Growing Moral Relations

Also by Mark Coeckelbergh

IMAGINATION AND PRINCIPLES

LIBERATION AND PASSION
THE METAPHYSICS OF AUTONOMY
Growing Moral Relations
Critique of Moral Status Ascription

Mark Coeckelbergh
University of Twente, The Netherlands
© Mark Coeckelbergh 2012
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For Lotte and Arno
The slave is a living tool and the tool a lifeless slave.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its

essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the
extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduc-
tion of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of
hydrogen bombs.
Heidegger, 1949 Bremen lecture

James: ‘We lack the words.’ Then why don’t we invent new ones?
What would have to be the case for us to be able to?
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 610
Contents

Acknowledgements xii

Introduction – The Problem of Moral Status 1

Part I Moral Ontologies: From Individual

to Relational Dogmas

1 Individual Properties 13

1.1 Moral status as property 13

1.2 Individuals and their contract 16
1.3 First attempts to solve problems: change unit
of analysis and expand social contract 20

2 Appearance and Virtue 24

2.1 Appearance and the social life: a turn to the

phenomena 24
2.2 Virtue 26
2.3 Community 33

3 Relations: Communitarian and Metaphysical 36

3.1 Objections to communitarianism and collectivism 37

3.2 Combining properties with relations? 40
3.3 Towards a phenomenological argument 43

4 Relations: Natural and Social 47

4.1 Ecology and ecophilosophy: natural relations and

the biotic community 47
4.2 Benton’s Marxism: social relations and
natural relations 51

5 Relations: Hybrid and Environmental 58

5.1 Latour’s amodernism: the collective of hybrids 58

5.2 Ingold’s ecological anthropology: dwelling
and skill 63

ix
x Contents

Conclusion to Part I: Diogenes’s Challenge 70

Part II Moral Status Ascription and Its Conditions

of Possibility: A Transcendental Argument

6 Words and Sentences: Forms of Language Use 75

6.1 Words, meaning and the construction

of moral status 77
6.2 Moral grammar à la Searle: moral status functions
and the moral–linguistic contract 82
6.3 Living language: towards a critique of moral
status ascription 88

7 Societies and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together 92

7.1 Moral status, habitus and know-how 92

7.2 Heidegger’s transcendental approach:
being-in-the-world and dwelling 95
7.3 Moral status as given in a Mitwelt 106

8 Societies and Cultures (2): Forms of Life 116

8.1 Moral status as given in a form of life: using

Wittgenstein 116
8.2 The cultural–social interpretation 120
8.3 The biological–material interpretation 125
8.4 Conclusion: Wittgenstein’s transcendental
argument 133

9 Bodies and Things: Forms of Feeling and Making 139

9.1 Human–animal relations: social and

material–technological conditions 140
9.2 Moral status and the body: Merleau-Ponty and
embodied cognition 143
9.3 Moral status and technology: beyond Marx 147
9.4 Using Ingold’s metaphors: making, growing,
revealing 149
9.5 The fiction of the automaton, human and
non-human 152
9.6 Nature, virtue and skill 160
 Contents xi

10 Spirits and Gods: Forms of Religion 166

10.1 The secularization of moral status and the

purification of religion 166
10.2 Two conceptions of religion: genealogical
spirituality and life-spirituality 170
10.3 Forms of spirit and moral status ascription 173
10.4 Shopping in the spiritual supermarket? 177

11 Fences, Walls and Maps: Forms of Historical Space 179

11.1 Two conceptions of space and time 179

11.2 Cultures and space 180
11.3 The city, the countryside and the wild 185
11.4 Space morality 189

12 Moral Metamorphosis: Concluding the

Transcendental Argument 194

12.1 Living value: moral status ascription and

forms of life 194
12.2 Can we move beyond modern and postmodern
thinking? Towards living philosophy 199
12.3 Three imperatives for the art of living 205

General Conclusion 207

A different moral epistemology: painting,
breathing, living 207
Morality’s womb 211

Notes 215

References 219

Index 225
Acknowledgements

I wish to thank all the people who, directly or indirectly, contrib-

uted to my thinking about moral status, including those who, often
anonymously, commented on my work on philosophy of robotics (such
as Steve Torrance), and of course my colleagues in the Department of
Philosophy in Twente (such as Johnny Søraker), from whom I learned a
lot about contemporary philosophy of technology, and who have made
this place a friendly, inspiring and encouraging environment for me to
work in over the past years. I am also extremely grateful to and for my
children, Lotte and Arno, who never cease to remind me about what is
really important in life, and who show me every day how wonderful
and meaningful it can be.

xii
Introduction – The Problem
of Moral Status

We live in an orderly moral world, or so we believe most of the time.

When we disregard the sour fruits of sceptical thinking, we usually
experience a moral universe in which each entity has its proper place,
a world in which value is arranged and distributed neatly among the
entities. This moral and metaphysical harmony is not only pleasing
to the mind; embodied and unfolding in our actions and our habits,
it is also necessary to live our lives. How could we possibly go on
with our daily business if we tried to live as sceptics in this respect?
How could we live at all if we constantly questioned the value and
status of entities? We would be at a loss to understand the world,
to give meaning to the world and to ourselves, and to act in the
world. Without the moral womb of tradition or ‘folk metaphysics’
that shields us from moral Angst and allows us to safely develop into
responsible and social adults, we would starve from perplexity, unable
to relate to the objects, people and other entities around us. We would
find ourselves in the nihilistic situation Nietzsche sketched so vividly
when he told the story of ‘The Madman’ (or ‘The Death of God’) in
The Gay Science:

How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to
wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained
the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we
moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling?
Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or
down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do
we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder?
Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? (Nietzsche
1882/1887, pp. 181–182)

1
2 Growing Moral Relations

Such a night is unliveable and perhaps even unthinkable. In such a

world it would not even make sense to call someone mad, since there
would no longer be a standard of sanity. The absence of a value order
seems to imply the absence of value and meaning as such. Thus, without
the experience of a sufficient degree of moral and metaphysical order
there is no human life worth the name.
However, to recognize this does not imply a claim about the precise
nature of this order (for example, it need not be hierarchical), nor does
it imply that we can always live in a state of moral paradise and inno-
cence, entirely undisturbed by philosophical questioning. Even those
who are not burdened by the philosophical tradition are vulnerable to
what philosophers call the problem of ‘moral status’. There are times
when new knowledge and experience crack the calm of fossilized habit
and received opinion, and challenge us to question the status and value
of entities – the status of other entities and of ourselves, humans. Then
Socratic scepticism is not only an adequate response; it is mandatory.
Then Nietzsche’s aphorism in Human, All Too Human becomes rele-
vant: ‘Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than are lies’
(Nietzsche 1878, p. 264). Then it is time, in other words, for doing moral
philosophy.
In our days, when science and technology play a major role in the
framing and creation of human experience, this questioning of the
moral status order tends to happen when we become aware of new
facts and artefacts that challenge the existing moral (status) order.
New evidence about existing entities which we call ‘natural’ entities
and new entities created by technology, which we call ‘artificial’, expel
us from the paradise of moral certainty and force us into the muddy,
laborious business of moral status ascription. For example, long after
Darwin’s work stirred up debates on moral status (a storm that is not
over yet), research on the so-called ‘great apes’ by pioneering prima-
tologists such as Jane Goodall and Frans de Waal has made us question
the sharp distinction we make between the moral status of humans
and the moral status of the so-called great apes. Should some of them
be considered as persons, rather than ‘mere’ apes? And, if chimpanzees
use tools, then does that shift their status closer to that of humans?
More generally, following accumulating scientific evidence on animal
behaviour and animal (evolutionary) biology that suggests many
similarities between human and non-human animals, there is a long-
standing philosophical discussion about the status of non-human
animals, for example the animals eaten by humans. Consider, for
instance, Singer’s Animal Liberation and subsequent discussions, but
 Introduction 3

also work by Midgley and others whom DeGrazia calls ‘second gener-
ation’ scholars. They ask questions such as: If an animal can suffer, if
it has a ‘mind’, if it has its own interests, and so on, then should we
not grant it a higher moral status than we do now, and treat it better?
Should we perhaps grant it rights?
Technological developments – existing technologies, but also emer-
ging technologies and even planned or imagined technologies (e.g. as
presented in science fiction) – also raise philosophical inquiries about
moral status. For example, the food and farming industry continues
to develop new production processes, which have morally signifi-
cant implications for the animals involved. And every now and then
monsters of all kinds leave the laboratory or the film studios and disturb
the peaceful moral order – ‘monsters’ meaning something that does not
fit into our moral and cultural categories (Smits 2006). Some monsters
are ‘real’ and ‘natural’ (e.g. new bacteria, genetically modified animals
and perhaps in the future humans); others are ‘artificial’ and/or ‘virtual’
(e.g. created with information technology). For example, some human-
like robots seem to be an excellent example of what Campbell called
‘monsters’:

By monster I mean some horrendous presence or apparition that

explodes all of your standards for harmony, order, and ethical
conduct. (Campbell 1988, p. 222)

This is not only a matter of science fiction. As robots and artificially

intelligent agents become more advanced, we are led to reflect on our
justifications of moral status and, indeed, on (the moral significance
of) the natural–artificial distinction itself. Can robots have minds and
emotions, and, if so, what is their difference from humans? Should we
grant rights to robots? And what exactly is the moral difference between
a biological body, to which we tend to grant moral status and protec-
tion, and an artificial robot body, which we tend to interpret and treat
as a thing? Why do we call biological life ‘life’, but refuse to use the term
for robots? Can there be ‘artificial life’?
In a similar vein, one might consider the moral status of so-called
‘cyborgs’: hybrids between humans and machines. Why do we take the
human body as the unit of our moral analysis, and not the human
body plus computer, plus glasses or plus car? What exactly is the moral
problem with replacing ‘natural’ body parts by artificial ones? How
‘artificial’ or ‘natural’ is a genetically modified organism? How artifi-
cial are humans if they have artificial body parts or if they were to have
4 Growing Moral Relations

nanobots in their blood? In a sense, ‘bio’ is becoming more ‘techno’

(e.g. the ‘making’ of new living things, genetic engineering, synthetic
biology, and so on) and ‘techno’ is becoming more ‘bio’ (e.g. growing
neurons and brains connected to a robot body, self-developing robots,
etc.). What does this imply for moral status?
Thus, the scientific and technological construction of new and old
entities, their new or renewed entry on the stage of our world, motivates
us to ask the philosophical question of moral status once again. What
is the moral status of non-human entities? How should we categorize
them – morally and ontologically speaking? Or is categorization itself
part of the problem?
Interestingly and typically, as the great apes case or the robot case
shows, new scientific evidence and technological developments do not
only make us question the status of non-human entities; they also invite
us to review the moral status of humans. Is there a difference in moral
status between some great apes and humans, or between advanced
robots and humans? If so, what is this difference? Are we basically great
apes, or even biological robots (biobots)? Are we ‘more’ or ‘different’,
and, if so, why? Why precisely is the border between the human body
and the rest of the (natural and artificial) world a moral border? What
is the place of humans in the moral universe? Can and should we
justify or change the hierarchical moral order we have lived for so many
generations? What is the moral value of humans as compared with non-
humans? Can and should we keep a distance in moral status between
humans and non-human animals, between humans and artefacts? How
animal-like, how artificial and how virtual are we, and what does this
imply for our moral status? And what is the moral status of non-person
humans that we sustain, ‘create’ or make visible by technological
advances in medicine, such as some coma patients, embryos created by
in vitro fertilization, embryos made visible by echoscopes, and so on?
What exactly is the moral place and relevance of ‘the human’?
In this book I discuss the question of moral status by means of a two-
step philosophical procedure that consists of two reformulations of the
initial question, which together constitute (1) an exploration of a social
and relational turn and (2) a critique of moral status ascription.
First I redefine the problem of moral status as the problem of
(re)defining the boundaries of the social. I discuss standard justifica-
tions of moral status in the light of this question and (re)construct an
alternative approach centred on appearance and relations. The central
question becomes how we should relate to other entities and how they
(should) appear to us. The preliminary answer I provide towards the
 Introduction 5

end of the first part of this book is a moral ontology that crosses indi-
vidual/social and natural/artificial distinctions. However, I then argue
that, if we want to make progress in our thinking on this matter, it
does not suffice to construct a scientific or metaphysical world view
that ‘sorts out’ the relations and ascribes value or moral status accord-
ingly. As critical philosophers who can benefit from post-Kantian philo-
sophical traditions, we also need to discuss the conditions of possibility of
moral status ascription.
In the second part of this book this transcendental question allows me
to identify and discuss the linguistic, social–cultural, natural–bodily,
material–technological, religious–spiritual and historical–spatial forms
of life that render it possible for entities to appear as having a particular
value or status (passive formula) and for us to ascribe a particular value
or moral status to entities (active formula). I argue that these condi-
tions do not only enable moral status ascription, but also place limits on
our discourse about moral status and on the possibilities of imagining
new practices and changing our habits. Influenced by Heidegger and
Wittgenstein, and drawing on interpretations by Dreyfus, Ingold and
others, I show that such discourses and proposals for change presup-
pose lived, relational experiences, practices and skills; they must be situ-
ated within the social–natural theatre of humans, animals and things.
I conclude that the question of moral status is fundamentally a social
question – how we should relate to other entities, how we should live
together – and that any answer to this question depends on the words,
relations, bodies, technologies, spirits and places we create, find and
live with.
Let me provide a detailed overview of the structure and content of the
book, which I hope will be useful to the reader.
In the first part of this book, I discuss existing accounts of moral status
and work my way up towards a (more) relational approach. First, I review
standard justifications of moral status and their social–philosophical
counterparts. I discuss direct justifications provided by deontological
and utilitarian theory and indirect justifications forwarded by virtue
ethics. In Chapter 1 I show that direct justifications base moral status
on (intrinsic) properties and rely on an atomistic metaphysics. Their
social–philosophical counterpart is individualism and their political–
philosophical counterpart is contractarianism. I point to several prob-
lems with these justifications (in particular epistemological problems)
and discuss attempts to overcome them within the properties paradigm
(e.g. changing the unit of analysis) and within the contractarian para-
digm (attempts to expand the social contract). In Chapter 2 I explore
6 Growing Moral Relations

two potential solutions that seem to leave the boundaries of individual

properties ontology. The first is a turn to appearance, which presents
itself as a solution to epistemological problems related to properties and
acknowledges the importance of appearance in social life. The second
is an indirect argument for moral status based on virtue ethics and its
political–philosophical counterpart communitarianism (a solution to
problems with individualism and contractarianism). These solutions
can be formulated by using the theatre metaphor and account for the
subjective dimension of moral status ascription, which is an important
step towards the work in the second part of the book. However, I then
argue that we should not interpret this subjective dimension as implying
that moral status just is a social–cultural construct or is caused by social
and cultural factors. Moreover, the indirect argument does not account
for our intuition that moral status should be about the entities in ques-
tion and not about us – in other words, it is too anthropocentric and does
not really expand the boundaries of the social. In Chapters 3, 4 and 5,
therefore, I look elsewhere (ecophilosophy, Benton’s Marxism, Latour,
Ingold) to construct a relational theory of moral status, which questions
modern distinctions between humans and non-humans, and between
nature and society. This ‘ecological’ approach avoids most problems
discussed in the previous chapters. However, I emphasize that the rela-
tional approach can only constitute an attractive alternative paradigm
if it is not understood as an alternative moral ontology, in the sense of a
better description of moral reality. If we interpret this approach as just
another dogma about the true nature of moral and ontological reality,
we lose sight of the subjective and indeed relational–ecological dimen-
sion of moral status ascription: we ascribe moral status as beings who
are already part of the world, who are already ‘environmental’. Thus, the
subjective dimension does not imply that an expansion of the bound-
aries of the social is merely a question of (good) will, as if we could
simply decide to change orientation; it depends on our relations.
But can we just ‘switch’ to a different, relational paradigm? Can we
simply change our practices? We might want to move towards a more
relational way of talking and living, but under what conditions is this
possible? I conclude this part of the book with some reflections on the
‘teachings’ of Diogenes the Cynic, pointing to the need for an approach
that draws our attention to what might keep us from moving in a
more relational direction, preferably one that brings more life into our
thinking about moral status.
In the second part of this book, therefore, I exclude any ‘dogmatic’
interpretation or recovery of the moral–relational project by making a
 Introduction 7

‘transcendental’ argument: I ask about the conditions of possibility of

moral status ascription. This question can be formulated in terms of
experience (What are the conditions for an entity to appear as having a
certain moral status?) or in terms of ascription/construction (What are
the conditions for moral status ascription/construction?). While moral
status cannot and should not be reduced to these conditions (it is not
these conditions), it depends on them in the same way as a building
depends on the existence of space: they are conditions of possibility.
This argument can be considered as a turn to the subject (Who is the
architect, who constructs moral status? We humans do; in this sense
this theory of moral status is anthropocentric), but this subject is not
isolated and does not exercise absolute free agency. Rather, it is consti-
tuted (enabled and limited, shaped and reshaped) by structures or forms
of various sorts.
In Chapter 6 I discuss a first form: I introduce language as a condi-
tion for moral status ascription. I draw attention to the linguistic form
moral status ascription takes. Using Searle’s social ontology, in particular
his concepts of ‘declaration’ and ‘status function’, I first construe the
view that moral status is constructed in the same way as other social
constructions: a physical entity is declared to have a certain status. The
family member of this position in social theory is contractarianism: we
live together as if we had made, agreed on declarations of status in an
Original Position. We thus create our ‘moral status grammar’. However,
this view assumes a misguided view of language and presupposes a
strict division between a physical world (objective, real) and a social
world (subjective, constructed), a division which is untenable in the
light of the phenomenological approach explored here. In Chapters 7
and 8, therefore, I argue that, if a linguistic turn is desirable here, it
should not merely be about language as convention or declaration –
if that means it is up to us to declare and agree about it. I show that,
instead, moral status is already part of one linguistic–social–physical
world. In line with Dreyfus’s objections to Searle, I argue in Chapter 7
that our world is already a Mitwelt (Heidegger), and that in this sense the
entity is already part of our social–linguistic world before we can ascribe
moral status to it. Its moral status is already partly ‘given’ in language
and social relations; this enables and limits moral status ascription. In
Chapter 8 I also use the view of the later Wittgenstein that for any utter-
ance (e.g. a moral status ascription) to be meaningful it must be subject
to public rules and shared understanding; there must already be a ‘form
of life’ in which the moral status ascription is embedded. It is ‘part of
an activity, a form of life’ in a social and cultural sense. Thus, moral
8 Growing Moral Relations

status ascription is as much a matter of linguistic declaration or social

convention as it is a matter of how we already live with non-humans –
even if the non-human in question is ‘new’ to our order. This insight
draws our attention to the social–cultural conditions for moral status
ascription: culture (language, social relations, etc.) shapes the condi-
tions under which we ascribe moral status – regardless of the linguistic
form that takes.
However, to emphasize ‘culture’ too much may give the impression
that moral status ascription takes place in an ‘immaterial’ cultural
realm alone, separated from the physical. Responding to this possible
objection, I discuss in Chapter 9 the bodily, material and techno-
logical conditions of possibility for moral status ascription. I use
Latour’s deconstruction of the distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘the
collective’, I interpret embodied cognition theory and Merleau-Ponty
as implying that what we can say about other entities depends on
embodied experience, I use Marxism and Foucault to argue that we
already exercise power over other entities in more and less subtle ways
and that this has a material component (e.g. food production power
structures) and a bodily component (e.g. disciplining animal bodies),
and I argue that technologies condition (shape, expand) the range of
possibilities we have for ascribing moral status as redefining the social,
and as redefining ourselves. Indeed, past technologies created existing
relations and limit our ways of talking about entities, and new or future
technologies condition our moral imagination (e.g. robots as a meta-
phor) and limit moral change.
In Chapter 10 I discuss the relation between moral status, religion
and spirituality. I argue that, even if some of us consider themselves
secular, religious belief and experience promote certain ways of seeing
and transforming the world, and therefore frame our ways of thinking
about moral status. I outline several forms of spirituality and discuss
how each enables and limits moral status ascription in a particular way.
In Chapter 11 I discuss examples of forms of historical space, moral–
geographical patterns that are traces of our ‘moral status’ thinking
and doing and at the same time continue to constitute and limit that
thinking and doing. I describe distancing processes of domestication,
civilization and earth-alienation for this purpose. I end with the ques-
tion of whether we can escape such ‘colonial’ forms of thinking. In
Chapter 12 I try to answer this question. I conclude that, if we want
to move towards a more relational view and practice, we had better
take into account these conditions of possibility for moral status ascrip-
tion and the corresponding limits they place on our moral discourse.
 Introduction 9

Changes to our thinking and practices – changes to our form of life – are
possible, but change is slow, and the role of individual will and action
or social–political agreement is limited. It is a ‘moral metamorphosis’
rather than a willed and controlled ‘transformation’.
In my general conclusion, therefore, I claim that attempting to
change moral status thinking amounts to attempting to change moral-
ity’s womb. In other words, the project of moral status ascription is
bound to fail tragically if it does not recognize its limits. Changing
moral status is a process of growing relations, which is at the same time
the growth of a new form of life. It is a process that is already taking
place, but it is not entirely in our hands. In so far as it is possible to
re-form at all, I suggest that promoting relational growth in the moral
domain can and does benefit from relations between ‘West’ and ‘East’,
and between ‘North’ and ‘South’. In my conclusions I also explore alter-
native moral metaphors that may encourage a more fleshy, living and
breathing way of thinking about moral status and moral knowledge,
and conclude that ‘the transcendental–phenomenological argument
made in this book amounts to a proposal for a kind of philosophical
yoga: an exercise in becoming more aware of your moral breathing.’
Part I
Moral Ontologies: From Individual
to Relational Dogmas
1
Individual Properties

1.1. Moral status as property

The standard approach to the justification of moral status is to refer

to one or more (intrinsic) properties of the entity in question, such as
consciousness or the ability to suffer. If the entity has this property, this
then warrants giving the entity a certain moral status, for example in
the form of rights. Thus, according to this approach, the key to knowing
the moral status of an entity lies in knowing that it has one or more
morally relevant properties.
Consider the so-called first generation discussion about the moral
status of animals in the 1970s and 1980s. Singer made the utilitarian
argument that sentience and the ability to suffer are such morally rele-
vant properties and that they give us a reason to promote the happi-
ness and interests of animals (Singer 1975, 1993), whereas Regan, from
a deontological position, argued for giving rights to animals if they
are ‘subject of a life’: if they have wants, preferences, beliefs, feelings,
memories, expectations, and if their welfare matters to them (Regan
1983). In spite of their disagreement (utility versus right), both camps
unite in the form of their justification: they all rely on the animal
having a morally relevant property.
A similar structure can be observed in discussions about the moral
status of robots and artificially intelligent agents. For example, Levy has
argued that artificially conscious robots should have rights (Levy 2009)
and according to what Torrance has called the ‘Organic view’ artificial
humanoid agents should be considered as having intrinsic moral status
if they are natural or artificial organisms: if they have ‘organic charac-
teristics’ such as sentience (Torrance 2008, p. 502). Again, in spite of
disagreements about which property is the morally relevant one, there

