Oldal 71 [71]
What must I do (and why me)? | 69
2. Back, but where to?
For the first representatives of radical or deep ecology, it seemed obvious
that the expansion of the range of actions falling under ethical judgment
goes together with the denial of the special role of human beings. The
rules of the republic of nature apply to our species just as much as to
anyone else and the privilege of self-awareness, if anything, obliges
homo sapiens to behave in accord with these laws.
The philosophers aiming to create the ideological basis for the animal
liberation movement thoroughly scandalised their contemporaries when
they dismissed as speciesist prejudice the traditional position of
humanism, according to which the only inhabitant of the ethical
universe is man.*° But why should the capacity for rational thought
entitle our species to privileges over other beings, whose other good
qualities place them far above man, such as flying, climbing trees,
running or the capacity to communicate with their fellows at long
distance? From a neutral, i.e., inter-species standpoint, this approach
can by no means be called ethical or just. It rather indicates that we are
not superior to our fellow beings. That only man knows good and evil
— i.e., only he possesses ethical self-awareness — does not excuse him
from taking the interests of other beings into consideration. If we want
to be consistent, claims Singer, we cannot present a single criterion of
moral considerability that would apply to all humans and that would
not thereby also apply to other beings besides us. (Ethical self-awareness
itself is by no means the possession of every human: for instance, no-one
has it in the first year of his/her life, i.e., it is not born with us. ‘This is
nevertheless no obstacle to including infants or the mentally disabled
under ethical accountability.)
Whose wellbeing matters, therefore? Whose good should we will?
‘The adherents of various schools of ethics offer varying answers to this
question (also). If, as the utilitarians claim, the ethical good can be
identified with the greatest happiness of the greatest number and evil
with causing suffering, then it follows that we have to take into account
the interests of all those capable of joy and suffering, according to their
level of sentience. Those with a central nervous system are placed in
front and even within this group the hierarchy is determined by the
development of the brain functions enabling the experience of pleasure
30 Peter Singer: Animal Liberation. A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. Harper
Collins, 1975.