Assessing Rawls' Difference Principle as Practical Guidance for our Duties to Animals

Abstract

It is a commonly held view that Contractarian ethics cannot produce a substantial moral system that includes animals. However, since Mark Rowlands introduced his interpretation of Rawlsian Contractarianism we have been provided with, as it were, a ready-made system to which we can now insert animals. However, such a result is far from the final hurdle in providing a substantial account of human duties to animals. The extension of justice to animals may well be possible, but it produces a great many intricate problems as to how the dynamics of human-animal relationships should be borne out. It would seem now that the animal-friendly Contractarian owes an account of how our relationships to animals be governed. In this essay I will argue that the Rawlsian Difference Principle lends itself to just such a task. The Difference Principle’s focus on equal consideration without a need for identical treatment lends itself to producing comprehensive and flexible guidelines for our duties to animals - providing pragmatic answers to how we should engage with them. The conclusion of this paper will not be by way of an entire theory governing human-animal relations (as I’m without time or space to do justice to such a project), but an argument for establishing the viability of the Difference Principle as the guiding notion behind such a theory.