Weak ethics. Strong feelings

Transcription

1 In: J. Keulartz, M. Korthals, M. Schermer and T. Swierstra, (eds.), Pragmatist Ethics for a Technological Culture, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht 2002, pp Weak ethics. Strong feelings Comments on Michiel Korthals, A Multi Practices Ethics of Domesticated and Wild Animals Hans Harbers It is half past one at night. Just finished Jan Siebelink s, My life with Tikker. About fourteen years of intense togetherness between the author and his soul mate Tikker. In the final chapter Tikker, the dog, dies. The story is over. I can t sleep. I m sad. Thinking about Romke, my own dog, sleeping downstairs. Is he? Sooner or later he will die too. But not yet? I get up, go down, and snuggle alongside him on the couch. He turns on his back, stretches, and breathes deeply. Intense mutual pleasure. Lunacies like these are typical for what Korthals describes as the practice of companian animals. And no reasonable person would expect to impose such an exorbitant intimacy with animals on other practices of human-animal relations, like farming or experimental animal research. We don t have at our disposal a strong animal ethics, applicable for all practices and generally accepted; and it would be rather unpragmatic to develop and enforce one. But strong feelings towards animals we have positive or negative. Such feelings, I would argue, should not be passed over too quickly as mere sentiments or unarticulated intuitions. On the contrary, they are a cornerstone of (not only moral) deliberations and learning processes concerning human-animal relations. Weak ethics but strong feelings. In his contribution A Multi Practices Ethics of Domesticated and Wild Animals Korthals argues for a pragmatic, multi practices oriented, animal ethics. I fully endorse the first, pragmatic part of his programme. It avoids any foundationalist or essentialist reference to a kind of natural situation. Korthals gives two related reasons for this pragmatism. First,

2 there is no natural situation, and therefore, secondly, essentialism, in whatever fashion, can not handle the four dilemma s he reconstructs in human-animal relationships. In one or another way each animal ethics Korthals distinguishes refers to something like a stable, universal, apriori given Nature, which leads to normative criteria such as animal rights, genetic integrity, ecosystem equilibrium of animal welfare. Rejecting these criteria, Korthals argues for a nonfoundationalist pragmatism in animal ethics, i.e. for practice-related ethical learning processes. This kind of pragmatism, I believe, can not be argued for frequently enough; especially in times of crises due to BSE or food and mouth disease, when foundationalism and misplaced sentimentalism run rampant not only among ordinary citizens but also among professional ethicists. As if pigs, cows and sheep at a farm always should be treated the same way as cats and dogs at the service flat. In discussions like these, Korthals Walzerian idea of spheres of animal ethics has a wholesome effect. His multi practice approach acknowledges that ethical rules and considerations only function within the context of a specific practice; that is in close relation to other concerns, for example of a more social, esthetic, environmental, historical or cultural kind. Consequently, animal ethics is not a matter of top-down regulation and legislation, but of bottom-up learning processes. Both the triangulation of those, often conflicting, concerns within one practice and clashes between different practices, possibly leading to a translation of the vocabulary of one practice to another, feed this learning process. So, Korthals pragmatism does not need abstract principles or rules to move on. Exit ethical visions from nowhere. At best, we human animals can help ourselves, muddling through practices. Nevertheless, Korthals formulates a general, practice-independent animal ethics however much minimal. First, he says, animals deserve serious, though not equal, ethical consideration. And secondly, the more animals fall within our responsibility and are dependent on us, the more we must care for them. Apart from the question whether the formulation of these general principles is philosophically consistent with Korthals own pragmatism, i.e. with his multi practices approach, the content of these principles is disputable. How far does the idea of ethical consideration of animals actually reach or, normatively, do we want it to reach? All animals in all situations? Or only some in some situations? But then: which ones in which situations? That s just a matter of those learning processes, Korthals will riposte. Granted, but is the answer on those questions an ethical one, or even more specific: one of animal ethics? What, in fact, do we mean by (animal) ethics? I would like to push Korthals argument one step further. These learning processes are not so much a matter of moral learning, resulting into an (animal) ethics. On the contrary, we

