The Meaning of the Great Ape Project
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POLITICS AND ANIMALS ISSUE 1 I FALL I 2015 The Meaning of the Great Ape Project PAOLA CAVALIERI Independent Researcher It is now more than two decades since the Great Ape Project was launched. How does such a cultural Keywords: and political initiative fit in the ongoing construction of a politics of animal liberation, and in the larger egalitarianism; contemporary moral and social landscape? An albeit tentative answer to this question will be possible nonhuman great apes; only in the context of an illustration of what the Great Ape project is—of its starting point, its articula- personhood; tion, and the objections it elicited. liberation THE PREMISES community may be arranged on the basis of extensive, super-scientific explanations of things (M. Warnock, Should the deeper sense of the idea of equality, 1990, p. 105)—that, in other words, individuals can be on which human rights is based, demand that we treated according to their alleged place within grand gen- provide for the interests and needs of humans eral worldviews built to explain the universe. While in but allow discrimination against the interests and pre-modern philosophy metaphysics predominated over needs of nonhuman beings? Wouldn’t it be ethics, and ethics was based on values which were deter- strange if the same idea contains the claim for mined by particular conceptions of Being, starting at equality and the permission for discrimination least from Henry Sidgwick (1981, B. I, Chapter 3, B. IV, too? (Anstötz, 1993, p. 169) Conclusion) a consensus slowly emerged that in ethics We live in egalitarian times. Although at present both enquiry and argumentation must meet the autono- there are controversies about specific moral attitudes— mous standards of ethics itself (Nagel, 1978). The such as those concerning abortion or euthanasia— change was significant—after all, it had been the arbitrar- equality is different (Singer, 1979, p. 14). The change in iness of metaphysical approaches which had made it attitudes to equality has been radical, and the burden of possible to treat non-Western peoples as inferiors on the proof has shifted to hierarchical assumptions. basis of idiosyncratic European conceptions of a hierar- Until about thirty years ago, it was taken for granted chy of essences. Moreover, such a shift could not leave that equality was an entirely intra-human affair. As a re- untouched the somehow related perspective which does sult of the questioning of many traditional ethical tenets not clearly discriminate, within ethics, between basic con- that the refinement of the egalitarian arguments in- straints on behavior and precepts about values to be pur- volved, however, the idea of a possible extension of sued (G.J. Warnock, 1971, Chapter 2 and 5; Strawson, equality beyond the boundaries of Homo sapiens could 1961), a perspective that can result in a misplaced respect make its appearance. It is hence worth offering a short for idiosyncratic cultural norms which have an adverse presentation of how assumptions long taken for granted bearing on the fundamental treatment of some beings. have been disputed by the new conceptions, thus clearing Since both these outlooks negatively affected the status the way for the first extensionist attempt undertaken of animals, the fact that they have been challenged through the collective volume The Great Ape Project (Cava- cleared the way for a reappraisal of their treatment. lieri & Singer, 1993). Another ingrained assumption that has been un- The most general aspect of conventional ethics dermined is the so-called agent-patient parity principle,1 which has come under attack is the idea that the moral according to which the class of moral patients—the be- www.politicsandanimals.org 16 Copyright © 2015, Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0 license. POLITICS AND ANIMALS ISSUE 1 I FALL I 2015 ings whose treatment may be subject to moral evalua- ally discriminated against on the ground of her/his tion—coincides with the class of moral agents—the be- membership in a particular biological group. Stressing the ings whose behavior may be subject to moral evaluation.2 moral irrelevance of purely physical characteristics such Traditionally, mainstream moral philosophers, especially as skin color and reproductive role, as contrasted to the from the continental perspective, tended to assume that moral significance of psychological properties such as direct moral protection is only due to those beings (ra- the capacity for being harmed or benefited, for having tional, autonomous, etc.) who can reflect morally on how interests, desires, or a welfare, contemporary egalitarian- to act, and that those beings who can be harmed but ism openly condemned both racism and sexism (Wasser- cannot act morally are excluded from the moral commu- strom, 1979, p. 