Animal Rights within Judaism: The Nature of the Relationship Between Religion and Ethics

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is to investigate whether religious views inform ethical views. The laws surrounding non-human animal rights within Judaism is used as a case study for this exploration. Historically and to some extent today, non-humans are severely constrained in their freedoms and imputed value by the dominant Western religious paradigms. It is therefore instructive to see to what extent an ethical attitude toward non-humans is present, or absent, and whether the religious prescriptions are justified by moral reasoning. Within the Hebrew Bible and Judaic commentary there is a textual bases for inclusion of non-humans within the sphere of moral concern. This leads to a some questions: has our moral sense towards non-humans been informed by a religious tradition? And if so, has this led to changes in our secular understanding regarding the ethical treatment of non-humans? Or, has there been a moral intuition there all along, which has incidentally been expressed in a religious mode? There is significant contrast historically between the dominant Western religious paradigm (Christianity) and resultant philosophical moral theory - in which there is a marked absence of consideration toward the suffering of non-humans, and the minority paradigm (Judaism) in which there is a body of laws governing the treatment of non-humans in consideration of their capacity for suffering and self-determination. I suggest that the movement of both secular and contemporary Christian culture towards inclusion of non-humans on the continuum of ethical concern speaks to the existence of a longstanding awareness of the rights of non-humans. This moral intuition regarding the ethical obligation to consider the suffering of sentient beings of all stripes is most robustly expressed in the laws and code of ethics within Judaic culture.