3 are faced with rather uncontrolled, for heterogeneously driven and thus contingent developments within and between practices developments in which all kinds of facts, artifacts, and ideas play a role: economic changes, technological novelties, rational calculations, cultural traditions, sentiments, and, may be, sometimes, even moral considerations and ethical principles. To illustrate my point, I go back for a while to the farm I grew up in the fifties and sixties. picture 1: parental farm Our farm was a mixed firm partly agriculture, partly cattle farming. Behind the farmhouse are two stables, one for store pigs and one for breeding pigs. Surely, in Korthals categorisation these pigs belong to the practice of livestock. But did we entertain one and the same relation towards all pigs? Of course not. Our affection and level of care for breeding pigs the sows, the board, and the piggies was much more intense than for store pigs. We were not allowed to enter the stable for store pigs outside feeding time. They were hold to sleep and to grow for slaughter, as quick as possible. Don t disturb. So, even only this first human-animal relation was internally differentiated. Even more so taking into consideration our relation with other animals at the farm. Max, the horse, for example.

4 picture 2: Max, the horse Max was the most important animal on the entire farm, since he was literally the farm s tractive power at that time we didn t have a mechanical tractor. We did everything for him. We brushed him, we stroked him, in exceptional cases we even gave him sweets (when he had brought into our house all the harvest grain and hay). Indeed, we loved him. But up to a certain amount, of course: we sold him at the livestock market as soon as we bought a tractor and good old Max became economically superfluous. A painful decision, but made without any moral doubt. picture 3: Teddy, the dog Then we had a dog, of course. The closest to us, humans, may be, and thus, according to Korthals second ethical principle the most in need of care. But was he always cared for? Not in the way I, nowadays, treat my dog, Romke, as a pet in a middle-class neighbourhood in the

5 centre of a city. Our farm-dog ran off for days, caring for himself. Once only he did not came back. And I remember our second dog: he bit to death the sheep of the neighbours. My father killed him by breaking his neck with a stick sadly enough, but there was no other way of departing life we could financially afford. To the same practice of companion animals Korthals reckons animals for sports, recreation and entertainment. We had them too: on sunday afternoon, for reasons of killing time, out of downright boredom, or just for fun we shot, with an airgun, sparrows from the roof. No ethical problem at all. Who cares?! There were other animals we had to keep away from the farm: rats, mice they were catched and killed or poisoned as much as possible. In that sense they were the wild animals, for us, in that specific context. And, don t forget, the hermite. On hot summerdays, when a few boards were removed from the backside of our crumbling henhouse (see picture 3 in the background), in order to give a bit more fresh air to the chickens, she, the hermite, climbed in and killed hens simply by sucking their blood like Dracula. We could not catch, kill or poison her. The only thing we could do was to put back the boards again, in order to keep her out of our system in favour of the chickens of course. For them we had to care. But also only to a certain amount: as soon as they did not lay eggs anymore, we killed them, and then, in the weekend, we enjoyed our chicken soup and drumsticks. In other cases we even were much more brute in killing animals, for example using pesticides. Every summer an airplaine sprayed pesticides on our patato fields to protect them against Phytophthora a very destructive disease. All right, that s about potatoes and fungus plants, not animals. But we used pesticides for animals as well. In the cowshed and the pigsty for instance we rubbed the walls with a blue stuff I don t quite remember the name killing the flies and other insects. The cowshed. I did not mention them yet: our cows. To let them produce milk as much as possible we treated them very well. And once, when a cow would not stand still during milking and my father, having had a bad day, kicked the cow with his wooden shoes, roughly and firmly and not only once but several times, we were embarrassed and he too, afterwards. This is what you might do to some other animals, not to cows. They look big and stupid, but they were part of us and not only as economic instruments.