13
14 Growing Moral Relations

is a broad consensus on how to justify moral status: identify one or

more morally relevant properties and then find out if the entity in ques-
tion has them.
Put in a more formal way, the argument for giving moral status to
entities runs as follows:

1. Having property p is sufficient for moral status s

2. Entity e has property p

Conclusion: entity e has moral status s

Usually, this procedure is not applied to an individual entity, but to a

class of entities, for example an animal species or a particular class of
robots. The argument for giving moral status to an entity belonging to
class c then becomes:

1. Having property p is sufficient for moral status s

2. All entities of class c have property p

Therefore, all entities of class c have moral status s

3. Entity e is of class c

Conclusion: entity e has moral status s

However, the three premises incur at least the following epistemological

problems.
First, how can we know which property is sufficient for (1) ascribing
moral status at all and (2) ascribing a particular moral status s? Arguments
for moral status of animals or robots tend to focus on human-like char-
acteristics such as sentience or consciousness, or other features (e.g.
‘organic’), but why exactly are these morally relevant characteristics?
Second, how can we establish that a kind of entity has a particular
property p? This is difficult, since most properties we hold morally
relevant involve a ‘mental’ aspect that is not directly transparent and
accessible to us. For example, how can we establish the presence of
consciousness or an ability of suffering? And where shall we draw the
moral line if having a certain property is gradual rather than absolute?
For example, for some animals it is difficult to determine whether their
nervous system makes sentience possible. Consider the question of
whether or not fish are sentient.
 Individual Properties 15

Third, can we define sharp boundaries between kinds of entities, and,

if so, how shall we do this? For example, even within an animal species
there may be differences: some may have the morally relevant property
to a higher degree than others.
When we already know the entities very well, we do not ask these
questions. In daily life we know what we owe to others and how to
treat others – and this goes for non-humans as well. As philosophers,
we assume that these moral practices are justified either by knowledge
of the moral and metaphysical order – we have a ‘book’ that gives us
clear categories of entities and that gives us the value or moral status
of these categories of entities – or by the application of a method
that allows us to establish whether or not a category of entities has a
particular property. In modern times, we believe that this is the scien-
tific method.
When we question the moral status of new or old entities, we lack
the epistemic basis given by tradition. We thought we knew what (non-
human) apes are, we thought we knew what humans are, we thought we
knew the difference between the two types of entities, and we thought
that there was a strict, clear difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’: they are
(non-human) animals, we are humans. We thought we knew that robots
are ‘mere machines’ and that we are not mere machines. We think we
know, until science and technology shatter our world view, and thereby
shatter the metaphysical categories and the moral categories based on
them. Then we lose our ‘book of reference’. Reference to the older, trad-
itional categories does not solve the epistemological problem; these
older categories are part of the problem.
The epistemological problem is a Platonic one: find instances of
an Idea, be it a property or a type of entity. Consider the following
example. Imagine that we have to establish whether a particular cat has
consciousness in order to answer a moral status question. Then we have
to ask the following questions:
Question 1: Do cats have consciousness? In order to answer this ques-
tion we need the following knowledge:

1. We know what consciousness is, that is, we know the Idea of

consciousness
2. We know what cats are, that is, we know the Idea of cats
3. Then we can ask: Can we find the Idea of consciousness in the
Idea of cats? Does the property consciousness belong to the Idea of
consciousness?
16 Growing Moral Relations

Question 2: Is this entity a cat? In order to answer this question we need

to know the following:

1. We perceive this particular entity

2. We know what cats are
3. Then we can ask: Can we find the Idea cat instantiated in this
particular entity?

Usually we can skip many steps here; a lot of this knowledge is taken for
granted and usually there is no need to make it explicit. But if the entity
is not known to us yet, or if it turns out that we know a lot less about
it than we thought, then we do not have available an Idea of the kind
of entity. Then we have to start with the phenomena and try to gener-
alize, try to find the Idea and the Properties that belong to that idea
(that is, other Ideas). In other words, we have to investigate, research and
build theory. This is what science does – ancient ‘science’ and modern
science. It is also what modern moral philosophers do, at least if they
understand moral philosophy and indeed moral status ascription as a
moral science. (I return to this approach below.)

1.2. Individuals and their contract

The moral status ascription procedure described in the previous section

is not only a procedure we can use in (individual) ethics; it is linked
to social and political philosophy, in particular to social–historical
patterns of argumentation. The social–philosophical counterpart of the
properties-based approach to moral status is emancipatory, individu-
alist, liberal and contractarian. Let me explain this.
Once we thought that ‘slaves’ were non-human. However, gradually
they were emancipated, that is, declared human – and thereby ‘made’
human. Will the same happen for some types of animals or robots?
In any case, the formal structure of moral status arguments applies to
emancipation arguments. Emancipation of a particular class of entities
is justified by referring to the morally significant properties of that class
of entities. One first discriminates between properties that are held to
be morally relevant (e.g. the ability to reason, the ability to suffer) and
properties that are considered to be morally irrelevant, such as skin
colour or ancestry. Then a particular class of entities is said to have
those morally relevant properties and is therefore given a new moral
status. And the one who wishes to be emancipated claims her rights
or other form of moral status on the basis of these morally relevant
 Individual Properties 17

properties. Showing that a particular class of entities (‘them’) have, and

perhaps share with ‘us’, the morally relevant properties, is crucial to the
argument for emancipation. These famous lines in Shakespeare’s The
Merchant of Venice are illustrative of this:

‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?

If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?’

Of course, not every entity can make such a claim: not all entities
speak. Therefore, human subjects assume authority to speak on their
behalf. Making the claim is delegated to humans. For example, one
might claim rights for a particular class of (non-human) animals, or
robots. (And, if some humans do not have the effective freedom to
speak, others can speak for them and demand that they get that effective
freedom and other ‘human rights’, that is, rights that belong to them,
that are their property, in virtue of their being human.)
From a social–philosophical point of view, this approach is individu-
alist, since moral status is ascribed to entities considered in isolation
from other entities – including the observer. This isolating, alienating
approach deserves further metaphorical–philosophical elaboration.
Typically (in imagination or in reality) one ‘brings in’ a ‘species’ of the
entity (a specimen) and then examines that species in order to determine
whether or not it has the relevant moral propertie(s). Slaves, women,
blacks and animals are displayed and examined in the courtroom,
dissected in ‘anatomy theatres’, examined in the laboratory. In other
words: they are taken out of (their usual) context in order to determine
their properties, their essence. If we find the Kantian thing-in-itself,
then we know its moral status.
Indeed, the entity in question finds itself in the position of the
corpse that is examined in Rembrandt’s seventeenth-century painting
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. The moral philosopher lectures
about the moral status of entities by showing the moral anatomy of a
particular entity. Once again this is a Platonic procedure: the appear-
ances are stripped away. In the anatomy theatre, in the courtroom
and in the lab, the moral qualities of the entity are revealed, shown
to the eye of the public. The modern scientist, who forces nature to
reveal herself, is now accompanied by the moral scientist, who forces
the entity to reveal its true moral status. ‘The animal only appears to
suffer; in reality it feels nothing and we cannot ascribe moral status
to it. Watch this; here is the evidence; I will show how it really works.’
18 Growing Moral Relations

Or: ‘The robot is only treated as a pet; in reality its status is that of a
thing. I can show it; let me open the machine and reveal what is under
its artificial skin.’
I return to this question regarding appearance in the next chapter.
For now, let me emphasize that the entity is examined without taking
into account its relations to the world and to the observers. For example,
when we discuss about the moral status of a pig in terms of its intel-
ligence or sentience, we leave out the context of the pig, for example
the context of meat production, the humans who eat the pig, how the
pig lives with other pigs, and so on. Both the moral surgeon and those
who visit the moral theatre or the moral lab are not meat consumers
or people who had dealings with the animal before it was brought to
the examination table, but ‘impartial observers’ who search for the
truth behind the appearances. They take distance from the context.
On the clean table of the moral anatomist, essences appear and rela-
tions disappear. In this sense it is an ‘individualizing’, non-relational
procedure.
Note that this role of the moral scientist is assumed not only by
philosophers or by scientists but also by, for example, animal liberators.
Those who (sometimes literally) fight for animal rights have the same
properties-approach to moral status and make their claims from the
same pedestal: the position of the detached observer, who claims to
know the real and true moral status of the entity, who tries to show to
others what that status is, and who for this purpose engages in a way of
thinking that alienates the entity in question from its relations – a way
of thinking which we could call ‘individualist’.
Moreover, the whole approach is individualist in the sense that moral
status is viewed as ‘prior’ to the social. It is assumed that in an original,
natural state – a kind of state of nature – the entity had particular moral
status based on natural properties. However, so the emancipatory argu-
ment continues, in the unjust society of our days, these properties are
not recognized and hence moral status is not given to them, that is, not
given back to them. It was, as it were, stolen from them. Withholding
moral status is withholding their moral property. This is regarded as a
moral crime par excellence in liberal–romantic societies: entities are enti-
tled to their ‘natural’ moral status.
Thus, property is not only the key metaphor when it comes to
defining the natural properties of an entity (a metaphor at work in
natural science), but also a metaphor for moral properties based on
these natural properties (a metaphor at work in moral science). Moral
status is something you can have, possess. It belongs to you in the same
 Individual Properties 19

way as luggage belongs to you. Entities come with a moral backpack

and they have the right to carry that backpack since they have certain
(natural) properties. Liberty, in this approach, is what Berlin called
‘negative liberty’ (Berlin 1958); which means here that no-one violates
your natural properties or takes away your moral properties – which are
based on these natural properties.
This description is especially adequate for one particular form of
moral consideration: rights. Rights are often seen as inalienable: they
belong to the entity in the same way as arms and legs belong to the
human body. This reference to arms and legs implies a much tighter
connection between the entity and its moral status than the backpack
metaphor suggests. If you cut off the rights, then you violate the entity’s
moral integrity and endanger its moral life. Therefore, the entity has
a kind of meta-right: the right to claim its rights (or to have its rights
claimed) at all times.
Human rights, for example, are seen as rights that belong to humans
qua humans; they cannot be separated from the human; to do this
would be to violate the moral integrity of the human in question. If
any entity has the property ‘human’, then the moral property ‘human
rights’ comes with it. They are as natural as (other) natural properties.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, speaks of
‘the inherent dignity’ and ‘equal and inalienable rights of all members
of the human family’ (Preamble). Given this inalienable character of
rights, they become as natural as other properties. It is even said that
human beings are born with them: ‘All human beings are born free and
equal in dignity and rights’ (Article 1).
Historically and logically, this move is only possible since the human
beings are individualized, cut off from other ties and from the social. For
universal human rights, the only relevant relation is membership of
‘the human family’, that is, of the human species.
Society, in this view, can only be understood as a contract between
individual agents who try to protect their basic liberties, rights and
other moral properties. The social thus mainly appears as an architec-
ture of security, providing a particular type of security: it ensures that
property – moral and natural – remains with its owners. Liberalism and
private property go hand in hand.
This bourgeois approach to moral status does not necessarily exclude
non-humans, as deontological and utilitarian arguments for giving
animals moral status show and as I will show next. But typically non-
humans are not part of the ‘social contract’ understood as a security
contract.
20 Growing Moral Relations

Partly this is due to the contract metaphor itself. In order to make a

contract one has to be able to speak, to reason, and so on. Thus, as long as
one requires that the givers of moral status are the same as the receivers
of moral status, entities who lack these capacities cannot be parties to
the contract. However, contractarians have a solution for this problem:
humans can speak for those with ‘no voice’ – at least, those who cannot
use the voice of reason. They can agree, in a contract amongst them-
selves (e.g. made explicit in law), to protect non-humans in virtue of the
(lower) natural and moral properties they have.1 However, even if we
agree to give these entities moral status, they are not part of the social;
they are not part of our, human, world.
In sum, the tradition of contractarianism is not per se hostile to
giving non-human entities moral status, but has at its centre a social
contract between humans. The social is therefore defined as exclusively
human.
However, this approach becomes problematic when outside the moral
laboratory some entities appear differently than they are – that is,
they do not appear as they are supposed to appear according to moral
science. We would like to categorize them as ‘beasts’ or ‘machines’, but,
when we consider the so-called quasi-social nature of the new entities
under discussion, it becomes harder to exclude them from the social.
For example, not just animals (consider pets) but also robots may appear
as ‘quasi-others’ (Ihde 1990; Coeckelbergh 2011a), as ‘artificial compan-
ions’ (Floridi 2008). In these cases a gap opens up between experience
and theory: these non-humans appear to be part of the social, whereas
(traditional) contractarian theory excludes them.
One possible response to this problem is to reassert the truth of the
theory and educate people about the real moral status and the truth about
the animal and about the robot. Another response is to leave the moral–
scientific approach to moral status and to take seriously this social
dimension of human experience and existence. This book chooses the
second option. But, before exploring different approaches to moral
status, I shall discuss some attempts to solve the indicated problems by
stretching, not breaking, the standard approach.

1.3. First attempts to solve problems: change unit

of analysis and expand social contract

First, in response to the mentioned epistemological problems, one might

try to change the unit of analysis. This can take two kinds of theoret-
ical directions. A first route is to replace the entity as a scientific unit of
 Individual Properties 21

analysis by the entity as a quasi-subject or subject. Perhaps ‘subject-of-

a-life’ (Regan’s term) can be counted as belonging to this strategy. The
purpose of this switch is to talk about (subjective) experience rather than
objective properties. However, this move easily slides back to another
kind of properties-based account, since proof is required that the entity
in question really has these experiences (has desires, expectations and
so on) and can have them: one has to show the presence of the proper-
ties necessary for an entity to be able to have these experiences. Thus,
this approach reverts back to the standard approach, which assumes
that moral status is based on ontological properties and that science (or
indeed a Stoic or Christian insight into the moral world order) can tell
us all about these properties.
A second route takes a more scientific approach and subscribes to the
long-standing tradition of ‘elementary’ (meta)physics: change the unit
of analysis from ‘entity’ (animal, robot) to something more elemen-
tary, such as genes or ‘information’, and use properties of those things
as a basis for justifying moral status. Let me explain and discuss this
proposed solution.
A scientific–philosophical reply to my second objection may be that,
while mental properties are difficult to establish, we can establish their
presence at an elementary level. The method of elementary science,
which is Platonic and pre-Platonic in origin, is to look for elements (e.g.
elementary particles) ‘behind’ or ‘underneath’ the phenomena. What
we need, the argument goes, is a stable basis for morality, and this basis
can be found at the elementary, physical level, where we can find the
truth and reality, ‘beneath’ or ‘behind’ the lies of the phenomena.
For example, Liao has argued that rights and moral agency can be
justified on a genetic basis, which is ‘identifiable’ and ‘physical’ (Liao
2008). But this does not solve the problem, since it is unclear what
counts as a ‘property’ here. One gene? All genes? Which genes? Where
do we draw the line? Should we talk about genes or something else?
What is the ‘genetic basis’ of an organism? And why should anything
that is part of the genetic basis count as a property at all, given that
genes do not determine phenotype, behaviour, functions? Furthermore,
this ‘solution’ incurs my other objections as well: which genes are
morally relevant, which make a moral difference, for example the moral
difference between us and a chimpanzee? Science and a science-based
philosophy (alone) cannot answer these questions.
Similar problems occur in information ethics. One could try to find
a basis in the code of an entity or in a more abstract ‘element’ like infor-
mation, but it is not clear which part of the code or which information
22 Growing Moral Relations

should be selected and is morally relevant, that is, relevant for moral
status.
Consider Floridi’s information ontology (Floridi 2002): he links the
moral status and intrinsic value of an entity to its ontological status
as information object. By resorting to this strategy, one avoids having to
talk about properties of entities like robots, animals or humans. They
are analysed at what is taken as the most ‘elementary’ level (for example
information). However, then one has to know the properties of that
most elementary object. As Floridi says, the main question concerning
the moral worth of an entity is: ‘what is the intrinsic value of x qua
an object constituted by its inherited attributes’. Hence the problems
I identified previously remain intact: selection of the morally relevant
property, proof of the entity having that property, and definition of
boundaries between objects. The latter concern challenges elementary
(meta)physics at the heart of its approach: it suggests that the border
between elementary objects may be blurred and hence that there actu-
ally is no ‘element’.
Second, in response to the limitations of contractarian thinking with
regard to the social inclusion of non-humans, we should consider efforts
to stretch these limitations. Some authors have proposed modification
to contractarianism in order to include animals and other non-humans
in the contract. Most attempts to do so are property-based, which incurs
the epistemological problems mentioned above.
For example, Nussbaum has argued in Frontiers of Justice (2006) for
extending the (parties to the) social contract to people with disabilities
and to (non-human) animals. She argues that (human) rationality is
not the relevant property (Nussbaum 2006, p. 93) and proposes other
criteria instead. For example, she challenges the contractarian assump-
tion that people are of equal power and capacity (Nussbaum 2006,
p. 103) and argues that sentient animals, in contrast to non-sentient
ones, ‘have a secure entitlement against gratuitous killing for sport’
(p. 393). Thus, Nussbaum’s approach remains with the individualist
properties-based approach.
In an effort to find a more social criterion to stretch the contract, I
have proposed a different solution in a recent article: grant moral status
on the basis of cooperation, a basic contractarian concept. I have argued
that cooperation between humans and non-humans can de facto estab-
lish a social contract (Coeckelbergh 2009), which implies ascription of
moral properties to non-humans also – or at least to those non-humans
who cooperate with humans. This approach has the advantage that
we do not need proof of properties such as sentience or consciousness.
 Individual Properties 23

Of course, being able to cooperate assumes certain properties on the

part of the entity, and in this sense this approach remains properties-
based: only entities that have the capacity to cooperate (with us) receive
moral status.
Whatever the merits of these proposals, however, it must be clear by
now that there is a link between moral status ascription and defining
the nature and boundaries of the social, and that the properties-based,
individualist–contractarian approach faces significant problems that
cannot be solved easily.
But is there a real alternative to this individualist and properties-
based approach? One solution we may want to explore is the ‘indirect’
argument for moral status. The argument for moral status analysed in
this chapter can be called direct, since it seeks to protect the entity in
virtue of the entity’s own properties. There is, however, an indirect argu-
ment as well: we can protect other entities in virtue of our own value
and status as humans. I will discuss this solution in the next chapter, in
which I will also start to search for an alternative to the Platonism and
realism implicit in the properties-based approach to moral status.
2
Appearance and Virtue

In the first chapter I have discussed properties-based and contract-

based approaches to the problems of moral status as a problem about
the boundaries of the social. I have also indicated problems related to
these approaches and I discussed two modifications that turned out
to be only ‘superficial’ solutions, that is, no solutions at all. In this
chapter I wish to consider two theoretical avenues that deserve atten-
tion as better alternatives, one of which I will develop further in the
next chapters and in Part II. One is an appearance-based justification
of moral status (an alternative to a properties-based, ontological one)
and the other is the indirect argument for moral status: virtue ethics
and the related communitarian alternative to contractarianism. Both
alternatives constitute a first turn to the subject in thinking about
moral status, a turn which will be continued in the next chapters and
in Part II.

2.1. Appearance and the social life: a turn

to the phenomena

One way of trying to avoid the mentioned epistemological problems

is to replace the ‘thing-in-itself’ (to use Kant’s term from the Critique
of Pure Reason) with the thing (object) as it appears to us (subject).
The justificatory ground of moral status, in this view, is not ontology
but phenomenology: what matters, morally speaking, is not what
the entity in question is, but how the entity appears. Elementary
(meta)physics, which, following Plato and pre-Socratic natural phil-
osophy, searches for the real ‘behind’ or ‘beneath’ the phenomena,
is replaced by attention to human experience and consciousness.
Such a ‘phenomenological’ approach may then go two ways, which

24
 Appearance and Virtue 25

we may call a ‘Husserlian’ and a ‘Heideggerian’ way. One way is to

make it a science of consciousness or a science of experience (psych-
ology), which easily slides back into elementary metaphysics: Husserl
was after ‘pure consciousness’ and things-in-themselves, and contem-
porary psychology changes the unit of analysis from human beings to
minds, behaviour, brains, neurons and so on. Another way is rather
(post-)Heideggerian, hermeneutical and constructivist: it attends to
the ways we experience, encounter, interpret and construct things
in daily life, in moods, in context, in our worldly and social way of
being – not in detached scientific consciousness. If we take the latter
approach, moral and ontological status is neither something that is ‘in’
‘the thing’ or that is its attribute (e.g. intrinsic value, rights, etc.), nor
something we can experience purely and directly as detached obser-
vers, but something that is experienced, given, ascribed, interpreted,
mediated and constructed. Moral status, then, is not about the entity
but about us and about the relation between us and the entity: how we
experience and construct the entity, how it appears to our conscious-
ness and how we give it reality, meaning and status. (This will be the
focus of Part II.)
For the moral status of non-humans (and indeed humans), the latter
approach to moral status has at least the following implication. As I have
argued in the previous chapter, standard moral–philosophical argu-
ments view non-human entities out of their (existential, natural, social)
context. I used the metaphor of the dissection theatre or laboratory:
philosophers doing (applied) ethics rely on scientists who ‘examine’ or
‘dissect’ the (new) entity and then determine its ontological and moral
status. “Can the animal feel pain? Is the artificially intelligent agent
conscious? In order to know this, let us experiment and find out what
this entity really is. Then we know how we should treat it: as a thing, as
an animal, perhaps as a human being?” However, such an approach is
neither appropriate nor possible. It assumes that what an entity is can
be exhaustively described and determined from the ‘outside’ and from
a point of view that is a ‘view from nowhere’ (Nagel 1986), without
taking into account the (quasi-)subject’s experience and the context
in which it exists. As sociologists and anthropologists of science have
shown, laboratories are not non-places and non-contexts and scien-
tists are subjects-in-context: they do not have unmediated access to
reality; subjectivity and contexts enter into the process. Scientists do
not ‘find’ or ‘discover’ reality but interpret phenomena and (have to)
construct ‘reality’ by relying on a network of humans and non-humans
(see, for example, Latour’s actor-network theory – Latour 2005). Even
26 Growing Moral Relations

the ‘elementary particles’ are not the ‘reality’ behind or underneath the
phenomena but are themselves phenomena and constructions.
However, the problem with this view – in the form I have articu-
lated it here – is that it may easily water down into a Platonic–scientific
approach to moral status once again: social science, cultural studies,
anthropology, and so on understood as sciences that reveal the truth
and dismantle the phenomena. If this happens, then the problems
discussed appear to turn up again. Indeed, this view can be misinter-
preted as saying that moral status is a social–cultural construction in
the sense that it is ‘caused’ by society and culture. If this interpret-
ation is endorsed, then even the language of ‘construction’ turns out to
be a form of scientific realism in disguise: yet another ‘reality’ discov-
ered underneath the ‘reality’ of the scientists. This is Platonism once
again: social science shows that moral scientists think moral status is
something objective, whereas in reality moral status is a construction, is
produced in the laboratory and so on. Latour’s ontology, for example,
might be interpreted as implying that there is such an underlying
reality: the network of humans and things.
In Part II, therefore, I will avoid this (superficial interpretation of)
constructivism and, rather, make a transcendental argument: society
and culture are (one of the) conditions of possibility for moral status
ascription. This allows me to bring in all kinds of contextual conditions
without reducing morality (moral status, value, etc.) to these condi-
tions, as the sciences and philosopher–scientists tend to do.

