Philosophical discussion about the moral status of animals intensified in sophistication and scope in the later decades of the twentieth century, thanks in part to groundbreaking works like Peter Singer's Animal Liberation (1975) and Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights (1983). The latter book especially helped to formulate the idea that aspects of the liberal "natural rights" doctrine, usually reserved for humans, should be applied to animals-hence the concept "animal rights," which is now broadly used to characterize the current animal defense movement.
Beginning in the 1980s, feminist theorists developed a feminist approach to the issue of the moral status of animals, or what is now termed "animal ethics." The feminist approach, which was crafted partly in reaction to Singer's and Regan's theories, was rooted in feminist "ethic-of-care" theory, as articulated primarily in Carol Gilligan's celebrated In A Different Voice (1982). Gilligan identified a women's "conception of morality" as one that is "concerned with the activity of care ... responsibility and relationships," which she contrasted to a men's "conception of morality as fairness," one that is more concerned with "rights and rules." Where the masculine concern with rights, rules, and an abstract ideal of justice tends often to seem like "a math problem with humans," the feminine approach offers a more flexible, situational, and particularized ethic. Gilligan called the feminine conception "a morality of responsibility," as opposed to the masculine "morality of rights," which emphasizes "separation rather than connection" and focuses more on the autonomy of the individual than on the context and on interdependent relationships. In analyzing one woman subject's response to a hypothetical scenario, Gilligan notes that the reasoning reveals a morality concerned with "sustaining connection ... keeping the web of relationships intact."
The feminist care approach to animal ethics thus rejects abstract rule-based approaches in favor of one that is more situational and focused on the context, allowing for a narrative understanding of the particulars of a situation or issue. As with feminism in general, care theory resists hierarchical dominative dualisms, which establish the powerful (humans, males, whites) over the subordinate (animals, women, people of color). Instead, care theorists see all living creatures as having value and as embedded in an interdependent matrix. At the same time, care theorists have resisted the claims of "deep ecology"-another major contemporary approach to animal issues. Deep ecology-initiated by Aldo Leopold in the 1940s-holds that the ecosystem supercedes the individual. Tom Regan termed this view "environmental fascism" in that the totality counts for more than the individual. Care theorists agree with Regan in this, counting each "subject of a life" (Regan's term) to be precious, sacred, valuable, and not expendable.
In applying the feminist care ethic to animals, theorists argued that while natural rights theory makes important contributions to theorizing about animals, it nevertheless is in many ways inadequate and unworkable when applied to animals. One problem we noted with rights theory is its rationalist bias. Developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the so-called Age of Reason, rights theory relies on what Carol Adams has termed "a mechanistic ontology of territorial atomism." It envisages a society of rational, autonomous, independent agents ("persons") whose territory or property is entitled to protection from external agents (other people and the government). Animal rights theorists have argued, in effect, that animals are entitled to be considered "persons" before the law and to have rights similar to those held by citizens-that is, the basic right to have their territory (their selves, their bodies, their space) held inviolate from unwarranted human intrusions and abuse. To sustain their claim, they have had to argue that animals are in many respects similar to humans: Regan argues that animals are autonomous individuals with an intelligence that is similar to human reason, whereas Singer argues that sentience rather than rationality should be the basis upon which "rights" and moral status are granted. Rights theory thus requires an assumption of similarity between humans and animals, eliding the differences. But, in reality, animals are only with considerable strain analogous to rational, property-owning men.
We therefore need an ethic that acknowledges that nonhuman animals are different, are not in fact human, but are nevertheless entitled to moral respect. Care theory argues that we have a moral responsibility to care for all creatures with whom we can communicate, regardless of how different they may be from us. Of course, the degree to which active caring is possible will vary according to circumstances. For example, our responsibilities for domestic animals vary greatly from our duties to wild animals.
Rights theory also presumes a society of equal autonomous agents who require little support from others and need only that their space be protected from others' intrusions. But, in reality, animals are not equal to humans; domestic animals, in particular, are for the most part dependent for survival upon humans. We therefore have a situation of unequals and need an ethic that recognizes this fact. Rights theory has in fact been criticized by feminists when applied to humans because its vision of the equal, autonomous individual (male) ignores the network of supporting persons (usually female) who enable his autonomy-that is, the persons who raise him, feed him, clothe him, and so forth. In short, rights theory ignores the fact that most humans and animals operate within an interdependent network, and it provides no obligation to care for those who are unable to operate autonomously.
Another problem feminists have had with the rights approach is that it devalues, suppresses, or denies emotions. This means that a major basis for the human-animal connection-love-is not encompassed. Since the exclusion of the emotional response is a major reason why animal abuse and exploitation continue, it seems contradictory for animal defense advocates to also claim (as Regan and Singer have done) that feelings are inappropriate guides to ethical treatment.
