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Valuing humane lives in two-level utilitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2020

Nicolas Delon Open the ORCID record for Nicolas Delon [Opens in a new window]
Nicolas Delon*
Affiliation:
New College of Florida
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

I examine the two-level utilitarian case for humane animal agriculture (by R. M. Hare and Gary Varner) and argue that it fails on its own terms. The case states that, at the ‘intuitive level’ of moral thinking, we can justify raising and killing animals for food, regarding them as replaceable, while treating them with respect. I show that two-level utilitarianism supports, instead, alternatives to animal agriculture. First, the case for humane animal agriculture does not follow from a commitment to two-level utilitarianism combined with a commitment to respecting animal lives. Second, the two-level utilitarian case falls prey to a compartmentalization problem and cannot uphold both respect and replaceability. What I call ‘humane lives’ are not appropriately valued by the lights of two-level utilitarianism itself.

Type
Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 276 - 293
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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