ROUSSEAU AND VOLTAIRE: THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND ANIMAL ANIMAL RIGHTS RIGHTS RAYMOND GIRAUD Stanford University tification or even of kinship. Sadly, per haps, we must admit the i.rmlense resistance In his extraordinary work, Animals I human beings present to recognizing obliga Rights, first p.ililished in 1892, Henry Salt, tions even to individuals of their own race although giving much credit to humanitarian and species without a prior denonstration of feeling in antiquity and the Renaissance, sane sort of kinship. "Blood is thicker than situated the first true develofXOOIlt of the water. " The author of the medieval Chanson concept of animal rights in the Enlighten de Roland expressed this parochial conviction ment. "It was not until the eighteenth cen with admirable succinctness; "Christians are tury, the age of enlightenment and 'sensibi right (unt droit); pagans are wrong." The lity' of which Voltaire and Rousseau were the old British device invokes "Dieu et ITDn spokesmen, " he wrote, "that the rights of droit" (Gcd and my right), not the rights of animals obtained ITDre deliberate recognition" others. (p. 4). Indeed, in our contemporary under standing of the word, all of its variants and Rousseau and Voltaire inherited fran offshoots (the rights of man, of the citizen, their recent past as a target for criticism of WOllen, slaves, prisoners, gays--and of an analysis of man's radical difference fran animals, too) stem fran that period when the other living creatures that was riddled with European bourgeoisie, and by extension the contradictions but had acquired status be American as well, formulated a revolutionary cause of the unquestionable brilliance of its ideology that, in the language of the time, author, the great Rene Descartes. in an called for liberation fran tyranny, des effort doubtless directed both toward coun potism, and oppression and vindicated libera tering accusations of heresy and justifying tive action by the elaboration of a network the use of animals in experimentation ("ab of "rights"--aITDng them life, liberty, and solving men fran the suspicion of crime," in the prrsuit of happiness, as well as sane his words) , Descartes argued that animals that we might consider ITDre esoteric, like were natural automata, incapable of thought the right to own property, but which Voltaire and feeling and ITDved by divinely created likened to the cry of nature. mechanisms analogous to the ingenious spring operated clockwork devices that human beings Neither Rousseau nor Voltaire can prob had used to give a semblance of life to their ably be considered a major contributor to the own inanimate creations. (If one leaves Gcd develofXOOIlt of the concept of animal rights, out of the equation, Descartes' explanation but Salt's words are no less true for that. of animal behavior is not very far fran the More direct attacks on human mistreatment of one that present-day behavioristic socio animals in the name of their innate (if not biologists offer for the conduct of human Gcd-given) rights and on the ITDdel of the beings, whose every gesture is dictated by an ongoing struggle for human rights (not just inherited genetic code and who can find vir those of the male, white bourgeoisie but of tue or vice in pills or liquid potions, much WOllen, slaves, proletarians, and colonial like their literary ITDdel, Stevenson's Dr. peoples) found their source in the writings of the Enlightenment PrilosoIilers, aITDng them, Rousseau and Voltaire, who both ad dressed themselves to the question of the relation between rnen and beasts. PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHY
'!hat question had long been one of ideniden- 4 Jekyll.) Why God endowed these insentient ship with those species that even he con lOOchanical creatures with a canplete set of tinued to call the "lower orders." Born with what Darwin called "a pedigree of prodigious sensory organs remarkably similar to those of human beings, Descartes failed to explain, length," man owes that birth to a long line although he clearly was aware of this anbar of non-human progenitors. "Unless we will rassing impediment to the plausibility of his fully close our eyes," Darwin concluded in arguwent and admitted that the presence of his chapter on the genealogy of man, "we may, those organs might lead less subtle minds with our present knowledge, approximately than his to the false conclusion that animals recognize our parentage." "Nor," he added, were capable of sensation. "need we feel ashamed of it" (The-- Descent of- Man, chapter VI). Darwin was not the first With this over-easy dismissal of a grave to reject the belief that man is the work of IOOral problem that had troubled others for a separate act of creation, although his wri centuries, Descartes affirms a sanewhat fa tings went farther to establish the certainty cile seal to the position that there is a of our tilysical relatedness to other animals radical and absolute difference, an un than any had before. But if we distinguish bridgeable gulf separating humanity fran all the "scientific" deIOOnstration of a literal other creatures on earth (theologians were family-tree sort of kinship fran the senti willing to speculate on our possible kinship ment of sharing in a cemoon nature, involving with demons and angels, distant cousins in both tilysical and spiritual relatedness, then heaven or hell, related to us by their intel Voltaire and Rousseau are readily identifi lect) • One of the problems Descartes' posi able aIOOng Darwin's predecesors--more than tion created for him was that it was irrecon Descartes and Buffon, who, ironically, are cilable with a belief in evolution, and there