Cruelty, Kindness, and Unnecessary Pain

The ideas of cruelty, kindness, and unnecessary suffering play prominent roles in the growing debate over our treatment of animals. An index of how pervasive these ideas are, is that a philosopher who does not rely on them, or not all of them, or who argues in ways that give other ideas a place of prominence, might none the less be viewed as resting his case against, say, vivisection or factory farming on these very ideas. Thus, for example, Renford Bambrough, in his editorial in the October 1978 issue of Philosophy,1 by way of contrasting the essays in that issue with the work of Peter Singer and myself, writes that ‘(t)he emphasis of Peter Singer and Tom Regan has been on animal suffering and human cruelty’. For obvious reasons it is not part of my task to consider how accurate a characterization of Singer’s position this is.2 As for my own, two comments at least are in order. The first is that, even if it were true that I place emphasis on ‘animal suffering and human cruelty’ , it would not be true that my position centred on just these two ideas. Equally central, for good or ill, is my attempt, successful or otherwise, to understand whether it is wrong to kill animals and, if so, why, independently of questions of suffering or cruelty.3 But, second, it is not true that cruelty is central to my thinking.