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Doing Politics with Animals (2023)

Profile image of Will KymlickaWill KymlickaProfile image of Sue DonaldsonSue Donaldson

2023, Social Research

https://doi.org/10.1353/SOR.2023.A916348
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28 pages

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Abstract

the western tradition of social and political thought is built on human "exceptionalism"-and a human/nature divide. Whereas nature is ruled by biological imperatives, humans are assumed to have the capacity to rise above nature and animality through reason, language, and culture. Humans make choices about how we want to live, and politics is the vehicle by which we exercise this supposedly unique human capacity for jointly and deliberately shaping the life of the community. As Aristotle put it, only humans are zoon politikon-animals capable of formulating and debating different visions of the good life and the good society. Human freedom and dignity, according to this tradition, are measured by how far humans have distanced themselves from, and risen above, animality. This human exceptionalist view of politics is increasingly challenged on both empirical and normative grounds. Many commentators argue that it has played an important role in perpetuating the ongoing moral catastrophe of human-animal relations and that living justly with animals requires bringing them into the political realm. But what does it mean to do politics with animals? We consider three recent developments that shed some light. These are (1) proposals for the institutional representation of animals' interests in human political decision-making processes; (2) growing ethological evidence for animals' own capacities for language, culture, and collective decision-making; and (3) new theoretical accounts of political

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