On Kantian Deontological Theories in Animal Ethics

Kant’s view on animals holds that human beings have no direct duties to animals, because they have no rational natures and cannot be persons, but human beings have duties regarding them, because these duties are necessary for human beings to cultivate their virtues. This view is demonstrated by many commenters as logocentrism, anthropocentrism and speciesism. In order to response these objections, Wood and Korsgaard attempt to construct Kantian direct duties to animals by amending Kant’s concepts such as reason, person and end in itself, while O’Neill, Denis, Altman and Kain try to defend Kant’s indirect duties regarding animals through emphasizing Kant’s concepts such as Humanity, moral feeling and moral anthropology. This article will point out that these commenters share a questionable premise, that is, it is incompatible between direct and indirect duties, and argues that Kant’s concept of amphiboly can help us to connect these two kinds of duties, which is also helpful for us to construct modern animal ethics.