ethics
21 Aug 2008
What's Wrong with Bestiality Anyway?
Morally dumbfounded by sex with dogs? In this extract from his latest book, Clive Hamilton argues for existential distinctions between species
Acts that are considered to contravene moral norms elicit emotional responses from those who witness or contemplate them. Depending on the nature of the act, they may make us feel annoyed, bewildered, outraged or disgusted. Such feelings are inspired both by acts that breach universal ethical principles and by acts that merely contravene social conventions or etiquette, although the intensity of the reaction is usually greater in the former case. Having noticed these strong emotional reactions, moral philosophers typically set out to understand the rules or principles that have been breached to cause such effects.With the possible exception of necrophilia, no purely sexual act elicits in us more revulsion than bestiality.
In Good Sex, his recent study of sexual ethics, American philosopher Raymond Belliotti uses a post-Kantian ethical framework to discern why bestiality might be morally wrong. With admirable philosophical honesty, he declares himself unable to reach an obvious conclusion as to the immorality of bestiality. Belliotti notes that even though animals have moral status because they have interests, they do not necessarily have a moral status equal to that of humans.
The strongest argument against bestiality is the lack of consent. It is not, however, apparent that animals suffer as a result of bestiality or that their interests are greatly impaired. As a result, Belliotti says, lack of consent seems inadequate to establish the wrongfulness of bestiality.
Next he asks whether it is wrong because the animal, a sentient being, is used as a mere means to a human end. Once again, it is not apparent that the interests of the animal are affected by being used as a mere means. The animal might be exploited during the act itself but otherwise be very well treated. Despite the lack of obvious reasons, Belliotti does conclude that bestiality is immoral, although the grounds for his conclusion are weak.
Reflection on the matter does not produce any compelling explanation for why we find bestiality repugnant. This "moral dumbfounding" is not uncommon. When Rolling Stone Keith Richards told an interviewer he had snorted his father's ashes, the hostile public reaction caused him to hastily announce that he was only joking - although it is not at all clear why snorting one's father's ashes should be immoral.
Jonathan Haidt gives the example of the brother and sister who one night in a remote cabin decide to have sex out of curiosity. They take all precautions against pregnancy and enjoy the experience but decide not to do it again and to keep it secret. It is hard to find a good reason to condemn them. They were fully consenting, there was no chance of conception, and both enjoyed the experience. In cases like this we can reach strong moral judgments without a maxim in sight. Haidt argues persuasively that moral reasoning typically occurs after a moral judgment has been made intuitively and is used to rationalise the reaction.
Nevertheless bestiality remains a powerful taboo. So perhaps we should try a different approach and work backwards. Instead of trying to explain why we feel revulsion, let us accept revulsion as a given and ask what this fact can tell us about the ethical framework I have developed.
That one feels disgust at something - as some do with homosexual sex - does not make it morally wrong, but the enduring and universal social taboo relating to bestiality makes it reasonable to accept that it is wrong. Note first that, because the interests of the animal are involved, it is legitimate to take a universalising stance: we would not just advise against a proposed act of bestiality; we would condemn it as immoral. Moreover, there are good grounds for believing that the person who engages in bestiality suffers from a perversion that may have an effect on other humans. Society therefore has a moral interest in bestiality.
If bestiality does not necessarily contravene a practical rule we must go to the basis of moral rules. That basis cannot be found in Kantian reason or in utilitarian calculus: it is to be found only in the notion of metaphysical empathy and the understanding of each human being as both phenomenon (that is, as a physical self existing in the world of everyday experiences) and noumenon (an "essence" or moral self). As we have seen, the reasons for the immorality of bestiality are hard to situate in the phenomenon.
So what is it in our moral selves that makes the practice repugnant?
Considering the functions of sex, it seems that the source of the problem must lie in the idea of metaphysical union, the joining of Selves. It is reasonable to hypothesise that there is something intrinsically different between the universal Self of each species and that the attempted merger of two differing Selves in the sexual act is an offence against what might be called "the noumenal order".
In The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer argued that each species can be considered the representation of a Platonic Idea. If the world is the expression in phenomenal form of the noumenon, it is expressed in many grades or forms. Thus, while two rocks of a specific type scarcely differ, higher animals are differentiated into individual forms. Each species of animal reflects a Platonic Idea that captures all that is universal to the species and resides unchanged in its individual forms.
These "species ideas" are the unique manifestations of the noumenon before they appear in the phenomenon. This is what lies behind Schopenhauer's conclusion that bestiality is "really an offence against the species as such and in the abstract, not against human individuals". As a result, each of us has a moral interest in any act of bestiality.