20; Richards, 1971, p. 83; Cavalieri, 2006). nity. More recently, this view was replaced by an attenuat- But since discrimination based on species membership ed version of the principle, according to which moral also is clearly a form of biologism, which appeals to a agents, though not monopolizing the status of moral pa- difference in genetic make-up, according to a consistent tient, are granted superior moral protection with respect application of this line of thought even “speciesism” to all other beings, who are relegated to a second-class turns out to be prima facie discredited (Singer, 1990, moral category.3 However, reflection on the plight of Chapter 1). And this makes it unacceptable to treat ani- those non-paradigmatic humans who are irrevocably de- mals as second class beings on the traditional ground that prived of the characteristics required for moral agency— “they are not human.” the brain-damaged, the severely intellectually disabled, THE PROPOSAL the senile—could not but lead to questioning both the agent-patient parity principle and its attenuated version. I sat alone at the crest of a grassy ridge watching And this is what occurred. For first, it was argued that a spectacular yet common sunset over the silvery such principles are flawed by the confusion between the waters of Lake Tanganyika in wonderful solitude how, or the possibility of morality, and the what, or the object and silence. I suddenly noticed two adult male of morality—that moral agents make morality possible chimpanzees climbing toward me on opposite does not make them the only (or most) morally consider- slopes. They saw one another only as they topped able beings (Sapontzis, 1987, pp. 145-147). Then, it was the crest, just yards from my seat beneath the stressed that while respect for moral autonomy, where tree, whereupon both suddenly stood upright and such autonomy exists, can be seen as a merely formal swiftly advanced as bipeds through waist-high condition, the bestowal of a special dignity is a substan- grass to stand close together, face to face, each tive move that stands in need of justification (Sumner, extending his right hand to clasp and vigorously 1986, p. 12). Even more to the point, it was argued that shake the other’s while softly panting, heads bob- if the reasoning behind such principles implies that the bing. Moments later they sat down nearby and we characteristic to be valued is a capacity to recognize that three watched the sunset enfold the park. (Teleki, there are other interests than ours, the conclusion that 1993, p. 247) our interests should automatically override the demands Defined as a “deconstructionist and militant book” of all other beings is nothing short of paradoxical (S.R.L. (Blanckaert, 1994, p. 261), The Great Ape Project: Equality Clark, 1984, pp. 107-108). Of course, all these reconsid- beyond Humanity launched in 1993 an international effort erations could not but pave the way for the possibility of to obtain basic human rights for chimpanzees, gorillas an extension of full moral protection to nonhuman be- and orangutans.4 According to some (Corbey, 1995, p. 1) ings as well. the enterprise brought full circle a process that opened in Finally, there is the question of the forms of biolo- 1698 with Edward Tyson’s claim that the chimpanzee was gism that have often infected mainstream western phi- a being intermediate between humans and apes. Passing losophy. Confronted with the kind of biological discrim- through various middle steps including Charles Darwin’s ination against some human groups that has marked our positing of human descendance from apish ancestors history, reaching its apex in the organized genocides of and Wolfgang Köhler’s first (callous) experiments on ape the first half of the twentieth century, contemporary eth- intelligence, this process reached its peak with Jane ics has defended that idea that no individual can be mor- www.politicsandanimals.org 17 Copyright © 2015, Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0 license. POLITICS AND ANIMALS ISSUE 1 I FALL I 2015 Goodall’s discovery of tool manufacture and use in free- win’s theory, in themselves do not bear direct ethical im- living chimpanzees in the 1960s. plications (Rachels, 1993, pp. 152-157). However, they The Great Ape Project includes essays by philosophers play an important philosophical role, insofar as they help and scientists from different countries, and is opened by to erase the traditional idea of a sharp separation be- a “Declaration on Great Apes” signed by all the contrib- tween us and the other great apes by removing its tradi- utors. The Declaration demands the inclusion of the tional background; to quote Diamond again, their impli- nonhuman great apes in the “community of equals,” de- cations “concern how we think about the place of apes fined as the moral and legal community whose members and humans in the universe” (1993, p.