sozretimes perceived as in the lineage of the seem to be sane hints that he thought the evolutionist tililosotilers. evolutionary process not inconceivable. A century later, the naturalist Buffon would adopt a similarly contradictory stance, ad hering to orthodox Christian belief in the *** idea of separate creation for humankind, but also clearly aware of the many functional and 'The best text to cite fran Voltaire is structural resemblances between us and other surely the short piece entitled "Betes" animals. Obviously, acceptance of the impli (beasts) in the original 1764 edition of the cations of zoological observation required Dictionnaire prilosophique, included by Tern either exceptional courage or the advent of Regan and Peter Singer in Animal Rights and an era in which Christian dogma would be put Human Obligations (pp. 67-69), under the title of 'A Reply to Descartes." It is un on the defensiv8. Needless to say, Voltaire mistakably a refutation of Descartes' posi and Rousseau not only lived in such an era, tion, although he is not named in the ar as Buffon did, too, but possessed extraordi ticle. Voltaire does not mince words, haw nary courage. Discreet as Voltaire could be ever. He denounces the poverty of spirit of and timid as Rousseau surely was in many those who claim that animals are machines situations, they jeopardized their freedan deprived of awareness and feeling (connias and even their lives with much of what they ~ et sentiment). Descartes had argued wrote. that articulate speech constitutes the only evidence of capacity for feeling or for memo It would be extravagant, however, to see ry or ideas. Voltaire, in seeking to demon either of these two as putting his neck on strate the vacuity of this arguwent (really the block for animals' rights, or even as no IOOre than an assertion) describes in de considering this a central issue. Neither tail the compelling evidence of a dog's one--and this is not to their discredit- feelings of grief, pain, and joy in the form went so far in his repudiation of the Car of what present-day linguists might call tesian characterization of aniJreJ.s as Darwin "non-~tic" behavior. In refreshingly unin would in the next century, IOOSt explicitly in hibited language, he does not hesitate to The Descent of Man. Darwin's writing--and describe as "barbarisms" the vivisectionists this was for many of his contemp::>raries, as it still is today for "Creationists," the as he pictures them seiZing the dog "who IOOst horrifying aspect of it---tended toward a surpasses man so prodigiously in friendship," recognition of a literal blood relationship nailing him to a table, and cutting him up or consanguinity, our true family relationrelation- alive. "Answer loo, lOOchanic (machiniste), 5 BE:IWErn '!HE SPOCIES has nature arranged all the springs of feel tience with what he considered futile rreta ing in this animal so that it should not physical questions and the kind. of vaporous feel?" (It is significant and, of course, mentality he associated with them. He also characteristic that, while Descartes des uses the question to reassert the attribution cribed the body as a machine made by the hands of God, Voltaire identifies the archi of feeling, nerory, and thought (limited, teet of creation as Nature herself, thus perhaps, to "a certain number of ideas") by distancing himself from orthodox Christian the same supreme being who makes grass grow theism. ) and subjected the earth to the sun's gravita tional force, thus reminding his readers of Voltaire's language is direct, clear, his preference for Newton above Aristotle and unambiguous, and forceful. He appeals to the Descartes, as a true ideologist of the En reader's cx:xrrron sense and to his personal lightenment. observations and experience of life. He addressed the unnamed Descartes and those who This part of Voltaire'sVOltaire's article is also related in its thrust to other texts that he think as he does directly with the familiar p..1t together on the subject of the soul, tu, abolishing distance and formality and which he always took great pleasure in demys creating, as it were, the illusion of dia tifying. In one of them, which appeared a logue and, with it, life and IlIOvement. Last few years later (in Questions sur l'Encyclo ly, he does not dissociate theory and prac ~, tice, as a IlIOre timid writer might. The 1770), he repeated elements of the cartesian to whom he appeals is not an idle article we have been discussing, but with the armchair theorist, whose intellectual con difference that Descartes is named and that structions are divorced from concrete reali what he calls "the strange system which sup ty, from the active, lived experience. No! poses animals to be p..1re machines without any He himself is p..1tting the ideas into prac sensation" is identified as Descartes' "chi tice, which, indeed, is inseparable from the mera. " (See "De l'Arne des Betes" ["en Ani theory that has been concocted to legitimize rnals' Souls") in Dictionnaire philosophique, it. This practice is being irnp::Jsed, brutally Notes, pp. 428-9.) As usual, ridicule and and inhumanely, upon the animal Voltaire irony are his weapons as he IlIOCks Descartes' represents as being like ourselves. In him, unprecedented "abuse of the gift of rea he declares, "there are the same organs of soning" with his curious assumption that feeling as there are in thyself (dans toi)." nature gave animals all of our organs of The contradiction in the cartesian's theory, feeling in order that they might be totally which would be harmless and without conse deprived of feeling! D:>ubtless, this was not quence if it could be contained at that le quite the way Descartes had p..1t it, but the