If this argument holds it provides a basis for judging bestiality as immoral because it violates the essential integrity of both human and animal. The repugnance we feel is an inbuilt mechanism that discourages offences against the noumenal order, a metaphysical reaction that is expressed as a visceral one - perhaps analogous to the physical disgust people feel when confronted by rotten food. If we accept that there is such a thing as the noumenal order, the way we consider the morality of bestiality must change.
Although the interests of an individual animal might not be harmed, the interests of each species can be. Such a view contradicts the rights-based approach shared by post-Kantians (such as Belliotti and John Rawls) and utilitarians (such as Peter Singer), which assesses an act as right or wrong according to how it affects the interests of individuals.
It is worth noting that if there is something existentially distinct between species, the position of animal ethicists - notably Peter Singer, who argue that humans and animals are in the relevant sense the same and their interests should therefore be given equal consideration - is undermined. Accepting Singer's view has a number of ethical implications, including vegetarianism. The noumenal order I propose leads us to declare bestiality immoral because it violates the essence of the species, but eating meat does not have the same metaphysical implications.
It might seem curious that in setting out to uncover the ethical case against bestiality we end up questioning the ethical case for vegetarianism. It seems we can eat animals but we cannot have sex with them. This is not so surprising when we remember that almost all humans feel disgust at bestiality but not many feel disgust at eating meat.
Of course, this does not mean there are no other reasons for deciding to avoid meat, among them the cruelty inflicted on animals destined for human consumption and the environmental degradation associated with meat production. Nor does it mean an ethical approach to the treatment of animals should disregard their sentience and thus our obligation to respect them as manifestations of the noumenon.
But if we accept our revulsion at bestiality as a given fact it does seem to make intuitive sense that animals are metaphysically distinct from humans. This deepening of our understanding of the noumenon has wider implications for the relationship of humans to the natural world.
This is an edited extract from Clive Hamilton's latest book, The Freedom Paradox: Towards a Post-Secular Ethics (2008), published by Allen and Unwin.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Newsvine
Facebook
Kwoff
Discuss this article
To participate in the discussion Sign in or Register
All the existential metaphysics are bit too much for me. A lot of old taboos had their origins in health concerns which may or may not be relevant today.
For some people there are still a lot of pernickity rules about what animals and which bits are permitted to be eaten. But today’s Western meats have usually been domesticated and cooked, after first doctoring with pesticides and antibiotics.
On the other hand, cross-species exchange of bodily fluids sounds like a great opportunity to spawn a whole new menagerie of STDs.
So, if I use a zucchini as a dildo am I violating its noemenal spirit?
Hmm, just coming out on the other side of a Masters in critical theory where I have read a bunch of Plato, other theorists on Kant and Husserl, am halfway through Being and Time, and have finished books about postmodernism, ontology and epistemology, I don’t think an attempt should have even been made to reduce this argument to a thousandish words. Plus I immediately shut off when anyone takes Schopenhauer seriously. This is the philosopher who decided women are ugly, stupid and evil because he got rejected by one. There’s a strong example of rationality for you.
I’m not convinced bestiality is morally wrong - that there’s something disgusting about it may be - but I’m certainly a vegetarian. If it is immoral, I have to go with the consent and power thing. Having sex with an animal would then be in the same league as having sex with a child: neither the child nor the animal have the appropriate conditions to consent willingly to sex, or even know if they want to consent. So really it is the sex that’s the problematic (as Hamilton alludes to by comparing bestiality to eating meat) not the speciation.
Anyway, hope the book is better argued than that.
"Plus I immediately shut off when anyone takes Schopenhauer seriously. This is the philosopher who decided women are ugly, stupid and evil because he got rejected by one. There’s a strong example of rationality for you."
Ad hom, innit?
I have enormous respect for Clive Hamilton, but this topic seems to have got away from him a bit. He comes at it from the anthropocentric view of - there are humans, and then there are "animals", as if we are some kind of separate creation. I partly address that issue here http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/94514/I_see_dead_people.html as a general principle but it is also fundamentally important for the argument Clive is making. If you look at it from the point of us as one animal species among many, then it would be instantly clear that repugnance for "bestiality" is a universal concept. Indeed if Clive were a biologist he would be aware that the prevention of sexual relations (and consequent gene flow) between groups is the process that leads to speciation. So all species contain within themselves the ability to recognise (by all kinds of means - sight, smell, behaviour) their own species as potential mates, and other species as not potential mates. That is, this is a fundamental feature of life on Earth, not some odd philosophical quirk of human beings. If people are interested I could expand on all this on another occasion.
Hi Ayladarcy,
I’d leave the zucchinis to the chicks if I were you.
Joe
ayladarcy: if you see a zucchini as existentially distinct from the species with which you identify, then - if i’m following CH correctly - you can eat the marrow, but forget about the post-prandials. some issues of consent might also arise.
What IS the age of consent for zucchinis ?
Not sure, David…don’t dogs hump our legs?
