The moral status of the non-human animals in the Western European philosophical tradition
Abstract
https://doi.org/10.21860/j.17.1.2
The moral status of the non-human animals is one of the most current areas of interest of ethics research. This is because the question of the status of non-human animals should be reconsidered, as traditional attempts to justify granting them rights have focused on identifying similarities between animals and humans. However, from an ontological and epistemological perspective, this question is poorly formulated and problematic; it should instead be framed as: “What are the conditions under which an entity becomes a moral subject?” In seeking an answer, this article revisits the history of Western philosophy to examine how this question has been understood, with the aim of clarifying contemporary positions and proposing a solution: to treat animals in ways comparable to how we treat one another and to refrain from using them instrumentally, instead respecting them as partners.
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