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Human rights v animal rights: seamless expressions of empathy?

By Stephen Keim and Jordan Sosnowski - posted Monday, 31 December 2012


All campaigners, whether they be advocating on behalf of animals or humans, must struggle against the above psychological truth. In the 2010 Blackburn Lecture, Julian Burnside invoked the idea that people care more about animals than their fellow humans. Mr Burnside was comparing the upsurge of public outrage in response to the treatment of animals exported to the Middle East to the apparent lack of public concern about the treatment of asylum seekers who make it to Australian shores.

The difference in public response may be more apparent than real. More than 500 million animals live and die each year in factory farms in Australia, without noticeable outbursts of concern by the Australian public.

Throughout the history of human learning, there have been people who have been able to combine working to advance human rights with the promotion of kindness and tolerance towards animals.

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The two causes are not mutually exclusive. We should not be surprised by this. They each flow from the ability to care about the interests of others.

There should not be arbitrary bounds to the empathy we feel for others.

Pythagoras

Pythagoras is best known for his contribution to mathematics and western philosophy. However, he also practised a Buddhist-like notion of kindness towards animals and was a strict vegetarian.

His greatest mathematical discovery was the infamous theorem concerning right-angled triangles. Pythagoras was at home in geometry which commences with things that are self-evident and leads, by way of deductive reasoning, to conclusions that are not only not self-evident but not at all obvious.

Pythagoras' methodology is reflected in the famous words of the 1776 Declaration of Independence of the American colonies, one of the foundation human rights instruments: "We hold these truths to be self-evident".

Pythagoras also founded a religion based on the transmigration of souls, making him one of the first Western thinkers to advance the idea of reincarnation. His ideas promoted equality between men and women – a view that was very progressive for his time. His emphasis on equality led him to practise an early form of communism.

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The same font of ideas, however, also led to a strong belief in taking steps to advance animal welfare. Pythagoras did not eat the flesh of animals. Nor did he allow his followers to kill animals in sacrifice. His concern for the welfare of humans and animals was inter-connected. Pythagoras: '[A]s long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love'.

Pythagoras was influential in widening the moral compass of future great thinkers to include animals among the beings worthy of human empathy.

Mary Wollstonecraft and the Romantics

Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the earliest feminists and is famous for championing the women's rights movement. However, her views, in an interesting cascade, led to others close to her advancing the cause of animal rights.

In 1792, Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which advocated sexual equality and a dramatic change in education of women so that women were not simply taught how to be 'alluring mistresses' but also 'rational mothers'. As was the case with Pythagoras, Wollstonecraft's concern for the rights of women was far ahead of its time.

Wollstonecraft's daughter, Mary Shelley, gave a new focus to her mother's ideas in the famous Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft had written that women 'are treated as a kind of subordinate beings, and not as a part of the human species'. Mary Shelley created Dr Frankenstein's Monster. The Monster is cast as an 'outsider' but, interestingly, is also a vegetarian. By gaining sympathy for the 'outsider', Mary Shelley utilises her Mother's concept of equality to highlight issues common to both women's rights and animal rights.

Mary Shelley's husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, was also influenced by Wollstonecraft's ideas of equality when he wrote A Vindication of Natural Diet. Shelley saw abstinence from meat as a social levelling mechanism, a way to bring about a restructure of the classes by foregoing needless luxuries.

Shelley's writing also employs a theme of pacifism towards all beings and his work carries 'an explicitly vegetarian message'. Shelley articulated the idea that pacifism and equality extended beyond the human circumstance, to all those who could feel pain.

His teachings influenced later writers including George Bernard Shaw and Mahatma Ghandi.

William Wilberforce and his legacy

William Wilberforce is primarily known for his pivotal role in abolishing the slave trade in England. However, he was also one of the founding members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and a strong supporter of legal rights for animals.

Wilberforce funded hospitals and schools and was a patron of the arts. He also advocated for laws to prevent the exploitation of child labour.

Wilberforce's passion for social justice stemmed from a deeply religious base and a commitment to benevolence towards others.

The statute to abolish the slave trade finally came into effect in 1808. When the legislation was passed, Wilberforce reacted by asking, '[W]ell, what shall we abolish next?'

He devoted his energies, alongside MP Richard Martin and other humanitarians, to establish the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The first goal of the group was to reduce the improper treatment of cattle in the trip to urban slaughter. This was achieved in 1822 with the passage of 'Martin's Act', the first specific piece of anti-cruelty legislation in the world.

For Wilberforce, the issue was not whether the abolitionist cause was more important than preventing cruelty to animals. Both causes sought to correct injustice caused, in each case, by a lack of benevolence and consideration for others.

Conclusion

Philosophically, the causes of human and animal rights are not mutually exclusive.

For activists, the constraints of time, energy and resources mean that choices must be made as to the particular field in which one seeks to correct the injustices that we see in too much abundance around us.

Those constraints should not lead us to accept that other injustices, on which others spend their time, are less important or more acceptable because they are not the ones to which we devote our energy.

Even if multi-focussed activity is not possible for us as individuals, we should appreciate the work of others who fight injustice in a different sphere to that in which we fight ourselves.

The enemy of most people who campaign against injustice is a lack of empathy on the part of those whom we seek to persuade and enlist to our cause. The ability to feel empathy, as the famous quote from George Steiner at the beginning of the article illustrates, can fall away even as the injustice involves cruelty to many.

In our opinion, it is important to encourage the ability to feel empathy both for humans and the animals with whom we share this small planet. It is a precious commodity. We should not let it be wasted.

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This article was first published in Justinian.



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About the Authors

Stephen Keim has been a legal practitioner for 30 years, the last 23 of which have been as a barrister. He became a Senior Counsel for the State of Queensland in 2004. Stephen is book reviews editor for the Queensland Bar Association emagazine Hearsay. Stephen is President of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights and is also Chair of QPIX, a non-profit film production company that develops the skills of emerging film makers for their place in industry.

Jordan Sosnowski is an Associate Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She graduated from Monash University with a Master of Laws, Juris Doctor and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland, majoring in Philosophy and English Literature. Jordan is the recipient of a Summer Research Grant from Michigan State University and is currently working in the field of legal research for the Animal Legal & Historical Web Center.

Other articles by these Authors

All articles by Stephen Keim
All articles by Jordan Sosnowski

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