How Demands Shape Morality

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.21860/j.15.1.7

Although Kant’s ethics excludes non-human animals from direct moral concern, animal ethics can still benefit from it. Some of Kant’s statements provide incentives for developing moral obligations towards non-human animals, rather than simply concerning them. These incentives are primarily found in two of his statements. Firstly, Kant defines duty as “the
necessity of an action from respect for law,” but also as “moral constraint [Nötigung] by [another] subject’s will.” Therefore, the duty can be understood as a demand. In the Kantian framework, this demand can only come from another person, not non-human animals. However, Kant also acknowledges that man’s “reason certainly has a commission from the side of his sensibility which it cannot refuse.” Suppose this demand, arising from sensibility, can be interpreted as a demand of our animality in its own right. In that case, there should be no obstacles to rejecting the moral consideration of demands presented to us from the standpoint of a non-human being’s animality. The paper categorizes demands as either articulated or silent and as either moral or related to self-realization. It argues that non-human animals can indirectly shape moral demands by expressing their silent demands for self-realization. They do so indirectly because moral demands can only be articulated in our practical reason.