Jeremy Bentham on Animal Ethics
Why Read This
What Makes This Article Worth Your Time
Summary
What This Article Is About
David E. Cooper examines Jeremy Bentham’s revolutionary contribution to animal ethics through his famous question: “Can they suffer?” Bentham, an 18th-century utilitarian philosopher, argued that the capacity to experience suffering—not rationality or communication—should determine which beings deserve legal protection against cruel treatment. By paralleling the irrelevance of skin color to human rights with the irrelevance of reasoning ability to animal rights, Bentham established sentience as the sole morally relevant criterion for establishing rights against cruel treatment.
However, Cooper argues that Bentham’s position, while historically significant and widely embraced by contemporary animal welfare organizations, suffers from critical limitations. By reducing our moral obligations to animals solely to minimizing suffering, utilitarian frameworks miss the richer dimensions of ethical human-animal relationships. Cooper advocates for a virtue ethics approach grounded in eudaimonia—living well—which recognizes compassion as essential but insufficient, requiring appreciation of animals as complex social beings deserving responses beyond mere protection from harm, including engagement, recognition, and appropriate forms of relationship that constitute human flourishing.
Key Points
Main Takeaways
Suffering as Moral Criterion
Bentham revolutionized animal ethics by establishing sentience—the capacity to suffer—rather than rationality or communication as the relevant basis for moral consideration.
Historical Misattribution Corrected
Bentham was not a pioneer of animal rights but rather rejected natural rights entirely, viewing them as theistic nonsense incompatible with his atheist utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism’s Narrow Focus
Bentham’s criterion exclusively addresses legal protection, reducing moral relationships with animals to preventing suffering while ignoring other ethically relevant dimensions of engagement.
The Parental Analogy Expanded
Good fathers protect children from suffering but also engage their capacities for reasoning and communication—virtues equally applicable to our relationships with animals who possess such capacities.
Virtue Ethics Alternative
Cooper proposes shifting from utilitarian principles to virtue ethics grounded in eudaimonia, where seeing animals as complex social beings prompts compassion, respect, and appropriate engagement.
Moral Phenomenology Over Theory
Rather than applying abstract moral principles, we need moral phenomenology that helps us perceive and appreciate animals’ actual natures, capacities, and social embeddedness.
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Article Analysis
Breaking Down the Elements
Main Idea
Beyond Utilitarian Animal Ethics
Cooper’s central thesis argues that while Bentham’s suffering-based criterion for animal protection was historically revolutionary and remains influential, it provides an inadequate foundation for our ethical relationships with animals. The utilitarian framework reduces morality to suffering minimization, ignoring the richer dimensions of appropriate engagement with animals as complex beings. Cooper advocates replacing principled utilitarianism with virtue ethics grounded in eudaimonia, where perceiving animals accurately as social beings with capacities prompts compassionate, respectful relationships that constitute human flourishing beyond mere protection from cruelty.
Purpose
Critical Reassessment and Philosophical Correction
Cooper writes to accomplish two objectives: first, to correct widespread misattributions about Bentham’s position (particularly the false claim he pioneered animal rights), clarifying that Bentham rejected natural rights entirely while establishing suffering as relevant only for legal protection; second, to demonstrate that even properly understood, Bentham’s criterion remains insufficient for guiding our moral relationships with animals. By contrasting utilitarian principles with virtue ethics through concrete examples—fathers with children, women with pets—Cooper aims to persuade readers that moral phenomenology attuned to animals’ actual natures provides better ethical guidance than abstract utilitarian calculus.
Structure
Exposition → Critique → Alternative Framework
The essay opens by contextualizing Bentham’s famous quotation within his broader utilitarian philosophy and radical political positions, then explicates the suffering criterion’s application to animal ethics. Cooper transitions to critique through two corrective movements: first challenging misattributions about Bentham pioneering animal rights, then questioning whether suffering minimization exhausts our moral obligations even accepting Bentham’s premises. The argumentative pivot occurs through an extended analogy comparing father-child relationships to human-animal relationships, demonstrating that protection from suffering, while necessary, insufficiently captures ethical parenthood. This prepares the constructive proposal: virtue ethics grounded in eudaimonia and moral phenomenology that perceives animals’ complex social natures.
Tone
Respectfully Critical, Analytically Measured & Constructively Philosophical
Cooper adopts a balanced philosophical tone that acknowledges Bentham’s historical significance while systematically exposing limitations in his position. The writing demonstrates scholarly precision in distinguishing what Bentham actually claimed from common misattributions, avoiding polemical overstatement. The critique remains constructive throughout, never dismissing utilitarian concerns about suffering but incorporating them within a richer ethical framework. Concrete examples—fathers with children, women with dogs, zoo keepers with animals—make abstract philosophical distinctions accessible without sacrificing analytical rigor. The concluding advocacy for virtue ethics over principle-based theories reflects philosophical conviction tempered by recognition that moral improvement requires perceptual transformation rather than merely adopting different theoretical commitments.