vel, has nCM becane, in the cartesian's ac lurid clarity of Voltaire's way of spelling tion, a IlIOnstrous contradiction of his own out the grotesque implication of the carte humanity. Moreover, by asserting the dog's sian argument effectively causes it to dis derronstration of friendship and love, a high solve in absurdity, as his reader dissolves level of social relationship that the anthro in laughter, a technique that Voltaire raised pocentric cartesian would reserve for human to the level of high art in candide and many beings alone, Voltaire demolishes the carte other pieces of philosophical fiction. sian's claim of IlIOral superiority and estab lishes the contrary, the animal's superiori ty, not in the mJdemJd.e of an allegorical fable, *** but as literal fact, made apparent by this confrontation of the dog's loving behavior Jean-Jacques Rousseau was as much a man and the cartesian's insensitive brutality. of the Enlightenment as Voltaire, although that. can be obscured by the fact that they There are in this brief article of Vol came to detest each other and by Rousseau's taire's sane further words on the question of progressive isolation from the other main the souls of animals. Are they substantial stream philosophes. When Rousseau writes of forms, as Aristotle and Christian theologians animals, it is in a very different voice from maintained? Or are their souls material? Voltaire's, but it is all the IlIOre striking These pages may interest us less as a ccmnen that so much of their approach to the ques tary on Voltaire's conception of our relation tion should be based on the same tmderlying to animals and our obligations toward them. concerns. Most important, perhaps, is that, They are, however, revelatory of his impaimpa- like Voltaire, Rousseau attached great imporimpor- 6 6 tance to our fellow animals' capacity for Rousseau uses this distinctioo that feeling and through this to their kinship people are accuste:.tred to draw between them with us. selves and animals to develop an analogy with distinctions people make aroong themselves: Banal as it is to say, ooe cannot over "By extension we beccrne hardened in the same state the importance Rousseau attached to way toward the lot of sane men, and the rich sentiment. For him (as for other "pre-ranan console themselves for the harm they do to tics" of the eighteenth century) the capacity the poor by supposing that they are stupid for feeling deeply was a fatal gift, a guar enough not to feel it" (pp. 264-5). In this anty of pain, but also of !lOral value. ('!bat way, Rousseau alroost slyly insinuates an gift, rather than learning or physical beau accusation of soc:ial injustice with the cas ty, was what attracted the heroine of Rous uistic justificatioo by the rich of their seau's novel, The New Heloise, to her young wrongdoing into his argument about animals, tutor. ) in the Emile, Rousseau's chronicle thus putting human apologetics for their of a child's developnent into adulthood, he mistreatment in the same perspective and also cooducts the boy into adolescence, the pas inviting redress for animals as a parallel to sion and !lOral awakening of which are asso the struggle for human rights on the part of ciated roore than anything else with the reve the impoverished mass of people. latioos of deep feeling. The child Emile had, of course, felt pleasure and pain, but, Rousseau's developnent of this analogy like other children, had remained indifferent strikes at assumptions that have been made to what was outside of himself. It is in the throughout history. Aristotle, for example, birth of pity, experienced through the cries cast doubts upon the humanity of slaves. in and convulsions of a dying animal that the child bece::Kres a man. This is what Rousseau calls his first "relative" feeling:
To beccrne sensitive and capable of pity, the child must know that there are beings like himself who suffer what he has suffered. In fact, how are we to allow our selves to be rooved by pity tmless it is by escaping fran ourselves and identifying ourselves with the suffering animal by taking leave, so to speak, of our own being in order to assume his? (Emile, Book IV, p. 261.)
It is surely significant that Rousseau chose the spectacle of the death throes of an animal as the event to awaken in his young pupil a sense of kinship with others than himself so that the erootion of pity may be born. He recognized that not all human beings are rooved deeply by the suffering of the enlightened nineteenth century, it was animals and speculated on why it is that we cammonly assumed that working class men and can be roore hardened to their pain than to wanen lacked the sensitivity of the roonied that of other human beings, despite the fact classes and suffered less fran hunger, cold, that the sensitivity that we share in cammon and other deprivations. Nietzsche, in a ought to identify us equally with them. One curious passage of his On the Genealogy of cause, he believed, is the supposition that Morals, declared his solemn conviction that animals are less endowed with either rnemJry Blacks ("taken as representatives of prehis (of past suffering) or imagination (of the toric man") can endure pain "that would drive future) than we are. And, thus, the animal's even the best constituted European to dis suffering is judged roore limited than the traction." In a truly extraordinary sen presumably roore canplex person's. tence, even for Nietzsche, he elaborated on 7 7 this by no means uncamon idea that both the Emile) will agitate on behalf of our animals and the lower orders of the hunan never harming another man "or even any sensi species are relatively insensitive to pain: tive being (aucun etre sensible)."
