An irreducible understanding of animal dignity

Alongside lively philosophical debate about human dignity (Etinson, 2020; Rosen, 2012), several philosophers have begun asking whether “dignity” could also illuminate our moral relations with nonhuman animals (e.g., Abbate, 2020; Anderson, 2005; Gruen, 2014; Humphreys, 2016; Nussbaum, 2006; Ortiz, 2004). Increasing talk of animal dignity is also occurring in public and even legal discourse (Kotzmann & Seery, 2017). For example, in a recent habeas corpus hearing for a Bronx Zoo elephant, a Judge declared that the elephant is “a dignified creature” but “there is nothing dignified about her captivity” (Wilson, 2022, p. 4). Such language is perhaps beginning to resonate more with people than it once did.

Nonetheless, some philosophers seriously doubt that dignity is a coherent and useful moral idea (Zuolo, 2016). Dressing circus-kept animals in human clothes and laughing at them may strike modern people as cruelly demeaning to those nonhumans. Yet for critics, these apparent assaults on “dignity” are ethically trivial or else merely indirect wrongs—objectionable only because such treatment could upset human witnesses or generally promote animal exploitation (Martin, 2019, p. 94). According to dignity's critics, other moral concepts can far better explain what is wrong with that treatment.

Dignity is a complex notion and providing lucid accounts is challenging. Furthermore, philosophical analysis of animal dignity is relatively limited. It warrants greater attention. In this paper, I explore an understanding of animal dignity that seems to be irreducible to a range of other moral concepts and to some other conceptions of dignity. The understanding I explore appears to be a sui generis notion that involves a special kind of non-natural harm and assault upon animals. This special or distinctive harm and assault is related to the cognate notions of defiling, degrading, demeaning, dishonoring, and honoring treatment.

Presenting this sui generis understanding requires examining arguably the most compelling current account of animal dignity on offer—a “relational” conception of dignity as social respect or status. Although very important, I shall ask whether there is also another “relational” way of understanding dignity that is irreducible even to that account—although importantly it might complement and deepen it. This suggests that more than one ethically important way of conceiving of dignity is possible.

In the following, I outline criticisms of animal dignity with a focus on reductionist attacks, identify a social conception of dignity, reflect on some key examples of human behavior that seem to facilitate understanding of animal dignity, briefly introduce positive forms of irreducible dignity, and consider several objections, before concluding.

Like “human dignity” (Cochrane, 2010), “animal dignity” may be attacked as merely rhetorical or as an excessively indeterminate concept. Dignity could mean, for example, inherent value, virtue, social rank, bodily integrity, autonomy…and much more (Schroeder, 2010). However, as I attempt to do below, dignity might be more carefully specified to avoid damaging vagueness.

Some pro-animal thinkers worry that “dignity” is too closely associated with higher human abilities and the denigration of nonhumans. Dignity talk, says Will Kymlicka (2018, p. 771), “is saturated with the idea that dignity involves not being treated as an animal.” This is true of some analyses of human dignity (e.g., Kateb, 2011), but perhaps there are approaches that avoid throwing animals “under the bus” (Kymlicka, 2018, p. 779)—and that even enlarge our respect for animals.

Both human and animal dignity are targets of a reductionist attack by philosophers who are dismissive and sometimes damning of the concept. For example, some philosophers have forcefully claimed that human dignity is a useless concept that simply means respect for persons or autonomy (Macklin, 2003). The reductionist critic says that “dignity,” while apparently fine sounding, is ultimately uninformative and replaceable with more fundamental and valuable moral ideas. Federico Zuolo (2016), for instance, argues that reductionism undermines recent characterizations of animal dignity by Michael Meyer and Martha Nussbaum.

