Julia Held 
On Animals’ Morality [PDF ebook] 

Essay from the year 2019 in the subject Philosophy – Miscellaneous, grade: 1, University of Leipzig, language: English, abstract: In this paper, I will reject the Kantian claim that animals’ behaviour can’t be morally assessed. On the contrary, I will show how animals’ behaviour can indeed be morally assessed, even if we can’t ascribe a sort of human-like normative morality to them, since they don’t use language and thus have no concept of morality.

Before stating my argument, I want to avoid any misunderstanding by specifying some central notions, i.e. “humans”, “animals” and “moral sensitivities”.

The reader will often be confronted with the terms “humans” and “animals”. Here I want to clarify that a mental division between us, as human animals, and animals, as non-human animals should be avoided. Such a separation usually leads to an overestimation and the assessment of humans being the only ones capable of morality on earth, mainly because of their advanced minds and intellect. Therefore, when considering the problem of moral assessment to animals, an imaginary hierarchical classification should be avoided in order to see what the essence of morality lies in, namely an innate moral sensitivity which humans share with some (or many) animals.