'Ibe curve of hunan susceptibility For Rousseau, this settles the ancient to pain seems in fact to take an disp..1tes on participation by animals in natu extraordinary and abrost sudden ral law: drop as soon as one has passed the upper ten thousand or ten million For it is clear that, deprived of of the top stratum of culture; and intellect and of freedan, they for my own part, I have no doubt cannot recognize [natural law]; that the canbined suffering of all but, since they share sarething of the animals ever subjected to the r;:nrr nature through the sensitivity knife for scientific ends is utter with which- they are endowed, one ly negligible compared with one will judge that they too ought to painful night of a single hysteri participate in natural right and cal bluestocking. (On the Genealo that man is subject to sore sort of gy of Morals, SecondEssay, Section duties toward them. It seems, in VII. ) fact, that, if I am obliged to do no harm to my fellow man [roon sem rbrds like these denonstrate the sadly ines blable], it is less because he is a capable fact that the brilliant Nietzsche, reasonable being than because he is capable of truly radical thought, was as much a sensitive being; a quality that, a prey to ignorant superstition as the roost being camon to beast and man, benighted of his contemp::rraries. We may, of ought at least to give the one the course, agree that people whose bodies have right not to be uselessly mis been softened by inactivity and canfort may treated by the other (Ibid.). feel the sudden imposition of pain roore a cutely than those who have had to accustor. We must, of course, recognize that, themselves to hardship. But Rousseau's per despite his heretical deviations fran both ception of the canbination of bad faith and catholic and calvinist dogma of his time, prejudice in the rich person's lulling of his Rousseau was less estranged fran theological conscience and of the analogous way in which conceptions than Voltaire and was, therefore, men make little of animals' suffering seems roore disposed to deny animals both reason and far roore penetrating than Nietzsche's wild freedan. Nevertheless, there are at least thrashing, in which he takes on not only two radical elements in this statement of animals but also African Blacks, intellectual his. One is that animals have rights. More wanen, and all the impoverished masses unfor over, the right Rousseau enunciates (not to tunate enough to be born below the top "stra be mistreated by men) is conceived on the tum" of European society. roodel of eighteenth century hunan rights in the sense that it is a defensive right, a 'Ibe argument in Rousseau's Emile is right that limits the freedan of the oppres readily relatable to passages in other wri sor to have his way with the victim. More tings of his in which, for reasons both per than an "enabling~ right for the individual sonal and philosophical, he attacks the ine for whan the right is proclaimed, it is a qualities that have developed in hunan socie "privative" curbing of previously uninhibited ty. Probably the roost significant of these powers of authority. 'Ibe fact that Rousseau is the second discourse of 1754 on the ori sees things this way is in itself a great gins of inequality annng men. In the preface leap forward, even though he is willing to to that work, attentive as always to the limit the forbidden mistreatment to what is importance of the pre-rational, he had iden "useless." tified two "principles:" an ardent preoccu pation with our own well-being and self 'Ibe second radical element of Rousseau's preservation and "a natural rep.lgnaIlce to see argument is his displacement of intelligence any sensitive being and principally those of or rationality as a qualification for animal our own kind (~ semblables) perish or suf rights or hunan obligations toward them. fer" (Ganlier-Flanmarion edition, p. 153). Jeremy Bentham will write just a few decades An inner i..rnp.l1se of ccmni.seration (assimil later in words that sound like a crisp, con able to the pity born in the fourth book of densed echo of Rousseau's: "The ~estion is
Bm.WEEN 'mE SPEX::IES 8 not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk [as cannot refrain fran fo=lating differences Descartes had held]? but, Can they suffer?" that he has been led to believe IlU.lSt be (Fran '!be Principles of M:lrals and Legisla essential but stops short of permitting the tion, 1789, quoted by Regan and Singer, ~. conception of those differences to legitimize cit., p. 130.) inflicting pain on animals, and, on the other hand, he clings to a perception of our kin As a matter of fact, declarations of ship with animals as sensitive beings and to rights for human beings have not claimed them our CXJIl1lOfl right to have rights in self only for conspicuously rational members of defense against oppression. the species. '!be 1\merican Declaration of Independence declared all rren equal and The line of perceived kinship leads claimed rights for them all (even conceivably Rousseau to deferrling the practice of vege including by implication future liberation tarianism (Origins of Inequality, p. 163). for wanen and slaves). One after the other, He finds that the structure of human teeth exploited and oppressed groups have asserted and intestines puts us arrong the fruit-eaters and struggled for rights, winning them to (les frugivores). This, he suggests, is sane extent, no doubt, through the exercise evidence that, in the state of nature fran of tactical intelligence, but without relying which man has fallen, he lived (contrary to on a stipulation of intellect as a require Hobbes' grinmer view) in peace with his fel rrent for a
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