Kant and Moral Responsibility for Animals

This chapter claims that Kant has a consistent and not counterintuitive account of why we have the moral attitudes we do about animals and of how it is that these attitudes have the appearance of being about the animals themselves. It argues that Kant can explain why it doesn’t follow from this that these moral attitudes arise from attributing moral rights to the animals themselves. Central to this interpretation is Kant’s Religion, as it contains an account of human nature that adequately explains both why we have the positive attitudes we do towards animals and why we consider other occasions of attitudes towards animals as genuine examples of moral failure.