2.2. Virtue

A (very) short way of summarizing the turn to the phenomena proposed

in the previous section is to say that we (humans) ascribe moral status.
Moral status ceases to be regarded as an objective property; attention
is paid to the human subject, the ‘ascriber’ of moral status. This turn
to the subject has epistemological and moral significance. First, there
is a sense in which moral status ascription is always ‘anthropocen-
tric’: when we consider the moral status of an entity, we always have
to start from the position of the subject. For example, we use language
to ascribe moral status to non-humans. This weak form of what we
may call ‘epistemological’ anthropocentrism cannot be avoided and
has important consequences for understanding moral status ascrip-
tion (see Part II). However, there is also a different and stronger form
of anthropocentrism (which we may call ‘moral’ anthropocentrism):
the idea that our relation to non-humans should be shaped not by their
 Appearance and Virtue 27

moral status but by our moral status – in particular, our moral char-
acter. This is the virtue ethics approach to moral status, which I shall
now discuss. I will also discuss the related social theory (communitar-
ianism), which I will present in the next section as an alternative to the
individualist–contractarian approach to moral status discussed in the
previous chapter.
Virtue ethics seems to avoid the problems discussed above by
employing an indirect argument for moral status: if we humans wish to
be virtuous persons, we should treat non-humans well – regardless of
their moral status. Abuse of non-humans is not wrong because it violates
their moral status (e.g. by creating moral suffering or by violating their
rights), but because it is not what a good person is supposed to do. It
is wrong because as humans we fail to live up to our moral status as
humans and as members of a moral and political community. This shift
to the subject of moral consideration seems to avoid the epistemological
problems indicated in the previous chapter. We no longer need to know
the properties of the object of moral consideration.
Moreover, in its communitarian version – that is, as a social and polit-
ical theory – this approach rejects the individualist and contractarian
view of the social and acknowledges the social, communal dimension
of human being. There is not ‘first’ the individual and then society;
according to this view, it is rather the other way around. ‘First’ there is
the community; only in this context does it make sense to talk about
the obligations we have towards one another and perhaps towards non-
humans. In this way communitarianism presents itself as an antith-
esis and alternative to the individualist–contractarian view that leaves
behind its problems. It also changes the focus from an ethics of the
right (here: what is the right thing to do vis-à-vis a non-human entity,
how should we act towards it) to an ethics of the good (what is the good,
flourishing life and, related to this question, how should we live with
human and non-human beings).
An interesting example of a virtue approach to moral status may be
found in so-called ‘environmental virtue ethics’. Authors who argue
for this approach (see, for example, van Wensveen 2000; Cafaro 2004;
Sandler 2005; Sandler and Cafaro 2005; Hursthouse 2007; Sandler
2007) argue for the good of non-human entities as a requirement of
human flourishing.
This turn to virtue and ancient philosophy is not new, but it is
relatively new to the field: usually environmental philosophy does
not ask “How should one live?”. As said, deontological and utilitarian
theorists ask the question concerning right action. Moreover, virtue
28 Growing Moral Relations

ethics as an ethics of character has also long neglected the question

of how we should relate to the environment. In response, environ-
mental virtue ethics asks the question ‘what attitudes and disposi-
tions we ought and ought not to have regarding the environment’
(Sandler and Cafaro 2005, p. 2). For virtue ethicists, having a good
character in this respect is not only a means to do the right thing in
relation to the environment; instead, environmental virtue is held to
be valuable in itself (p. 3).
A good example of a virtue ethics approach to environmental ethics
is Cafaro’s interpretation of Thoreau’s Walden (Cafaro 2004), in which
he defines environmental virtue as a kind of self-cultivation (Cafaro
2004, p. 6) that requires ‘hard work’ (p. 22) and leads to the good life or
human excellence. This excellence should not be defined narrowly in
moral terms, as in Christian and modern ethics, but includes ‘physical,
intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual excellence’ (p. 46). With Thoreau,
he argues against overconsumption (be content with less; excellence
should be the goal, not comfort) and warns that technology tends to
‘distance us from wild nature and from our immediate environment’
(p. 93). Instead he recommends freedom, self-reliance, self-knowledge,
connection to nature, and philosophical reflectiveness (p. 109). In this
way, leading flourishing lives is good for nature. We should aim at
‘joyful relationship’ with nature (p. 139). He contrasts this approach to
ethics with Singer’s and Regan’s approach: instead of appealing to the
demands of reason, Thoreau and Cafaro appeal to experience:

‘No argument about general ethical principles, or the essential nature

of pigs or chickens, can take the place of actually visiting a modern
factory farm and seeing how cruelly the animals are raised.’ (Cafaro
2004, p. 145)

Thus, Cafaro suggests that, if we had to slaughter an animal ourselves,

we would most likely become miserable. We would feel that it was not
right. The punishment for vice is not external but internal to the activity
and the experience. In this sense, Thoreau is right that ‘the penalty is
simply to be immoral and unjust’ (p. 69). And, if we live the good life,
we also have a good feeling.

‘The simplest messages in Walden are to get outside, use your limbs,
and delight in your senses. Run, walk, swim, sweat. Taste the sweet-
ness of the year’s first huckleberries and feel the juice dribble down
your chin.’ (Cafaro 2004, p. 155)
 Appearance and Virtue 29

Ideals and principles can have a role in ethics, but we must try them in
life; this is what Cafaro calls an ‘experimental virtue ethics’ (p. 222).
Justification comes to us ‘within our own experience’ (p. 225). We are
called to live our philosophy. Informed by virtue ethics and a good
shot of romanticism, which connects ethics to personal commitment,
feeling and flourishing, such an environmental virtue ethics seems to
offer an attractive alternative to standard environmental ethics.
This ‘environmental virtue ethics’ draws our attention to an important
problem with standard theories: they tend to be very abstract. This
prevents the experiential processes promoted by Cafaro. Paradoxically,
standard environmental ethics is at its best when it is not very prin-
cipled and abstract but ‘down to earth’, when it lets people experience
what they are doing. As Nigel Pleasants writes about Singer’s influential
book Animal Liberation in his discussion of Marx and Wittgenstein:

‘When Singer succeeds, it is by getting people to see what they actu-

ally do, or are implicated in doing, to their fellow creatures [ ... ]. In a
word, then, Animal Liberation works not by teaching people [theory]
but by getting them to look at and acknowledge what they do –
or what is done for them – to animals.’ (Pleasants in Kitching and
Pleasants 2002, p. 176)

As I will argue in part II, when I discuss Heidegger and Wittgenstein

in order to develop a different approach, what is needed are indeed
different ways of seeing and doing. In so far as it emphasizes experience
and experiment, and avoids reification of virtues by not seeing them
as abstract moral principles, virtue ethics is partly compatible with the
approach I defend in this book (as it is with Deweyan pragmatism) and
can reinvigorate environmental ethics and animal ethics.
Virtue ethics is also a worthwhile approach to ethics of information
technology. For example, it has been applied to the issue of violent
computer games (McCormick 2001; Coeckelbergh 2007) and it can
be applied to other ethical issues in ‘virtual’ contexts as well, such as
virtual child pornography. The advantage is that it allows us to say what
may be wrong with abusing a virtual entity. Whereas deontological and
utilitarian theories cannot make a strong case against abuse of such
entities (at best they can employ an indirect argument: it is wrong only
if real humans are abused for the purpose of creating virtual entities),
virtue ethics directs our moral attention to potential harm to character
on the part of the real, human player, porn consumer, and so on. Again,
as in environmental virtue ethics, the moral status of the subject is at
30 Growing Moral Relations

stake – regardless of the moral or ontological status of the (virtual or

natural) object.
However, virtue ethics and communitarianism have problems of
their own. First, one needs to know what the virtues are. It risks making
a circular argument: x is wrong (or living in an x way is not good) since
it is not virtuous to do so and being virtuous means not doing x or not
living in an x way. For example, strategies to specify environmental
virtue rely on known inter-human virtues (e.g. humility, patience,
temperance, and so on – which all have corresponding vices), benefit
to agents, considerations of human excellence, or study of role models
(for an overview see Sandler and Cafaro 2005, pp. 3–6), but there seems
to be no further justification for selecting particular interpersonal
values (and why they are virtues), for saying why something constitutes
a benefit at all, for why human excellence depends on humans being
ecological beings, or for why some role models really are role models,
why the character of these persons is virtuous. It seems that views of
what constitutes virtue and of what humans are must be taken for
granted in order to start the environmental virtue ethics arguments.
There is no ‘deeper’ justification.
Virtue ethicists could reply, perhaps inspired by Deweyan pragma-
tism, that we should give up this quest for justification if it means
finding an ethical rock bottom outside experience. The benefit and
value of a particular character and a particular way of life are experi-
enced by those who have that character and live in that way. Consider
Cafaro’s example again: quite apart from any external rule, we experi-
ence that slaughtering animals is a vice.
However, next to this problem of justification the theory faces at least
two problems of application: it is not clear in relation to which entities
we should exercise virtue (to all humans, to all animals, to all entities?)
and it is not clear what the application of the relevant virtue to that
entity consists in. This is a harder problem and cannot be easily solved
by an appeal to experience. For example, should we behave benevolently
towards bacteria? And does living a virtuous and flourishing life require
us to refrain from eating meat? Deontological and utilitarian theories
also face these problems, but, based on their properties-approach, have
a clear answer (which, as I have argued, is problematic). Can virtue
ethics avoid a properties-approach?
Unfortunately, virtue ethics, with its focus on human character, has
to provide the same type of properties-based justification, but related
to properties of humans instead of properties of non-humans: it has to
argue that it is our ontological status which warrants the moral status
 Appearance and Virtue 31

it ascribes to humans. As said, virtue ethicists typically rely on a view

of human nature in order to define human excellence. In the neo-
Aristotelian version, virtue ethics is rooted in a view of humans as
rational and political animals – the latter meaning that humans can
only develop themselves and flourish as part of a community (see, for
example, Hursthouse 1999; MacIntyre 1999). This raises questions such
as: Can we maintain Aristotle’s essentialist view of human nature?1
How does this view relate to contemporary understanding of human
nature influenced by evolutionary biology? But, whatever their justifi-
catory basis (that is, whatever view of human nature), virtue ethicists
still have to answer the question of what this means for our treatment
of animals, nature, robots, virtual entities and other non-humans.
Moreover, as van Wensveen suggests (in Sandler and Cafaro 2005,
p. 26), a clear idea of how things should be changed is usually missing.
She writes:

‘Calls to respect nature, to change our dominating attitudes, to be

frugal, careful, and wise, tend to remain just that: calls. Usually they
are not followed by a detailed analysis of how heeding them will
bring about the desired social change.’ (Van Wensveen in Sandler
and Cafaro 2005, p. 26)

Furthermore, there is the problem of motivation. Van Wensveen

supposes that our ‘dominating attitudes’ can be changed. But why
should people be motivated at all to adopt a different attitude? Unless
calls for change are psychologically endorsed and socially realised,
environmental virtue ethics will remain a philosophical theory or a
moralist call.2
Finally, in an Aristotelian view of ethics (as opposed to a Stoic view),
virtue is not sufficient for human good. As Sandler notes, ‘virtue
is necessary but not sufficient for human flourishing’ since it also
depends on circumstances beyond our control (Sandler in Sandler and
Cafaro 2005, p. 217). This is the so-called problem of ‘external goods’:
are they necessary for human flourishing or can we be ethical saints in
the face of hardship and bad luck? I believe this question is particularly
relevant to environmental virtue ethics, since much what happens to
the ‘environment’ is not, or is only partly, the result of human action.
Consider climate change: even if it makes sense to talk about such a
thing as ‘climate change’, and even if this is partly and significantly due
to human actions, then human environmental virtue alone is probably
not sufficient to ‘change climate change’.
32 Growing Moral Relations

However, even if virtue ethics had good ontology-based/properties-

based arguments, even if it could deal with its epistemological problems,
and even if it had a (more) convincing answer to the already mentioned
problems of justification, application, motivation, social change and
‘external goods’,3 there remains a tricky problem with regard to virtue
ethics’ view of moral status: it remains indirect, that is, it is not directly
concerned with the good of the object of moral status. Environmental
virtue is about human flourishing (the aim) and human virtue (valuable
in itself), not about the flourishing of the non-human entities, which
are not understood as having intrinsic value. If we have the intuition
that a justification of moral status should at least also have its source in
the good of the entity in question (an intuition shared by some envir-
onmental virtue ethicists4 but also by deontologists and utilitarians),
something is missing here. Moral consideration seems entirely rooted
in the moral subject.
The challenge for a more comprehensive theory of moral status,
then, is to account for the fact that we humans give moral status to
entities while at the same time accounting for the intuition that the
moral status of an entity is at least partly related to something about that
entity. Given the problems indicated in the previous pages, a further
requirement is that this aim should be achieved without relying on a
properties-based account – a requirement we would fail to meet if we
argued that non-human entities also have intrinsic value. This seems to
be a hard, if not impossible, task indeed. However, I hope to make some
significant steps towards a solution in the next chapters, in which I will
continue to develop the phenomenological–hermeneutical argument
I started in this chapter by exploring a relational and transcendental
approach to moral status.
Finally, as I said previously, it seems that environmental virtue ethics
faces a problem of motivation. Even if we could identify, justify and
apply the environmental virtues (and if we knew to whom or to what
they apply, if we knew to whose flourishing a virtuous person should
be responsive), then there would still be a gap between knowledge and
action: we recognize the need for a different relation to nature, for
different practice, but we fail to act upon that knowledge.
One could try to solve this problem by means of imagination. In
its neo-Stoic version, this would involve one contemplating the logos
of the universe and expanding one’s imagination from the human
to the non-human (to ‘nature’). In its romantic version, this might
involve feeling the unity of all living beings, the harmony of ‘nature’.
Both uses of the imagination would allow us to ascribe moral status to
 Appearance and Virtue 33

entities beyond the human world. However, as I will argue in Part II,
such moral thinking is in danger of detaching and disengaging us from
the world. Moreover, in terms of moral epistemology, the very way the
motivation problem is formulated rests on the misleading assumption
that there is ‘first’ a moral logos (which can be contemplated or felt)
and ‘then’ action. In Part II I will use the notion of skill to argue that
this assumption should be abandoned in favour of a different view of
moral knowledge and a different view of the relation between virtue
and technology.

2.3. Community

Today virtue ethics is often interpreted as being concerned with indi-

vidual character. But originally – that is, at the time Aristotle lived –
virtue would have been strongly connected to the community. Hence
virtue ethics is not necessarily about the moral status of the human
individual, but about the ‘moral status’ of individuals as members of a
community. Let me briefly discuss Book I of Aristotle’s Politics in order to
explore ancient communitarian thinking as an alternative to the indi-
vidualist–contractarian approach outlined in the first chapter. Thus,
the point is not to endorse or criticize his particular status ascriptions,
but to briefly examine and learn from his general approach to virtue
and moral status.
For Aristotle, humans are political animals, that is, animals that live
in a polis. Aristotle writes that the political community aims ‘at the
highest good’ (1252a6). It seems that what matters for him is the moral
status of the community and its members. Within the community
Aristotle makes distinctions between different ‘elements’. Within the
community, each has its role and status.
Aristotle starts his discussion with a history of the state. First there
is the union of male and female, a relationship out of which arises the
family (1252b10). The family is meant to take care of our daily needs,
which it does by cultivating the land, using an ox (if the family is poor)
or a slave (if the family is rich). When several families unite they form
a village; several villages unite in a larger community. Then Aristotle
draws an important distinction: for the polis, the aim is no longer
merely sustaining life but the good life: ‘originating in the bare needs of
life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life’ (1252b30).
He calls this evolution ‘natural’, and hence he can say that ‘man is by
nature a political animal’ (1253a3–4). He who is without a state is an
‘outcast’, an ‘isolated piece’ (1253a5–6).
34 Growing Moral Relations

With regard to moral status, Aristotle mainly talks about different

classes of humans. For example, he makes distinctions between master
and slave, husband and wife, and father and children (1253b and
following pages), based on the kind of soul they have. An exception is a
distinction he makes between humans and non-political animals: man
has ‘the gift of speech’, with which he can make moral distinctions,
rather than ‘mere voice’ which is ‘but an indication of pleasure or pain’
(1253a10–13).5
Thus, we have properties-based reasoning here: speech is the morally
relevant property. Another important property is the faculty of delib-
eration. Aristotle argues that the kind of rule differs according to the
‘parts of the soul’ that are ‘present in different degrees’:

‘For the slave has no deliberative faculty at all; the woman has,
but it is without authority, and the child has, but it is immature.’
(1260a12–15)

Aristotle combines this kind of reasoning with a non-individualistic

approach. According to him, the state is ‘clearly prior to the family
and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part’
(1253a19–20). His argument for this claim is that ‘the individual, when
isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation
to the whole’ (26–27) since we are social animals:

‘But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because

he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no
part of a state. A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature
[ ... ].’ (1253a27–30)

Thus, Aristotle does not think that there is a kind of ‘state of nature’ that
is unsocial and in which individuals must try to become self-sufficient or
set up society as a security structure; for him society and its laws are the
natural destination of mankind. Only in the polis can men achieve the
good life, become fully human. Community itself has a moral quality.
This is a difference from the individualist–contractarian approach: the
entity is not stripped of its relations with other entities; on the contrary,
these relations are crucial to its moral development. Freedom does not
mean negative freedom, being protected from interference by the state,
but the freedom to be a member of the state as a condition for enjoying
the good life. It is not about respecting rights but respecting one’s proper
function in the whole.
 Appearance and Virtue 35

Aristotle is concerned with humans here; hence this approach

remains anthropocentric in a strong, moral sense: what counts is the
moral status of humans. Moreover, his justification is as property-
based as any other standard justification. What we end up with here
is a picture of the well-ordered society: the picture of the body of the
state with all the members of the body being assigned a specific place,
based on their properties. But there is an important difference from the
approach discussed in Chapter 1. With Aristotle, the ‘moral status’ ques-
tion changes to a non-individualistic one. The question is not about the
moral status of an individual entity but about the moral development
of men-in-relation, that is, men as members of the community, which
he claims is ‘prior’ to the individual. His ‘moral status question’ is not
‘What is the moral status of entities of class c?’ but ‘Are entities of class
c included in the moral–political community, and if so, what place do
they have in that community?’ This makes the question about moral
status a social–political question rather than an individual–ethical
question: it is about the boundaries and constitution of the social.
This is one way we can move towards what I will call a ‘relational’
approach, although it remains property-based. Fortunately, the
Aristotelian view is not the only possible alternative; I will discuss
more ways in the next chapters. I will also indicate problems with the
‘communitarian’ approach in general. For example, Aristotle, like many
of his contemporary followers, is not concerned with the moral status
of non-humans and is very ‘anthropocentric’ in this sense. But here we
have an example of a non-individualistic, albeit property-based, way
of thinking about moral status, which is at the same time sensitive to
historical and material conditions.
3
Relations: Communitarian
and Metaphysical

In the previous chapters the initial question ‘What is the moral status
of entities?’ has been reformulated: asking about moral status is asking
about the boundaries of the social. In this chapter and in the next two
chapters, I would like to further develop this argument and slowly move
on to a different research question: how should we relate to (other)
entities?
Leaving aside for a moment what I have said about appearance
in the previous chapter, let me recapitulate what I have done so
far. Faced with epistemological and other problems, I have tried to
distance myself from an individualist, properties-based account of
moral status and its related individualist–contractarian definition of
the social. After considering attempts to change the unit of analysis
and attempts to expand the social contract, I turned to virtue ethics
as an alternative approach to moral status and to communitarianism
as an alternative view of the social. It turned out that these theories, as
well as having problems of their own, did not really manage to move
away from a properties-based approach: they ‘only’ shifted the focus
from the properties of the receiver of moral status (‘the object’) to the
properties of the giver of moral status, the moral status ascriber (‘the
subject’). While I ask the reader to keep in mind this shift from object
to subject – I will need it in Part II – the approach remains properties-
based.
An alternative approach, then, may be to redefine the social in a
radically different way: in the next pages, I will explore the view that
the social is neither a matter of individuals being ‘prior’ nor a matter of
the community being ‘prior’, but a matter of relations. In other words,
it is time to turn to a more relational theory of moral status, a theory
which naturally involves – or so it seems – a relational ontology.

36
 Relations: Communitarian and Metaphysical 37

The term ‘relational’ here is vague and allows many interpretations.

What do I mean by it? There are several potential candidates for a rela-
tional view.

