What’s Good, to a Cat?
In a new book of philosophy, Harvard professor Dr. Christine M. Korsgaard demands that we reconsider basic animal ethics
A creature roams my house. Her name is Clarice. She’s an adopted cat with one bulging marbled eye, which is blind, and one curious green eye, which I suspect can see ghosts. A white patch at her throat interrupts her otherwise mottled gray coat. At sunrise she paws my arms, with growing panic, until I rise from bed and feed her. When I come home from work, she demands to be held.
A question of philosophy: what do I owe this belligerent creature? On a simple practical level, what is my relationship to Clarice?
The average animal lover may not spend much time agonizing over whether the answer lies in Aristotle, Kant, or Bentham, but anyone who has ever wrestled with the question of what we owe to animals is wading into a centuries-old debate that has occupied many of philosophy’s biggest stars.
One voice has tended to dominate that debate, especially in the last fifty-ish years: Peter Singer, the Australian moral philosopher credited with translating veganism into a coherent philosophical position. Singer’s 1975 Animal Liberation used the utilitarian principle that the best moral course of action is the one that maximizes the good…
