The Value of Human Life: Are We More than Animals?

Since the Enlightenment, Western society has become increasingly secular and, in recent times, post-Christian.  What this means for a discussion about suicide and euthanasia is that the value of human life is no longer considered distinctly from animal life.  A Jewish and Christian understanding stands in opposition to this developing culture.

 The reduction of human life to a merely animal status is a characteristic of post-Christian, Western culture.  Pamela Smith provides a survey of this perspective in her book, Environmental Ethics?, which is significant for this survey.  Western thought has developed along two trajectories in this matter.  First, Immanuel Kant’s deontological (duty-based) tradition concerns itself with ‘justice’ and ‘rights’, and therefore people speak of ‘animal rights’.  Second, Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian principle—‘do the greatest good to the greatest number of people—places the group—some group—over the individual.  Kantian ethics looks at universalizable ethics (if it is right for one, it must also be right for all) that are duty-based, and therefore arguments regarding what is just appeal to rights due to what has intrinsic worth.  Utilitarian arguments, on the other hand, determine extrinsic value according to the needs of society.  Animal activists might extend this utilitarian principle from humans to all animals.

 Both Kant and Bentham wrote in the 1700’s.  Kant insisted that reason is the basis for possessing moral duty—one cannot hold someone (or some animal) accountable in the absence of reason.  Bentham argued that rights being extended to all humans might someday also be extended to animals because those rights are not based on the ability to reason but on the possibility of experiencing suffering.  Peter Singer, a vegetarian and well-known advocate for an ethic of animal rights, argues that the emotions or passions are a better starting point for ethics.  He begins for his thought with Jeremy Bentham, who argued that ‘the capacity for suffering rather than for reasoning or talking ought to be the starting point for any discussion of “moral status” and the recipients of humanity’s “moral duties”.’

Tom Regan’s argument for human rights is based on both Kantian and Benthamite arguments.  Following Kant, he argues for an egalitarian justice for animals and humans because they both show the ability to reason.  Regan condemns ‘animal agriculture’, hunting, trapping, experiments using animals on the basis that most animals possess an ‘inherent value’ and therefore should be regarded as equal to humans.  This inherent value is based on the conviction that non-humans often show themselves to be ‘subjects-of-a-life’—having awareness, being able to express preferences, and capable of intentionally moving towards certain goals in their actions.

Regan does not limit himself to a Kantian approach to ethics that focusses on inherent value—dignity.  He also offers a utilitarian argument.  For Regan, what would be the moral argument to kill a rabid dog attacking a child?  In this case, the argument for inherent value based on reasoning is removed.  Regan still argues that it is not right to kill the rabid dog on the convictional basis that the child is human (the human dignity argument) but because the dog threatens a greater number of individuals and will do greater harm (the grief its death will cause, e.g.) should the child die rather than the dog.  In the language of ‘rights’, the child’s rights override those of the dog.  A negative utilitarian principle (‘do the greatest good to the greatest number of people’) operates in this case: choose to kill the creature whose demise will cause the least amount of grief to others.  Such reasoning—so far from Christianity—reduces humans to mere animal status.

Anthony Povilitis argues that ‘rights’ are not intrinsic, i.e., belonging to a thing’s very essence, but are assigned to animals, including humans, as moral agents perceive value in them.  This frees Povilitis from trying to define ‘moral status, requirements of moral agency, and reciprocity’: he prefers to speak of a new ‘worldview’ in which we decide to extend rights to other living things.  Such an argument is precisely why many look for a way to establish inherent rights after all: if justice is honoured only if a group grants rights to another group, then it would be just to annihilate a species or ethnic group if the ruling community chooses not to grant them rights.  We have been there before in purely human situations (let alone animal rights), whether in Turkey’s slaughter of Armenians, Nazi Germany’s slaughter of Jews, America’s removal of the human rights of the foetus, the genocide in Rwanda, certain Islamic groups killing of Christians, such as in Nigeria, and so forth.  Most of us will recoil at an argument such as that of Povilitis, but we regularly see it implemented in modern society.

