Animals and Ethics

Animals and Ethics
Non-human animals normally exist within the boundaries of our moral concepts. Sometimes the animals are accorded strong moral status while sometimes they are denied any form of moral status. A right is a concept created by human aimed at maintaining social order with other fellow human beings. It implies that non-human animals do not have anything to do with rights. However, a deliberate harm or any abusive done to such animals is morally wrong. Such abuses are wrong morally not because the animals have an intrinsic sense of rights but because these practices have effects on the nature of human’s ethical sensibilities. The practices have effects on the status of human beings as the ethical agents. Therefore, the abuse of animals by human beings is ethically wrong since it causes a lot of deformations in our ethical culture. In other words, the welfare of animals does not amount to animal rights.
The obligations we have towards animals includes allowing them to exist, ensuring their needs are met, treating them humanely and ensuring that their welfare is put under consideration in the event they are kept captive. Human beings normally have a choice to respect and love the animals. Animals do not deserve a certain level of cruelty that they are subjected at times. It is because we share the genetics and soul with animals in the world hence we have an obligation of handling them with love and respect that they deserve. Emmanuel Kant argues that animals lack a sense of reasoning, consciousness and autonomy hence are denied equal consideration with humans and also denied moral status (“Animals And Ethics | Internet Encyclopedia Of Philosophy” n.

p). However, he still requires humans not to harm animals since doing so causes great harm to the morality of human beings.
Work Cited
“Animals and Ethics | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy”. Iep.utm.edu. N.p., 2016. Web. 3 Oct. 2016.