Meyer (2001) proposes a Kant-inspired “simple dignity,” which identifies animal dignity with inherent or intrinsic moral worth. While Kant connected dignity with rational autonomy, the “simple dignity” account says that even without rational autonomy or moral equality with humans, sentient nonhumans nevertheless possess intrinsic worth. They thus also have a dignity (Meyer, 2001, p. 120). Such dignity may also ground various rights and be offended when a nonhuman dignity-bearer is used as a mere means (see Humphreys, 2016).

Unlike Meyer, Nussbaum (2006) locates dignity in natural wellbeing and species-typical flourishing. For Nussbaum, dignity involves the realization of various natural animal capabilities—such as emotional expression, play, health, and relationships—that we recognize as important. A life without dignity, on Nussbaum's account, is one that lacks these possibilities for natural flourishing. Thus, animals, like humans, also have dignity.

Zuolo attacks Michael Meyer's “simple dignity” as reducible to broad notions of moral considerability and Martha Nussbaum's account as reducible to natural living and wellbeing. Zuolo concludes that animal dignity lacks a distinctive ethical meaning and is best replaced with more informative concepts (Zuolo, 2016, p. 1119).

Perhaps this attack is unfairly reductionist. For example, one might say that Nussbaum's naturalistic conception of dignity is not just about natural wellbeing but is also partly constituted by a sense of wonder toward flourishing and of “waste and tragedy” toward damaged lives (Nussbaum, 2006, p. 346). Nonetheless, we might still feel that “dignity” does too little distinctive work in accounts which are so strongly centered on natural wellbeing (Nussbaum) and intrinsic worth (Meyer).

This raises the possibility that relational understandings of dignity can better resist reductionism. For even if relational understandings depend on or refer to features like intrinsic moral worth and natural living and wellbeing, they might also include and foreground significant ways of human relating and behaving that render those understandings distinctive or special. By revealing these possibilities, we may cast doubt on reductionist moves that seek to banish talk of dignity.

Doing so, however, can create further problems. In particular, any kind of dignity that cannot be reduced to more familiar concepts may be criticized as illusory or morally trivial. It will therefore be necessary for us to say something about why an irreducible understanding of dignity might be morally important and valuable (even if we cannot provide a more extended defense within the confines of this paper).

Next, I describe one important relational account—a social conception of dignity—recently advanced by animal philosophers. Comparing and contrasting it with a sui generis understanding will hopefully clarify both these relational understandings and advance discussion about animal dignity.

The social (or social-moral) respect or status account locates animal dignity in ways of presenting and viewing ethically valuable individuals and in expressions of moral (dis)respect toward them or their worth (Anderson, 2005, pp. 282–283). Such presentations and expressions occur in the space of social relations (Bird, 2013, p. 161) rather than being principally located in either natural or moral “properties.” This account might apply to humans and nonhumans. Social accounts of nonhuman dignity have been developed by Lori Gruen and C.E. Abbate.

Gruen describes dignity not as reducible to “properties” like “autonomous nature” (Gruen, 2014, p. 232) but rather as a relational property linked to our own and our community's perception of morally valuable others (Gruen, 2014, p. 234). This understanding has historical connections with “social or civic demands for recognition and respect” and “social harmony and human fulfillment” (Gruen, 2014, p. 234). It thus has intertwined moral and social dimensions.

Just as some behavior toward humans “reinforces negative attitudes” toward certain humans (Gruen, 2014, p. 235), so too certain ways in which an animal is presented or treated can tend to undermine (or occasionally promote) moral respect for that individual in society. An example is making animals in zoos or circuses appear ridiculous. Gruen (2014, pp. 238–239) cites zoo enclosures that visibly render the contained animals pathetic and so difficult to morally respect.