6 picture 4: milking cows I could go on and on telling about all the animals at our farm we related to differently. But the points I want to make might be clear enough. First, it is impossible to distinguish different practices as clearly as Korthals wants it. Almost all practices he mentions except the captive zoo-animals were present at our farm, itself to be characterized as a practice of very divergent human-animal relations. So, there is no clear external boundary, neither internal coherence. Practices mix and are internally diffentiated. Secondly, if we practiced any ethical principle at all, it were not only animals who counted, as Korthals first principle suggests. Talking about human-animal relations implies to take into account humans as well. Animal ethics is doomed to fail if not taking on board consideration for them for their interests, their feelings, their pains. Surely, Korthals will agree on that, keen as he is on social, esthetical and environmental aspects of practices. But where are the economic aspects in his story? I missed them, since these were constitutive for all the divergent human-animal relations at our farm. Thirdly, and related to the latter point, did we care (or not) for animals out of ethical considerations? I don t think so. The different human-animal relations at our farm were organized by a heterogeneous set of considerations economical ones of course, but not only these. Sentiments and intuitions also played an important role. Not false, romantic sentiments, or silly and unarticulated intuitions. On the contrary. As the example about the embarrassment at my father kicking the cow illustrates, our divergent human-animal relations were deeply

7 embedded in routines and habits. Strong feelings, solidly anchored in generations old traditions, guided our divergent relations with animals much more than explicit ethical principles. We did not have any, I guess. In other words: what do we expect from bottom-up learning processes: ethical and philosophical adequate legitimations or, more mundane but no less effective, new customs and daily habits? Perhaps animal ethics should become still more modest and minimal than Korthals wants to have it already. Finally, Korthals second (Humean) principle the closer to us, the more care needed does not seem to work in all circumstances. Look at the chicken: rather close, but no problem with slaughtering them after having lost their primary function laying eggs. Or remember the second dog: killed brutish after he bit the sheep. We felt pain about his death and even more about the way it happened. But it had to be. It was a hard life at the farm, but not hard-hearted. This historization and contextualization of human-animal relations, pushing Korthals pragmatism one step further, can be turned around, paradoxically enough, to the very subject of discussion: animal ethics itself being a historical phenomenon. Just as environmental ethics and nature protection comes into vogue since we think we have lost nature, animal ethics enters the stage in times of bioindustry and technological manipulation of animals. That s not only a reason for cynicism, but also a sign of increasing normative sensitivity. Animal ethics being a symbol of civilization an achievement of highly developed welfare states, economically but also culturally, or morally, if you want. Nowadays, in more flourishing circumstances, we would have killed, if at all, the sheep biting dog by less painfull means. Having said that, we finally can even relativize Korthals pragmatic relativism. As soon as we read the different animal ethics not as philosophical foundations and essences (the good reason for Korthals to reject them), but as historically contingent achievements, we can use those ethics freely again. Animal rights, genetic integrity, ecosystem equilibrium and animal welfare, all these ethical criteria can strategically be mobilized in specific contexts and practices not so much to scrutinize and regulate these practices, but to criticize them, to open them up in order to generate new practices and learning processes. Nothing wrong with such a strategic essentialism. Opportunism? No, pragmatism squared.

8 Notes on Contributors Hans Harbers, farmer s son, trained as sociologist, is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Groningen. His field of research and education is philosophy of science and technological culture. Recent publications are about the material embodiment of sociality and normativity in daily practices, for example his contribution (with Annemarie Mol and Alice Stollmeyer) to a Special Issue (2002) of Theory, Culture and Society on Sociality and Materiality. He is also editor of the Dutch journal for empirical philosophy, Krisis. Address: Dep. of Philosophy, A-weg 30, 9718 CW Groningen, Netherlands. j.a.harbers@philos.rug.nl