Some people here fail to grasp the most basic. Animals are helpless. They do not attack humans or skin humans alive. We are responsible for them. When people die it's mostly our own fault for either being to damn greedy, evil or inhuman. But animals can't protect themselves they are at our own mercy.
1785: Kant
“ Animals ... are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man. — Immanuel Kant[25] ”
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), following Augustine, Aquinas, and Locke, opposed the idea that human beings have duties toward non-humans. For Kant, cruelty to animals was wrong solely on the grounds that it was bad for humankind. He argued in 1785 that human beings have duties only toward other human beings, and that "cruelty to animals is contrary to man's duty to himself, because it deadens in him the feeling of sympathy for their sufferings, and thus a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation to other human beings is weakened."[26]
Last edited by bogo24dk (2009-05-03 12:09:22)