The social argument for extending rights to animals begins by observing the social instincts of animals.  Animals are aware, feel, have preferences, pursue certain interests.  E.g., Jane Goodall wrote about how chimpanzees help their kin and avoid incest, and Frans de Waal about how they practice justice and obey certain rules for sex.  Singer believes that mammals and some birds and fish have beliefs and desires, retain a ‘psychophysical identity over time’, and have a ‘preference autonomy’, which means they should be thought of as ‘moral patients’ of us, who are ‘moral agents’.  This in turn involves seeing that they have ‘rights,’ such as the right to respectful treatment.  Thus, we should extend vices associated with ‘rights’ thinking from racism and sexism to ‘speciesism’.

James Rachels says that ‘killing an animal that has a rich biographical life might be more objectionable than killing one that has a simpler life’.  Mary Midgley (Beast and Man and Animals and Why They Matter), however, treats humanity as part of a whole greater than itself in which various animals excel humans in many ways.  Midgley avoids egalitarian and rights language to allow for differences between individuals and species.

Jay McDaniel prefers to develop an ethic on the ground of humans and animals in relation to each other than to do so on a notion of animal ‘rights’.  This, in turn, involves not seeing animals as a ‘means to an end’, such as for food, cosmetic testing, clothes, recreation.  An ethic of respect can be derived from a theology of creation (‘ecospirituality’), and liberation theology (a ‘rights’ ethic focussed on the virtue of freedom) can be expanded to include ‘speciesism’.

A Jew or a Christian, looking at the creation story in Genesis 1-3, distinguish between humans and animals, even though all are creatures.  Men and women are created in God’s image (Genesis 1.26-27).  This gives them dominion over the other creatures (1.26, 28).  In Genesis 9.3, humans are told that they may eat every living thing.  God will require a reckoning from any animal and human taking a human’s life—the death penalty (Genesis 9.5-6).  Thus, the Judeo-Christian tradition sets human life distinct from, not just above, animals, and it sets an understanding of human worth not in utilitarian or other moral terms but on an ontological basis: humans are created in the image of God.

Being created in the image of God is related to an Ancient Near Eastern understanding of image-making.  In Genesis, God breathed into man once he was formed from the earth, making him a living creature (Genesis 2.7).  Making an idol in the Ancient Near East was an intricate and sacred practice.  After the idol is formed from material, a certain ceremony was performed.  It involved mouth opening and washing of the idol.  This allegedly enlivened the idol with the deity’s presence.  An idol was not just a statue or figurine meant to represent the deity.  It was an enlivened presence of the deity.  Genesis takes this Ancient Near Eastern notion and applies it to the creation of man, different from the animals.  Humans were given dominion over the animals as God’s images.  Adam was unique in his authority to name all the creatures, and no creature was a fit helper for him.  So, God made woman to be his helper (Genesis 2.19-21). 

While the animal rights arguments noted above aim to dignify animals so that they might be protected, we should note that the Genesis account and the whole Bible see humans as distinct from the other animals.  Humans not only have a higher level of reason or a more complex society and so forth, they are distinct.  Being in God’s image, they are not to be killed.  Animals are protected not because of ‘rights’ but because humans are responsible for their care.  Responsibility, not rights, provides an ethic that distinguishes humans from animals.

In the case of humans, we not only have responsibility for one another but are also ontologically valued as creatures created in God’s image.  This reasoning lies behind the simply stated Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not murder.  The reasoning extends to the questions of suicide and assisted suicide.  We are not to treat humans as animals.  Our responsibility over animals entails a dominion over them that entails both a matter of creation care and a right to kill and eat them.  In the case of humans, our responsibility is simply to care for one another.  Cain infamously says to God, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ (Genesis 4.9).  The question is not answered, but it is the question of a guilty and condemned man, a man whose assumption was that, having no responsibility for his brother, he might kill him.  The Biblical narrative suggests that we do have responsibility for the life of other humans.