Cruelty to animals may underwrite cruelty to dehumanized humans
Evidence
Scott is somewhat unusual for his time in wanting to include the mistreatment of animals in his account of torture, and in describing their plight as a consequence of the nonrecognition of rights, for like other moderns he sees the extension of rights to be crucial for the elimination of cruelty. But in the course of arguing this thesis he hits on a profound and disturbing ambiguity. It is not entirely clear whether he thinks that human cruelty is merely an instance of bestial cruelty—that is, a working out of the supposedly universal instinct of stronger animals to hunt or attack the weaker. Or whether human cruelty is unique—not a characteristic of animal behavior at all—and that everyday human ruthlessness toward animals is essential for justifying the persecution of vulnerable people (defeated enemies, uninitiated children, and so on) on the ground that they are not fully human. In either case Scott disturbs liberal ideas of what it is to be truly human: humans are essentially no different from other animals, or they are different by virtue of their unique capacity for cruelty. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 493
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- STORYSTEM: A story could hinge on a society that systematically brutalizes animals in order to license persecution of a ‘subhuman’ out-group — the causal chain Scott gestures at made literal.
- DEEPTHINKING: Two mutually unsettling accounts of humanity — humans as just animals, or humans as uniquely cruel — both destabilize liberal self-understanding.