Ethics Before Darwin
The Idea of Human Dignity
Human life is sacred.
•We must protect human life and respect
the lives and interests of human beings.
Nonhuman life is not sacred.
•We may use animals as we see fit.
Aristotle
(384-322 BC)
To understand anything, ask four
questions:
1.
What is it?
2.
What is it made of?
3.
Where did it come from?
4.
What is its purpose?
[W]e must believe, first that plants exist for the sake
of animals, second that all other animals exist for the
sake of man, tame animals for the use he can make
of them as well as for the food they provide; and as
for wild animals, most though not all of these can be
used for food or are useful in other ways; clothing
and instruments can be made out of them. If then we
are right in believing that nature makes nothing
without some end in view, nothing to no purpose, it
must be that nature has made all things specifically
for the sake of man.
--Aristotle, Physics
And God said, Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness: and let them have dominion
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of
the air, and over the cattle, and over all the
earth, and over every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:26)
The Greeks and Romans
The early Christians . . .
• approved infanticide
condemned all killing of
human beings.
• approved suicide
• approved mercy-killing
• approved combat
• approved executions
• murder
• infanticide
• suicide
• mercy-killing
• capital punishment
• killing by soldiers
Some time around 325 AD,
something happened.
The Roman Emperor,
Constantine, becomes
a Christian.
Acceptable
killings
• capital punishment
• soldiers in battle
Unacceptable
killings
•
•
•
•
murder
infanticide
suicide
mercy-killing
St. Augustine
(354-430)
The intentional killing of
innocent humans is always
wrong.
What about killing in self-defense?
Augustine: Although the state may kill to
defend itself, individuals may not.
St. Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274)
Killing of necessity, in individual
self-defense, is not the intentional
killing of the innocent, and it is
permitted.
Aquinas on nonhuman animals:
Hereby is refuted the error of
those who said it is sinful for a
man to kill dumb animals: for by
divine providence they are
intended for man’s use in the
natural order. Hence it is no
wrong for man to make use of them,
either by killing them or in any
other way whatever.
Aquinas again:
If any passages of Holy Writ seem to
forbid us to be cruel to dumb animals,
for instance to kill a bird with its
young: this is either to remove man’s
thoughts from being cruel to other men,
and lest through being cruel to animals
one becomes cruel to human beings: or
because injury to an animal leads to the
temporal hurt of man, either the doer of
the deed, or of another.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
Animals cannot think; they
have no conscious
experiences; they do not
even feel pain.
A human being has two parts:
They administered beatings to dogs with
perfect indifference, and made fun of
those who pitied the creatures as if
they felt pain. They said the animals
were clocks; that the cries they
emitted when struck were only the noise
of a little spring that had been
touched, but that the whole body was
without feeling. They nailed poor
animals up on boards by their four paws
to vivisect them and see the
circulation of the blood which was a
great subject of conversation.
--Nicholas Fontaine (1738)