Key Terms
Vocabulary from the Article
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Tough Words
Challenging Vocabulary
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Suitable or worthy of being quoted; expressing ideas in a memorable or pithy way that invites citation and repetition.
“Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was a distinctly quotable author.”
Relating to belief in the existence of a god or gods; based on or assuming divine agency or supernatural foundations.
“The idea of non-legal rights was ‘nonsense on stilts’, a left-over from a theistic ethics that Bentham entirely rejected.”
Making something narrower or tighter; limiting, restricting, or imposing tight constraints that reduce freedom or scope.
“It would be barely less constricting to propose that, in our relationships of care to animals, the only concern is the minimising of suffering.”
Lack of awareness or responsiveness to something; failure to recognize, appreciate, or appropriately respond to particular qualities or capacities.
“Insensitivity to their exercise of their capacities to reason and communicate would be culpable.”
Not affected emotionally; remaining indifferent or unpersuaded despite appeals, arguments, or circumstances that might typically elicit response or change.
“People who will remain stone-hearted or indifferent will also remain unmoved by exhortations to abide by moral principles.”
Prevented from developing properly; having growth, progress, or full development hindered or restricted by limiting conditions or attitudes.
“The person whose attitudes and comportment towards animals are dictated by a comparable ambition is morally stunted.”
Reading Comprehension
Test Your Understanding
5 questions covering different RC question types
1According to Cooper, Jeremy Bentham was a pioneer in advocating for animal rights as natural entitlements that animals possess independent of legal systems.
2What does Cooper suggest is the primary limitation of Bentham’s utilitarian approach to animal ethics?
3Which sentence best captures Cooper’s alternative proposal to utilitarian animal ethics?
4Evaluate these statements about Cooper’s discussion of the parental analogy:
Good fathers protect children from harm but also engage their capacities for reasoning, communication, and talent development.
Cooper argues that appropriate engagement with animals who possess certain capacities parallels the fuller responsibilities good fathers have toward children.
The analogy suggests that treating animals ethically requires exactly the same responses we owe to human children, including education and full linguistic communication.
Select True or False for all three statements, then click “Check Answers”
5Based on Cooper’s argument, what can be inferred about why he advocates for moral phenomenology over abstract moral principles?
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Bentham wrote during a period when he advocated extending legal protection to animals, contextualizing this within his broader utilitarian philosophy promoting ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number.’ His position emerged alongside his opposition to slavery, colonialism, and the death penalty. Notably, Bentham applauded the French for extending protection to Black people and argued that the same irrelevance of skin color to legal rights should apply to animals—that is, the capacity to suffer, not rationality or communication ability, should determine which beings deserve legal protection against cruel treatment.
Utilitarian ethics focuses on applying abstract principles—particularly maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering—to determine right action through calculation. Virtue ethics, by contrast, centers on character development and living well (eudaimonia), where moral improvement comes through cultivating perceptual capacities to see things accurately rather than following rules. Cooper argues that virtue ethics better addresses animal relationships because accurately perceiving animals as complex social beings with capacities naturally prompts compassionate, respectful engagement, whereas utilitarian reduction to suffering minimization misses ethically relevant dimensions of appropriate relationship.
Moral phenomenology refers to philosophical examination of how things appear to us through perception and how this perception shapes appropriate ethical response. Cooper uses this term to advocate for developing our capacity to accurately perceive what animals are—their social natures, emotional capacities, and relationships—rather than merely applying abstract moral principles. For instance, when someone truly sees a fox as a social being with family ties rather than merely as a suffering-capable organism, this accurate perception naturally prompts compassion, respect, and humility without requiring theoretical justification.
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This article is rated Intermediate because it addresses philosophical concepts requiring some academic familiarity but presents them through accessible examples and clear argumentative structure. While it engages with ethical theory (utilitarianism, virtue ethics) and introduces philosophical terms (eudaimonia, phenomenology), Cooper develops ideas progressively through concrete analogies like father-child and pet-owner relationships. The article requires ability to follow sustained philosophical argument and distinguish between similar ethical frameworks, but doesn’t demand specialized technical knowledge or presuppose advanced philosophical training.
As Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Durham University, Cooper brings extensive expertise in ethics and has written numerous works including books on world philosophies and Eastern thought traditions. His approach is significant because it challenges the dominant utilitarian and rights-based frameworks that have structured contemporary animal ethics discourse since Bentham and Singer. By advocating virtue ethics grounded in accurate perception rather than principle application, Cooper offers an alternative that many find more practically applicable to everyday human-animal relationships while maintaining philosophical rigor and avoiding the limitations he identifies in prevailing approaches.
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