On Abbate's account, dignity violations “essentially amount to some form of disrespectful treatment” of an individual's inherent value (Abbate, 2020, pp. 771, 776). She draws on Jeremy Waldron's notion of dignity as a “status” in society (Abbate, 2020, p. 772). Unlike inherent value, dignity as a kind of social standing can be affected for good or ill depending on how we treat and relate to those individuals.¹

Abbate suggests that disrespectful treatment or ways of viewing humans and animals constitute dignitary wrongs and harms. Such behaviors may cast intrinsically valuable others as objects, instruments, or tools (Abbate, 2020, p. 777). Some forms of disrespect occur simply from, say, inflicting, or attempting but failing to inflict, unnecessary suffering (Abbate, 2020, pp. 777–778). Others are instead culturally created—an example of this disrespect would be if people were to assign a mere number rather than a name to children (Abbate, 2020, p. 779). Our cultures can help determine various treatment as profoundly expressive of disrespect for others' worth, even when the treatment is not otherwise harmful.

Abbate claims that dignitary wrongs and harms differ from “ordinary” wrongs and harms since the former do not themselves damage “experiential” welfare by, say, causing suffering or preventing satisfaction (Abbate, 2020, p. 772). Indeed, Abbate's dignitary wrongs and harms can occur in the absence of any ordinary harm—non-experiential welfare harms included² (Abbate, 2020, p. 776). Dignitary harms follow from dignitary violations. For example, a dignitary harm can result from contemptuously mocking an oblivious animal without this causing any ordinary ill effects for them.

Bringing these features together: dignity on the social account concerns behavior toward individuals that socially promotes or expresses insufficient recognition of an individual's intrinsic moral worth (however “worth” is understood). These behaviors are disrespectful ways of wronging and (perhaps) thereby harming valuable individuals, even when they are not at risk of suffering any natural harms. The disrespect can stem from cultural ways of marking an animal's inherent moral worth, from showing contempt, and perhaps from other behaviors with social overtones.³

Like the social conception, a sui generis understanding of dignity relates to apparently distinctive—but often ignored—ways animals are treated. Neither the sui generis nor the social understanding reduces dignity to natural features, such as wellbeing and autonomy, or to moral properties, such as intrinsic worth. Instead, both conceptions link dignity to certain important human behaviors toward individuals.

However, although sui generis dignity is relational, it is arguably not reducible to the social form of dignity. I shall suggest that when we reflect on certain telling experiences or descriptions of animal treatment, it does not always seem possible to explain—or to fully explain—those phenomena by means of the social account. Nonetheless, I shall also suggest that a sui generis kind of dignity can sometimes complement and deepen the social conception.

In outlining an understanding of dignity irreducible to other moral concepts and to the social account of dignity, it will help to focus on several telling examples. These examples relate to experiences in which people have felt compelled to employ the term “dignity” and related moral terms such as “degrade,” “defile,” “demean,” and “dishonor.” For convenience, I shall call these terms d-terms. These d-terms are part of what I call “dignity language.” The approach here tracks Kaufmann et al.'s (2011, p. 24:2) suggestion that conceptual investigation of dignity profits from starting not with abstract ethical conceptions (e.g., of inherent worth) but with examples of dignity violations, such as the degradations, defilements, and humiliations that strike us as morally compelling phenomena (see also Luban, 2009; Margalit, 1998).

Cataldi's choice of the term “defiled” to describe her morally unsettling experience is noteworthy. For Cataldi, rejecting such language or substituting it with ideas of physical cruelty or diminished flourishing, would obscure rather than clarify the full nature of the assault on those bears. The violation here thus appears to be “non-natural.”

Coetzee suggests that dishonoring the corpses⁵ by leaving them amongst the rubbish or beating them is not just distressing for Lurie, but wrong and bad for the dead dogs, even though they experience nothing and suffer no natural harms. This parallels a conviction many (most?) people have that dead humans can be wronged and even harmed when their bodies are “desecrated.” The next example concerns not post-mortem indignity, but putative indignity in the act of killing.