3.1. Objections to communitarianism and collectivism

One candidate which should not be rejected too soon is – once again –
communitarianism. As my brief discussion of Aristotle’s view in the
Politics has suggested, communitarianism is relational in the sense
that it leaves behind an individualist view of society and emphasizes
communal relations. In theory, it even moves beyond individual–
society dualism. Communitarians such as MacIntyre (1984) and
Taylor (1989) show that personal virtue and the building of a moral
community go hand in hand, that there is no fundamental difference
between fostering personal morality and fostering the morality of the
community. Neither the community nor the members of the commu-
nity are mere means to an end; they are ends in themselves. Indeed,
if, as Aristotle argued, we are like members of a body, then this seems
to amount to a holistic view of the relation between individuals and
community, in which neither the whole nor the part takes ontological
or moral priority.1 If the communitarian view is conceptualized in this
way, then it seems that, whatever else may be said about it, it is a rela-
tional theory. If we are political animals, then the moral status of the
person is defined in a relational way.
However, in practice communitarianism has often become collectivist,
in which case it tends to see the members of the community as mere
means to the communal end and in which case only the whole counts
(the body), not the parts (the members of the body). Moreover, both the
Aristotelian version and the collectivist version of communitarianism
once again rely on properties: properties of men qua human beings and
properties of the collective are the basis of communitarian moral status:
the moral status of the member of the community and the collective
moral status of the community.
The collectivist version tends to grow not only in some groups but
also in larger wholes; it seems inherent in state nationalism and there-
fore to all political entities that act as ‘nation states’. What counts is
not the moral status of the citizen but the moral status of the nation
state, which is held to be based on its quasi-eternal properties.
Nationalism de-historicizes the political community in the sense that
it does not understand its current form as the result of historical proc-
esses. Instead, the nation appears as a non-historical, fixed entity with
38 Growing Moral Relations

its own ontological status and with a certain ‘character’. The nation
is assumed to have intrinsic features and an essence. In this way, the
nation becomes a kind of ‘individual’, and international relations are
seen in contractarian terms: the nation state (its status, its interests, etc.)
is ontologically, morally and politically prior to individuals, to relations
between individuals, to relations between states, and to relations with
international organizations.
In addition, the ‘body’ is made so large that it no longer matters to
the whole if some members are cut off; only the head of state cannot
be replaced. This is why democracy is always a threat to nationalism
(and why a democratic nation is a contradiction in terms): in the
Cartesian–nationalist perception, it is unthinkable that the members
take over command; each organ and each part of the ‘body politic’
has its proper function. (Hence in this sense fascism and Nazism are
‘natural’ outgrowths of modern nationalism and its Aristotelian roots;
these ideologies are not bombshells alien to the development of Western
thinking, but are rooted in it.)
The collectivist interpretation of communitarianism is also a danger
for environmental virtue ethics. Instead of taking seriously the very
term ‘environment’ and understanding entities as standing-always-
in-relation-to-their-environment (see, for example, my discussion of
Ingold’s view in Chapter 5), environmental virtue ethics can yield to the
temptation of seeing ‘nature’ as a collective, as something that stands
apart from us or of which we are members, and which has individual-
like properties. Therefore, both communitarianism-as-nationalism and
collectivist environmentalism (for which reason it is rightly called eco-
fascism) are not really relational theories in the sense I wish to elaborate.
Their starting point is collective properties, and what matters is the
moral status of that collective (e.g. of ‘nature’, of ‘the earth’), not the
relation between entities or between beings-in-relation.
Even if the communitarian approach to moral status were to be puri-
fied of its collectivist–organicist tendencies, it tends to be ‘relational’
in a weak sense only. Of course, according to Aristotle we are polit-
ical animals, that is, thoroughly social beings. However, neither in
Aristotle nor in his contemporary followers is this genuinely relational
claim followed by a full-blown moral relationalism. Bound up with
Aristotelian essentialism, it is assumed that there are intrinsic, inalien-
able features of an entity (i.e. the human and the community) and that
moral status is based on these features. Although communitarianism
considers relations between entities (e.g. the relation between the citizen
and the state), its relational approach tends to stop at the boundaries of
 Relations: Communitarian and Metaphysical 39

the entity: the entity itself is understood in a non-relational way. The

moral focus is on the (properties of the) human being and her commu-
nity. The relata rather than relations are at the centre of the theory.
Note that this judgement does not fundamentally change if, like
MacIntyre, we would emphasize that we are not only political animals
but also political animals, in other words, when we would stress the
biological nature of humans. In Dependent Rational Animals (1999)
MacIntyre revises his project of After Virtue: he says that he ‘was in error
in supposing an ethics independent of biology to be possible’ (MacIntyre
1999, p. x). According to MacIntyre, an account of the virtues must
explain ‘how that form of life is possible for beings who are biologically
constituted as we are, by providing us with an account of our develop-
ment towards and into that form of life. That development has as its
starting point our initial animal condition’. In particular, MacIntyre
recognizes our ‘animal condition’ by reckoning with human vulner-
ability as the ‘central feature of human life’ (p. x). We are dependent
on others; not only in early childhood or in old age, but also when
we are injured, ill or disabled. Therefore, MacIntyre proposes to view
the moral subject not as an independent, rational and healthy agent,
but as a rational and vulnerable, dependent human being. Humans are
rational animals, but he points out that this does not necessarily imply
that rationality is unrelated to our animal nature, and that Aristotle
did not think this property separates us from non-human animals
(pp. 5–6). MacIntyre shows that, although Aristotle put too much stress
on self-sufficiency and did not give ‘due recognition to affliction and to
dependence’ (p. 7), we can still construct an Aristotelian view of human
being that recognizes both our relations to (human) others and our
biological nature and vulnerabilities.
In this way, MacIntyre does not only sketch a more comprehensive
picture of Aristotle’s view, but also opens the door to thinking about
the moral status of non-human animals from within a communitarian
framework. He writes about the intelligence of dolphins and suggests
that there is no sharp line between human and non-human animals. He
criticizes those who make such a sharp line: they single out a particular
human capacity such as having thoughts, argue that this depends on
language, and then conclude that non-human animals do not have the
capacity since they do not have language. But, as MacIntyre argues,
we ascribe to some animals beliefs, thoughts, feelings and reasons for
action. For example, dolphins appear to act purposely toward goals.
MacIntyre suggests that language is not necessary for thinking. Of
course there is a difference: humans can evaluate reasons, for example.
40 Growing Moral Relations

But to a significant extent we behave in the same way as other intelligent

animals and we share a lot with them. MacIntyre wants to preserve ‘the
significance of the continuity and resemblance between some aspects
of the intelligent activities of nonhuman animals and the language-
informed practical rationality of human beings’ (p. 50). Humans have
a ‘second nature’ but this second nature is a (partial) transformation of
our first animal nature.
For the problem of moral status, MacIntyre’s view seems to imply
that we should give a higher moral status to some intelligent animals
(e.g. dolphins) than we traditionally would do on the basis of a sharp
human/non-human distinction. He might agree with Shapiro that
moral agency is a matter of degree and that we should not underesti-
mate the mental lives of other animals (Shapiro 2006). However, while
MacIntyre offers a version of communitarianism that is neither collect-
ivist nor speciesist in a strict sense, and therefore provides people who
wish to remain within the Aristotelian tradition with an interesting
alternative to other versions of communitarianism, it still remains
roughly properties-based. By pointing to shared properties of humans
and non-humans, MacIntyre challenges views that make a strict distinc-
tion between the two; but he shares with those views a properties-based
approach. In the next chapters, I will explore more relational views –
including views that centre on natural relations between humans and
non-humans (Chapter 4), rather than on our animal nature and other
natures, however similar or ‘transformed’ those natures may be.

3.2. Combining properties with relations?

In the previous section I said that properties-based views put too much
emphasis on the relata as opposed to the relations. But is this really
an either/or question? One may object that I should not present the
problem as a choice between the properties-view and relationalism, but
that, instead, we could try to combine the two approaches. In particular,
one may object that we could hold a pluralist view on how to approach
moral status or one that integrates the two approaches in one theory.
Before going ahead and arguing for what I regard as truly relational
views, therefore, I shall discuss these alternative proposals, which I find
in Warren’s multi-criterial view of moral status and in Søraker’s two-
component theory of moral status.
In her book on moral status, Warren criticizes what she describes
as ‘uni-criterial’ theories of moral status, which use life, sentience
or personhood as a criterion (Warren 1997). She argues that one of
 Relations: Communitarian and Metaphysical 41

these criteria may be a necessary but not a sufficient criterion. Inspired

by Callicott’s interpretation of Leopold’s ‘Land Ethic’ (see the next
chapter) and feminist ethics (Noddings 1984), she proposes to take into
account relational properties: an entity’s moral status also depends on
its social role and its role within a ‘biotic community’ and on emotional
connections between entities. Next to intrinsic properties, she argues,
we should also give weight to social, emotional and biosystemic rela-
tionships (Warren 1997, p. 19). If human beings do not only belong
to (human) social communities but also to biological communities, as
Leopold argued, then we should also ascribe moral status to members of
those communities in virtue of the relations between them. If we live in
‘mixed communities’, as Midgley put it (see below), then these relations
should serve as moral criteria. However, Warren criticizes what she calls
‘biosocial theory’ for having a uni-criterial approach. She argues that
‘our obligations to living things, sentient beings, and moral agents are
not entirely contingent upon the prior existence of social or ecological
relationships between ourselves and them’ (Warren 1997, p. 123). In
response to Callicott, who rejects an eclectic approach for not meeting
the demands of theoretical unity, coherency and self-consistency, she
objects that a ‘biosocial’ theory would deny moral status to ‘persons
and sentient beings that are not co-members of our social or biological
communities’ (p. 133). Moreover, Warren wants to distinguish between
stronger and less strong obligations. For example, in line with Noddings
(1984), she says that some relationships are caring relationships or love
relationships, which are more ‘complete’ and give rise to stronger obli-
gations – although she objects to Noddings’s caring-based theory that
‘we cannot always be bound by the limits of our empathetic capaci-
ties’ (p. 146). Therefore, she concludes, we need a theory that puts
forward several principles: respect for life, anti-cruelty, agent’s rights,
the ecological principle, the interspecific principles (these are principles
concerning members of mixed social communities: some animals could
get moral status on the basis their social relationships with humans),
and the respect principle. We should consider all these principles and
balance them. For example, according to Warren animals should not
get equal moral status but some moral status if they are part of ‘mixed
communities’. According to Warren, ‘only a multi-criterial account
of moral status can incorporate the sound ethical considerations that
underlie each of the uni-criterial accounts, while avoiding the distor-
tions of moral common sense that result from the attempt to make all
valid judgements about moral status follow from one single principle’
(p. 177).
42 Growing Moral Relations

Warren’s approach tries to takes seriously the moral significance of

relations and is methodologically pluralist. Therefore, it is better than
uni-criterial and non-relational approaches. However, she pays too little
attention to the relation between the different criteria. It seems as if
Warren thinks criteria can simply be added, combined and balanced
on a case-by-case basis, but that nothing general can be said about the
relations between the criteria. In other words, I agree with Callicott that
eclecticism is theoretically unsatisfactory.
In this respect, Søraker’s approach is more interesting: he tries to
integrate the non-relational and relational views in a theory of moral
status that has two components. In his chapter on the moral status of
information and information technologies (Søraker 2007), he distin-
guishes between moral status grounded in intrinsic properties (which
he calls ‘moral standing’) and moral status grounded in relational
properties (Søraker 2007, p. 15). He unifies both criteria in a two-
component theory. This allows him to say, as Warren does, that moral
status of entities comes in degrees. For example, he claims that non-
sentient entities have no moral standing (they lack free will, reason, and
linguistic competence, self-consciousness, and the ability to experience
pain and pleasure) but they have still (a lower degree of) moral status,
for example by ‘being an irreplaceable and constitutive part of some-
one’s practical identity’ (p. 15). He gives the example of a notebook and
the information in that notebook: such information and system might
be ‘a central part of [one’s] identity as a cognitive agent’ (p. 13) and if
this is the case, he argues, we should respect that notebook since we
have to respect the person’s practical identity. Often technology is not
purely instrumental, he claims, but part of our practical identity.
The last point about practical identity affiliates his theory with
indirect views of moral status: the reason why we should treat an entity
well does not lie in the moral status of that entity but in the moral
status of us, humans. Søraker’s notion of practical identity is Kantian
(based on Korsgaard), not MacIntyrian or Aristotelian, but all the same
his indirect argument is vulnerable to the objections I offered against
the virtue ethics approach to moral status: it remains property-based
(here: the properties we have as Kantian agents) and anthropocentric.
However, this indirect argument is not a necessary part of a two-
component theory. We could also ascribe relational status to entities
without moral standing on the basis of other relational properties, for
example that they are part of an ecosystem (see also below). If we do
so, then it seems a two-component theory like Søraker’s (or a multi-
criteria theory like Warren’s) can capture and integrate two widespread
 Relations: Communitarian and Metaphysical 43

intuitions: (1) persons (or humans) have more moral status than non-
persons (or non-humans) and (2) moral status partly depends on
relations.
However, both Warren’s approach and Søraker’s hesitate to draw more
radical conclusions from the claim that the relations matter morally.
They acknowledge that an entity’s relations are relevant to the moral
status of that entity, but they remain within the paradigm of the prop-
erties-view. By holding that an entity has relational and non-relational
properties, they do not go all the way with relationalism.

3.3. Towards a phenomenological argument

There is an entirely different way to forge a combinatory view. Consider

what Aristotle says about relations to slaves in the Nicomachean Ethics:

‘But neither is there friendship towards a horse or an ox, nor to a

slave qua slave. For there is nothing common to the two parties; the
slave is a living tool and the tool a lifeless slave. Qua slave then, one
cannot be friends with him. But qua man one can; for there seems to
be some justice between any man and any other who can share in a
system of law or be a party to an agreement; therefore there can also
be friendship with him in so far as he is a man.’ (1161b2–7)

The definition of friendship as agreement prefigures modern contrac-

tarian thinking, and traditional dualistic thinking about moral status
is evident here (humans versus animals, masters versus slaves). His
definition of a slave as a ‘living tool’ and a tool as a ‘lifeless slave’ is
also interesting in the light of the question regarding the moral status
of robots. But here I am interested in a different issue: pay attention to
how Aristotle manages to allow for friendships with slaves in spite of the
(lower) moral status they have in his view (a living tool): by using the
adverb ‘qua’, he distinguishes between the slave ‘qua slave’ and the slave
‘qua man’, that is, he distinguishes between two ways of perceiving or
interpreting the same entity, between two ways the entity may appear
to us. The same entity may appear as a living tool (a slave), but also as
a man. This prefigures the phenomenological approach introduced in
the previous chapter. I will continue this line of thinking in Part II,
but let me already briefly explain what I think a phenomenological
approach might imply for thinking about moral status.
The main idea is that moral status is not a matter of the properties
of the entity (relational or not) but has to do with the way the entity
44 Growing Moral Relations

appears to us. This implies that we can come to view particular animals
and particular robots in a ‘dual’ or ‘multiple’ way. For example, a chim-
panzee may appear as a non-human animal but also as a person. A
patient in a hospital context may appear as a body – a medicalized and
hence objectified body, an object of medical science – but also as a person
or a friend, partner, parent, and so on, depending on the particular rela-
tion one has with the person. An embryo may appear as a bunch of
cells (an object) but also as someone’s child, again depending on the
kind of relation we have to the embryo. An intelligent humanoid robot
may appear as a machine (an object, a thing) but also as a living tool; or
it may appear as a human, an other (a social other) or a subject. It may
even appear as a companion, partner, friend, and so on – depending
on the relation we have to it and on the context. These entities have a
‘dual’ or ‘multiple’ ontological and moral status, depending on appear-
ance-in-context and on the relations on which basis that appearance
is constructed. Their status is ‘unstable’ or ‘multistable’, to use Ihde’s
postphenomenological idiom (Ihde 1990).
In Part II, therefore, I discuss the linguistic, social, technological,
spiritual and spatial relations that must be presupposed when we
ascribe moral status. Moral status is no longer understood as something
objective that stands apart from (the rest of) our experiences and activ-
ities. Instead, it is seen as something that grows out of the experien-
tial–practical relational ground that is prior to our linguistic–scientific
and linguistic–philosophical conceptualizations. But this argument is
only conceivable if we first accept that there is no ontological stability
in the form of an object-reality that is entirely disconnected from the
subject.
In contrast, Warren and Søraker base their view on an ontology that
allows for different kinds of properties, but not different ways of viewing
the entity. Relational and non-relational properties can be found on the
same, flat (and only) ontological level. There is not a hint of (multiple)
perspectives, interpretations, angles, and so on. To use a geometrical
metaphor: in this book I propose to move on from a two-dimensional

Type of ontology Object

1-D ontology or object ontology object

2-D ontology or properties ontology object + property
3-D ‘ontology’ (1st level phenomenology) interpretation (object + property)
4-D ‘ontology’ (2nd level phenomenology conditions of possibility (interpretation
or transcendental phenomenology) (object + properties))
 Relations: Communitarian and Metaphysical 45

ontology to a three-dimensional and four-dimensional ontology, if the

label ‘ontology’ and this metaphor are still appropriate at all.
Moreover, if one wants to avoid the view of relations as a kind of
property, one should not view a relation as a kind of entity either. A
relational view risks viewing relations as a kind of separate entity,
which is somehow situated ‘between’ the (non-relational) entities, but
this way of viewing relations is misguided. Without venturing too deep
into the metaphysics of relations, this point can be clarified as follows:
relations are not things. They are neither one of the relata nor are they
of a different kind, that is, a different kind of thing. Just as things
cannot be considered apart from their relations, relations cannot be
conceived apart from the relata. As Bradley put it in the language of his
nineteenth-century metaphysics: every relation ‘essentially penetrates
the being of its terms’ (Bradley 1897, p. 347). In this sense, a relation is
never ‘external’ (p. 513) since that would be ‘psychologically meaning-
less’ (p. 521).2
If we must use this vocabulary at all, we may say that relations are
‘prior’ to the relata (see also my reference to Callicott in Chapter 4), in
the sense that they make possible the relata as phenomena: they belong
to the domain of the conditions of possibility (and could there be a rela-
tion that is more ‘internal’?). I will develop this thought in Part II: I will
argue that linguistic, social–cultural, technological–material, spiritual
and spatial relations are conditions that make moral status ascription
possible.
Leaving aside these remarks for now, let me conclude from this
chapter that neither communitarian indirect arguments nor existing
integrative views go beyond properties ontology. They recognize rela-
tions, but understand relations as a property (or as an object). In order
to construct a truly relational view, therefore, we must look elsewhere.
In the next pages I will explore other theoretical avenues that could lead
to a ‘deep-relational’ theory of moral status and of the social, which
means, in this book, a theory that recognizes the ‘deep’ entanglement
of the natural and the social (‘deeper’ than MacIntyre proposed, for
example) and that eventually reinterprets moral status in a transcen-
dental–phenomenological way.
To construe such a relational view, we need to explore and stretch the
boundaries of our thinking, which can be done by engaging with non-
Western and non-modern views (see, for example, Latour and Ingold in
Chapter 6) – keeping in mind, of course, that there is no such thing as
the West or pure ‘modernism’: cultures are always hybrid by definition
(for example, contemporary African and Asian countries are infused
46 Growing Moral Relations

with Western values). For example, it seems that East Asian (China,
Korea, Japan) and so-called ‘aboriginal’ cultures (current Australia)
involve relational ontologies.
However, there are views that claim to be relational and are much
‘closer’ to today’s Western culture: (deep) ecology and (a reinterpret-
ation of) Marxism. What can these views teach us about moral status?
4
Relations: Natural and Social

4.1. Ecology and ecophilosophy: natural relations

and the biotic community

‘Ecology’ can mean at least two different things: it can refer to (1)
ecology as a science (a natural, psychological, social, anthropological or
informational science, or combinations of these) and to (2) ecology as
‘ecological’ normative philosophy or ethics, for example ‘deep ecology’,
which does not only refer to a descriptive view of ‘nature’ (e.g. the ‘land’
or nature as Mother Earth) but also to a normative view about how we
should shape our relations to ‘nature’.
Natural ecology studies the relations between organisms and their
environment at different levels of organization. But there can also be
different units of analysis: not just organisms but also humans (human
ecology), populations (population ecology), systems (systems ecology)
or information (information ecology; see, for example, Floridi 2008).
What we may call ‘ecological philosophy’ is a kind of environmental
philosophy that has its roots in the work of Næss, who introduced the
term ‘deep ecology’ (Næss 1973). As a theory of moral status, it proclaims
the inherent worth of non-humans and emphasizes our dependence on
these non-humans and, more generally, on the ‘ecosystem’ or ‘ecosphere’.
It rejects the traditional Western hierarchy of value based on properties
such as consciousness or reason. It tries to be non-anthropocentric and
is committed to ‘biospheric egalitarianism’: all living things have the
same (intrinsic) value. It is relational in the sense that it sees living
things (organisms) as nodes in a biospheric network and as constituted
by these relations to other living things. Næss’s view is often connected
to Leopold’s ‘Land Ethic’ (Leopold 1949): Leopold argued for including
non-humans in the ‘biotic community’ (see below).

47
48 Growing Moral Relations

Another example of an ‘ecological philosophy’ can be found in

Midgley’s view of animals (Midgley 1983). According to her, moral
consideration should not stop at the species border, since there are
multi-species communities (p. 111) or ‘mixed’ communities (p. 112). For
example, all human communities have drawn in animals: ‘It is one of
the special powers and graces of our species not to ignore others, but
to draw in, domesticate and live with a great variety of other creatures’
(p. 111). We relate to them in affective and other ways. Moreover, while
our ‘social’ concern is limited to humans, our ‘ecological’ concern is
directed to ‘all living things and perhaps to the lifeless world which they
inhabit’ (p. 144). For moral status, this view implies that our treatment
of non-humans should be based on the relations we already have with
them and on the affective and other concerns we already experience.
Both kinds of ‘ecological’ thinking – scientific and philosophical – are
relational, but they remain vulnerable to objections similar to those I
made to communitarianism.
First, how relational is ecology as science if it maintains strict borders
between relata and relations? To the extent that it centres on relations
between organisms, information, and so on but protects its unit of
analysis itself from being polluted by relational thinking, it remains
relational only in a ‘shallow’ sense. For example, in the natural sciences
relations are studied between organisms, genes and their environment,
but it seems that the units of analysis (e.g. genes) themselves are not
always understood as fundamentally constituted and shaped by their
relations to the environment. Moreover, to the extent that it prioritizes
the whole over the parts, natural ecology is ‘collectivist’ – for example,
if it keeps using the concept of ‘nature’ or maintains a strict distinc-
tion between organisms and their environment. It also assumes that
we can define the boundaries of ‘wholes’. A radically relational theory
would not accept such an ontology but would claim that neither the
boundary of ‘wholes’ nor the boundaries of the parts of these ‘wholes’
can be clearly defined.
Second, at first sight deep ecology (as a theory of moral status) remains
properties-based and is vulnerable to the collectivism objection. It is
properties-based since it requires ‘life’ or ‘sentient life’ as a property
that warrants moral status. Moreover, it tends to become collectivist
and perhaps even totalitarian to the extent that it prioritizes the whole
(‘nature’, ‘the Earth’, the biospheric community, the ecosphere, etc.)
over the parts (organisms, living entities). Both features meet if the
whole, for example nature, is said to have certain essential properties
and is treated as an individual.
 Relations: Natural and Social 49

Midgley’s philosophy, by contrast, takes seriously the subjective

experiences we have of non-humans like animals and the already
existing relations we have with animals. However, the strict distinc-
tion she makes between ‘social’ (with humans or conscious beings)
and ‘ecological’ relations (with other beings) seems arbitrary, especially
given the existence of ‘mixed communities’. Why not apply the term
‘social’ to these mixed communities? We will need to further discuss
the relation between the social and the natural.
Third, although ecology as science admits a wide range of units of
analysis, ecology (in both senses) tends to uphold the distinction between
‘nature’ (or ‘reality’) and ‘culture’ (or ‘appearance’). Ecology as science
claims that its studies of ecologies show how things really and naturally
are, whereas we common humans might see things in a different way;
as such, it does not take seriously common knowledge (sometimes called
‘folk’ knowledge by scientists and philosopher–scientists). And ecology
as an environmental philosophy and ethics tends to see ‘nature’ or ‘the
Earth’ as something pure that stands apart from dirty, polluting and
destructive human culture, society and technology. In the next sections
I will discuss attempts to shed this problematic assumption.
At first sight, it seems that those who seek a relational view of moral
status should not turn to science or to deep ecology. However, we can
also give a different interpretation of both ecology as a science and deep
ecology. First, although ecology remains non-relational in the senses
indicated, it can have a powerful influence on our thinking and our
perception – an influence that goes beyond the ‘facts’. Thus, it is in its
non-scientific influence that it contributes most to a relational turn. For
example, ecology as a science can give us a different view of the land-
scape and indeed of morality:

Since ecology focuses upon the relationships between and among

things, it inclines its students toward a more holistic vision of the
world. Before the rather recent emergence of ecology as a science
the landscape appeared to be, one might say, a collection of objects,
some of them alive, some conscious, but all the same, an aggregate,
a plurality of separate individuals. With this atomistic representa-
tion of things it is no wonder that moral issues might be understood
as competing and mutually contradictory classes of the ‘rights’ of
separate individuals, each separately pursuing its ‘interests’. Ecology
has made it possible to apprehend the same landscape as an articulate
unity (without the least hint of mysticism or ineffability). (Callicott
1989, p. 22)
50 Growing Moral Relations

