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“Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
Supplement, Volume LXXII (1998).
Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature
Allen W. Wood
Kant’s ethical theory is famously (or notoriously) anthropocentric — or rather, it is
logocentric, by which I mean that it is based on the idea that rational nature, and it alone,
has absolute and unconditional value. Kant takes the authority of the moral law to be
grounded in the fact that it is legislated by rational will. The fundamental end whose
value grounds the theory is the dignity of rational nature, and its command is always to
treat humanity as an end in itself. Here the term ‘humanity’ is being used in a technical
sense, to refer to the capacity to set ends according to reason. It includes the technical
predisposition to devise means to arbitrary ends, and the pragmatic predisposition to
unite our ends into a comprehensive whole, called ‘happiness’. ‘Humanity’ is one of the
three original predispositions of our nature, along with ‘animality’, which includes our
instinctual desires promoting our survival, reproduction and sociability, and ‘personality’
which is our rational capacity to give moral laws and obey them (R 6:26, VA 7:321-324).
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‘Humanity’ in this sense does not refer to membership in any particular biological
species. (As a matter of fact, Kant thought it quite likely that there are rational beings on
other planets; they would be ends in themselves every bit as much as human beings (in
the nontechnical sense)(AN 1:351-368).)
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Even so, it might seem as though a theory of this kind would license (or even
require) a ruthlessly exploitative attitude toward humanity’s natural environment and all
nonhuman things in it. For if rational nature is the only end in itself, then everything else
must count only as a means to rational nature and its ends. Nothing else could have a
worth which might set limits on those ends or on the ways in which rational beings might
choose to employ nonrational nature in pursuit of them.
Some of Kant’s own statements, moreover, appear to be shameless endorsements of
this ghastly inference from his logocentric theory. In his explication of the Formula of
Humanity as End in Itself, Kant distinguishes persons — rational beings possessing the
dignity of rational nature as an end in itself — from things, which, he says, “have only a
relative worth, while persons, and they alone, may not be used merely as means” (G
4:428). A similar thought is found at the opening of Kant’s lectures on anthropology:
“The fact that the human being can have the representation ‘I’ raises him
infinitely above all the other beings on earth. By this he is a person… that is,
a being altogether different in rank and dignity from things, such as
irrational animals, with which one may deal and dispose at one’s discretion”
(VA 7:127).
And in his essay Conjectural Beginning of Human History, Kant describes in the
following words the sense of self-worth which our first parents acquired when they began
to use reason and to reflect on the gulf which this marvelous new capacity put between
them and the rest of creation:
“The first time [the human being] said to the sheep, Nature gave the skin
you wear not for you but for me, and then took it off the sheep and put it
on himself (Genesis 3:21), he became aware of the prerogative he had by
nature over all animals, which he no longer saw as fellow creatures, but as
means and tools at the disposal of his will for the attainment of the aims at
his discretion” (MA 8:114).
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Passages like these surely tend to confirm the view, which is widely held among (but
not restricted to) animal’s rights advocates, proponents of ecological or ecofeminist
ethics, and postmodernist critics of rationalism and humanism, that an ethical theory
such as Kant’s is well-suited to promote those attitudes which have led to the monstrous
destruction modern technological society has wrought on nature, and continues to wreak
on it with increasing ferocity.
In what follows I will not try to persuade the people just mentioned that Kantian
ethics is in full agreement with them.
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But I will defend my own conviction that Kant’s
principle, properly interpreted – and more generally, a “logocentric” morality (in the
sense described above) — is the one best suited to dealing with ethical questions about
how we should treat nonhuman living things and the natural environment. To that end, I
will criticize Kant’s manner of interpreting and applying his principle, even to the extent
of calling into question one of the assumptions underlying his taxonomy of ethical duties
in the Metaphysics of Morals. But my ultimate aim will be only to make Kantian
logocentrism the more consequent and secure.
A good place to begin is by noting some of Kant’s own moral conclusions about how
nonrational nature is to be treated. These conclusions, though otherwise not particularly
remarkable, may be quite different from what we would expect on the basis of the
passages just quoted. Kant denies that domestic or work animals are to be treated only as
tools or objects of use, and insists that there are moral restrictions in the ways we may use
them. Animals should not be overworked, or strained beyond their capacities. An animal,
such as a horse or dog, which has served us well, should not be cast aside like a worn out
tool when it is too old to perform its task; it should be treated with gratitude and
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affection, like a (human) member of the household, and be allowed to live out its days in
comfort. Kant thinks it is permissible to kill animals for human ends (such as for food);
but he insists that this should be done as quickly and painlessly as possible (MS 6:443;
VE 27:459-460). And he regards killing animals for mere sport as morally wrong (VE
27:460). Kant considers that the actions of vivisectionists, who perform painful
experiments on living animals, can sometimes be justified if the ends are sufficiently
important. But he regards as morally abominable “agonizing physical experiments [on
animals, carried out] for the sake of mere speculation, or whose end can be achieved in
other ways” (MS 6:443). He praises Leibniz for taking the trouble to place a worm back
on its leaf after examining it under a microscope (KpV 5:160; cf. VE 27:459). Kant
thinks we also have moral duties regarding nature in general as regards what is beautiful
or purposive in it. We must not wantonly destroy what is beautiful in nonrational nature.