Cat shovel case: Philosopher Raimond Gaita tells a story of his cat Tosca being mortally wounded by his dog at his home. Witnessing the cat's terrible suffering, Gaita considers “putting her out of her misery” (Gaita, 2016, p. 94) by hitting her on the head with a near-to-hand shovel, but Tosca disappears. Later, he comes to realize with some shock that to kill her like that, though painless and merciful, would have dishonored her. Gaita explicitly connects such dishonoring with the idea of assaulting animal dignity (Gaita, 2016, p. 35). For Gaita, dignity does not concern natural welfare, inherent worth, or various familiar animal rights (e.g., the right to life or to kind treatment). The wrong that would have been done to Tosca by striking her with a shovel was not about ending her life or hurting her. In fact, Gaita believed that ending her life and her suffering (perhaps by taking her to a veterinarian for euthanasia by lethal injection) was morally right. Nonetheless, he believed that killing her with a shovel would have dishonored her and thus offended her dignity.⁶

Baboon ridicule case: Philosopher Cora Diamond relates a scene⁷ in which a worker at a Head Injury Lab poses with a baboon “who has massive cranial hemispherical sutures.” The lab staff “laugh at the animal, whom they tease as having the ‘punk’ look” (Diamond, 2001, p. 148, fn 41). Diamond suggests that “moral disgust” at the baboon's treatment “may be compared with the response of the Dayaks in Borneo to ridiculing or humiliating an animal, to dressing it (for example) in human clothes ‘in parody of humanity’.” For the Dayaks, “this is a great crime, on the level of incest” (Diamond, 2001, p. 137). Diamond might well say that the treatment demeans or degrades the baboon and thereby wrongs her. Essential to Diamond's point is that the baboon is a genuine victim: she is harmed by the ridicule even though she lacks desires about not being humiliated and is not violated or harmed in any “naturalistic sense” (Diamond, 2001, p. 137). Damage to, say, the baboon's natural capabilities, or to her ability to flourish according to her telos (Schultz-Bergin, 2017, p. 844), is not to Diamond's point.⁸

The above examples highlight uses of our “d-terms,” that is, defiling, degrading, demeaning, and dishonoring treatment. They also highlight a concern about dignity, understood via these terms, that differs from concern focused on, say, inherent worth or rights, or “natural” properties like suffering, flourishing, and autonomy. Although one may choose to interpret the moral import of these examples as being underpinned by these notions,⁹ some of the above authors carefully distinguish these moral phenomena from the more familiar ethical categories. Indeed, they relate those scenes precisely because they believe they reveal something morally distinctive or unique. This is the case even if various naturalistic features may be related to important ethical aspects of such treatment (more on this later) and even if significant natural harms often accompany dignitary assaults.

A final point about these examples. Will Kymlicka (2018, p. 770) suggests that some people find dignity an “awkward or unnatural” term for animals. These examples, however, illustrate an opposite response. Clearly some people feel that “dignity language” is necessary to adequately describe both the moral nature and seriousness¹⁰ of some forms of treatment. Given that “dignity” and our “d-terms” may be indispensable to moral description in a range of cases, it seems worthwhile examining what they might show about the possible meaning(s) of dignity.

We have seen some evidence that not all instances of dignity language are reducible to various familiar morally important concepts; we shall now consider some further evidence. In this section, I will also consider reasons for thinking that relational kinds of dignity involving our d-terms need not be always or fully explainable by the social account. That could be an important finding about the meanings of dignity. I shall introduce this discussion with three human examples. As with the social account, a sui generis understanding of dignity possibly applies to both humans and animals.

The sui generis understanding we are developing conceives of dignity in terms of the moral assaults and non-natural harms of defiling, demeaning, degrading, or dishonoring treatment. It is sui generis because it is not reducible to social-moral status, let alone to other categories like intrinsic worth or natural wellbeing. Our discussion has at least suggested there is a morally serious sense or meaning of dignity that is distinct from these other ways of understanding it.

