A hermeneutical ethology?
pp. 199-205
in: Olga Kiss (ed), Hermeneutics and science, Berlin, Springer, 1999Abstract
The problem I want to discuss is easy to state but hard to solve.Everyone who once saw thousands of laying hens in a battery cage, young calves tongue-playing in their wooden cages, big white laboratory rabbits in their iron cages, the transportation of cattle, and so on, knows: here is something deeply wrong with the way we handle animals. Although for more than a century we think it is wrong to be cruel to animals, there is a difference between our present view on animals and the view on animals in the late 19th century. Nowadays the right way to handle animals is not only formulated in terms of what we, humans, think is right, but also in terms of what is right for the animals themselves. Contrary to the late 19th century, animals are not only conceived of as living beings which, without needless pain or dying, may be used by man, but also as beings who experience their own situation as good or bad. The concept of animal welfare does not only imply physical well-being (health, no pain, no needless dying), but also ethological well-being, which must be understood as psychological well-being.