“Never to be forgotten” is how Adam Smith described each of the two men who influenced him most, and only those two: his best friend David Hume and his Glasgow teacher and mentor Francis Hutcheson. Huge hearted, Hutcheson was larger than life, the warm soul of the Scottish Enlightenment in the decades preceding his death in 1746.
In a reading group on his Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy (Latin 1742, revised 1745, and English 1747), we came upon a passage worth calling attention to.
The work is not lengthy, yet the benevolent Hutcheson felt need to explain at length the moral justification of domesticating, breeding, and eating animals. His arguments remain pertinent. He justifies current practice but we might expect that he would object to certain methods today.
I have cleared away editorial apparatus; what follows is the 1747 English text. I hope you find it of interest.
There’s indeed implanted in men a natural kindness and sense of pity, extending even to the Brutes, which should restrain them from any cruelty toward them which is not necessary to prevent some misery of mankind, toward whom we must still have a much higher compassion. But men must soon discern, as they increase in numbers, that their lives must be exceedingly toilsome and uneasy unless they are assisted by the beasts fitted for labour. They must also see that such beasts of the gentler kinds and easily tameable, whose services men need most, cannot be preserved without the provident care of men; but must perish by hunger, cold, or savage beasts: nor could men unassisted by work-beasts, and over-burthened in supporting themselves, employ any cares or labour in their defence. Reason therefor will shew, that these tractable creatures fitted for labour are committed to the care and government of men, that being preserved by human care, they may make a compensation by their labours. And thus a community or society is plainly constituted by nature, for the common interest both of men and these more tractable animals, in which men are to govern, and the brute animals to be subject.
Such tractable animals as are unfit for labours, must make compensation to men for their defence and protection some other way, since their support too requires much human labour; as they must have pastures cleared of wood, and be defended from savage creatures. Men must be compensated by their milk, wool, or hair, otherwise they could not afford them so much of their care and labour.
Nay, if upon the increase of mankind they were so straitened for food, that many must perish by famine, unless they feed upon the flesh of brute animals; Reason will suggest that these animals, slaughtered speedily by men for food, perish with less pain, than they must feel in what is called their natural death; and were they excluded from human protection they must generally perish earlier and in a worse manner by hunger, or winter-colds, or the fury of savage beasts. There’s nothing therefor of unjustice or cruelty, nay ’tis rather prudence and mercy, that men should take to their own use in a gentler way, those animals which otherways would often fall a more miserable prey to lions, wolves, bears, dogs, or vultures.
Don’t we see that the weaker tribes of animals are destined by nature for the food of the stronger and more sagacious? Were a like use of inferior animals denied to mankind, far fewer of these animals fit for human use would either come into life or be preserved in it; and the lives of these few would be more exposed to danger and more miserable. And then, the interest of the whole animal system would require that those endued with reason and reflection, and consequently capable of higher happiness or misery, should be preserved and multiplied, even tho’ it occasioned a diminution of the numbers of inferior animals. These considerations abundantly evidence that right of mankind to take the most copious use of inferior creatures, even those endued with life. And yet all useless cruelty toward the brute animals is highly blameable. (Hutcheson 1747/2007, 134-135)
Daniel Klein is economics professor and JIN Chair at the Mercatus Center, at George Mason University, where he leads a program in Adam Smith. He is author of Knowledge and Coordination: A Liberal Interpretation (OUP, 2012) and chief editor of Econ Journal Watch.
READER COMMENTS
Jason S.
Apr 22 2019 at 9:23am
I’m not a vegan, but this argument is not very persuasive. The central problem is that human beings bred domestic animals to be docile and unable to defend themselves. The real moral comparison has to be between the situation of these animals when not domesticated and their situation under domestication and slaughter. I’m ready to believe that more mammals exist than would do if humans did not consume them, but fewer of them are wild, and the question of whether the brief lives of industrially farmed animals are equal in value to those of wild animals is a more difficult one.
Francois G.
Apr 22 2019 at 2:10pm
In a more fundamental way most if not all animals bred for food would not be born if we stopped eating meat. The question then becomes does their existence offer some value other than for human purposes? Given the current industrial conditions under which most live the answer is certainly not.
Luke (Not a Vegan but curious)
Apr 22 2019 at 3:56pm
Thanks for sharing this, Dan. I’m not normally a commenter, but the link between this post and what I was watching a moment ago seems to warrant it. Artifishal, is a documentary (with an agenda, admittedly) about fish farming but broadly applicable to animal domestication in general. Human beings are actively “devolving” salmon–making them less able to thrive in the wild. I’m not sure that there getting anything from us that would balance the scales. Also not a great outcome for us if salmon go extinct. What would Hutcheson say about that?
Stephen C.
Apr 23 2019 at 12:27am
I agree with Jason, and as Dr. Klein alludes to in his introduction here, the animal husbandry Hutcheson refers to bears little resemblance to the industrial factory farming system in which most feed animals live out their miserable existence today.
Rob Wiblin
Apr 23 2019 at 10:08am
Farming increases the number of these animals, so this moral argument relies on the lives of farm animals being worth living.
It’s hard to look at current US farming practices and think it would be a blessing to have such a life. I’d much rather never exist at all than be effectively tortured the way factory farmed animals are.
The line of argument is called the ‘logic of the larder’ and there is a modern literature on it. For example —
Human Diets and Animal Welfare: the Illogic of the Larder
“Few moral arguments have been made against vegetarian diets. One exception is the “Logic of the Larder:” We do animals a favor by purchasing their meat, eggs, and milk, for if we did not purchase these products, fewer animals would exist. This argument fails because many farm animals have lives that are probably not worth living, while others prevent a significant number of wild animals from existing. Even if this were not so, the purchase of animal products uses resources that could otherwise be used to bring a much greater number of animals into existence.”
Link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10806-005-1805-x
And because farm animals consume so much grain, we could also support more people if we ate much less meat, limiting ourselves to wild fish and animals grazed on the most marginal farmland where crops are impractical.
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