Cruelty for pleasure

An article about bullfighting in the September issue of Prospect magazine concludes by asking whether it can be justified:

This brings us to the heart of the matter: the question of animal rights. I do not believe animals have rights in the strict ethical sense of the word. If they did, they would have duties to uphold those rights for themselves, which is a risible notion. It would also follow that we would have a duty to prevent the lion from killing the wildebeest on Big Cat Diary, which would be an obscene act. However, even if one believes that attributing rights to animals is a nonsense, "it would not follow," to quote Roger Scruton's 1996 book, Animal Rights and Wrongs, "that we can treat them as we choose. It may still be the case... that certain ways of treating them are vicious and that there are only some ways of treating them that a good person would contemplate."

Now comes the key question as to whether the level of suffering inflicted on the bull in the ring is justified by the sheer aesthetic pleasure of the bullfight. And it is an aesthetic pleasure, for the bullfight is an art form. The pomp and ceremony, the rigid structure combined with the room for improvisation by an individual performer, the emotional appeal which is not merely the gaudy sparkle of circus spectacle, or an admiration of bravery, but something much more fundamental and tragic.

The author of the piece, Alexander Fiske-Harrison, leaves the question open, saying that whether or not 'artistic quality' outweighs the animals' suffering is something everyone must decide for themselves. I must say, I find the idea that deliberate cruelty, in this case the infliction of avoidable suffering, might be justified by the consideration that it yields aesthetic pleasure particularly revolting. I won't try to defend that statement. For one thing, it merely registers a fact about my own moral and emotional responses. For another, I'm not sure how to argue for the proposition that cruelty is bad, or that we shouldn't needlessly cause suffering. It just seems morally axiomatic.

I concentrate, therefore, on Fiske-Harrison's dismissal of the idea that animals could have rights. He bases this on the argument that having rights must entail having duties. But this is true only on some accounts of what rights are, and not on others. If rights are based on the fundamental interests of the being that has them, then animals can have rights, because they have interests. It is also worth noting one of the consequences of insisting that only a responsible agent - that is, one capable of having and fulfilling duties - can have rights: this is that infants and very young children would have no rights, and neither would people suffering from senile dementia. It also doesn't follow from thinking animals have rights that we are duty bound to make interventions of an impossible kind into the interactions between other species. We can only do what we can do.

One thing we can certainly do is register how very many sources of aesthetic gratification there are in the world that do not involve tormenting animals.