Second, deep ecology is not only about ‘nature’ but also at the same
time about society and community. I propose to draw again on
Callicott’s work to support this point. In his comments on Leopold’s
Land Ethics, he provides more insight into the metaphysics of deep
ecology. He shows that in Leopold’s ecology the natural environment
is represented as a community (p. 23). Ethics, then, is about ensuring
social cooperation by differentiating social from antisocial conduct: ‘if
one is a member of a cooperative group, community, or society, then
one is subject to ethical or moral-like limitations on his freedom of
action’ (p. 64). The scope of ethics reflects the (perceived) boundaries
of society. By extending ‘community’ to non-human natural entities,
Leopold also extends moral status to these entities and, more generally,
the scope of morality is extended. If we perceive the land in terms of
a biotic community, a correlative land ethic will emerge (pp. 81–82).
What matters, then, is the social representation of nature. Only then is
an environmental ethic possible (p. 83).
In this way, Callicott does not only show that there is a ‘communitarian’
aspect in Leopold’s thinking – and more generally in deep ecology – but
also opens the door to a subjective, phenomenological understanding of
ethics and of moral status not based on objective properties: an ethics
in which ‘moral value is not identified with a natural quality objectively
present in morally considerable beings’; instead, ‘it is, as it were, projected
by valuing subjects’ (Callicott 1989, p. 85). This thought is useful for
freeing up a phenomenological avenue for thinking about moral status,
since it helps to shift the focus from object to subject. Moreover, while
Callicott’s interpretation of Leopold, which we could see as a new kind of
communitarianism (an ‘environmental’ communitarianism), may still
be vulnerable to the dangers associated with communitarianism and
with holism (collectivism and totalitarianism), it attempts to be radically
relational. (Ecological) relations now have primacy rather than objects
(p. 87). In metaphysical language: ‘Relations are prior to the things
related’ (p. 110). For Callicott, this implies that we cannot draw hard
boundaries between ourselves and the environment. We come to see
ourselves as involved within the living terrestrial environment. We are
not a collection of bodies within a ‘logico-conceptual order’, as Aristotle
thought. Rather, the world is our body.1
This ‘metaphysical’ view has ethical implications. For Callicott, ought
follows from is (p. 127). If the ‘is’ is no longer an atomistic picture of
the environment (a collection of things) but an understanding of the
environment as a community, then we ought to preserve the envir-
onment, perhaps in the same way as we ought to preserve our body.
 Relations: Natural and Social 51

For moral status, this means that value is not an objective natural or
non-natural property, that there is no ‘intrinsic value’ if that means
‘belonging to the essential nature or constitution of a thing’ (p. 160).
Yet according to Callicott non-human entities are ‘inherently’ valu-
able as members of the biotic community. Value or moral status, in
this view, are not properties of an entity but emerge from membership
of a community – here the natural community. His use of the term
‘inherent’ seems to refer to being-in-community rather than ‘having
a moral or property that belongs to the entity’. (This is why Callicott
argues that his ethics would have nothing to say about the moral status
of extra-terrestrial life forms, at least if they were part of the biotic
community.)
Callicott’s view, therefore, can be interpreted as an attempt to move
beyond the properties view. On the one hand, it retains ‘life’ as a
criterion for moral status. On the other hand, in Callicott’s inter-
pretation of deep ecology the argument for moral status is not put in
these terms, but is understood as a social, quasi-communitarian argu-
ment: morality is related to the social dynamics of a living commu-
nity (or a community of the living), not to an abstract moral order
in which properties are attached to entities. However, understanding
the natural environment as a community – identified by Callicott as
the justificatory basis of deep ecology – seems still problematic. How
social are our relations with other entities? We are used to reserving
the term ‘social’ or ‘community’ for relations between humans. Can
we simply equate social with natural relations? Therefore, before
elaborating the phenomenological–relational dimension of his view,
we need to further analyse the relation between the social and the
natural.

4.2. Benton’s Marxism: social relations

and natural relations

Since ecology is usually concerned with ‘nature’ and ‘natural relations’,

it remains mysterious how it can say anything about the question of
moral status as a question about the boundaries of society. Various
attempts have been made to reconcile natural and social relations. It
seems that the solution proposed by the natural sciences (and ecology
as a natural science), and by deep ecology, is simply to subsume social
relations under the heading of natural relations. In this view, there is no
fundamental difference between social relations and natural relations.
Humans are understood as human organisms (science) or as members of
52 Growing Moral Relations

a biotic community (deep ecology); the ‘social’ is not a separate sphere,

since everything is natural and all relations are natural. But, while the
project of trying to reconcile the natural and the social is valuable,
something seems to be missing in this natural mono-relationalism: a
deeper and richer understanding of the specific way humans relate to
other humans and their environment as social beings. One way to cater
for this need is to resort to one of the most powerful theoretical tools
we have to understand social relations: Marxism. In this section, there-
fore, I shall discuss Benton’s Marxism, to which I will add a Foucaultian
complement.
Benton’s approach is a unique attempt to bring together the natural
and the social. In Natural Relations (1993) Benton argues against views
that foreground human powers and abilities over against those of
non-human species: he emphasizes that humans and animals have
much in common. Benton subscribes to what he calls ‘human/animal
continuism’ (Benton 1993, p. 17). This view does not imply that there
are no differences between humans and other species, but objects
to ways of thinking about human–animal relations that ‘ontologic-
ally and morally foreground human-definitive powers over against
needs, powers, and liabilities of humans which they share with many
other species’ (p. 17). Benton endorses a ‘non-reductive’ naturalism,
according to which both humans and other animals are seen as ‘part
of the order of nature, rather than as ontologically privileged beings’
(p. 17).
However, for Benton nature is not opposed to the social. Animals and
humans are both part of ‘nature’, but they are also materially–socially
interdependent. Animals are social beings and ‘many species are capable
of social relations with humans’ (p. 15). This might be taken to mean
that we engage in relations with pets and other domesticated animals.
It may also refer to the fact that even ‘wild’ or ‘natural’ habitats are the
objects of rights, protection, maintenance, and so on, and that ‘wild’
animals are in this sense already standing in social relations with humans
(p. 67). However, there is a deeper sense in which humans and animals
are mutually dependent: they depend on one another for their well-
being. Benton draws attention to the moral significance of embodiment
and ecological interdependence, for example the need for food:

One aspect of human embodiment – our requirement for food –

engages us in social relations and practices which inescapably
include animals: as partners in human labour, as objects of labour,
and of consumption, as well as competitors for habitats and common
sources of food. (Benton 1993, p. 18)
 Relations: Natural and Social 53

In this deeper, social–material and ecological sense, then, animals are

part of the social: ‘animals figure not just marginally but quite centrally
within the domain of human social life’ (Benton 1993, p. 18).2
In order to elaborate this argument and to further reconcile the natural
with the social, Benton develops an interpretation of Marx that high-
lights the naturalist side of Marxism. He draws attention to the manu-
script ‘Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole’,
in which Marx asserts that human beings are natural beings, which
means that they do not only exercise active powers, but also suffer and
stand in need of a nature outside themselves for satisfying their needs
(Benton 1993, p. 45). Like animals, humans are natural, needy creatures
(pp. 45–46). They share birth and death, growth and decline, sexuality,
need social order, and so on. Of course each has species-specific ways in
which these needs are met, but they share the needs.
Moreover, as indicated previously, animals and humans (already) have
social relations. We use animals to replace human labour, to meet bodily
needs, to entertain us, to learn, to make profit, to harm other humans,
and so on. For example, in his sociology of human–animal relations,
Franklin discusses use of animals in leisure and theory (the ‘zoological
gaze’), pets or companion animals, hunting and angling, and animals
in meat and livestock industries (Franklin 1999). Thus, humans and
animals already stand in social relations to one another, and this means
they are socially and ecologically interdependent (Benton 1993, p. 68).
This view allows Benton not only to attend to, and distinguish
between, the variety of human–animal relations, but also to criticize
existing particular social human–animal relations, in particular the
practices and structures of these relations and their specific moral
significance. According to him, intensive stock rearing and animal
experimentation constitute ‘systematic abuses of animals’ that deserve
our moral concern (p. 69). In itself, this concern is well known. But
his social–ecological approach allows Benton to express and justify the
concern in a novel way: he makes an argument from social relations
rather than an argument from (moral) ontology. As I have shown in
Chapter 1, the standard approach relies on properties, on ontological
features of the entity in question. Benton, instead, focuses on relations.
He explicitly responds to standard animal ethics by contrasting his rela-
tional approach to Regan’s (animal rights, see Chapter 1):

Regan proceeds as if the moral status of animals were a function of

the kinds of beings they are, independently of the diverse relations
in which they stand to human moral agents and their social prac-
tices. (Benton 1993, p. 92)
54 Growing Moral Relations

This view is in line with my arguments against the properties view.

From his Marxist angle, Benton pays particular attention not only to
human needs, but also to the contextual and historical side of morality.
He criticizes the liberal tradition that stresses universally valid moral
principles and the autonomy of the (human) moral subject, but that
forgets the Marxist lesson that ‘moral concepts and principles arise in
the context of specific, historically transitory social forms’ and that,
since dominant moral concepts express the interest of the dominant
group in society, it is likely (but, according to Benton at least, not neces-
sary) that ‘morality as such has a conservative, order-maintaining,
oppressive social function’ (Benton 1993, p. 99–100).
Note that communitarians would agree with Benton’s contextual and
social approach: both socialists and communitarians reject the view of
society as a collection of self-sufficient individuals with properties inde-
pendent of social relations. In Benton’s view, ‘abilities such as language
use, reasoning, moral action, and attributes such as personal autonomy
have complex social-relational and cultural presuppositions’ (p. 122).
This is an interesting divergence from the properties-based view: the
morally relevant properties themselves are not ‘natural’ but have social
and cultural presuppositions, that is, they are historical. (In Part II I will
use a different language and claim that the morally relevant properties
depend on social–cultural conditions of possibilities.)
This view has implications for the problem of moral change and motiv-
ation. For example, Benton employs his view to argue against modern
intensive stock rearing. A major problem with the rights approach,
he argues, is that an appeal to rights is unlikely to succeed given the
organization of the labour process. He writes that the ‘ecologico-socio-
technical organization of the labour process’ (Benton 1993, p. 156) puts
pressure on us to treat animals as instruments, as things. From this point
of view, the organic, psychological and social requirements and needs
of the animals appear as obstacles: some needs have to be fulfilled, of
course, but only to make sure that the animals do not become ill or
destroy themselves. The problem is that in this specific labour process
the relation between humans and animals is shaped in such a way that
‘quasi-personal relations’ are obstructed. This is partly an affective, not
a rational matter. We cannot simply change the situation by convin-
cing people who work in these farms that they should treat the animals
better:

Even if an argument in favour of the rights of animals subjected to

these regimes could be made rationally convincing to the human
 Relations: Natural and Social 55

moral agents involved, the affective conditions under which such

a conviction might issue in relevantly altered conduct are liable to
be missing. In the absence of long-run, quasi-personal, communi-
cative relations between humans and animals, the affective ties of
trust, loyalty, compassion and responsibility cannot develop either.
(Benton 1993, p. 159)

Thus, the way the labour process is organized limits the emergence of
communicative, trustful relations between these humans and animals.
Moreover, the (human) division of labour and the hierarchy of authority
‘diffuses both the causal and the moral responsibility of the individual
human agents involved’; individual workers have the feeling there is
little they can do to change things (p. 159).
Benton’s social, relational approach allows us to attend to these
‘oppressive’ regimes, that is, to the social–economical dimension of
animal ethics. An individual rights approach to animal ethics, combined
with an ontological approach that makes strict distinctions between
the human (social) world and the animal (non-social) world, obscures
that dimension and prevents an analysis along the lines proposed by
Benton.
More generally, a properties-based approach faces these limitations.
Even a utilitarian focus on animal suffering à la Singer, which at first sight
seems close to Benton’s Marxist focus on natural needs, views humans
and animals mainly as individuals and neglects the social–relational
dimensions highlighted by Benton. When it comes to the boundaries of
the social, it maintains a strict distinction between humans and (non-
human) animals, who are excluded from the social, and is therefore
unable to promote the interests of ‘factory’ animals in so far as these
interests depend on the organization of the labour process.
But the usual strict distinction between humans and animals is also
problematic with regard to the interests of humans: humans too ‘have
basic interests in virtue of their embeddedness in socio-cultural and
ecological webs of interdependence, and in virtue of their embodi-
ment’. If these interests are ‘marginalized to the point of exclusion in
the main streams of liberal-individualist moral and political thought’
(p. 184), there is also a problem with the moral status of humans. Thus,
the social and the physical–material are entangled, and this provides us
with a different view of the moral status and the morality of humans
and animals.
Benton thus applies the ‘classic’ socialist objections to individual
rights (see for instance pp.168–193) and to particular ways of organizing
56 Growing Moral Relations

labour processes to animal ethics, but at the same time enriches the
standard interpretation of Marxism by drawing attention to the
natural dimension of social–material relations. He recognizes humans
as ‘embedded’ but also as ‘embodied’ (p. 179). The upshot is that, in
contrast to abstract ‘animal rights’ or utilitarian views, Benton is able
to analyse the problem of moral status and its objects (e.g. animals) in
context and offer a similar, compelling view of the human on the way.

Bringing into the account [ ... ] the necessity for humans to conduct
their organic need-meeting activity in social co-operation with
others, under authoritative forms of normative regulation, and within
affordances provided by their ecological conditions and contexts, calls
into question the level of abstraction at which the individual of the
liberal-individualist view is conceptualized. (Benton 1993, p. 179)

Thus, Benton’s answer to liberal individualism is not collectivism, as in

socialist or communist interpretations of Marx, but relationalism.
Foucault allows us to refine and complement Benton’s Marxist analysis
and hence the form of relationalism I try to elaborate: the reason why our
relations with animals and with humans are structured in a particular
way derives not only from explicit ‘macro’ structures related to class
domination, capitalism, and labour processes in factories, but also from
more subtle ‘micro’ forms of disciplining and self-disciplining. Benton’s
analysis of the affective aspect of the organization of labour supports
a step in this direction: the point is not that someone tells workers to
abuse animals; instead, the psychology of workers is shaped by the
social–material structures that are in place. (Place must be taken quite
literally here, as I will also argue in Chapter 11: here the moral division
goes together with a spatial separation between animals and humans,
and between animals inside the factory farm and animals outside the
farm.)
Foucault’s analysis of disciplining allows us to say more about what
is going on here. He studied how people are disciplined in hospitals
and prisons. For example, in Discipline and Punish (1975) he contrasts
two ways of punishment: repression of the people by public displays
of torture and executions versus a particular, modern form of discip-
lining: people are given the feeling that they are watched by profes-
sionals (they live under a gaze), which makes them exercise a form
of self-disciplining. This is made possible by material structures, for
example by Bentham’s Panopticon: a prison where guards can watch
the prisoners from a central position but they remain invisible.
 Relations: Natural and Social 57

More generally, modern society knows many invisible forms of control

by professionals.
Applied to people working in intensive stock rearing, this means that
the oppression of animals is maintained not by ‘forcing’ workers to
abuse animals, but by systems of control that are at least partly invis-
ible but nevertheless discipline the workers: they feel themselves being
‘watched’ by professionals inside and outside the farm. A farmer or a
vet may be told by someone (not) to harm an animal but may also feel
under pressure to do it without explicit command, or in spite of oppos-
ition against it, due to the social–material environment (s)he works in.
(Therefore, those who, following Heidegger, compare factory farms and
other parts of the food industry to concentration camps may be right
in a double, perhaps unexpected sense: not only are the animals treated
like prisoners in the camp, the humans who work in the factory farm
are under a similar regime as we can assume the workers in concen-
tration camps were: they were not only following commands but
were also working under the more subtle modern forms of disciplining
Foucault described so well. Their cruel acts often did not require explicit
command.)
Benton’s Marxism, however, remains modern and does not explore
relevant insights offered by (other traditions in) twentieth-century
thinking. It brings together the natural and the social, but remains
within the categories of modern thinking. Let us now consider two
non-modern alternative ways of defining the social. Both approaches
are rooted in insights from anthropology.
5
Relations: Hybrid and Environmental

5.1. Latour’s amodernism: the collective of hybrids

A different way of conceptualizing the social as not exclusively human

can be found in the work of Latour. In order to understand his ontology
and epistemology, it is important to note that early in his career he had
been doing research in anthropology, and then went on to study labora-
tory scientists, using the same method (ethnography). He showed how
scientific ‘facts’ were socially constructed by the scientists. For Latour,
there is no fixed reality independent of the actions that bring ‘the real’
into being (Latour 2005). Science involves – in the language of Part II
we might say: presupposes – a network of people and things.1
Usually Latour’s view is applied to science: scientists construct the
facts, bring about that which is real, by using things in their lab, by
collaborating with other scientists, and so on – much in the same way
as people all over the world bring about their culture by means of their
actions in a network of actors and actants: things that are part of the
network and also ‘act’ to bring about the knowledge and the culture.
But what does it mean for moral status? What would it mean to have a
Latourian approach to moral status?
One way to proceed would be to start with a ‘network ontology’:
moral status depends on the place of humans and non-humans in a
network. This might give us a rather ‘egalitarian’ distribution of moral
status, since actors and actants seem to be positions on the same, hori-
zontal ontological level. Although some nodes may be more important
than others in various ways, a hybrid network ontology puts humans
and non-humans (animals, things) on the same plane. This would
be one way of bringing together the social and the natural, since in
this network it does not matter whether or not the object is natural

58
 Relations: Hybrid and Environmental 59

or artificial, and all relations are ‘social’ in some sense. However, this
view is neither Latourian enough nor gets us much closer to a truly
relational view that takes seriously the role of the subject. Of course,
networked objects are ‘related’ to one another, and questioning the
moral relevance of being ‘natural’ is an important step forward. But
what is missing here is the dynamic, historical, active dimension:
the bringing-forth (if I may use quasi-Heideggerian language already
at this point). Moreover, a ‘pure’ network ontology puts too little
emphasis on what Latour calls ‘hybrids’ and ‘the collective’. Without
rejecting the idea of a network of people and things, therefore, I
propose to further elaborate the implications of Latour’s approach for
thinking about moral status by discussing We Have Never Been Modern
(Latour 1993).
Staying true to his anthropological research interests, Latour argues
that pre-moderns did not make distinctions between nature and society,
or between humans and non-humans. We moderns attach importance
to these distinctions, but we forget that they are the result of ‘works of
purification’ and that this work is never entirely successful. We have
never been modern in the sense that we (continue to) bring forth a lot
of hybrids: we mix politics, science, technology and nature – Latour
even thinks there is a proliferation of hybrids, such as the hole in the
ozone layer or global warming. According to Latour, this renders our
modern distinctions untenable.
Crucial in this view is the work of purification, which created a
divide between the natural world and the social world. The birth of
the human required ‘the simultaneous birth of “nonhumanity” –
things, or objects, or beasts’ while ‘underneath, the hybrids continue
to multiply’ (Latour 1993, p. 13). The midwives who made this possible
are the scientists and the politicians. While early moderns such as
Hobbes and Boyle still simultaneously engaged in science, theology,
politics, law, and so on, they also created the division: in politics there
are spokespersons; in science the mediation of scientists becomes invis-
ible: facts speak for themselves. This process goes on in history until
nature and society become incommensurable: we get ‘E.O. Wilson
and his genes on one side; Lacan and his analysands on the other’
(p. 59). Similarly, Habermas distinguishes speaking and thinking
subjects (communicative rationality) from scientific and technical
rationality. Technology is believed to be pure instrumental mastery.
Moderns understand these distinctions as ontological separations and
believe in ‘the total division between the material and technological
world on the one hand and the linguistic play of speaking subjects
60 Growing Moral Relations

on the other’ (p. 61). They think there is a strict separation between
nature and culture, and between humans and non-humans: ‘It is the
particular trait of Westerners that they have imposed [ ... ] the total
separation of humans and nonhumans’ (p. 104). But according to
Latour ‘there are only natures-cultures’ and humans and non-humans
are not separated.
I disagree with Latour’s view that this division came about in
modernity; as I suggested before (and I will return to the distinction in
Chapter 11), Aristotle already separated the sphere of human logos (the
city) from the non-human sphere (the non-city). However, Latour is
right about ‘the work of purification’ and about the belief in the extreme
separation of the two spheres that has taken place in late-modern times.
This divide explains how we look at other cultures:

‘we are the only ones who differentiate absolutely between Nature
and Culture, between Science and Society, whereas in our eyes all
the others [ ... ] cannot really separate what is knowledge from what
is Society, what is sign from what is thing, what comes from Nature
as it is from what their cultures require. [ ... ] [But] we escape from
the prison of the social or of language to gain access to things them-
selves through a providential exit gate, that of scientific knowledge.’
(Latour 1993, p. 99)

The same way of thinking can be ascribed to the moral scientist of

Chapter 1: she believes that moral science will give us the true moral
status of the thing-in-itself: she can escape from the prison of ‘folk
psychology’ which sees animals as companions, robots as more than
machines, and so on. The moral scientist’s belief is made possible by
the assumption that there is a separation between science/reality and
culture/appearance, and by a belief in a strict separation between the
human and the non-human – and, indeed, between the humans who
can fully use their capacity of logos (the moral status ascriber, ‘us’) and
the humans who are captive of language and culture (‘them’).
What, then, is the way out of this modern predicament? How can
society and nature be reconciled? Latour proposes that the human (the
subject) should not be defined in opposition to things (objects). Rather,
‘the share of things’ is part of it:

‘So long as humanism is constructed through contrast with the

object that has been abandoned to epistemology, neither the human
nor the nonhuman can be understood.’ (Latour 1993, p. 136)
 Relations: Hybrid and Environmental 61

Latour calls for a new ‘Constitution’, in which nature and society are
not separated but are produced together. He proposes a ‘Parliament of
Things’, in which natures have their representatives and societies are
present with their objects (p. 144). In Politics of Nature (2004), Latour
elaborates this idea and defends a political ecology that is not about
‘nature’ and that no longer separates facts from values. Spokespersons
speak for mute things and in this way constitute a collective of humans
and non-humans.
Latour’s analysis of modernity provides insights into the problem of
moral status as a modern problem. To talk about the moral status of
non-humans presupposes that one first separates subject and object,
humans and non-humans, and culture and nature, society and science.
Let me discuss two examples to develop the links between Latour’s view
and the relational–transcendental view I am trying to develop here.
The idea of animal liberation, for example, requires two kinds of
purification and supposes two forms of hybridity. First, animals are
constructed as ‘natural’, that is, non-social. They are also seen as being
situated outside what Habermas and others would call ‘the system’, at
least initially; as ‘natural’ entities, their ‘lifeworld’ is now colonized by
humans. They now live ‘unnatural’ lives. To liberate those animals, then,
means to re-naturalize them, to ‘give them back to nature’, to keep them
out of the hands – and out of the hands extended by technology – of
the factory farmers, those icons of evil modernity with its instrumental
reason. But this view denies the intrinsic hybridity of nature–society.
It turns out that animal liberation people share their modern outlook
with the factory farmer they accuse. Both parties think in a way that
makes possible both the oppression and the liberation of animals.
Note also that both the construction of animals as ‘natural’ and
the Habermasian analysis of what goes wrong here are influenced by
the romantic strand of Enlightenment: the ‘natural’ is set up as a pure
sphere, unpolluted by, and opposed to, human culture and techno-
logical materiality. Latour could have strengthened his analysis if he
had attended more to the flip side of the rationalist, Habermasian
strand of Enlightenment.
A second process of purification in moral status ascription takes place
when politics and science are separated, which denies that they are
always mixed. It is assumed that on the one hand there is the scientist
who tells us facts about the properties of an animal – for example, facts
about the consciousness and sentience of the ape and of the fish. On
the other hand there are the moral philosopher and the politician, who
assign moral status and draw moral and political conclusions from this.
62 Growing Moral Relations

Letting the facts speak is the job of the scientist. Ascribing moral status
to the entity is the job of the moral philosopher and perhaps of demo-
cratic deliberation. But this division of labour denies the hybridity at
work here: in a sense the moral status of the animal is already decided
and ascribed in the lab, while at the same time democratic deliberation
is not only about values but also about facts.
A similar argument can be made about how the moral status of robots
is ascribed. For example, in the discussion about care robots people
usually assume a distinction between, on the one hand, the political
and ethical question regarding the use of robots in health care and
elderly care, and on the other hand the design of care robots by engin-
eers, who do not deal with such normative questions but with things. In
practice, however, this purification conceals that the future of health
care and elderly care is also – and perhaps mainly – decided in the labs
of the robotics engineers and that political decision-making in this
area cannot take place without thinking about things. The ‘care robot’
and the relevant ‘patient’ are hybrids of moral–political and scientific–
material (or scientific–bodily) elements. Similarly, to present the ques-
tion regarding military robots – for example, drones – as an ethical
question separate from engineering design is to conceal the techno-
ethical ‘construction’ of the robot and the construction of the ethical
question by means of a network of actors and things.
But let us return to animal liberation and factory farming. As I
suggested, paradoxically these works of purification and denials of
hybridity are also a condition of possibility for the very factory farming
animal liberators oppose. By placing the animals outside society, by
expelling them from the collective, we no longer have affective, commu-
nicative relations with them; we no longer experience them as compan-
ions or fellows. This allows us to see and treat them as ‘raw materials’,
as natural material, as things, that is: as non-social. (Similarly, robots
might be constructed as having nothing to do with society and with
politics: as pure machines.)
To really ‘liberate’ those animals, then, we need to change our way of
thinking. What is required, conceptually speaking, is the reconstruc-
tion of the nature–society as an explicit acknowledgment of hybridity: a
reconstruction of our non-modern natural–social lifeworld with its tech-
nologies and its things, in which animals have been drawn and ‘made’
by means of domestication – which always required things and tech-
nologies. If we adopt this approach, we can still talk about how to treat
animals better, for example by using the argument that they are part of
our ‘mixed community’, but without assuming the nature–society and
 Relations: Hybrid and Environmental 63

nature–technology splits of romantic Enlightenment. The point is not

that humans and non-humans are both ‘natural’, but that they are, as
natural–cultural entities, part of the same collective.
In such a collective, one can then have spokespersons who speak
for the ‘mute’ animals – although this idea still seems imprisoned in
dualist thinking (humans who can speak and non-humans who are
mute). Moreover, since Latour focuses on the collective, it remains
unclear how relational his account is. How can he avoid the totalitar-
ianism he accuses Marxism of? And to what degree does he avoid the
position of the scientist–anthropologist who, after coming home from
the tropics, then looks upon Western nature–culture from the outside,
from an external point of view? On the whole, his own approach looks
more like a scientific one than – as he claims – a philosophical one:
although he often explores the limits of different ways of thinking, he
himself seems to retain the overview. Can we have a more engaged phil-
osophy and a thoroughly relational view, which does not hesitate to
corrode the modern view of the human further, but without becoming
postmodern?

