Abstract
In this chapter I expound “African Modal Relationalism,” Kai Horsthemke’s label for my theory of animal rights with a sub-Saharan pedigree, and I defend it from several criticisms he has recently made of it in his book Animals and African Ethics. Central to my theory, developed in the light of some values salient in indigenous African thought, is the claim that a being has a greater moral status, the more it is in principle capable of relating communally with characteristic human beings. Horsthemke maintains that this principle is anthropocentric and speciesist, is poorly motivated relative to his egalitarian-individualist approach, and does not have the implications that I contend. I aim to rebut these and related objections, contending that African Modal Relationalism is in fact a promising way to philosophically ground animal rights.
This work has benefited from the input of Kai Horsthemke and other participants at the “Conference on African Philosophy: Past, Present and Future” held at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 2015. It was first published in the Journal of Animal Ethics 7, no. 2 (2017): 163–174, and is reprinted here (with some minor modifications) with the permission of the University of Illinois.
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Notes
- 1.
Horsthemke (2015).
- 2.
For example, Callicott (1994: 158).
- 3.
- 4.
Horsthemke (2015: 85–92, 99, 123, 144).
- 5.
Horsthemke (2015: 2–3).
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
There are additional, and in some ways even more controversial, implications of my theory of moral status , not central to the debate with Horsthemke . For instance, certain animals are probably much more able to be communed with by characteristic human beings than others, for example, cats versus fish, meaning the former have a greater moral status. In addition, “marginal” cases of human beings are, I maintain, noticeably more able to be communed with by characteristic human beings than animals, meaning the former have a greater moral status. For discussion of these points, see Metz (2012).
- 11.
For discussion in the context of several sub-Saharan peoples, see Nkulu-N’Sengha (2009).
- 12.
- 13.
Horsthemke (2015: 11; see also 82–83, 93).
- 14.
Horsthemke sometimes has a broader, and vaguer, notion of anthropocentrism, according to which it means “human-centred” or involves assigning “special value or worth to human beings” (2015: 5).
- 15.
See Nkulu-N’Sengha (2009).
- 16.
Horsthemke (2015: 85).
- 17.
Gyekye (2010).
- 18.
Horsthemke (2015: 91).
- 19.
Horsthemke (2015: 5).
- 20.
- 21.
Horsthemke (2015: 91).
- 22.
Horsthemke (2015: 92).
- 23.
Horsthemke (2015: 89, 99).
- 24.
See Metz (2010b).
- 25.
Horsthemke (2015: 89).
- 26.
- 27.
Horsthemke (2015: 89).
- 28.
Metz (2012: 394–395, 397).
- 29.
Horsthemke (2015: 91).
- 30.
Horsthemke (2015: 90).
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Metz, T. (2018). How to Ground Animal Rights on African Values: A Constructive Approach. In: Etieyibo, E. (eds) Method, Substance, and the Future of African Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70226-1_14
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