim, and chapter 7 argues against the first. In chapter 8, Korsgaard develops her own version of “A Kantian Case for Our Obligations to the Other Animals.” The conclusion of her argument is that “we are committed to the view of animals as ends in themselves” (150) because “we recognize them to be fellow creatures, with a good of their own just like ours” (148). She agrees with Kant that “our moral relations to animals have a different basis and a different shape than our moral relations to other people” (148). This creates problems for achieving the “highest good,” since the interests of animals are “irreparably contrary” (154), but that is no reason not to treat them as ends in themselves. Part 2 ends with chapter 9, “The Role of Pleasure and Pain,” in which she notes her agreement with Singer that animals have moral standing in virtue of their capacity for pleasure and pain, but also sketches her differences with Singer.In part 3, “Consequences,” Korsgaard organizes her discussion around what she calls “the animal antinomy,” which is rooted in the conflict between “our moral standards and the way that nature works” (215). A prime example of this conflict is predation, which Korsgaard illustrates with several horrifying examples. She thinks that whether or not we ought to try to eliminate predation is “one of the most vexing questions in animal ethics” (173). Eliminating predation would be an exercise in what Korsgaard calls “creation ethics,” in effect replacing existing wild animals with newly created domestic animals through such means as genetic manipulation. The inhabitants of the resulting peaceable kingdom, like the domestic animals that now exist, would in almost every way be dependent on humans. This relation of dependency is pervaded by force, and it is extremely difficult, she thinks, to treat domesticated animals as ends in themselves. The critique of dependency and domestication gives rise to abolitionism, the view that we should have as little to do with animals as possible, a thought that in turn “leads to apartheid: humans and animals must be separate but equal, and live on the opposite sides of a great divide” (179). The elements of the animal antinomy are now in place: we have reason to eliminate predation, but were we to do so, then all animals would be under our control; we have reason to abolish practices that involve having animals under our control, but were we to do so, then all animals would be wild and predation would occur. The key to resolving this antinomy, Korsgaard thinks, is in rejecting the principle that “ought implies can.” Accepting this principle “means thinking that there must be some guarantee that morality and nature are going to fit together somehow,” and “without some sort of theological underpinning there is simply no reason to believe that that's true” (218). Korsgaard's own view about predation is that a “‘preservation ethic’ is superior to a creation ethic” (218). “We have no obligation to...take on the role of the creator..., but we do have obligations to support or at least not to undermine existing animal communities” (208). She seems to endorse abolitionism with respect to eating animals and using them in scientific experiments, while carving out some exceptions for working animals and companion animals.This book advances the discussion on every subject that it touches, and in this short review I cannot do justice to the subtlety of the argument or the range of the topics that it takes up. It is also a book that invites further discussion. In the space that remains, I want to make one broad comment about the project as a whole.Korsgaard characterizes her view (which she thinks is also Kant's) as “Kantian naturalism”(167–68). This position is located between the antinaturalist tradition, which often claims Kant for itself, and thoroughgoing naturalistic views. She agrees with naturalistic animal ethicists that humans are not morally superior to other animals, while agreeing with Kant that humans are different from other animals. She is certainly right in saying that humans are different from other animals, for every animal is different from every other animal. The question we should be concerned with is what important difference a particular difference makes, and for what purpose.1 For Korsgaard, the difference between humans and animals is important because it sets up a sharp dichotomy between humans and nature: “The natural world staunchly resists moral reorganization” (215). Human morality can “produce a universally shared, absolute good,” but this hope is gone once we take animals into account (154). This is because (as we have seen) the interests of animals (including “ourselves as animals”) are “irreparably contrary” (154). In staking out her middle ground, Korsgaard remains under the spell of Kant's idea of the “highest good,” even while recognizing that it is illusory.There is another way of looking at morality, one which views “ourselves as animals.” On this view morality is an institution whose very existence is a response to “irreparably contrary” interests. Expanding the circle of morality to include other animals complicates matters but does not fundamentally alter them. We and our fellow creatures are all part of a natural order that was not designed with our interests in mind. Humans may resist nature more successfully than some animals (though less successfully than others) but, in the end, there is no question about who is the boss. Nature is out to kill us, and it succeeds. No one is exempt: not the most humble housefly nor the noblest philosopher. These are the rules of the game in which we find ourselves. Despite Korsgaard's rejection of this way of looking at morality and the thoroughgoing naturalism on which it is based, there is much in this book that betrays her attraction to such views, for example, in her serious and sober discussions of wild animal suffering and whether humans should go extinct. The depth of her feelings of solidarity with her fellow creatures is revealed most eloquently in the final sentence of the book: “There is something about the naked, unfiltered joy that animals take in little things—a food treat, an uninhibited romp, a patch of sunlight, a belly rub from a friendly human—that reawakens our sense of the all-important thing that we share with them: the sheer joy and terror of conscious existence” (237). The kind of naturalism that puts the joy and terror of all animal life at the center does not describe a simple path to a systematic philosophy, but it opens up some remarkable vistas. It is to Korsgaard's credit that in addition to making such a powerful case for a Kant-inspired animal ethics, she also provides us with glimpses of what may lie beyond.Many thanks to Alice Crary and Beatrice Longuenesse, whose comments on an earlier draft provoked some significant improvements

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