5.2. Ingold’s ecological anthropology: dwelling and skill

Let me introduce Ingold’s work by indicating some contrasts with the

thinkers discussed in the previous pages, which will also help me to
articulate my own position.
In his efforts to cut through the natural/social distinction Ingold
seems close to Benton, but he also criticizes Marxism’s modernism, for
example the assumption that humans are engaged in a ‘transformation’
of nature. For Ingold we ‘grow’ artefacts; I will soon make clear what he
means by this.
In contrast to Latour’s focus on the collective, Ingold’s approach is
perhaps more relational (although actor-network theory is also about
relations and their structure, of course) and somewhat less abstract.
In spite of his references to empirical cases, Latour’s writings are full
of conceptual play, whereas Ingold combines conceptual work and
reviews of anthropological studies in a way that seems more relevant
to concrete living practice. Both anthropologists also cover different
domains: although Latour’s early work was concerned with non-Western
cultures, he now focuses on laboratories of scientists (in ‘the West’),
whereas Ingold tries to learn from non-Western cultures, in particular,
but not exclusively, circumpolar peoples. Finally, an important diffe-
rence from Latour, and also the main reason why I use Ingold’s work in
64 Growing Moral Relations

addition to Latour’s, is that Ingold’s thinking is (even) more in line with

the phenomenological and transcendental orientation of my argument:
like Latour, he does not aim to provide a new, alternative relational
ontology that is to replace the naturalist one, but rather goes beyond
the nature/social dichotomy. But, unlike Latour, he stands much closer
to the phenomenological tradition: he seeks to move beyond the
reality/appearance dichotomy characteristic of the sciences (including
anthropology as a science) and is sympathetic to non-modern views
that see the relational character of the world as ‘an ontological “a priori”
against which the “naturalness” of beings [ ... ] stands out as unstable
and problematic’ (Ingold 2000, p. 107). Indeed, what we need is neither
a new science of relations (e.g. an actor-network theory), nor a rejec-
tion of modern science, but an understanding of science and of moral
science as practices that are only possible on the basis of an ontological–
relational a priori, which Ingold characterizes as a ‘poetics of dwelling’
(p. 110). In this sense, Ingold’s relations are pre-scientific, pre-ethical;
they do not themselves constitute a new scientific ontology or a new
ethics. This way of thinking fits with my transcendental argument in
Part II. And with his ‘poetics of dwelling’ and his emphasis on ‘being-
in-the-world’ he is closer to Heidegger (see Part II) than Latour.
In order to make sense of these claims, let me summarize what I take
to be (the development of) Ingold’s thinking in the essays collected in
The Perception of the Environment (2000).
Like Benton and Latour, Ingold sees the modern Western distinction
between the social and the natural as highly problematic. For him,
humans are not half organism and half person but ‘organism-persons
within a world that is inhabited by beings of manifold kinds, both
human and non-human’. For thinking about relations, this means that
there is no categorical distinction between social and natural relations.
Social relations, he argues, are ‘a sub-set of ecological relations’ (Ingold
2000, p. 5). We are all nodes in a field of relationships. But his view
implies not only an alternative (relational) anthropology, but also an
alternative biology: an organism is no longer seen as a discrete entity
‘relating to other organisms in its environment along lines of external
contact that leave its basic, internally specified nature unaffected’ (p. 3),
as in mainstream modern biology. Instead, all entities have to be under-
stood in relational, ecological and developmental terms. Life history is
not the writing out of a programme of construction, a bio-logos given in
advance, but is active, ‘creative unfolding of an entire field of relations
within which beings emerge and take on the particular forms they do,
each in relation to the others’ (p. 19). A proper ecological approach,
 Relations: Hybrid and Environmental 65

according to Ingold, should not set up organisms and their environ-

ment as mutually exclusive entities, but takes as its point of departure
‘the whole-organism-in-its-environment’ (p. 19).
Referring to Dreyfus (see also Part II), Ingold understands this being
situated in an environment as a necessary a priori for knowledge: not
formal detached knowledge, but intuition, skills, sensitivities. Such
knowledge, according to Ingold and Dreyfus, ‘constitutes a necessary
foundation for any system of science or ethics’ since we depend on
these pre-objective and pre-ethical (perceptual) skills and relations.
In order to develop his view, Ingold engages with many anthropo-
logical studies of pre-modern cultures (‘hunter-gatherers’) and non-
modern cultures, in particular circumpolar cultures but also aboriginal
culture and others. In his work he criticizes the idea of nature as a
cultural construct, which sets up a dichotomy between nature and
culture, and between nature that is really natural and nature that is
culturally perceived (Ingold 2000, p. 41; see also Latour). He shows
that hunter-gatherers do not approach their environment as an alien,
‘external world of nature’ that has to be represented and conceptualized
in one’s detached mind and that has to be transformed; instead, they
are ‘immersed from the start, like other creatures, in an active, practical
and perceptual engagement with constituents of the dwelt-in world’ (p.
42). He rejects the separation between humans as meaning-makers and
a physical environment as raw material for construction. Construction
is replaced by engagement, enculturation by enskilment. What hunter-
gatherers did and do, then, is not the ‘natural’ way of living untouched
by civilization, but is a particular way of coping with the world that is
as much exemplary of the human condition as our way of coping with
the world. The hunter-gatherer, therefore, is not a ‘savage’ but a human
being in a more than biological sense.
Moreover, we can also learn a lot from hunter-gatherers by studying
their relations to other beings, in particular animals. In order to illus-
trate his claim that we should not separate humanity and nature, that
‘the domain in which human persons are involved as social beings
with one another cannot be rigidly set apart from the domain of their
involvement with non-human components of the environment’ (p. 61),
Ingold studies how hunters and gatherers relate to their environment.
He shows how people’s commitments to one another are intrinsically
linked to commitments to, and relations with, the non-human envir-
onment. For example, Woodburn has shown that in a delay-return
system, in which people invest in tools and storage rather than imme-
diate hunting and consumption without much effort, people are more
66 Growing Moral Relations

committed to particular people, animals and natural resources (Ingold

2000, p. 66). In this way of living, there is no strict distinction between,
on the one hand, ‘ethics’ as concerned with people and independent
norms and, on the other hand, how people relate to their environment,
what skills they develop, and so on. For example, Ingold shows that trust
can only develop if we are at the same time dependent on the entity
we trust (human, animal), but at the same time also allow sufficient
autonomy to that entity. This means that trust can develop in hunter-
gatherer communities, but not in pastoral systems of domination and
domestication, which are not only metaphorically related to practices
of (human) slavery (pp. 69–75). Ingold’s point is again that ‘nature’ and
‘culture’ should not be strictly distinguished, that the ways in which
we shape human–human relations and human–animal relations are
closely related. Histories of such relations (for example scientific ones)
can only be made on the basis of existing relations and engagement:
in order to construct a narrative, ‘one must already dwell in the world
and, in the dwelling, enter into relationships with its constituents, both
human and non-human’ (p. 76). Ingold wants to rewrite the history of
human–animal relations ‘taking this condition of active engagement,
of being-in-the-world, as our starting point’ (p. 76).
This view of the relation between the natural and the social implies
that there is no longer a separate ‘natural’ world as opposed to a ‘social’,
human world:

‘we can no longer think of humans as inhabiting a social world of

their own, over and above the world of nature in which the lives of
all other living things are contained’; instead, ‘both humans and
the animals and plants on which they depend for a livelihood must
be regarded as fellow participants in the same world, a world that is
at once social and natural. And the forms that all these creatures
take are neither given in advance nor imposed from above, but
emerge within the context of their mutual involvement in a single,
continuous field of relationships.’ (Ingold 2000, p. 87)

Ingold even extends his ecological, developmental view to man-made

things. For technology and artefacts, his view implies that there is ‘no
absolute distinction between making and growing’ (p. 88), since the
forms of artefacts are not given in advance but ‘are rather generated
in and through the practical movement of one or more skilled agents
in their active, sensuous engagement with the material’ (p. 88). Hence
Ingold criticizes Marxism and other modern currents of thinking that
 Relations: Hybrid and Environmental 67

view humans as transcending and transforming nature. Nature is not

a raw material which we then transform and domesticate, a means
to human ends. Rather, the world transforms itself: ‘nature is not the
surface of materiality upon which human history is inscribed; rather
history is the process wherein both people and their environments are
continually bringing each other into being’ (p. 87). Therefore artefacts,
like the forms of living beings, are not made but ‘emerge [ ... ] within
the relational contexts of the mutual involvement of people and their
environments’ and making things is ‘a process of growth’ (p. 88).
Ingold’s unificatory view does not only reconcile the natural and the
social; it also cuts through the reality/appearance dichotomy. The best
way to show this is to consider his work on how people relate to animals
in non-Western, non-modern cultures, but also in Western cultures. It
is well known that in the West and elsewhere some animals are related
to as if they were fully human. Through the eyes of Western science,
this illustrates ‘anthropomorphism’: ascribing human properties to
non-human beings. Ingold gives the examples of pet-keeping and fables
in our culture (Ingold 2000, p. 91). He also mentions Ojibwa stories
about metamorphosis, for example about humans who can be turned
into a bear. From a scientific point of view, all this is about projection
of a world view onto ‘reality’: people ‘personify’ natural objects. This
presupposes a distinction between appearance (coloured by one’s world
view, one’s particular culture) and reality (nature as it really is). It is
said that the natural object or living being is ‘constructed’ as a person
by the ‘primitive’ people. But Ingold wants to take seriously the experi-
ence of these non-Western peoples in their lifeworld. The Ojibwa do not
‘personify’ natural objects. They do not ‘envisage the world of nature
as made up of a multitude of discrete objects, things, each with its own
integrity and essential properties’ which are then ‘grouped into classes
of varying degrees of inclusiveness on the basis of selected properties’,
as we do since Plato and Aristotle (p. 96). In this sense, in the Ojibwa
world there are no ‘natural objects’ to classify; the nature of things is not
given in advance but is ‘revealed’ (p. 97). Ingold suggests a different epis-
temology: knowledge is not about accumulating of mental content or
propositions or beliefs. One gets to know the world by moving around,
by watching, by listening and feeling; it is a skill (p. 99). Similarly, mind
is not outside but in the world; we are involved beings (p. 101). If this is
true, it makes no sense to distinguish sharply between appearance and
reality: we cannot know ‘reality-as-it-really-is’, we can only know the
world by being-in-the-world, by experiencing and engaging with the
world.
68 Growing Moral Relations

Ingold’s view supports Latour’s claim that we have never been

modern. It is also in line with Szerszynski’s critique of modernity
(Szerszynski 1996). Like Latour, he poses the question: How modern
are we really? Looking at pre-modern cultures, he first evokes a world
that was already ordered and suffused with meaning and purpose. The
subject was participating in the world. There was no clear distinction
between the world of words and the world of things. There was no gulf
between morality and social structure. Ethics was not divorced from the
formation and dissolution of social relations in the ‘flow’ of culture. Is
this really different in modernity? According to Szerszynski, the answer
is negative: we are always already part of the world. Our knowledge of
the world is shaped by the social. In order to overcome postmodern
nihilism (self-assertion in an alien world), romanticism (achieving
authenticity), communitarianism (re-embedding in concrete commu-
nities and substantive traditions), and ecology (Szerszynski criticizes
ecology for not abandoning the nature–culture dichotomy), we should
turn to a different view of the human condition. Rather than trying to
secure a ‘real’ behind the phenomenal world or embracing nihilism, we
should learn from Wittgenstein and Heidegger that the world is consti-
tuted through language. Language, however, is not a human construc-
tion but is interfused with the world we inhabit (p. 133; see also Part
II). We are involved in the world. This ‘ecological’ view has implications
for ethics:

‘Instead of the impossible project of securing discourse’s transpar-

ency to moral realities through its purification and formalization,
ethics becomes a recognition of our always already implicatedness in
the world.’ (Szerszynski 1996, p. 111)

Ingold’s and Szerszynski’s approach solves the epistemological prob-

lems of the properties-based account of moral status, since the modern
mystery of how we can know the properties of the entity no longer makes
sense. If there are no discrete entities with properties but only a lived
world, then the question is no longer ‘What is the moral status of entity
x given its properties p1, p2, and p3?’ or ‘How can moral status ascrip-
tion become a perfectly transparent representation of moral reality, a
formal code purified from the phenomena?’ The new question is: ‘How
should we relate to other beings as human beings who are already part
of the same world as these non-human beings, who experience that world
and those other beings and are already engaged in that world and stand
already in relation to that world?’ What we call the appearance of an
 Relations: Hybrid and Environmental 69

entity and the reality of an entity are the outcomes of different ways of
experiencing and engaging with the world (for example, a scientific way
or a ‘folk’ way), and both non-scientific and scientific knowledge and
practices presuppose lived experience and relations with other entities.
This is why, with Ingold, we must learn from the animistic view, which
‘takes the relational character of the world as an ontological a priori,
against which the ‘naturalness’ of beings [ ... ] stands out as unstable and
problematic’ (Ingold 2000, p. 107).
Therefore, I infer from Ingold’s analysis, for a truly relational theory
of moral status it is not sufficient to replace traditional Western
non-relational ontologies by a relational ontology understood as ‘the
true view of reality’ or ‘the true view of the nature of reality’ as opposed
to mere appearance. To replace the properties dogma with the rela-
tional dogma would deny the a priori character of the relational world-
in-which-we-are-already-engaged which makes possible moral status
ascription, rather than giving a predefined and fixed answer to the
question of moral status. ‘Relations’ should not get the same function in
the theory as ‘properties’; if we made that substitution, we would need
a science of relations (compare with a science of appearances, a science
of properties, etc.) and this would give us – finally! – moral knowledge
as a set of propositions concerning the moral status of entities. Moral
status would be justified by resting it on a firm ontological basis or foun-
dation. But, if Ingold is right, there is no such firm foundation in this
sense. Instead, we have ‘only’ (!) our lived experience, our engagement
with the world, which is a condition of possibility for asking the question
of moral status and for trying to answer it; it is not itself the answer.
Answers – moral status ascriptions, for instance – are not and cannot be
produced as if they were the products (output) of a logical machine that
takes in ontological propositions (input) (industrial metaphor). They are
more like produce that grows (agricultural metaphor) or like animals that
show, reveal themselves to the hunter (hunter-gatherer metaphor) in the
ever-changing field of relations, in the hybrid and changing world in
which we dwell.
In the next part, I hope to further analyse the conditions of possi-
bility for moral status ascription. I start with a condition that figured
so prominently in many philosophies of the past century and which
has always been the main tool of philosophers: language. But let me
first say something about Diogenes the Cynic to conclude this part of
my book.
Conclusion to Part I:
Diogenes’s Challenge

Diogenes the Cynic, also known as Diogenes of Sinope, was an ancient

Greek philosopher, probably an ex-banker, who was famous for his
antisocial behaviour. For example, he is said to have urinated on people
and masturbated in public. Long before Rousseau wrote his romantic
philosophical works, Diogenes’ lifestyle was a way of showing that a
more simple and ‘natural’, dog-like (cynic) way of living was possible,
independent of society’s norms. He was the first to call himself a
cosmopolites: a citizen of the world. Interesting for the argument of this
book is the reason why he taught by example: Diogenes believed that
wisdom and virtue are not a matter of theory but of living. Therefore,
he scorned the abstract philosophy of Plato – he scorned academic
philosophy.
In his The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius
tells us an anecdote about Diogenes’ response to Plato’s definition of
man as ‘a bipedal featherless animal’: Diogenes plucked a cock and
brought it into Plato’s school, saying “This is Plato’s man.” After which
the definition was extended to ‘with broad flat nails’.
What Diogenes teaches us here is not so much that ‘broad flat nails’
or ‘bipedal’ and ‘featherless’ are inessential properties and that instead
we should look for other, essential properties. Rather, he shows that it
makes little sense to define an entity by reference to its properties at all,
that is, it makes little sense to define an entity in such an abstract way;
what a human or a cock is, is something that becomes clear in real-life
contexts. It needs to be shown; it is not a knowing-that but a knowing-
how. If we want to teach a young child what a human is (as opposed
to other entities), it needs to live with humans to learn in practice and
in context how we relate to different entities in different ways. What

70
 Conclusion to Part I: Diogenes’s Challenge 71

matters is how we relate to entities in practice, how we treat them, what

name we give them, and so on.
In the previous chapters I have taken distance from the individu-
alist properties view and explored an alternative, relational approach
to moral status. In this way, I hope to have taken the animals, robots
and cyborgs out of Plato’s school, out of the dissection theatre, and
out of the lab of the moral scientist. With reference to Rembrandt’s
painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicholaes Tulip, we may say that
the anatomy lesson taught by the moral ontologist is over now. We
have now explored and developed a relational approach to moral
status, which does not have the disadvantages of the moral science
approach. However, there is always the danger of a relapse: we might
give in again to the Platonic temptation and understand the relational
approach as constituting a new ontology, perhaps with entities having
relational properties or with relations as the new entities. Or we might
understand phenomenology as a science of phenomena, in which case
we would have an ontology of phenomena. None of these avenues is
very promising: it looks as though they would amount to bringing new
objects to Plato’s table (entities with ‘relational properties’, ‘relations’
or ‘phenomena’) and to inviting once again the moral anatomist and
moral classificationist to do their work. But we do not want to know
the properties of the new cocks of our time; we want to know how to
relate to them.
Moreover, from a moral–philosophical point of view, we do not only
want to answer this direct normative–ethical question; we also want
to know whether and how it is possible to take distance from social
norms in this respect. If we wish to move towards a more ‘relational’,
‘ecological’ way of living, to what extent is this possible? Can we be a
Diogenesian cynic with respect to fossilized ways of relating to animals,
for example? The question about treating entities then becomes: Can
we be a philosophical dog in a Diogenesian sense, that is, can we treat a
particular entity and live with it in a different way than ‘one’ always has
done? What about new entities such as robots and cyborgs? And, more
generally, can we think about moral status in a different, more rela-
tional way? What would need to be the case for this change to happen?
Can we create a different moral language? Can we change society? Can
we live a different moral life? Can we do this without being regarded as
an outcast? Do we need new philosopher–dogs and perhaps new artist–
dogs, new cynics, to show us the way? To what extent can we really take
distance from received views?
72 Growing Moral Relations

To these meta-ethical questions I now turn. In the next part of this

book, I will further develop a critique of moral status ascription, with
‘critique’ understood as involving a transcendental–phenomenological
argument. This can be seen as a rather theoretical, academic, indeed
not very dog-like (cynic) means of reviving thinking about moral status,
that is, of returning to where Diogenes wanted to have us: life. However,
I hope the reader will find it a worthwhile detour.
Part II
Moral Status Ascription and
Its Conditions of Possibility:
A Transcendental Argument
6
Words and Sentences: Forms
of Language Use

The transcendental claim that language is a condition of possibility for

moral status ascription is, like all transcendental claims, a two-sided
coin: conditions of possibility are at the same time enabling (in this sense
they are a transcendental ground – see also Chapter 9) and limiting. On
the one hand, the language that is given to us and that we use enables us
to ascribe moral status to entities. Without language, we could not talk
or write about moral status, we could not a-scribe it at all since we would
miss our main tool. Words and grammar are the stuff and the laws
that allow us to build our moral–linguistic universe, that make possible
‘moral status talk’ (or ‘moral status chatter’, if you wish). On the other
hand, language is also limiting in the sense that thinking (in so far as it
is thinking) cannot move beyond or outside language. As Heidegger and
Wittgenstein knew, we live in language (see also Chapters 7 and 8) and
our thinking is also limited by the particular language(s) we (can) use.
In these two senses, language is the vehicle of our thinking about moral
status. Wrathall writes:

For Heidegger, the key feature for understanding language is to

focus on [ ... ] the way that it shapes and guides our understanding of
ourselves and the world around us “before we are speaking”. (Wrathall
2005, p. 89)