I need now to stress that such dignity is not equivalent to the general category of non-natural assaults/harms. To see this, recall our earlier exam cheating case. Imagine now that Farida never discovers her poor assignment result and Jo's betrayal. Here we might say that though Farida is not naturally harmed by the betrayal, she is non-naturally wronged and harmed by it.¹⁵ But, as we noted, it is nonetheless not obvious that she was defiled or degraded in being selfishly taken advantage of by her friend. Thus, it seems that our notion of irreducible or sui generis dignity does not simply equate to the broader category of non-natural violations or injuries.¹⁶ Rather, it seems to constitute a special subset of non-natural assaults/harms.

In several ways, then, sui generis dignity apparently represents a distinctive moral category. But this may invite the question: just what is this sort of dignity?¹⁷ Are there further ways of characterizing this apparent type of non-natural assault and harm? Examining relevant examples may suggest some additional characterizing features.

To start with, Cataldi's Moscow circus bear example reveals a distortion of natural behavior and appearance that is related to dressing the bears up in human costumes to perform unnatural clown-like and childish behaviors. Notions of condescension to “dumb animals” and infantilization of beings who can lead intelligent, independent lives may thus enter our sense of defilement here. Ideas of humiliation and ridicule may also be present—as they are more explicitly in Cora Diamond's story of the laboratory staff who mocked the unknowing baboon with the head injury. Conceivably, failing to name animals we regularly interact with may involve a defilement related to their individuality as unique beings with their own perspectives.

Features of bodily alteration, mutilation, and disfigurement,¹⁸ and ways of treating dead bodies such as putting them with the garbage (even without denigratory intent), are present in the Coetzee example of the dog corpses. Some animal dishonorings seem to be linked to human excretory or sexual functions. For example, we may perceive an act of urinating or spitting on an unconscious (or dead) animal, or of training an animal to enjoy having sex with humans, as further defilements of those nonhumans (even when, again, there is no intention to denigrate).

Apparently, then, a range of factors—and the above list need not be exhaustive—help characterize a distinctive category of degrading or defiling treatment. To be clear, this does not imply that defilement can necessarily be entirely reduced to those characterizing features. For example, the fact that the defiling treatment of the Moscow circus bears is conceptually related to the bears' ability to pursue their own kinds of lives does not mean that the assault and harm of defilement is to be understood wholly in terms of the harm of preventing natural living. In fact, the bears may be defiled by being dressed in clown costumes and trained to behave like humans even if they otherwise have flourishing, natural bear lives.

We seem, then, to have a sui generis understanding of dignity involving “d-terms” conceptually conditioned by a range of notions—for example, kinds of humiliation, condescension, alterations of body and appearance, interference with natural behavior, some cultural practices like “numbering not naming,” some uses of human excretory or sexual functions, and perhaps more besides. The charge may now be that this spectrum is too broad and disparate to sustain a coherent notion of dignity.

One point to make is that if we attempt to link such dignity to just one kind of feature—for example, “nature-denying” features (Abbate, 2020, p. 781)—we may overlook other significant instances of this sui generis type, for example, defilement of dead animals via desecration of their corpses. Moreover, a concept need not always have narrow and strict necessary and sufficient conditions to be recognizable as a single and coherent concept. Accordingly, sui generis dignity might lack clear-cut necessary and sufficient conditions and encompass a spectrum of human behaviors toward animals, but nonetheless be recognizable under the very same (irreducible) moral concept of defilement and our other d-terms. That need not render such dignity an unhelpful “catch-all” concept that covers, say, all the wrongs we do to animals (Hadley, 2017, p. 1001). We have, after all, noted various conceptual boundaries.

Arguably, then, we can recognize a single conception of sui generis dignity that covers a range of behaviors toward animals. Now, however, some may feel there must be some feature or concept that unifies the above varieties of treatment linked to our irreducible d-terms and which, we added, might involve notions like infantilization, condescension, and humiliation. For example, someone might say that sui generis dignity is ultimately tied to the irreducible existence of individuals or to their essential individuality.¹⁹

How should we respond to the claim that the various distinctive types of defiling (etc.) treatment can, after all, be subsumed under some further common concept? One reply is to say that this is possible, although of course the case would need to be made (and is too large a project for this essay). Another reply, however, is that such a move itself follows a reductionist impulse that may distort the kind of dignity under discussion. A fully sui generis understanding of dignity may resist explanation in terms of some further unifying idea. Thus, there might simply be a range of irreducible ways in which individuals can be defiled that we nonetheless recognize as forming a distinctive and unique category of harm and assault. Given our space constraints, further discussion of these ideas must be left to another time.

