Adler was teaching a class on classical
texts during the Second World War. As so
many young men were missing from the home front, Adler’s class consisted
entirely of women. He was trying to
illustrate the concept of human nature with this scenario. “Suppose a creature entered the room. He is eight feet tall, covered in hair, with
fangs. He sits down in one of these
chairs and discusses the classical texts with us. Would that be a man?” After a brief pause for thought, one of the young
ladies replied: “Well, Mr. Adler, times are hard.”
That joke, as I remember it, perfectly
expresses the point I was making in my last post. Adler’s imaginary monster may not belong to
the biological species Homo sapiens, but he shows clear signs of being human in
a moral sense. He can read and communicate
in auditory symbols, which suggests the uniquely human power (on this planet in
this age) of logos.
Is this a secure foundation for
the doctrine of unalienable rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence? I submit that it provides the most secure
foundation possible: it works for anyone who can recognize the difference
between plants, non-human animals, and human beings.
There is a very good reason why
we recognize that animals and plants have a very different moral status. We are concerned enough about animals that we
punish people who abuse them. We live in
weird times but, so far as I know, no one has been arrested for abusing a carrot. The reason is that the two kinds of organisms
occupy very different levels on the existential pyramid. Plants can flourish or wither, but they
cannot suffer. Animals can suffer and
because we recognize that we do or should care about how we treat them. This moral fact is a robust as the difference
between a horse and a horse chestnut.
The same order of distinction
presents between human beings and animals.
Perhaps we shouldn’t exploit animals at all, let alone eat them, the way
we do plants. Some people believe
that. No reasonable person can say that
we ought to give a dog the vote or allow her a space for liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. Dogs are, by nature,
capable of no such things.
The phrase “all men are created
equal,” understanding “men” to mean all human beings, is grounded in such
distinctions. I can conceive of no better
ground for human rights than in the nature of the creatures that we encounter
in this world.