This is a transcendental argument, not a causal argument. If it is true

that the moral order in which we believe ourselves to live is possible
only on the basis of language, it is important to keep in mind that this
language does not cause or determine that order, and is not itself that
moral order; rather, as its condition of possibility it shapes its structure,
its forms, and its boundaries. The properties approach to moral status,

75
76 Growing Moral Relations

in spite of its claim to ascribe objective moral status, equally relies on

such linguistic–hermeneutic conditions of possibility. The entity in
question already appears to us in a certain way ‘in’ language ‘before’ we
ask the explicit question concerning moral status. This way of seeing is
not ‘neutral’ in any way; language – including scientific language – is
already normative. It lets the world appear in a certain way and not in
another way. It shows us what is of value. It already brings forth a moral
world. To quote Wrathall’s interpretation of Heidegger again:

When we decide what a particular object is, and thus decide what
its essential properties are [ ... ] we need to have a prior sense for
what matters to us and concerns us – we need, in other words, to
be disposed to the world in a particular way so that something will
appear relevant and important while other things will seem trivial.
(Wrathall 2005, p. 92)

Thus, in so far as moral status ascription relies on the properties of

objects, it depends on our ways of seeing the world: on the kind of
world we have (in the Heideggerian sense of the word), which depends
on the language we use. Before we ascribe moral status to an entity we
are already disposed to it in a particular way, and this disposition is
at least partly a matter of language. The entity already matters to us
and appears to us in a particular way. Whether or not there is a ‘thing-
in-itself’ (Kant), the entity can only show up to us (appears to us, is
disclosed to us) in language; language prestructures whatever we can
say and think about it. In this (Heideggerian) sense, not I ascribe moral
status but language does.
In this chapter I distinguish between, and discuss, two ways in
which language is a condition of possibility for moral status ascrip-
tion, which accord with two well-known dimensions of language:
moral status ascription depends on the words that are available to us in
a particular language (the semantic dimension of language, having to
do with meaning) and on the forms of language use that frame how we
ascribe moral status (the grammatical, in particular syntax, dimension
of language, its structure).
Since meaning is related to use and context (the pragmatic dimen-
sion of language) and since grammar is not a free-floating abstract and
universal realm of forms, there is no strict distinction between the
semantic and syntax dimensions of language and moral status ascrip-
tion (as there is no strict distinction between forms of language and
other conditions of possibility). This will become clearer in the following
 Words and Sentences 77

pages. I will make three claims. First, meaning is not entirely fixed and
context-less: I will argue in this chapter against the ‘dictionary’ view of
language and moral status in this chapter. Second, any ‘moral grammar’
is itself dependent on the social, relational lifeworld: I will argue against
the contractarian view of morality. Third, therefore, I will show that
forms of language are related to forms of life (see end of this chapter
and the next two chapters). However, before discussing these interre-
lations, I will begin with the words/sentences and meaning/grammar
distinctions in order to show how enabling and limiting language can
be, how much it really is a condition of possibility, and then sketch a
more adequate picture.
The structure of this chapter also reflects a second important distinc-
tion: one between moral status receptivity (how things appear to us,
how we perceive things as implying the perception of moral status) and
moral status ascription as activity (how we ‘construct’ things as implying
the constructing of moral status). This chapter can be regarded as
proposing a ‘linguistic turn’ in thinking about moral status – although
the turn is not merely linguistic. Both the perception and the construc-
tion of moral status are mediated by language. In order to show this,
moral status is first understood as moral status ascription in the sense
of construction. It is, to apply Austin’s famous phrase, about ‘doing
things with words’ (Austin 1962). Sentences about moral status do not
state ‘facts’ about moral status, but perform something, do something:
they are ‘speech-acts’ that construct moral status. Here we enter the
theatre of moral status ascription. However, I will also argue that what
happens in this theatre is not only the result of our acts of ascription;
next to the active dimension there is also the receptive dimension:
language, including moral language, also happens to us, is ‘given’ to us
in various ways. This receptive side of the ‘linguistic’ argument (which,
I repeat, is not merely about language) will be continued in the next
chapters, for example in the Wittgensteinian section on ‘forms of life’
in Chapter 8.

6.1. Words, meaning and the construction

of moral status

Some of the most important ‘building blocks’ of language, including

moral language, are words and their meaning. They allow us to say
what we want to say (at least, in the best case), but they also precon-
figure the very content of our thoughts: they ‘make us say things’ in a
particular way, a way we do not fully control. They co-shape what we
78 Growing Moral Relations

think and how we think; they also limit what we can think. Words are
not just representations of the world (e.g. the moral world order with its
distribution of moral value and status) or expressions of thoughts (e.g.
what we think about the moral status of a particular entity). Rather
than functioning as a mirror of the world, words co-shape the world
and our thinking about the world.
For example, the word ‘robot’ is entangled with a cloud of meanings
that frame how we use the word and how we think about ‘robots’: they
are machines, slaves that work for us and obey us. The moral status
implied is clear: like herd animals, they belong to a moral category that
licenses us to dominate them and exploit them. Hence, if we want to
see some robots differently, for example as companions, we have to
forge new words (or word combinations) and meanings (e.g. “artificial
companions”). Another example: the very word “animal” has tradition-
ally been used to set it apart from humans in terms of moral status. If
someone wishes to stress commonalities between humans and animals,
she has to use a term like “non-human animal”, which comes with a
different world view – and a different way of experiencing, different
practices, and so on. Therefore, we must agree with Wittgenstein that
meaning and verbal expression are not separated:

When I think in words, I don’t have “meanings” in my mind in

addition to the verbal expressions; rather, language itself is the
vehicle of thought. (Wittgenstein 1953, §329, p. 113)

According to Wittgenstein, a sign by itself is ‘dead’; only ‘in use it lives’

(§432, p. 135). Language and its concepts are tools or ‘instruments’,
which means that it matters which concepts we employ (§569, p. 159).
Not because they correspond to some ‘inner’ state but rather because
they do things (see again Ayer: we ‘do things with words’); concepts
are words–thoughts. Wittgenstein criticizes making a distinction
between ‘what you really wanted to say’ and what is being said, since
that supposes that meaning is present in the mind ‘before’ there is an
utterance or expression (Wittgenstein 1953, §334, p. 114). We can only
think ‘in’ or ‘by’ language; it is our vehicle. (Even an intention is not
merely ‘mental’, since it is ‘embedded in a setting, in human customs
and institutions’ (§115, p. 115).) Similarly, if language is the vehicle
of moral thought, then there is only moral language–thought instead
of words on the one hand and ontological or moral meaning on the
other hand. We are accustomed to talk–think about (other) entities in
a certain way.
 Words and Sentences 79

Another way of putting this is to say that the way we talk about
non-humans already presupposes their moral and ontological status as
embedded in a (customary) way of thinking (and, as we will see, doing).
Therefore, making an argument about how to treat other entities in terms
of moral status is philosophically naïve if this moral–linguistic dimen-
sion is left out. The words we use are already part of a way of seeing the
world – including making moral distinctions. In other words, we must
apply some Wittgensteinian therapy to the question of moral status.
In her classic article ‘Eating Meat and Eating People’ Diamond
writes:

it is not “morally wrong” to eat our pets; people who ate their pets
would not have pets in the same sense of that term. [ ... ] A pet is not
something to eat, it is given a name, is let into our houses and may
be spoken to in ways in which we do not normally speak to cows or
squirrels. That is to say, it is given some part of the character of a
person. (Diamond 1978, p. 469)

Thus, meaning and morality are already ‘in’ the word we use. The same
seems to hold for our talking about humans and human ethics, which
are also preconfigured by the words we use. To quote Diamond again:

Similarly with having duties to human beings. This is not a conse-

quence of what human beings are, it is not justified by what human
beings are: it is itself one of the things which go to build our notion
of human beings. (Diamond 1978, p. 470)

Thus, as I suggested before, to talk about ‘human beings’ already

presupposes a distinction: we have set them apart from non-humans.
Similarly, our word ‘non-humans’ is not morally neutral in this sense:
we already have defined them in opposition to humans and all the
moral meaning attached to this term. This is not recognized by the
properties approach, which makes a strict distinction between morality
and ontology, and between ontology and language. It assumes that we
can separate moral and ontological meaning from the words we use.
It assumes that ontological, and perhaps also moral, language func-
tions as what Rorty called a ‘mirror of nature’ (Rorty 1979). But both
our ‘ontology’ and our ‘morality’, including ‘moral status’, are already
contained in our language, that is, in the way we view the world. There
is no ‘objective’ way that would allow us to distinguish sharply between
morality, language and world.
80 Growing Moral Relations

At this point we can pick up the phenomenological argument about

appearance started in Part I. Consider the example of robots. Standard
robot ontology supposes a sharp distinction between appearance and
reality. It is said that a robot may appear human, animal-like, and so on,
but actually it really is a machine. Hence what is needed, it is argued, is
science: the work of unmasking, revealing, uncovering, stripping away
the phenomena. In this realist, objectivist and dualist view, a strict
distinction is made between what entities really are (e.g. machine, code,
information), understood as ‘objective reality’, and what entities appear
to be (e.g. social, emotional, human-like), which is understood in terms
of ‘perception’, subjective perception (which can become the object of
scientific study). There is the world of appearances and there is the world
of reality. In the lifeworld, we unfortunately find ourselves in Plato’s
cave and have to do the work of science to gain a view of truth and
reality. Illusion is fine for entertainment; for example, robot designers
can be seen as masters of illusion. But it remains illusion. According to
this view, the truth is ‘behind’ or ‘underneath’ the appearances.
However, saying that a robot is a ‘machine’ is already a particular
way of looking at the robot that has in itself moral consequences. For
example, if it is constructed as a ‘machine’, then of course we can never
have robot companions. Then of course it is mistaken to speak of such
a thing. Moral distinctions such as human/non-human social/non-
social come with the name. When our thoughts about moral status
start flowing, there is already a river-bed that guides their course. And
the river-bed becomes deepened when habits of thinking erode it. But
there are many ways of seeing and many ways of talking, and there
is not one that has what we may call ‘ontological priority’, at least if
this means that we can find out this priority entirely independently
of the lives we live. The priority depends on the context, on what one
wants to achieve, on use, and so on. Moral status ascription has lost
touch with the lifeworld if it practices a quasi-Cartesian isolationist
thinking. Wittgenstein writes the following about seeing people as
automata:

But can’t I imagine that people around me are autonomata, lack

consciousness [ ... ]? If I imagine it now – alone in my room – I see
people with fixed looks (as in a trance) going about their business –
the idea is perhaps a little uncanny. But just try to hang on to this
idea in the midst of your ordinary discourse with others – in the
street, say! Say to yourself, for example: “The children over there are
mere automata; all their liveliness is mere automatism.” And you will
 Words and Sentences 81

either find these words becoming quite empty; or you will produce
in yourself some kind of uncanny feeling, or something of the sort.
(Wittgenstein 1953, § 420, p. 133)1

Thus, people may appear as automata in one context (e.g. a philoso-

pher’s reasoning) but equally the sentence may be meaningless or
out of place and deranged in a different context of use – and ‘ontological’
priority is given to what is meaningful and to what we feel at home
with. Much of the philosophical, academic discourse on moral status is
taken out of its daily, ordinary context of use.
Thus, the discussion about moral status is a dualist discourse if retains
a difference between ‘what things really are’ and ‘how we see things’ (or
how we talk about things). Rather, there are different possible perspec-
tives. A machine may appear as a machine, but in some contexts it
may appear as a social other. Phenomenology attempts to go beyond
dualism by acknowledging that there is more than one way of seeing,
more than one meaning. There is, in Ihde’s words, ‘multistability’ (Ihde
1990). Robots (sometimes) can appear to us as ‘quasi-other’ (Ihde) and,
perhaps at different times, as machine. Consider the concept of Gestalt:
the same ‘physical’ line can be seen as a vase or as two faces touching
one another.
However, it would be wrong to conclude from this ‘multistability’ or
Gestalt that therefore ‘anything goes’. Not all meanings and percep-
tions are possible (you cannot make a cow from the vase), and, morally
speaking, it matters which perspective you take. Although none of our
ways of seeing has ‘ontological priority’ in an abstract, ‘objective’ sense,
each perspective has different normative, moral connotations and
moral consequences for how we treat the entity. If a robot appears to
us as a quasi-other, we treat it in a way similar to treatment of human
others (as ‘an end in itself’). If it appears as a machine, we will treat it as
a ‘mere means’ (to use Kantian language). Thus, moral status is already
‘in’ our ways of seeing, in the way things appear to us, and how we see
them matters to us and the possibilities are not unlimited. (Note that
the language of appearance stresses the passive, receptive side of experi-
ence. In the next section I will use the language of construction: robots
can be constructed as machines, quasi-others, and so on.)
Since these ways of seeing cannot be disconnected from our ways of
talking, the same argument can be construed as a critique of a repre-
sentational view of language. One may object, for example, that we
should distinguish between ‘the thing itself’ as designated by the word
“robot” (e.g. the entity in itself, the robot in itself) and metaphors like
82 Growing Moral Relations

“slave” that are connected to it but that can also be disconnected from
it. This is a common, representational view of language. It accepts that
language is relational in a weak sense only: of course there are relations
between words; metaphors are such a kind of relation. However, a truly
relational view of language (and the world) is not content with relations
between discrete entities; it holds that these entities (here: words) are
themselves constituted by the relations. Thus, the meaning of words is
entirely dependent on its relations and language is itself deeply ‘meta-
phorical’. There is no such thing as the word or the thing an sich. The
meanings of words (nouns, verbs, and so on) are shaped and altered by
their relations to the linguistic and non-linguistic environment.
This view allows us to historicize meaning: it implies that the
meaning of words is not fixed, that meaning has a history. For moral
status, this means that, while words and their meaning preconfigure
the moral status of entities, this does not determine their moral status;
there is always the possibility of change. Change in meaning is possible
through different use of existing words and the creation of new words.
However, it would be mistaken to see this as a matter of individual will
or of language use understood in a narrow sense (that is, as a separate
domain): meaning is also dependent on the extra-linguistic environ-
ment in which the language and the language user are embedded.
Therefore, we can maintain that language (in this section: language
as meaning) is a condition of possibility for moral status ascription:
while and because it is not entirely fixed and isolated, because it does
not dwell in an eternal, immaterial realm of abstraction, language (as
meaning) enables and limits what we can say about the moral status
of entities.

6.2. Moral grammar à la Searle: moral status functions

and the moral–linguistic contract

As I said in my introduction, a second way in which language is a condi-

tion of possibility for moral status ascription has to do with its gram-
matical dimension. How we use words is not entirely free but ruled.
Grammar rules the way we use language, and this gives language uses
a particular form. We speak not only in words but in sentences. Using
a language well requires not only knowledge of the words and their
meaning-in-context (semantic skill) but also knowledge of grammar
(syntax in particular), which is also a skill and is usually learned in
context, but at least seems more suitable for formalization and idealiza-
tion. Can we apply this to moral status? In order to show the conceptual
 Words and Sentences 83

power of this approach, let me first follow this route and then divert
from it in significant ways.
How we ascribe moral status has a particular grammatical form (at least
if we assume a broad definition of syntax), which has social and moral
consequences. I propose to elucidate and elaborate this idea by using
the work of Searle, in particular his social ontology. First I will construct
a model of moral status ascription à la Searle and point to the social–
theoretical counterpart of this view. Then I will criticize both views. In
this way, the structure but also the content of this chapter will mirror
those of Chapter 1: both analyse non-relational views and their prob-
lems by connecting ethics to social philosophy. The other chapters will
keep to this method, but there is an important difference: the chapters
in the first part mainly discussed moral–ontological arguments in order
to construe a relational view, whereas the chapters in this part discuss
various views in order to construe a transcendental argument that modi-
fies and further develops the relational view arrived at in the first part.
Before using Searle’s theory, let me introduce the grammatical aspect
of moral status ascription by means of the robot example. In the first
section of this chapter, I have proposed a linguistic turn in philosophy of
moral status, which – among other things – means that we must attend to
how we talk about robots and to robots. This has implications for robotics
and ethics of robotics. Traditional artificial intelligence (AI) research was
focused on what the computer or the robot can say. But for the question
of moral status, it is important to study how humans talk about robots
and to robots. The words and sentences we use do not (merely) represent
the robot; we also ‘construct’ it as robot – or as something else – by using
language. This has a grammatical aspect. It matters a lot, morally and onto-
logically speaking, how we address robots. What is the linguistic form we
use? Sometimes we take an impersonal third-person perspective; we use
the word ‘it’. This implies that we regard it as an ‘object’, a ‘machine’. At
other times we take the personal second-person perspective; we address
the robot with ‘you’ (perhaps even with ‘we’). This implies that we see
the robot as a quasi-other, perhaps a companion or even a partner. How
we address the robot makes a difference to how we will treat it and to
how we will interact with it. It will also make a difference to how robots
are designed, how they are sold, and so on. In this sense, our ‘grammar’
matters morally. The structure of our language is not a mere reflection
(representation) of the robot or of what goes on in the human–robot rela-
tion, but co-constructs that relation and changes our practices.
The moral significance of linguistic construction can be further
understood by discussing the work of Searle. Searle shares with liberal
84 Growing Moral Relations

contractarianism (e.g. Rawls 1971) and discourse ethics (e.g. Habermas

1983) the idea that society, together with its moral and political princi-
ples, is a rational construct, or at least can be rationally reconstructed
by us.2 It is assumed that society is created by us, by our speech, or can
at least be reconstructed as such. For Searle, society is constructed by
words. Austin and Searle developed ‘speech-act’ theory: communica-
tion is not just about getting across propositional content; we also ‘do
things with words’ (Austin 1962). In this way, Searle argues, we create
social reality by means of speech acts. According to Searle, such speech
acts have the form of a declaration: we declare something to have this or
that meaning or value. Searle gives the examples of promise, marriage
and money; this is how we create social institutions.
Let me explain this in more detail and show how it can be applied to
the study of the conditions of possibility of moral status ascription. In
The Construction of Social Reality (Searle 1995) and in the article ‘Social
Ontology’ (Searle 2006), Searle attempts to answer what he calls ‘the
problem of social ontology’:

How can such animals as ourselves create a “social” reality? How can
they create a reality of money, property, government, marriage and,
perhaps most important of all, language? (Searle 2006, p. 13)

According to Searle, in contrast to physical facts these ‘social facts’ are not
‘observer independent’ (reality that exists independent of us) but ‘observer
relative’ (p. 13). He sees his task as explaining the nature of the creation
of such facts. Although others have tried such an explanation before,
he says, classical discussions (for example in sociology) took language
for granted. Searle, by contrast, understands the social as dependent on
language. He argues that language has a constitutive role: it does not just
categorize (as Bourdieu argued) or enable us to reach rational agreement
(as Habermas argued); rather, it constitutes social reality itself.
This works in the following way: ‘collective intentionality assigns a
certain status to [a] person or object and that status enables the person
or object to perform a function which could not be performed without
the collective acceptance of that status’ (Searle 2006, p. 17). Searle gives
the example of money:

the piece of paper in my hand, unlike the knife in my pocket, does

indeed perform a function, but it performs the function not in virtue
of its physical structure but in virtue of collective attitudes. (Searle
2006, p. 17)
 Words and Sentences 85

People collectively accept that the piece of paper has a certain status and
this makes it possible that the piece of paper can perform a function. They
declare that it has a certain status. Searle calls this ‘status function’ (p. 18).
The logical form of the assignment of status function is as follows:

‘X counts as Y in context C’ (Searle 206, p. 18)

Searle has in mind social institutions. But, in preparation of my

upcoming argument, we can shed his ontological dualism and apply
his theory more widely to reinterpret what I have said before about
meaning: we can apply the theory to things Searle would see as
‘physical’, non-social things. In other words, we can say that declarative
status functions are not only the grammar of social ontology but of all
ontology. Applied to robots, for example, the form becomes:

Robot X (physical reality) counts as a Y (e.g. machine or quasi-other)

in this (quasi-)social context C.

Or applied to animals:

Animal X (biological reality) counts as a Y (e.g. pet or ‘wild’ animal)

in this (quasi-)social context C (e.g. a home or a circus).

This offers us an interesting understanding of moral status ascription,

which appears to take on the form of declaration. We may call it a moral
status function. It seems that we are now able to formally describe how
people ascribe moral status. It seems that we now have found the ‘moral
grammar’ of moral status ascription, the holy grail of moral status
science.
However, let us first return to Searle to understand what this declar-
ation form implies, which can help us to further develop and critique
it. Searle argues that status functions give us ‘deontic powers’: if I have a
parking ticket, for example, I have the right to park here. Applied to the
moral status of particular entities, say robots or animals, this argument
implies that a particular status function gives us certain rights and obli-
gations. For example, if a particular entity e counts as a “pet”, then I
have the right to live with it but also the obligation to treat it well. But
if the same biological entity counts as an “experimentation” animal,
then I have the right to use it in my experiments (a use which may be
constrained by certain duties as well, depending on which institutional
constraints are attached to the declaration “experimentation animal”).
86 Growing Moral Relations

Which constraints are in place depends on agreement. Indeed,

important in this view is collective acceptance; without it there is no
status function and no power. This is a contractarian view of the social.
In this sense, Searle’s formula should read as follows:

We agree that X counts as Y in context C.

For example:

We agree that mice count as vermin in a home context and as useful

experimentation objects in a lab context.

Or, in the robot example:

We agree that this (physical) thing is a machine and we therefore

have the right to use it as a slave.