We have been considering dignitary harms and assaults. This “negative” focus is understandable, since “concerns about dignity are often expressed in the contexts in which it has been or might be denied. It is rarely the case that we recognize or admire the dignity of people being respectful of one another in the ordinary course of things” (Gruen, 2014, p. 234). That said, there may also be a distinctive positive dimension to dignity in the irreducible sense. This might involve kinds of “dignified” treatment that go beyond simply “not humiliating” (Luban, 2009, p. 211) or not defiling another. It is worth mentioning this possibility, even if very briefly.

Gruen suggests that some presentations of animals are “dignity-enhancing” (Gruen, 2014, pp. 240, 237); Abbate remarks that animals whose “inherent value is acknowledged by others” are ipso facto made (non-experientially) better off (Abbate, 2020, p. 776). A sui generis account might also appreciate “dignitary goods”—but ones not reducible to natural goods, expressing recognition of inherent worth, elevating social status, and so forth (as important as these things are).

Here is one example. Many people now bury their dead nonhuman companions in graves or scatter their ashes in places special to them and their animals, rather than having them dumped in landfill (though that still frequently happens). Coetzee extends this basic idea of the treatment of dead animals to those who are not now or never were people's companions. In Disgrace, David Lurie goes well beyond refusing to inflict dishonor on the dead stray dogs by allowing them to be beaten with shovels like other bits of rubbish. Lurie instead waits until the workmen at the dump have knocked off and then carefully loads the dogs “one at a time” onto the incinerator trolley in the spirit of performing a cremation (Coetzee, 1999, p. 144). He regards himself as a “dog undertaker” providing a “service to dead dogs” once they are “utterly unable to take care of themselves” (Coetzee, 1999, p. 146). Lurie confesses his actions seek to honor those dead individuals.

While dignitary actions and goods might sometimes be understood in terms of the social respect conception, they might sometimes be understood as distinctive sui generis goods. The way we treat dead animals and honor them in life, such as by selecting appropriate names, may involve irreducible benefits for those animals, just as their dishonoring or defilement can constitute irreducible harms. Although “honor” can suggest social recognition of moral worth, it need not only mean that. We may certainly feel that when Lurie “honors” the unwanted dead dogs he expresses such recognition, but we might also think that as their “undertaker” he provides them with the good simply of being honored in death, whether or not his actions have those additional social implications. And (to echo our earlier argument) those social status and respect implications may anyway draw some of their force from a prior and sui generis notion of honoring.

Although I cannot adequately consider all objections here, I shall briefly examine several possible problems with the sui generis understanding of dignity. This may limit its premature dismissal and aid in clarification.

Our exploratory discussion of ways in which people feel compelled to speak of the defiling, degrading, demeaning, and dishonoring treatment of animals—and perhaps of honoring and dignifying treatment—suggested an understanding of dignity irreducible to familiar moral concepts, such as naturalistic ideas of violation and harm, notions of intrinsic moral worth and respect for autonomy, and so forth. It thus appears resistant to at least some reductionist attacks. A sui generis understanding, we further found, can seemingly be distinguished from a valuable social account of dignity, which it might nonetheless complement and deepen. A notion of irreducible animal dignity may possibly overcome objections that it is uninformative, illusory, inapplicable to nonhumans, and morally trivial or marginal to our relations with animals. Perhaps such an understanding of dignity may even help transform our moral understanding of and relations with nonhuman animals.

This paper received no funding.

The author declares no conflicts of interest.