Cruelty to animals (updated)
It doesn't often happen that I disagree with my friends next door at Harry's Place, but I'm perplexed by David T's and Harry's posts on fox hunting and I want to explain why. I'm not going to argue positively for the ban, though I support it. I do think, however, that you need better arguments to oppose it with than are supplied in David and Harry's posts. David adopts - or affects? - a couldn't-care-less attitude towards animal suffering, giving priority to the pleasures of human beings. Harry endorses a piece by Polly Toynbee in which she belittles the importance of the fox hunting issue relative to the 'things that really matter', like social injustice. In response to which I offer the following.
(1) One should care about the suffering of other sentient beings. Indifference to the suffering of others is part of the definition of cruelty.
(2) Putting the interests of human beings above those of other species is all right as a general principle, but it doesn't by itself settle all particular cases where these interests compete. Otherwise you would have to allow that someone who mildly enjoyed beating an animal to death with a club every morning should be allowed to do so. But one shouldn't allow that, and in fact as a community we don't. So it then becomes a matter of judgement about the nature and importance of the pleasures in question, their substitutability, how far the pains involved in those pleasures can be alleviated, or avoided altogether, and so forth. Given the range and variety of pleasures available to human beings I'd like to see a compelling argument for the indispensability of fox hunting, bull fighting and the like.
(3) There are so many types of suffering and injustice in the world that any single person can only be active in protesting about and opposing a fraction of them. Given this, it can nearly always be said that you shouldn't be wasting time on this when what really matters is that. But everything that matters really matters. The fact that some things matter less is only an argument for ignoring them if you think that everybody should be constantly mobilizing over what matters most. Thus: unless you're protesting and active over (just for example) Darfur, you're not entitled to speak out about anything. True, someone who gets upset about fox hunting but is willing to swallow factory farming whole has a problem of moral consistency to deal with. But some of us opposed to the one form of cruelty to animals are also opposed to the other form of it. For the rest, the struggle against the ills of the world is huge and never-ending; it can't be waged by focusing exclusively on what matters most.
(4) There's an argument for thinking that cruelty, like compassion, will find its way across the boundaries here. A humanity that practises - as we do - enormous, terrible cruelties towards other species is less than well placed, and not very likely to be able, to minimize cruelty within its own ranks.
Update: David T has posted a response. There are also posts up about the issue by Ophelia B, Dave G and Eric the U. Two points I'd like to add in the light of some comments made in these posts: (3 a) I don't 'regard meat-eating... as the sort of practice in which the balance should be struck in favour of humans' (David T); I think humans should stop eating meat. (5) I don't think the fact that a practice is 'layered with deep cultural meaning' (David T) is a good enough reason for preserving it; much less do I think that the fact that something is a 'sport', as opposed to being an activity 'just for the hell of it' (Dave G), tells at all strongly in its favour - in both cases, not if the practice or thing in question causes needless suffering. Update 2: Harry has put up a further post.