We ought to take an interest in the beautiful in nature irrespective of any intention to use
it (MS 6:443; KU 5:298-299).
The first question we need to raise is how Kant proposes to justify these opinions on
the basis of the moral principles described earlier. To answer this question, we must look
at the way the principle of morality is applied in Kantian ethical theory. Common
interpretations of Kantian ethics (which appear to be based exclusively on the first forty
pages or so of the Groundwork, and completely ignore his explicit account of the matter
in the Metaphysics of Morals), suppose this procedure has to do with formulating maxims
and deciding whether they can be universalized. But it does not. Instead it consists in
attending to the various ethical duties which can be grounded on the principle of
morality, – nearly always, in the Metaphysics of Morals, using the Formula of Humanity
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as End In Itself. The Metaphysics of Morals contains a taxonomy of such duties, and to
understand the authentically Kantian approach to any particular moral question is first of
all to understand its relation to the principles of that taxonomy.
The first division of duties in Kant’s system is that between duties of right or juridical
duties and duties of virtue or ethical duties. Duties of right are those which can be
coercively enforced by law and the state. Duties of virtue are those to which a moral
agent must be constrained only inwardly by her own reason. We have no direct duties of
right regarding nonrational nature, since only finite rational beings (in our experience,
human beings) have enforceable rights (MS 6:241). Any juridical duties we might have
involving the treatment of nonrational nature must be consequent to the rights of human
beings and laws made by the general will of a state – for example, their rights of property
over nonrational things, and laws promoting the common good or fulfilling its collective
moral duties (such as duties of charity toward the poor) (MS 6:325-328). Kant mentions
no specific juridical duties regarding animals or the natural environment under the latter
heading, but it is worth noting that there is room for them. In Kant’s theory, the fact that
nonrational beings have no rights does not entail that the general will of a state may not
legislate restrictions on how they may be used or treated.
The most fundamental division among ethical duties is between duties toward
ourselves and duties toward others. Kant never gives us an explicit account of what it
means for a duty to be a duty to or toward (gegen) someone. But it is not hard to
construct such an account. As we have seen, Kant regards only rational beings as
persons, which are to be treated as ends, regarding all other beings as things. Even his
statement of the Formula of Humanity as End in Itself – “So act that you use humanity,
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whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an
end, never merely as a means” (G 4:429) – involves the idea that humanity or rational
nature has a moral claim on us only in the person of a being who actually possesses it.
This idea is what I will call the personification principle. Kant’s division of ethical
duties into duties to ourselves and duties to others may be regarded as a corollary of the
personification principle. Duty d is a duty toward S if and only if S is a rational being
(or more than one), and the moral requirement to comply with d is grounded on the moral
requirement to respect humanity in the person of S.
Duties to ourselves are those required on account of the respect we owe humanity in
our own person: Kant considers all such duties to fall under the end of our own perfection
(natural or moral), since we show respect for humanity in our own person by promoting
the perfection our rational nature and of the powers at its disposal (MS 6:385-387).
Duties to ourselves are strict (or owed) duties, if they require us to perform or omit
specific actions in order to avoid moral blame or demerit; they are wide (or meritorious)
duties if they require no such specific actions but actions in fulfillment of them are
meritorious (MS 6:390-394).
Following the personification principle, all duties which are not to ourselves are
required on account of the respect we owe humanity in the person of other rational
beings; they fall collectively under the end of the happiness of others, since we show
respect for humanity in others by promoting the (permissible) ends set by their rational
nature, which are summed up in the idea of a person’s happiness (MS 6:387-388). Duties
to others are further distinguished into duties of respect and duties of love (which
parallels the distinction between strict and wide duties in the case of duties to ourselves)
(MS 6:448-450).
It follows from the personification principle that there can be no duties toward
animals, toward nature as a whole, or indeed toward any nonrational being at all (MS
6:442). Yet in an interesting section of the Metaphysics of Morals (MS §§ 16-17, 6:442-
443), Kant argues that we nevertheless have duties in regard to (in Ansehung) nonrational
beings. These duties, he says, appear to be duties toward them, owing to an “amphiboly
of moral concepts of reflection,” that is, a sort of conceptual illusion which leads us to
mistake a duty to oneself for a duty to beings other than oneself.
Kant argues that our duty to cherish and promote what is beautiful in nonrational
nature irrespective of its usefulness, and to behave with kindness and gratitude toward
animals, are really duties to promote our own moral perfection by behaving in ways that
