Animals in the History of Political Thought

Abstract

It would be foolish to jump into an examination of the contemporary debates in political theory about animals without having first understood where those debates have come from. Indeed, it would be quite wrong to consider the animal issue as a purely modern phenomenon which has only exercised political theorists in the last 30 years or so. For in fact, the question of our obligations to animals — whether we have any, and what they are — is as old as political theory itself. Furthermore, contemporary debates about animals are shaped by and often mirror directly debates that have been had in political theory for many centuries. Because of this, this chapter briefly examines the treatment of animals in the history of Western political thought. It does so by organising itself around three periods in Western thought: Ancient, medieval Christian and modern. Inevitably, drawing lines around such periods involves some arbitrariness, as does the selection of the thinkers that is discussed in each. However, structuring the discussion in this way does help to focus on what I take to be an important trend in the discussion of animals in the history of Western political theory. That trend is largely of disagreement about whether animals merit justice in Ancient times, consensus over their exclusion in medieval Christianity and then a return of the disagreement once again in modern times.