Are Humans Animals

 

What makes us animals? Commonalities? We do share a lot with many animals – two eyes, nose, mouth, arms and legs, and cells. However, chairs have four legs, but this doesn’t make them cows or pigs. What if we share more commonalities than differences with chimps? Does this make us a chimp? What if our cells more closely resemble the amoeba’s cells? Would this make us amoebas? In a NYT article, “Humans Are Animals. Let’s Get Over It,” Philosopher Crispin Sartwell assumes that we are animals:

 

·       One difficult thing to face about our animality is that it entails our deaths; being an animal is associated throughout philosophy with dying purposelessly, and so with living meaninglessly. It is rationality that gives us dignity, that makes a claim to moral respect that no mere animal can deserve. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/opinion/humans-animals-philosophy.html

 

At first glance, it does seem that our intelligence gives us more dignity than those “other members of the animal kingdom,” but perhaps “dignity” is just a concept humans invented to give us a sense of value and superiority?

 

Besides, if we apply this concept consistently, it will force us to conclude that some of us humans have more dignity than others, like those who have achieved PHDs or run a hedge funds. Do they deserve more respect? Hardly!

If we want to retain the idea of human dignity or primacy over the animal kingdom, we don’t want to go there, but where do we go? They is only one place – to the God who gave us this dignity and sees His likeness in the humans he created (Genesis 1:26-27) and never calls us “animals.”

 

Nevertheless, Sartwell is committed to the idea that we are animals:

 

·       But maybe we’ve been too focused on the differences for too long. Maybe we should emphasize what all us animals have in common.

 

However, if we do emphasize what we have in common, we should regard and treat our fellow human beings as animals. Is this the brave new world Sartwell seeks, where dogs eat dogs and where only the fittest survive?