THE SPECTER OF SPECIESISM - BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN VIEWS OF ANIMALS
Author Paul Waldau Interviewed by Claudette Vaughan

Paul Waldau holds a doctorate in ethics at Oxford University, a law degree from ULCA, and a Master’s Degree from Stanford University. He is currently Assistant Clinical Professor at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, where he is on the faculty of the Center for Animals and Public Policy. He teaches courses entitled “Jurisprudence and Ethics” and “The Human-Animal Bond.” He is also an adjunct faculty member at Boston College Law School and Harvard Law School, where he teaches animal law courses.

We highly recommend his book, “The Specter of Speciesism – Buddhist and Christian Views of Animals. Here is our interview with him.

Abolitionist: The present day Pope Benedict 16th said when asked on the subject of animals, “That a very serious question. At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God's creatures... Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible." The late Pope John Paul 11 said that “…animals are our smaller bretheren” and that they are, “as near to God as men are”. How do these enlightened attitudes compare to the early Church Fathers writings on the role and place of the non-human animal kingdom and the plan for them on this earth?

Paul Waldau: The early attitudes were, much like today, very mixed. There were beautiful statements that suggested connection and communion. There were harsh statements that confirmed that others dismissed ANY nonhuman as “beneath” humans and thus subject to our use and even whim.

The ancient Greek world in which Christianity “grew up” was a place of great debate over humans’ possibilities with nonhuman animals. In this one regard, the environment of early Christians was somewhat similar to the present situation in our industrialized societies today. We, too, have multiple options before us.

Abolitionist: In all your extensive research on the subject of religion, animals and non-speciesism aren’t we really looking at this planet earth’s evolution away from it’s slave roots. White people enslaved (and enslave) Black people. Men enslave women. Today the current child sex slave industry is huge in parts of the world and animals in the hierarchy of things are the easiest of the lot to enslave – and that’s exactly what humans have done. My point is: Isn’t religion a command to move away from materialist slave roots and dominance, so religions concern isn’t so much about speciesism but it is centred on the human being to act in accordance with the religious impulse?

PW: There is a keen insight in seeing this feature of religion—religions can be immensely helpful in our attempt to notice and take seriously our nonhuman fellow travelers on this Earth. There are, of course, OTHER views of religion that recognize how often many religious institutions and believers have been deeply hostile to the insight that nonhuman animals matter. To my mind, your summary reflects the best of religion. Let’s thus give religious believers and religion in general credit for achieving an important insight. One can surely be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew or Buddhist or Hindu or whatever and be in tune with and kind to all nonhumans. And yet it remains very true in today’s world that there are forms of the religions most familiar to us in which a complete dismissal of nonhuman animals is justified as moral and “the will of God.” Religion is, simply said, very mixed on this issue.

Abolitionist: From your book, The Specter of Speciesism, can you outline for us what Buddhist religious traditions say on the subject of animal rights and their right to exist?

Paul Waldau: Buddhists often start out their day with five very basic moral commitments – the first of these is, “I undertake not to kill any living being today.”

This is obviously very animal friendly. So at its heart, Buddhism can be said to be animal friendly.

At the heart of most, if not all, Buddhism, however, is another attitude that puts down all other animals. It is very common in Buddhist literature to find that nonhuman animals are viewed as morally inferior to humans. If nonhumans live a good life, then they can advance and come back as a human (usually, a poor, crippled human). If a human lives a bad life, correspondingly, they will be reborn as some form of nonhuman animal. The negative view of animals is thus part of the explanation of karma and reincarnation.

Abolitionist: And from a Christian perspective?

Paul Waldau: Christianity is part of the “Abrahamic” religions (in order of antiquity, Judaism, Christianity and Islam—each reckons that its founder is Abraham). These three religions are very human-centered, in that they hold that the creator put the universe together and then crowned it with humans. Sometimes humans are even said to be superior to angels.

So there is a feature in Christianity, as in the other two Abrahamic traditions, that can mislead one into thinking “only humans really matter.” But, fortunately, the ethic of “love” and their sense of a good creator God are other features that lead many to view other animals as creatures of God.

Abolitionist: Were there any surprises for you?

Paul Waldau: Yes, that the scholarship was so poor at talking about how religions have treated other animals. Scholars seemed to think the field of “religion and animals” was about images of our fellow animals, and thus not really about how we have treated, and especially can in the future treat, our animal cousins.

Abolitionist: Is it possible to compare the two traditions?

Paul Waldau: Yes—each offers good and bad things in terms of our possibilities of living in full communion with all life. I think the best of Buddhism and the best of Christianity are equal in this regard. Day-to-day, Christianity certainly has a worse record. But that is misleading—in a very full sense each of these traditions, when it is sensitive in its maximum ways to other animals, represents well how caring and powerful our human ethical abilities can be.

Abolitionist: Buddhists have a belief in the transmigration of the soul and in reincarnation. In reincarnation if you are not evolving (progressing) due to misdeeds (sin in Christianity) then it might be necessary to go back to an earlier younger evolution (the non-human animals) to pay back that karma. Did you find any of those specifics in any of the doctrines in Buddhism?

