Moral Perfectionism, Virtues, and Animal Rights
Moral Perfectionism, Virtues, and Animal Rights
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In Introduction to Ethics, John Deigh expresses a common objection against hedonism argues as follows: “By taking pleasure and freedom from pain as the sole elements of well-being, hedonism would seem to have reduced human well-being to animal well-being and therefore to have denied that it consists in anything special to human existence.” In other words, in understanding happiness as pleasure, hedonist accounts lack of specificity and could not distinguish between animal or human well-being.
With their views, perfectionists such as Plato and Aristotle aim at providing accounts of happiness and moral virtue that are specific to human beings. In this sense, they develop ethical theories where human nature and its peculiarities function as compasses orienting one’s philosophical moves.
And yet, this may very well have controversial and even counterintuitive consequences when considering issues related to animal rights. In effect, if one accepts as the horizon of moral inquiry that one inscribed within human nature and happiness, it might be very difficult to vindicate within that context a suitable notion of animal rights. If morality has to do with humans and their happiness, how can we account for the well-being of animals? Do animals possess essentially moral rights, or are they simply a derivation of human interest?
I think the happiness of animals is related to human moral behavior, virtue influence moral behavior of the human mind. The happiness of people related to the moral, the happiness of animals also related with human morality. Humans have thought, has the ability to no other animals, so human grasp the life and death of the animal, also can feel the happiness of animals.
For my opinion, animals do not have moral rights, I think they simply a derivation of human interest. Maybe they don’t know moral right. In animal’s world, they don’t have any moral code, so there is no moral right. Mankind may enact laws, protect their rights and interests, but I think it’s only human to social harmony and moral behavior caused because the mind beauty. The biggest dilemma of animal rights is not out of human rights discourse language to express system and value system, and to enact laws to protect animals is a kind of consciousness of human to human obligations.
