Three Main Stages of the Development of Animal Ethics

Abstract

The reflections on the relationship between animals and humans can date back to ancient times. Many philosophers and thinkers ponder on animals and human-animal relationship, and present their perceptions of animal ethics, which exert great impact on their followers and influence people’s attitude towards animals. According to the extent of the recognition and realization of animals as well as interspecies relationship, the paper divides the development of animal ethics into three main stages. The first stage is full of anthropocentric prejudices against animals, according to which animals are deemed as inferior to human beings while their consciousness, minds, and emotion are denied. The second stage witnesses an awakening to animals’ sentience, consciousness, and feelings, a call for animals’ liberation, and a defense for animals’ rights. There’s increasing attention to animals’ living condition, pains, needs and wants, together with their value, esteem, moral agency, and ethical rights. The third stage attaches importance to interspecies interconnection and interaction. There’re more and more record of, researches into, and calls for human-animal interactions, in which humans’ attention to and care for animals are underscored. A dialogical interspecies ethics is advocated for cross-species interactions, which subverts the former anthropocentric and dualistic concept of human-animal relationship.