Anyway, even if it is "natural" to find bestality repugnant, does that necessarily make bestiality "wrong"?
I don’t know why I find this topic interesting - maybe because I don’t much care one way or another.
I hate myself when I make typos.
Ah Ben, do’t hate yourself, even the best of us ake typo’s.
I don’t care much either - of the 1001 serious issues I have to think about before I can go to sleep each night, bestiality is number 1002.
But I am concerned by Clive’s conclusions that the argument that "humans and animals are in the relevant sense the same and their interests should therefore be given equal consideration - is undermined" and that "it does seem to make intuitive sense that animals are metaphysically distinct from humans". These are the kinds of arguments that have caused so much animal cruelty and so much environmental damage.
And dogs humping legs? Well, I think that tells you more about the breeding of domestic dogs and about the owners of the legs and the way they have raised their pets than it does about species interaction in general. Or have you had a wolf humping your leg?
There is a lovely story about a virtuoso pianist being asked by a friend to set up a concert for his son, as a special favour. The pianist asked his virtuoso violinist friend to arrange it, the pianist took on the role of violinist, the violinist agreed to turn the pages for the young man and the concert duly went ahead, to the bemusement of the audience. A critic reported, ‘A strange event occurred last night: the violinist turned the pages for the pianist; the pianist played the violin; and the person who should have been turning the pages, played the piano.’
It is very common in Indigenous affairs, at least here in Adelaide, for the heads of Indigenous units, organisations, etc., to have either no qualifications or quaifications in fields other than the one which they are heading. For example, the head of the main health organisation is a teacher, the head of the main education body is a community worker, and so on. So it is no surprise to see that Mr Hamilton has thrown his hat in the ring to become an ethicist and a philosopher. He has every right to give this a go, after all, if Germaine Greer can pose as a thinker, then it’s pretty much open slather. After watching the Olympics, what the hell, I might even give the the rings a try, it doesn’t look all that hard.
So who’s turning the pages ?
Don’t you love it when self appointed "moral philosophers" try to explain "the functions of sex" by invoking "the essential integrity of both human and animal."
The real irony here is in Clive’s book title: The Freedom Paradox: towards a post secular ethics…
Organized religion has been banging on about the "freedom paradox" (which is really code for legitimizing counterfactual reasoning for those who know or care about what that is) for at least two thousand years. There is nothing "secular" about Platonic "Ideas" (I think the more accurate term is Forms, anyway).
I cannot think of better way to articulate the core premise of almost every argument made in favor of organized religion than this statement:
"Although the interests of an individual animal might not be harmed, the interests of each species can be."
Interests of the species… please Clive, this is not the nineteenth century.
And you’ve gotta love those "offences against the noumenal order," too. Isn’t that just another way of saying "sin"?
There is a lesson to be drawn here though. The fact that Clive has had to invoke bestiality in order to make his point illustrates how desperate those wanting to make the case for "universal morality" have become.
Well you know what they say Clive, if meat is murder then surely milk is aggravated sexual assualt.
But really. Humans are animals. It is only your success at subjugating the other species that makes it possible to draw these fine distinctions about ethics and morals. All I know is I would rather be screwed than eaten.
PS. I feel personally attacked by this article.
Hi Doc,
You would rather be screwed than eaten ? Unless you are in southern Italy, or China, neither fate will befall you. How’s that for alienating two audiences at once ?
Cheers,
Joe
I personally don’t feel absolute disgust whan hearing about bestiality, homosexual sex or even sex with a sibling - I’m not interested in performing any of the above - but I wouldn’t roundly condemn anyone who would indulge in same, either.
Paedophilia and rape/sexual assault are different matters, but that’s for another time..
But all this "utiltarian calculus" an "noumenal order" mince just leaves me cold. Just use plain English when compiling your artices, please, o noble feature-writers, or just create an appendix at the end, if you would. It would be of benefit to those plebs like me who got lost after the fifth paragraph..
When christianity is taken out of the question of what is moral and what is not it seems imposible to label anything immoral or moral. Even the concept of consent is based on the christion teaching "do to others as you have others do to you." Before the spread of Christianity a person could do anything to anybody as long as they had the power to do so.
According to who, RR? I also believe in God, but I also believe that the notion of what is decent or indecent doesn’t have to come from religion. There are a plethora of examples throughout history to confirm that religion doesn’t help. Take your pick. The Salem witch-hunts. The Spanish Inquisiton. The Taliban. The Reformation. The Ottoman Empire. The list is almost inexhaustive.
To say that "before Christianity a person could do anything to anybody as long as they had the power to do so" is, I believe, wrong. Not everyone who inhabited the ancient world was an offensive primitive, you know. The ancient Greeks and Romans weren’t total unsophisticates. One could probably say the same thing about many civisations before them as well. The Aborigones, for example. Or do you you really know so little about your nation’s history?