By Rollin Grams, Bible and Mission.
Since the Enlightenment, Western society has become increasingly secular and, in recent times, post-Christian. What this means for a discussion about suicide and euthanasia is that the value of human life is no longer considered distinctly from animal life. A Jewish and Christian understanding stands in opposition to this developing culture.
The reduction of human life to a merely animal status is a characteristic of post-Christian, Western culture. Pamela Smith provides a survey of this perspective in her book, Environmental Ethics?,[1] which is significant for this survey. Western thought has developed along two trajectories in this matter. First, Immanuel Kant’s deontological (duty-based) tradition concerns itself with ‘justice’ and ‘rights’, and therefore people speak of ‘animal rights’. Second, Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian principle—‘do the greatest good to the greatest number of people—places the group—some group—over the individual. Kantian ethics looks at universalizable ethics (if it is right for one, it must also be right for all) that are duty-based, and therefore arguments regarding what is just appeal to rights due to what has intrinsic worth. Utilitarian arguments, on the other hand, determine extrinsic value according to the needs of society. Animal activists might extend this utilitarian principle from humans to all animals.
Both Kant and Bentham wrote in the 1700’s. Kant insisted that reason is the basis for possessing moral duty—one cannot hold someone (or some animal) accountable in the absence of reason. Bentham argued that rights being extended to all humans might someday also be extended to animals because those rights are not based on the ability to reason but on the possibility of experiencing suffering.[2] Peter Singer, a vegetarian and well-known advocate for an ethic of animal rights, argues that the emotions or passions are a better starting point for ethics. He begins for his thought with Jeremy Bentham, who argued that ‘the capacity for suffering rather than for reasoning or talking ought to be the starting point for any discussion of “moral status” and the recipients of humanity’s “moral duties”.’[3]