Your partner has left for the sea after birthing your child and months of not eating properly. You have the responsibility of a life on your feet, and you huddle with the other guys for warmth. Your black feathers glisten in the cold winter brightness and a chilly wind filters through the tightly packed group. And to make life even worse, your all american (certified) “In dog years, I’m gay” socks are now a whopping $16 because of the tariffs. Now, I may not know exactly how tariffs work, but I do know that those penguins are affected by them. How do I know? Well, according to most humans, things that have become more expensive are bad, so why would penguins feel any different? Shouldn’t our human interests also reflect the interests of animals? 

 

While this essay may have a silly introduction, it lends itself more serious questions. Do non-human animals have interests? Do they have rights? And based on these things, should we treat them well? 

 

Human beings carry the responsibility to care about animals with empathy and compassion as the one who profits from exploiting animal habitats, environment, or ecosystems–even though animal rights and interests cannot be affirmed by themselves or deciphered by human rationales.

 

A historical example—seemingly much crueler and completely unrelated—that represents a similar perspective is European rationale during colonization. Colonizers who encroached on the great land of Africa during the 19th century did not have the interests of the natives in mind because they believed that native people were not intelligent enough to have their own best interests in mind. We cannot use one perspective because it is

“better” or “more civilized” because there are always other views on the same issues. In the novella Heart of Darkness, British author Joseph Conrad reveals the oppressive nature of , colonization, in which the Europeans exploited not just native

labor but their cultures and traditions. The narrator of the book shapes the Africans as barbaric by depicting their native languages as sounds resembling animals. Conrad looked at the utterances of the English language by the Africans as rudimentary as we see grammar mistakes and such in their speech. However, it is ironic because European flowery languages convey less meaning than the short, but precise, phrases that the Africans say. This “language barrier”, which was only put up by the Europeans as the Africans clearly understand and speak English, contributes to the “White Man’s Burden” of having to “civilize” Africans. Colonizers who saw native peoples as actual animals instead of humans saw this language barrier as a way to excuse their dominance, and believed that they, as the colonizers, knew better than native people on where their interests lie. The similarity here to the language barrier with animals is not to compare animals with any group of people, but that we simply cannot understand what animals are thinking. Because we have an actual communication barrier, where us humans lack knowledge of the signals animals send, we cannot then assume we know what animals want. It’s important to establish a difference in the language barrier to dominance pipeline between people, and between people and animals, whereas one comes from bigotry and prejudice, and the other comes from a complete lack of a way to translate, at least with today’s technology.

 

Another variable to recognize is the definition of animal rights. It’s difficult to differentiate what would even constitute a right for animals when there’s a question about morals and societal standards. Our standard, universal human rights, was formalized and idealized with ethics and philosophies in mind. And as we already know, animals just have different standards than us.This isn’t just a question about if animals have thoughts on morality, but also logistically. Would universal animal rights exist if there is such a diverse fauna population? Then, if there are

different rights for different groups of animals, how would there be a standard of what violates a

right.

 

But if we can not interpret non-human animal interests or their rights, what can we do around the discussion of animals? Why should we care about our impact on them? As Peter Singer states in Animal Liberation,  “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” (Singer 36). Although we might not be able to completely understand the needs and wants of animals, it is clear that we are impacting them negatively. Humans, with our policies and desires, are driving animals to extinction, and the climate to its highest temperatures. However, to protect animals and secure their rights in the natural world means human constructions or natural resources will be eliminated, slowing down technological developments. In this case, should us, humans, as creatures belong to a completely different/unrelated tribe than animals, still care and take the responsibility (of species that are not related to our benefits)? The answer lies within the moral responsibility highlighted by the concept of “Banality of Evil”--even though you are not the actual person who shot the jews, do you bear the crime? Hannh Arent answers yes that following authoritarianism instead of reflecting and protesting is an act of evil. (historical context + court case) even if protecting jewish people, a different ethnic group, would harm one’s own benefit due to authoritarianism, it is still a crime of taking away lives as accomplices. Therefore, either ignorance to animal suffering or witnessing animal suffering as a bystander is an immoral choice. 

