Broadie and Pybus on Kant
TOM REGAN

In their essay ‘K ant’s Treatment of Animals’ (.Philosophy, 49 (1974),375-383), Alexander Broadie and Elizabeth M . Pybus argue both that(1) K ant’s account of our duties to animals is “ radically at odds with asound ordinary view concerning our treatment of animals, namely, the viewthat animals, in so far as they have a capacity for suffering, are objects ofdirect moral concern’ (p. 345) and that (2) K ant’s view concerning ourduties to animals leads to absurdity and is internally inconsistent with otherprinciples in his philosophy. T h e former of these charges may be correct,
but not the latter, at least not for the reasons Broadie and Pybus give.
Their reasons are as follows (p. 382):[Kant’s] argument, put briefly, is to the effect that if human beings mal­treat animals they will acquire a tendency to use rationality (in themselves
or in other people) as a means. But, according to Kant, animals are, inthe technical sense, things, and consequently are precisely what we should
use as means. His argument therefore is that if we use certain things, viz.
animals, as means, we will be led to use human beings as means.
Something has gone wrong already. Kant never maintains that it iswrong to use animals as means— e.g. as beasts of burden. What he does
maintain is that the maltreatment of animals is wrong because it leads
those who do so to treat persons in a similar way. And it is clear that Kant
does not suppose, as, in the passage just quoted, Broadie and Pybus
erroneously assume that he does, that the concept of maltreating an animal,on the one hand, and, on the other, the concept of using an animal as ameans, are the same or logically equivalent concepts. For we can, given
K ant’s views, use an animal as a means without at the same time necessarily
maltreating it, as when, for example, a blind man uses a seeing eye dog buttreats him with love and devotion.
This same error underlies the charge of absurdity and inconsistency thatthe authors level against Kant in bringing their argument to a head. T h eywrite (p. 383):
Thus, if [Kant] is to use the argument that using animals as means willlead us to use rationality as means, he must generalize it, and say that
because of the effect on our behaviour towards other people, we ought
never to use anything as a means, and we have an indirect duty not to
do so. This is not merely absurd, but contrary to his imperative ofskill (my italics).
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Discussion

T h e point is, however, that Kant does not maintain that using animals asmeans will lead to the effects in question; what he does maintain is thatmaltreating them will. So Broadie and Pybus cannot argue that K ant’s
position leads to the absurd consequence that we have an indirect duty notto use any thing as a means on the ground that Kant holds that we havean indirect duty not to use animals in this way. Nor can they say that hisview here is inconsistent with his imperative of skill. For what follows fromwhat Kant says is not that we have an indirect duty not to use any thing as ameans; what follows is that we have an indirect duty not to maltreat anything, if, by doing so, we are led to use the rationality in ourselves or inothers merely as a means. Even assuming, then, that K ant’s views here are‘radically at odds with a sound ordinary view concerning our treatment ofanimals’, Broadie and Pybus have not shown that they are absurd or thatthey are radically at odds with his own views on other matters.

North Carolina State University

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