E.g., Certain crimes are connected with certain animals. E.g., male chicks never stood a chance because in an earlier evolution they never gave a chance in a former incarnation, or male donkeys who are highly sexed to a point of killing their young to get to their partner could denote a serious sex crime in a previous lifetime, or a predator animal such as a shark was also a predator in human form once but had to go back to an earlier incarnation to learn how to love again. “The Turtle Guy” mentioned in this issue that Mother Sea Turtles plant their egg in the sea bed and never return so they never get to see their young, which could denote from a previous incarnation, a mother who killed her child perhaps – and it certainly gives food for thought on the subject of artifical insemination and the role of phenomenology in addressing how human actions play themselves out.

Paul Waldau: Not heavily—such things do exist, but they are just one of a thousand complications in the way that early and later Buddhists and Christians tried to explain the world around them.

Abolitionist: Buddhists also named "key" animals. Why did they do that? As you yourself said on page 16 of your book “The early Buddhist tradition held mere membership in the human species to be a moral achievement”. Please comment.

Paul Waldau: As I mention above, there are plenty of places in the Buddhist scriptures where other animals are seen in negative ways – as pests, as unintelligent, and as morally challenged. The culture behind early Buddhism, which is the same culture that nurtured the early Hindu and Jain beliefs, had rich views of other animals even as they claimed humans were the pinnacle. But, remember, each of these traditions also has powerful features that connect humans to nonhuman lives—that connection is always nearby even when other animals are being derided.

Abolitionist: Can you please provide us with a working definition of anti-speciesism and what are some of the subtleties of speciesism?

Paul Waldau: Anti-speciesism challenges the claim that it is all and only humans who should matter to a moral being.

Speciesism is really an idea, a justification for harming nonhumans. But notice that in our daily world, it is hardly the case that ALL humans matter. We ignore lots of humans in too, too many ways. So speciesism is helpful to see why people claimed humans were superior to nonhumans, but there are always additional inquiries one should make about human-on-human oppression that hardens individual humans. When someone harms a living being (whether human or not), it is easier to later again harm another being (whether human or not). Practice harm to living beings and you’ll be desensitized to other beings. Humans have suffered a lot because of the callousness which humans have toward nonhumans, and heaven knows that nonhumans have suffered terribly because of the insensitivities that humans have toward each other.

Abolitionist: Darwin argued that there ‘is no magical’essential difference between humans and other animals, biologically speaking. All religions are convinced that humans are more than their evolutionary biology. What religion, if any, regards non-human animals as more than their evolutionary biology and isn’t that what the animal rights movement is all about?

Paul Waldau: Virtually every religious tradition I have studied has squarely within its insights some form of recognition that nonhumans are more than just their evolutionary biology—evolution is, after all, a principal scientific notion. Religions have been able to nurture the notion that nonhuman individuals think, have families and emotions, and communities.

Abolitionist: Did the animal rights movement make a wrong turn in purporting we are “just one more animal” – not because it is speciesist but because it sets up a failure mechanism before we even get going, that failure mechanism being, give a human the lowest common denominator to work from – and they’ll do it.

Paul Waldau: I personally think a key is recognition that we are animals. Within each of us is the experience that an animal can be a caring being. And science shows easily that this is not merely a human trait, but something we share at the very least with other mammals. So I think we should reclaim our animal heritage. We are living proof of how remarkable animals can be. Others animals, too, will show you this if you will simply unlearn your biases against them. Notice them, take them seriously, and they will become an integral part of your community and self identity.

Abolitionist: Are the varied criticisms of speciesism that you cite in your book valid in your opinion?

Paul Waldau: Yes, I think speciesism is narrow and a sell-out of human possibility.

Abolitionist: All religions have an understanding of evil, how it manifests in the world and how to protect yourself from it. Catholics believe in Satan and satanism. If the Devil was to talk to humans today about animals all he would have to say is “I will treat you the same way that you treat animals” e.g., factory farming, circuses etc and there’s no recourse to that, is there? We’re apt to see it elsewhere but not in ourselves. Isn’t that a wake-up call?

Paul Waldau: I think of belief in the devil as representative of only some Catholics, some Christians, etc. There is something to your argument—the devil, if he exists, would be more powerful than we are. Does that in any way justify dominating us? If there’s an insight in this form of reasoning, it is simply that our ability to dominate other animals doesn’t give us the right to do so.

Abolitionist: How do we engage the religious communities to organise themselves to work to help save animal lives and work against the entrenched notion of speciesism?

Paul Waldau: We help them see their own resources for doing this. Religion, if it is about anything, is about your next step. What are you going to do with your marvelous abilities to care? Caring about only your own family is too narrow. So is caring only about your own race. So is caring only about your own gender, or your own nation.

Why is caring only about your own species legitimate? Most religions, most cultures, and most integrated people recognize that we are connected to other life. Speciesism is just another virulent form of that terrible combination of human ignorance and human arrogance that has allowed us to be such miserable creatures to each other, other cultures, and our environment. It’s time we grew up, recognised that humans are animals who have remarkable abilities to care. We can answer this question “Who are the others I’m supposed to care about?” in broad, enriching ways. Or we can stay narrow, and pretend that it is moral to protect only humans. I think it is clear which approach produces the most fulfilled, happy, and self-actualizing human beings.