Animal Rights Philosophy: Who Knows a Pig That's Been Treated Well?

The philosopher and legal theorist Martha Nussbaum writes in the foreword that what she enjoyed most about working on her book “Justice for Animals” was the intensive study of research work on all areas of the animal world.

You can see it in the book from the first to the last line.

The discoveries of science about the abilities of animals, which have greatly increased in recent decades, form the background of Nussbaum's thinking, which is ignited by the grim present.

That no one can say how old pigs would get if they were ever allowed to live the life they want is a testament to this grim situation;

not to mention species extinction.

Since she doesn't know any pigs that are treated well, she decided on a life-inspired fiction, says Nussbaum when presenting one of her example animals.

A gorgeous black Berkshire sow, this fictional character leads the life of a happy pig at Blandlings Castle as the Empress of Blandlings.

It comes from a novel by PG Wodehouse, who was a great lover of animals.

In Nussbaum's version, however, the sow's life takes a horrific turn when she is placed in one of those birthing pens that are common in industrial pig farming.

The empress is one of five examples, along with the cow elephant Virginia, the humpback whale Hal, the trilling finch Jean-Pierre and the dog Lupa, in which Nussbaum shows how the behavioral repertoire of animals is shattered by reality.

The elephant is killed by ivory hunters, the humpback whale dies from a thick block of plastic in its stomach.

Only the bitch Lupa is better off: She is adopted by friendly people as a street mutt.

The confrontation of the abilities of the respective animals with the violence they suffer directly or indirectly through human actions is so vivid because it is taken from reality.

With her ability catalogs of animals, Nussbaum takes up the results of recent research.

For example, from knowledge gained not only through observation but also through increasingly carefully designed experiments, we know that all vertebrates and many invertebrates feel pain subjectively, that they also, more generally, have their own worldview.

Nussbaum's example animals have names

There is a certain way in which animals present the world to them.

They have emotions, and at least some, such as crows, elephants, or various monkeys, can also express compassion and sadness (both of which require complex grasping of a situation).

This is one of the reasons why the example animals in Nussbaum appear as individuals and have names.

It is also known from experiments with animals as diverse as crows and dolphins that they are capable of solving complicated problems and can learn to make and use tools.

The way in which such knowledge is transmitted in the respective populations also suggests that the social associations of these animals are not a context in which a mechanically inherited repertoire is acted out, but rather spaces of complicated social learning in which Young animals are taught a large part of their skills.