 Sentience and the Primordial ‘We’: Contributions to Animal Ethics from Phenomenology and Buddhist PhilosophyAnya Daly Environmental Values, 2023, vol. 32, issue 2, 215-236 Abstract: This paper explores the ontological bases for ethical behaviour between human animals and non-human animals drawing on phenomenology and Buddhist philosophy. Alongside Singer and utilitarianism, I argue that ethical behaviour regarding animals is most effectively justified and motivated by considerations of sentience. Nonetheless, utilitarianism misses crucial aspects of sentience. Buddhist ethics is from the beginning focused on all sentient beings, not solely humans. This inclusivity, and refined interrogations of suffering, means it can furnish more nuanced understandings of sentience. For phenomenology, sentience includes the capacities for self-awareness and, I will argue, a plural self-awareness; the ‘I’ belongs to a ‘we’, and the ‘we’ is constitutive of the ‘I’. This ‘primordial we’ provides the basis for rethinking the moral relations between human animals and non-human animals. I contend finally we thus have an ontological basis in ‘interanimality’ to explain why we most often do and should care about all sentient beings. Keywords: Sentience; animal ethics; phenomenology; enactivism; social ontology; Buddhist philosophy; interanimality; Merleau-Ponty; Scheler; Schopenhauer (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envval:v:32:y:2023:i:2:p:215-236 DOI: 10.3197/096327122X16452897197801 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Environmental Values |
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