Chapter 34 Chapter Summary

Steinbock considers the question raised by Peter Singer and other proponents of moral equality for animals whether there is any morally relevant difference between humans and nonhumans that justifies privileging human interests without undermining claims for human equality. She concludes that such a difference can be found, rejecting Singer’s claim that the capacity to suffer is the only fundamentally morally relevant capacity. Steinbock grounds appeals to humanity’s special dignity or moral worth on a set of qualities she argues humans uniquely possess, including the desire for self-respect and the capacities for autonomy, moral responsibility, and altruistic motivation. 

To Singer’s objection that some individual humans lack typically human levels of intelligence required for responsibility, autonomy, and so on, Steinbock offers two replies. First, normal humans can look at severely disabled humans and say “That could be me,” but cannot say the same about nonhuman lives. Second, it is morally permissible to extend special care to disabled humans but not to nonhumans, so long as one does not ignore nonhuman interests entirely.