Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals

A Kantian argument that we have direct moral obligations to other animals, which Kant himself denied. Korsgaard argues that animals are ends in themselves, though not in Kant's sense of rational beings who make moral law. She begins by rejecting the idea that human beings are more important than other animals: importance is always importance to someone, and every creature matters to itself. On her account, goodness is 'tethered': things are good or bad for beings that have a point of view. When we, as rational beings, value ourselves as ends in themselves, we are valuing ourselves as creatures for whom things can be good or bad, and consistency requires us to value all such creatures. She gives an account of animal minds, explains where she parts company with utilitarians, and argues that species have no value apart from the creatures that make them up. The final chapters apply the view to eating animals, experiments and pets, and face the hard case of wild animals and predation.

It is the strongest Kantian case for taking animals seriously, and a fresh way into questions about moral status that does not rest on adding up pleasures and pains.