Abstract
This paper examines the challenges posed by confronting the topic of animal suffering in animal husbandry. The predominant positions within animal ethics mainly focus on the moral status of humans and animals, arguing that killing farm animals is morally wrong due to specifiable intrinsic properties that grant farm animals significant moral status. Such positions are derived from a detached perspective that advocates for rational consistency. This paper opposes this detached perspective. By drawing on Cora Diamond’s concept of a difficulty of reality, it contends that facing animal suffering, including changing one’s habits and attitudes towards this suffering, is instead best accomplished by adopting a situated perspective. Being affected by animal suffering is mediated by our own existential condition as an embodied being exposed to vulnerability. This embodied perspective, which more generally informs our encounters with the world, is derived not from rational principles, but from our immersion in a specific worldly context. Effectively criticizing norms of animal treatment requires engaging with the world with all of our moral capacities, such as imagination and emotional response, from a non-detached perspective.
Recommended Citation
Deininger, Konstantin
(2025)
"In an Animal’s Shoes: Facing Animal Suffering as a Difficulty of Reality,"
Between the Species:
Vol. 28:
Iss.
1, Article 4.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol28/iss1/4