IFA III Essay writing activity 2nd essay draft 08/06/2015

Luiz Felipe Martins Candido

Some Consequences of Darwinism to Ethical Treatment of Animals

Along the history of western thought animals have been largely neglected. Indeed, many
times they have been not only neglected but also misrepresented. The philosophy,
before the appearance of Darwinism, was in a very large measure unable to think the
condition of the other beings that share the world whit us. Of course, there are
exceptions, like Pythagoras of Samos and his followers, that believed the animals was
able to reasoning in some measure; or Plutarch, that refer to the habit of eating animals
as unnecessary and cruel. Nevertheless, most of the time, the tradition dealt with
animals as being not worth of consideration.
The appearance of Darwinism the theory of evolution by natural selection changed
this scenario in many aspects, doing necessary rethink about many issues established or
neglected by the tradition. Because of his revolutionary and materialistic view about the
life and specifically about the development of the species, Darwin challenged the
traditional explanations about the functioning of the nature and even of the society. One
of the issues impacted by the discoveries of Darwin was the field of the ethical
reflection.
There are at least two ways that the Darwinism challenged the traditional ways of
thinking about ethics. First, it poses new questions about the foundation of ethics,
establishing basis to build a new comprehension of the nature of the ethics itself;
Second, and this is the point that interest here, it provides a comprehension of the beings
that raises questions about the very characteristics of the beings that are ethically
relevant.
The theory of evolution by natural selection offers an explanation of the diversity of the
species in nature based mainly upon the competition for resources (which Darwin calls

the struggle for life) and sexual fitness. These natural mechanisms create a situation
that results in the surviving of the better fitted (more able to gather resources and to
have sex to have offspring). Combined with the genetic features, responsible to
mutations that produce the characteristics that will be selected, the organisms will
changing along the time, causing the species diversity we know.
What about the moral characteristics that we consider relevant? The issue here is related
to the fact that we, like all the other living beings, are products or results of the same
process. We are all inserted in a continuum that comes from de most inferior (in the
sense of the lesser organic complexity) to the most superior (more complex) forms of
life. And, in this sense, we have, in smaller or larger measure, with many beings
(specially with the mammals, but not only), many characteristics in common, being the
main of them the capacity to feel pain and enjoy pleasurable sensations.
As we know, the ethics refer to the ability to provide reasons to justify actions. If we
care about the goodness or the badness of our actions and the impact of them in the
world, knowing what we know about the nature, and being able to recognize the
similarity between many beings beyond the Homo sapiens specie, it is necessary and
even urgent think about the way we treat and use animals for our purposes without
considering them as bearers of interests like living well or not to be injured.

References
Felipe Fernndez-Armesto, So You Think Youre Human? Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004.
David DeGrazia, Animal Rights: a very short introduction, Oxford University Press,
2002.
Yuval Harari, Sapiens: a brief history of humankind, New York, Harper Collins, 2015.
Tim Ingold. "Humanity and Animality", in Tim Ingold (ed.), Companion Encyclopedia
of Anthropology, Londres, Routledge, 1994, pp. 14-32.
James Rachels. Created from animals: the moral implication of Darwinism. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1990.
Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, New York, Harper Collins, 2001.