 

However, many could argue that animals don’t have rights, interests, or both, and therefore we should make the decisions for the animals. A common understanding of rights is that only humans have rights because only humans have duties. And so because animals are not capable of representing themselves in order to claim their rights, and furthering their interests, they don’t have rights, or at least the rights that humans have. Then there are interests. While we cannot say that animals have no interests whatsoever, there are arguments that human interests should be given more weight to those of animals. There are 2 main arguments for this, only human beings can act morally and only human beings are part of the moral community. Humans are, according to Charles Darwin, the only beings capable of being able to anticipate the consequences of their actions, to make value judgements, and to choose between alternative courses of ethical action. Humans are also in a moral community, which some claim is necessary for full moral status. And not only are animals not part of a moral community, they also have the capacity to be part of one. And for these reasons, animals don’t have rights and our interests matter more, which is why we should be able to make decisions for animals.

 

While I agree that we have some amount of power over the quality of life of animals, I believe that it does not matter whether or not they have rights or interests, we should treat them well because it reflects ourselves. Additionally, if you use the understanding that beings that cannot represent themselves and their interests do not have rights, that could then include human infants and others who have disabilities. Additionally, following the ethics of philosophers like Kant, leads us to moral absolutism. In this case, it means that no matter what the consequences are of treating an animal good or bad, because it does or doesn’t have rights, you should treat an animal well because that is the right thing to do. It is your duty to be a decent person, and how you treat others and non-humans reflects that. 

 

To summarize and conclude: how you treat others should not only be how you want yourself to be treated, but also how you want to be seen in society. And so it would not matter if for example you would get rewarded or not for helping an elderly person cross the street, what matters is if you want to help the person in the first place. Treating animals well shouldn’t be dependent on whether or not we know they would suffer from a lack of rights or if we violate their interests. It should be dependent on whether or not the animal will suffer if we do an action. So it doesn’t matter if cutting down a forest somehow violates an animals rights or if it’s against the animals interests for their homes to be destroyed, it should matter because we know of the negative ecological impact of cutting down trees and displacing animals. It’s not the consequences of our actions that we should be worried about, but the inherent empathy we should have for the beings that live with us on this planet.

 

Works Cited

 

Birch, Jonathan. “The Place of Animals in Kantian Ethics.” Biology & Philosophy 35, no. 1 (December 24, 2019): 8. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-019-9712-0.

Gruen, Lori, and Susana Monsó. “The Moral Status of Animals.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman, Fall 2024. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2024. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2024/entries/moral-animal/.

Ladwig, Bernd. “Do Animals Have Rights?” Animals : An Open Access Journal from MDPI 13, no. 7 (March 31, 2023): 1220. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13071220.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. “Evil: The Crime against Humanity | Articles and Essays | Hannah Arendt Papers | Digital Collections | Library of Congress.” Web page. Accessed June 29, 2025. https://www.loc.gov/collections/hannah-arendt-papers/articles-and-essays/evil-the-crime-against-humanity/.

“Lynne Rienner Publishers | Comparative Politics of the Global South Linking Concepts and Cases 5th Ed.” Accessed June 29, 2025. https://www.rienner.com/title/Comparative_Politics_of_the_Global_South_Linking_Concepts_and_Cases_5th_ed.

Meighan, Paul J. “Colonialingualism: Colonial Legacies, Imperial Mindsets, and Inequitable Practices in English Language Education.” Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education 17, no. 2 (April 3, 2023): 146–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/15595692.2022.2082406.

NYU Press. “Discourse on Colonialism.” Accessed June 29, 2025. https://nyupress.org/9781583670255/discourse-on-colonialism/.

Rahman, Parvejur, and Sagufta Mehnaz. “International Journal for Multidisciplinary Research (IJFMR).” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2024. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5054029.

Sciences (US), National Academy of, John C. Avise, and Francisco J. Ayala. “The Difference of Being Human: Morality.” In In the Light of Evolution: Volume IV: The Human Condition. National Academies Press (US), 2010. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK210003/.

Singer, Peter. “Animal Liberation,” n.d.

 

My love for philosophy was birthed when I watched a T.V. show called "The Good Place", where an ethics professor explains different philosophies to save a woman from The Bad Place. It was a fun way to learn about things like a social contract and why what you do matters to others. Then, my mom introduced me to this writing competition and I was ecstatic to share my thoughts and philosophies on different topics, like should we trust our moral intuition or should we treat animals well. In this competition I've not only gained many skills like researching and how to cite things (still not a strong suit of min but I'm getting better), but I've also begun to think more critically about hard topics like colonialism. Writing these essays, for me at least, is just a way to get myself thinking about the world in different views and how philosophy has every part of our lives.