Finally, the rights approach tends to be abstract and formalistic, favoring rules that can be universalized or judgments that can be quantified. Many ethical situations, however, including those involving animals, require a particularized, situational response-one that considers context and history (the relational web Gilligan described)-a response that may not be universalizable or quantifiable.
The feminist ethic of care sees animals as individuals who do have feelings, who can communicate those feelings, and to whom therefore humans have moral obligations. An ethic of care also recognizes the diversity of animals-one size doesn't fit all; each has a particular history. Insofar as possible, attention needs to be paid to these particularities in any ethical determination regarding them.
One of the primary theories that continues to legitimize animal abuse is Cartesian dualism-the division of the world into mind and matter. In the Cartesian view, matter is assumed to be lifeless and without energizing spirit (unlike in much premodern thinking, which is animist), and is held therefore to be of lesser value than mind, spirit, or reason. From this viewpoint, which undergirds much modern thinking about animals, which is instrumental, animals are reduced to mere things, machine-like automatons lacking inner spirit, sensitivity, or feelings. Thomas Kelch has pointed out that it is this view that supports the current common-law conception of animals as property. Kelch argues that reconceptualizing the moral status of animals as feeling subjects will require changing the legal status of animals.
Like feminism in general, feminist care theory is a political theory and is therefore unlike traditional welfare approaches to animal issues, which deal with one animal at a time and fail to critique or oppose the system responsible. Ethic-of-care theory insists that these causal systems be addressed. As Catharine MacKinnon has noted, we're for "caring and empathy while never letting power off the hook."
The feminist care approach therefore pays attention (a key word in feminist ethic-of-care theorizing) not only to the individual suffering animal but also to the political and economic systems that are causing the suffering. The feminist care approach in short recognizes the importance of each individual animal while also developing a more comprehensive analysis of why the animal is being abused in the first place.
Care theory recognizes that ideological systems often screen humans from animal harm and suffering by offering legitimizing rationalization for those harms, as a number of theorists, notably Brian Luke, Kenneth Shapiro, and Carol J. Adams have emphasized. Men especially, Luke and Shapiro note, are socialized from an early age under our "sex-species system" (Adams's term) to consider sympathy and compassion for animals as unmanly and feminine, which Adams sees as one aspect of a more general derision of compassion in society at large. Animal harm is moreover rendered invisible for most people, as Luke notes, by massive ideological screening that allows people not to see the suffering animal in the laboratory or slaughterhouse.
Recently, some ethic-of-care theorists have proposed that our attention should be directed as well to what the animals are telling us about themselves, rather than what other humans are telling us about them. In my article "Caring to Dialogue," I have called for a renewed emphasis on dialogue with animals, learning their communication systems, reading their body language phenomenologically, and taking these communications seriously in our ethical decisions.
Such communication may be imperfect. It may indeed be impossible to really know, as Thomas Nagel famously put it, "what it is like to be a bat" (1974). But we can nevertheless decipher animal communications sufficiently to formulate an appropriate ethical response. Indeed, we use the same mental and emotional operations in reading an animal as we do a human. Body language, eye movement, facial expression, and tone of voice all are important signs. One might in fact argue that nonhuman animals' emotional responses are more clear and direct than humans' and thus are easier to read. In reading animals it is sometimes helpful to know about species' habits and culture. And as with humans, repeated experiences with one individual help one to understand that individual's unique needs and wishes.
One of the principal ways by which one understands animal "language" sympathetically is by analogy to one's own experience. Say I saw a dog yelping, whining, leaping about, and licking an open cut. Because under similar circumstances I know I would likewise feel like crying and moving about anxiously because of the pain, I therefore conclude that the animal is experiencing the same kind of pain as I would. Knowing that one would wish one's own pain to be alleviated, one is moved to do the same for the animal. Of course, the animal's expressed feelings or wishes cannot always be determinative. At times humans may have to override them for their own good (as when one vaccinates one's companion animal). And to be sure the more different the creature is from oneself the more difficult the communication. But even insects, fish, reptiles, and birds react in ways we can relate to: avoiding pain and threats of death, and seeking that which enhances their life.
If, in short, we really begin to pay attention to what other creatures are telling us, we will hear that they do not want to be slaughtered, eaten, subjected to pain, or treated instrumentally as unfeeling objects. It behooves us humans as ethical beings to incorporate their wishes when we make decisions-as we inevitably must-about their lives.
Josephine Donovan, Professor Emerita at the University of Maine, has written widely on literature and animal ethics. With Carol J. Adams, she edited The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics (Columbia University Press, 2007), from which parts of this article derive.