Note that, since Searle emphasizes the deontic power status functions
make possible and collective agreement, in his view we can have status
functions without physical objects (so-called ‘free standing Y terms’
(Searle 2006, p. 22). This means that status can also be given to what
we may call virtual objects. This is what happens with money: there is
no longer a physical object. This is also the case with virtual bots on the
internet: we agree that program X counts as a ‘computer program’ in this
financial context, whereas we agree that program Y (which may be not
very different from X) counts as an ‘artificial agent’ in this game.
We can conclude from this that Searle’s view can be used to shed
new light on the ‘grammar’ of moral status ascription, but remains a
properties-based view par excellence. On the one hand, property is ‘just’
a social institution, which is ascribed by means of a status function:
we agree that physical object X counts as property (Y) in context C (for
example this country). On the other hand, status function ascription
itself is giving a property to a physical object. Status function ascription
just is property ascription.
On the basis of Searle’s social ontology, we can say that with language
we create social reality and – I infer – moral reality. Responsibilities,
obligations, rights, and so on are as ‘real’ and ‘factual’ as other social
facts. (However, for Searle social facts are not as real as physical facts:
in Searle’s view there is a strict distinction between an observer-
independent physical world (physical reality or simply reality) and an
observer-dependent social world. His view can be characterized as a
 Words and Sentences 87

‘weak’ brand of constructivism or constructionism since it limits its

constructionism to the social.) Thus, in so far as morals are social facts
and institutions, they are, in Searle’s words, ‘the glue that holds society
together’ (p. 29) and the glue is based on agreement and made in the
factory of language and logic.
Applied to the question of moral status, this Searleian view means
that moral status is inscribed into (or onto) physical reality. Physical
things are ‘given’ a particular moral status by means of words. Words
are the instruments by which we ‘coat’ or ‘dress’ physical reality with
layers of value and status. From what we may call the moral status func-
tion then follow obligations, rights and other deontic powers.3
According to this view, moral status is like monetary value: we agree
that entity x has moral status s. (Supposed) agreement is crucial. Indeed,
the contractarian version of this argument is that society has to be
understood as if it were the outcome of such speech acts. In Habermas’s
discourse ethics, agreement is also important: it is seen as if it were
the outcome of a rational intersubjective deliberation process, which
takes place in the ‘Original Position’.4 According to discourse ethics,
people make validity claims inherent to their speech acts. For example,
they make a claim of truth (truth about the propositional content: they
claim that what they say is true). However, in a Searlean view, it seems
that there is no assumption of rationality or truth; agreement suffices.
Applied to moral status as a social construct, these contractarian and
discourse ethics views imply that the moral status of entities must be
understood as if it were the outcome of an ‘initial’ or ‘original’ process
of deliberation: as if in an Original Position we ascribe moral status to
non-human entities. Moral status is a kind of property given to objects
by subjects engaged in an intersubjective dialogue. A Rawlsian version
would stress the disinterested, disengaged attitude of the participants
in the deliberation (and does not really need more than one subject). A
Habermasian version of this view would stress more the dia-logical char-
acter of deliberation5 and claim that this deliberation is done by rational
subjects, who make truth claims and other claims with regard to moral
status. Thus, in these views, the totality of moral status ascriptions must
be understood as the outcome of a rational consensus reached by means
of disinterested, disengaged deliberation. In Searle’s view, the consensus
need not be rational, but disengaged agreement it is. Rational or not,
dia-logical or mono-logical, a logos is inscribed by the subject on the
surface of a world in which it is not engaged.
If moral status is a kind of ‘dressing’ that covers the physical–
ontological ‘salad’, then it might seem that – in a Searleian version – it
88 Growing Moral Relations

is entirely up to ‘fashion’ which status we give to entities. There are

different moral styles but there is no independent standard. It seems
that we can arbitrarily change our agreements.
This relativistic implication might be avoided by claiming, like
Habermas, that speech acts presuppose normative conditions of commu-
nications such as a truth claim and a rightness claim. In the case of
moral status, this would then presumably mean that a claim is made
that moral status s is true and appropriate given the physical–ontolog-
ical status of the entity. Then the mirror of nature view returns. In this
view, we are the moral tailors of physical reality, but this metaphor also
implies that we have to make moral status ‘cloths’ or ‘dresses’ that fit
the ‘bodies’ of physical–ontological reality. We are the moral ‘chefs’ that
make a particular moral ‘sauce’, but we have to work with the ingredients
we get from nature and the ‘sauce’ has to be appropriate, that is, accord
with the properties of the object. In this interpretation of the rationality
requirement, rationality refers to ratio: there should be a relation between
the properties of the object and the moral status of the object.
Indeed, these views (including Searle’s) are not radically constructivist:
they leave physical nature intact as a reality that is not under discus-
sion, a truth that miraculously escapes social construction. As suggested
before, Searle’s ontology is dualistic in the sense that he makes a strict
distinction between physical reality, which is non-constructed, and
social reality, which is constructed. Searle would apply his status func-
tion view only to the social world and would not accept my proposal
to apply it to everything; his view remains a social ontology only. For
example, he would make a strict distinction between what robots and
animals really are (machines and biological organisms) and how we
construct them (e.g. as companions). Searle’s approach assumes that
‘first’ there is physical reality, ‘then’ there is construction. Similarly,
contractarianism supposes that ‘first’ there are individuals, ‘then’ there
is society. Contractarianism and discourse ethics also presuppose a
strict distinction between subjects and objects, and both presuppose a
disengaged subject. In order to rationally reconstruct the world and its
social and moral (epi)phenomena, we must take distance from it.

6.3. Living language: towards a critique

of moral status ascription

There is, however, an entirely different way of conceiving of moral

status which involves a very different view of language and world, and
which allows us to attend to the conditions of possibility for moral status
 Words and Sentences 89

ascription and to the (inter)subjectivity – rational or not – involved in

that ascription. In this section and in the next chapters, I will explore
and develop a non-dualistic and engaged view. I will show that, if we take
a phenomenological approach, there is no interpretation-free appear-
ance of a ‘physical’ or ‘biological’ reality. As I already suggested when
discussing the meaning of words in the light of Diamond’s remarks, the
entity already appears in a particular way, is already interpretated (recep-
tive aspect) and constructed (active aspect) ‘before’ we ascribe moral
and ontological status. There is no morally or ontologically ‘neutral’
appearance of robots, animals or other non-humans.
Consider again Searle’s example of money. What is its ‘objective’
status? As Wittgenstein wrote, the institution of money only makes
sense in a particular Umgebung (surroundings) (Wittgenstein PI §584)
and within a ‘form of life’. The same is true for moral status: it makes
sense to talk about it within a particular ‘language game’, which relates
to a particular world view. It makes sense to talk about animals as ‘live-
stock’ within a particular form of life and it makes sense to talk about
robots as companions in a particular Umgebung. Even the scientific,
‘objective’ understanding of non-humans is possible only on the basis
of a particular world view, which is connected to a particular form of
life. Moreover, I will argue that interpretation and construction are not
entirely within human control and have non-linguistic dimensions,
related to bodies, materiality, activity, skill, spirit and place.
I will elaborate this Heideggerian and Wittgensteinian approach to
moral status in the next chapters, but let me already briefly present a
different view of language to begin with.
Let us take up Ingold’s anthropology (or, rather, meta-anthropology)
again to explore a different, non-Searlean and non-contractarian view of
language. According to Ingold, language is not so much a rule-governed
system or ‘grammar’ as a skill, ‘the Skill of skills’ (Ingold 2000, p. 361). It
is not ‘an objective system of rules and meanings – [ ... ] something that
people have, and can use ’ (p. 393) but a skill or even an activity. Speaking
is like practising an art (p. 401). Put in dualist philosophical jargon, one
could say that language is not only internally relational (relations within
language as a system of meaning and a grammatical system) but also
externally relational: it grows, it is responsive to the environment, to
various contexts. This gives us a very different view of language from
the contractarian one: it ceases to be a construction tool and becomes
something living, a kind of organism.
However, this way of putting Ingold’s point might still tempt us to
assume that there is such a thing as language, separate from the human
90 Growing Moral Relations

subject. The notion of language as skill (and as activity) allows us to go

beyond such a dualism. In Ingold’s view, language involves imitation
and improvisation in a relational environment:

Speaking is not a discharge of representations in the mind but an

achievement of the whole organism-person in an environment; it is
closely attuned and continually responsive to the gestures of others,
and speakers are forever improvising on the basis of past practice
in their efforts to make themselves understood in a world which is
never quite the same from one moment to the next. (Ingold 2000,
p. 401)

Similarly, writing is not the inscription of what is already ‘in the head’
(something mental), but is also a skill or an art which depends on
context and environment, which, like all skills and activities, involves
the body, feeling and the whole organism, and cannot be reduced to
the ‘imprint’ or ‘printout’ of a given mental content. Ingold gives the
example of playing a musical instrument: this is not the execution of
a mental representation, a musical ‘logos’; the intention is ‘in’ the flow
of the (embodied) activity itself (p. 413). As Dreyfus and Ingold argue,
skilled practice is not the application of a body of expert knowledge
(understood as rules and representations); that is only a starting point
(pp. 415–416). (See also the next chapter.)
With Ingold we can liberate language from its strong connection
with the technology of writing (consider the metaphors ‘ascription’ and
‘inscription’ used in connection with moral status) and related tech-
nologies (print), and give it back to the living body: it becomes voice and
breathes again. In a sense, Descartes, in his triumph of modern solip-
sism and dualism, forgot to breathe (or at least forgot that he breathed): he
cut off thought–language from its body–environment flow, denying its
inherent relationality and embodiment. No wonder that modern phil-
osophy ran out of breath soon. (See also my conclusion on philosoph-
ical yoga.)
More generally, anthropology teaches us that we (also in ‘the West’)
are always already ‘wholly immersed, from the start, in the relational
context of dwelling in a world’, a relational world ‘already laden with
significance’ (Ingold 2000, p. 409). It is not so much the case that people
first ‘have’ a language and then do things together. Rather, people can
share in the same meanings if they do the same things, if they live
in ‘a common world of meaningful relations’ (p. 409). A ‘communion
of experience’ is only possible on the basis of a ‘foundational level of
 Words and Sentences 91

sociality’ (p. 409). Only if we disengage and dissociate ourselves from this
already meaningful world can we see the world (‘nature’) as meaning-
less. Ingold calls this world ‘virtual’; it is a product of our imagination
(pp. 417–418); yet even in this moment of imagination we remain situ-
ated in a relational context. For example, the scientist may see himself
as ‘objective’ and detached, but ‘were he in reality so removed from
worldly existence he could not think the thoughts he does’; ‘we [ ... ]
have to live in the world in order to think it’ (Ingold 2000, p. 418; see
also Ingold 1996, p. 118). We have to breathe in order to speak – and to
write.
In the next chapter, I further discuss the Heideggerian view that we
are always already involved and engaged in the world. According to
this ‘deep’ relational view, the inner/outer distinction (compare mind/
body distinction and person/environment distinction) is no longer
useful, and perhaps even harmful to thinking. It is a highly prob-
lematic vehicle of thought. Moreover, language is not external to life,
but emerges from the continuously changing ground of being (to use
Heideggerian idiom). It is always language use; however, we do not use
language in the same way as we use a thing. It is not a separate thing,
but is deeply connected to a ‘form of life’ (as we may say with the later
Wittgenstein – see Chapter 8). In this view, there is no strict separ-
ation between a ‘symbolic’ sphere and ‘the real world’, and the relation
between language and world is neither one of representation nor one
of construction. A language–world is given to us. However, ‘the given’
is not external. Word–things get their meaning only in an Umgebung,
for sure, but this environment is our form of life and is fused with our
activities and practices, with what we do and how we do it. Language is
as ‘worldly’ as we are; it is what we do and it is the way we do things. In
this Heideggerian and Wittgensteinian sense, we do not use language;
we are language and we live language. Linguistic forms are dependent
on forms of life: on our forms of living together, on our bodily experi-
ence and our technologies, on our religious thinking and practice, and
on how we shape space. I will show in the following chapters that this
view has important implications for thinking about moral status as
moral status ‘ascription’.
7
Societies and Cultures (1):
Forms of Living Together

7.1. Moral status, habitus and know-how

To say that ‘culture’ or ‘society’ is a condition of possibility for moral

status may be easily misunderstood as assuming that there are, on the
one hand, humans and their society and culture (including the art and
culture of moral status ascription) and, on the other hand, uncultured
‘nature’ or ‘wilderness’. It may also be taken to assume that on the one
hand there are ‘humans’ and on the other hand there is ‘culture’, as
a separate sphere which has to be constructed or appropriated. Both
assumptions, which are in line with the Searlean view of moral status
ascription I constructed and discussed in the previous chapter, are
mistaken. Moral status is not something that we humans ascribe to
natural, physical entities, a label that we give to them in addition to
other efforts to cultivate and civilize them, colonizing the wilderness
and bringing it into our sphere of culture. Moral status is not part of a
separate sphere of ‘society’ or ‘culture’ which we construct (by means
of language as a tool, not something in which we dwell), pass on (as
DNA is passed on – a ‘genealogical’ view) and appropriate (make it one’s
property – again a property-based view). With Ingold, we can say that
we do not first construct or represent the world before we can act in it
(which he calls the building perspective), as Searle but also classical soci-
ology, anthropology (for example Douglas) and classical AI and robotics
assumed, but rather that we are already immersed ‘in an environment
or lifeworld as an inescapable condition of existence’ – in other words,
we dwell rather than build (Ingold 2000, p. 153). Cultural forms, forms
of life (see the next chapter), ‘only arise within the current of [our]
life activities’; they remain ‘under construction’ (p. 154). These living
forms make it possible that we ascribe moral status to entities, without

92
 Societies and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together 93

determining moral status, and also limit what we can say about the
moral status of entities.
Moral status, like other meanings, is neither given to us nor made;
it is neither a catalogue nor a layer or cloth with which we ‘cover the
world’; instead, it is ‘immanent in the relational contexts of people’s
practical engagement with their lived-in environments’ (Ingold 2000,
p. 168). In other words, the traditional, ancient (Greek) view has it
right that meaning and moral status are ‘already there’ in the world,
are immanent, but they were wrong about the static and external char-
acter of that world, the nature of moral status, and the place of humans
in it. Moral status is not attached by the mind to entities as labels
are attached to objects in a museum collection or supermarket. Moral
status is not already available to us, as inscriptions on a map that are
fixed in advance; it is, rather, something that arises out of our engage-
ment with these entities – with the world. As we ‘feel’ our way through
a moving world (Ingold 2000, p. 155) of humans and non-humans,
moral status definitions grow.
This assumes a different view of moral knowledge and of intelligence.
Moral status depends on habitus (Bourdieu 1990), instantiated in ongoing
activity, in practices; it is a skill (know-how) rather than propositional
knowledge.1 It cannot and should not be codified but has to be learned
and lived in practice, like other human skills. Bourdieu writes that what
he calls ‘practical sense’ is ‘a quasi-bodily involvement in the world which
presupposes no representation either of the body or of the world, still less
of their relationship’; rather, people have a ‘feel for the game’ (Bourdieu
1990, p. 66). However, whereas one enters, for example, a board game
by means of ‘a quasi-contract’ (p. 67), a conscious act, one is born into
a society and its conditions of existence. Practical sense is not abstract
knowledge but is incorporated, embodied. Bourdieu: ‘It is because agents
never know completely what they are doing that what they do has more
sense than they know’ (p. 69).
In robotics, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, this distinc-
tion accounts for the difference between, on the one hand, the view
that a robot should first try to model the world, represent it, before it can
act (classical artificial intelligence: the artificially intelligent computer
or robot needs a mind with codes and a symbolic system; this is the
view Dreyfus has criticized, as I will explain below), and, on the other
hand, the much more recent, emerging view that in artificial intelli-
gence one should focus on giving the robot a body: if mind is necessarily
embodied, then in a sense robots should not be ‘built’ but ‘raised’; they
should learn skills as ‘bodily’ machines.
94 Growing Moral Relations

This new view of robots and robotic ‘cognition’ is directly linked

to a view of humans as embodied beings, as developed in cognitive
science (Varela et al. 1991; see the next chapters) and phenomenology
(Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty; see below). Moreover, not only is ‘mind’
intrinsically connected to ‘body’; humans should also be understood as
constituted by their relation to their environment. There are not first
schemata or categories which allow us to build a picture of the world;
gaining knowledge is about continuous perception and experience (see
also Gibson, as summarized by Ingold 2000, p. 166). The aim is practical
knowledge, know-how.
This can be read as a criticism of mentalist interpretations of Kant’s
transcendentalist argument, which assumes that categories are ‘in’ the
mind. Instead, the transcendental ground for perception and know-
ledge – including moral perception and knowledge – is as much ‘in’ us as
it is in the world; it is in lived experience, in relations perceived, in the
forms of life that cannot be disconnected from the humans and non-
humans that live. To understand the conditions of possibility for moral
status in social–cultural terms, then, means to understand that moral
status is made possible by a culture and a sociality that are not repre-
sented or constructed, but that are instead ‘given from the start, prior
to the objectification of experience in cultural categories, in the direct,
perceptual involvement of fellow participants in a shared environment’
(Ingold 2000, p. 167 – see also Jackson 1989). It is on this soil that the
language of moral status flourishes and prolife rates – sometimes with
the excesses, spills and uselessness characteristic of life itself.
This is a relational view once again, and contrasts with traditional
metaphysics and with contemporary constructivism, which separate
and counterpose humans and their world, humans and non-humans,
culture and nature, the real and the perceived. Compared with the
transparency and clarity of models, pyramidal structures, tree diagrams,
maps and genealogies of traditional morality, this may indeed feel as if
we have to find our way in the dark. However, it is not the darkness of
death or of the nihilism which Nietzsche rightly feared – it is the dark-
ness of the forest, it is the ramble of sweating, breathing, smelling human
moral life, weaving uncertain treads and footprinting paths knowing
neither origin nor destination. (This is about moral imagination, surely,
but imagination as improvisation and flow, not as representation.)
The theoretical source of this view must be located in phenomenology,
in particular Heidegger’s work, which, together with the later work of
Wittgenstein, also inspired Dreyfus, colleague of Searle in Berkeley,
in his objections to Searle’s view. To Heidegger and Wittgenstein we
 Societies and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together 95

turn now in order to better understand society and culture as a condi-

tion of possibility for moral status ascription. Aided by interpretations
offered by Dreyfus, Ingold and others, I will interpret Heidegger and
the later Wittgenstein as offering a transcendental argument (hence as
standing firmly within the Kantian modern tradition on this point) and
as supporting the relational view of moral status that emerges here. In
this chapter I start with Heidegger.

7.2. Heidegger’s transcendental approach:

being-in-the-world and dwelling

In Being and Time (1927), Heidegger clarifies his transcendental approach

in a way that will guide my discussion of moral status ascription in this
chapter:

The question of being thus aims at an a priori condition of the possi-

bility not only of the sciences which investigate beings of such and
such a type [ ... ] but it aims also at the condition of the possibility
of the ontologies which precede the ontic sciences and found them.
(Heidegger 1927, p. 9)

In so far as moral status ascription rests on ontology, it is crucial there-

fore to clarify its a priori conditions of possibility. The properties view is
based on an ontology that defines entity X as a being of ‘such and such
a type’ to which then a particular moral status is ascribed in virtue of its
ontological (Heidegger would say: ontic) status. But what makes possible
this properties ontology itself? What makes possible the ‘moral science’
of the properties approach?
Heidegger’s transcendental view can be further clarified by the terms
being-in-the-world, dwelling and Mitsein.

Being-in-the-world
For Heidegger, we are beings-in-the-world. The world, including entities
with their ‘properties’, can only appear against the background of
involved, engaged practice. The properties view and the scientific world
view it is related to are particular ways of looking at the world. In our
daily lives, for example, we often experience the world differently.
Wrathall explains the phenomenological view as follows:

When a physicist tries to persuade you that what you really see are
light waves [ ... ] she is confusing two different things – one is the
96 Growing Moral Relations

causal interaction of our bodies and objects in the world, the other is
what it is actually like to experience the world. (Wrathall 2005, p. 9)

But even the scientific way of viewing depends on practical experience.

As Brinkmann puts it when interpreting Heidegger’s Being and Time:

In everyday life [ ... ] we do not have a sense of the world as a large

collection of value-neutral ‘things’. In fact, it takes a lot of philo-
sophical imagination to see the world in this way [ ... ]. So the disen-
chanted world is not the world of everyday, practical life. [ ... ] The
objectifying attitude, where entities turn up as discrete things, is only
possible given a background of practical involvement and concern.
(Brinkmann 2004, p. 63)

Thus, a ‘things ontology’ – for example, the one used by the moral
scientist – is only possible because there is already a more ‘primordial’
being-in-the-world that is not reflective but practical.

The meaning of anything (and any thing) must be understood

against the background of activities and practices, and the totality
of these activities and practices is what Heidegger called the world.
(Brinkmann 2004, p. 64)

‘World’ is not objective reality but, as Wrathall puts it, ‘the unified
and coherent whole that structures our relations to people and things
around us’ (Wrathall 2005, p. 75). ‘World’ refers to the practical and
relational whole that forms the background of understanding. We have
already an intuitive understanding before science organizes the world
in a particular way. When we think and talk about the moral status of
entities, therefore, we can only do that on the basis of a world. Other
entities are part of the practical and relational whole and are revealed
to us in a particular way as parts of that whole. In Heidegger’s own
words: ‘These other beings can only “meet up” “with” Da-sein because
they are able to show themselves of their own accord within a world’
(Heidegger 1927, p. 54). The scientific world view lets entities show up
in a particular way (as objects, facts etc.), but this particular way of
unconcealment should not be mistaken for the world, if this means
that one way of seeing takes epistemological priority. More generally,
for Heidegger we are in the mode of ‘knowing the world’, which has
led astray our understanding (p. 55). When we describe ‘innerworldly
beings’, ‘“world” is already “presupposed” in various ways’ (p. 60). For
 Societies and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together 97

Heidegger, ‘world’ does not refer to the objective totality of beings or

to the scientific universe; it is, rather, the transcendental ground that
makes possible talking about these things at all. Similarly, romantic talk
about ‘nature’ presupposes a world (p. 65).
Moreover, world is always relational. Even before Heidegger writes
about Mitsein (see the next section), he defines ‘world’ in a relational
way and in a way that (in contrast to Mitsein) does not exclude non-
humans but instead relates humans to non-humans. Other beings can
only show up to us on the basis of everyday being-in-the-world defined
in terms of association:

The phenomenological exhibition of the being of beings encoun-

tered nearest to us can be accomplished under the guidance of the
everyday being-in-the-world, which we also call association in the
world with innerworldly beings. (Heidegger 1927, p. 62)

Before I say more about the relational dimension of Heidegger’s view,

let me first emphasize and clarify the novelty of Heidegger’s version of
the transcendental approach. This is a kind of paradigm shift in the
history of philosophy, a ‘Copernican turn’. In this view, there are not
first ‘facts’ which we then have to make sense of, but the other way
around: the world already appears to us as meaningful and to construct
it as a collection of facts takes work – the work of science. As Ingold puts
it, in a way that is very relevant to my argument about moral status:

Cartesian ontology, which takes as its starting point the self-

contained subject confronting a domain of isolable objects, assumes
that things are initially encountered in their pure occurrentness, or
brute facticity. The perceiver has first to make sense of these occur-
rent entities – to render them intelligible – by categorising them, and
assigning them with meaning or functions, before they can be made
available for use. Heidegger, however, reverses this order of priority.
[ ... ] To reveal their occurrent properties, things have to be rendered
unintelligible by stripping away the significance they derive from
contexts of ordinary use. This, of course, is the explicit project of
natural science [ ... ]. (Ingold 2000, pp. 168–169)

Thus, ‘even’ science can only be done against the background of being-
in-the-world. Heidegger shows that science’s disengaged approach is a
‘fiction’, since even science ‘takes place against a background of involved
activity’ (Ingold 2000, p. 169).2 We are always already in the world.
98 Growing Moral Relations

We are familiar with it. Growing up and learning is getting familiar with
a world, is learning to live in a world. Things only make sense against
the background of a world. Thus, our engagement and immersion in
the world is a condition of possibility – or transcendental condition – for
experiencing ourselves as ‘entities’ and other entities as ‘entities’, that
is, as detached objects, separate from the world.
For the discussion about moral status, this approach helps us to formu-
late a more thorough critique of moral status ascription as a moral science,
a more in-depth critique of moral status reason(ing). The properties-
based approach to moral status is only possible on the basis of the tran-
scendental ground, which makes it possible to encounter other entities
as meaningful and as (possibly) having a moral status in the first place.
We do not first experience ‘neutral’ entities and then assign moral and
other properties to them. They already appear to us as part of a world of
meaning which is at the same time a moral world. World, as the back-
ground that prestructures our experience, both enables and limits how
entities can appear to us and how they relate to us and to one another.
Understanding my world means that I have ‘a grasp of the possible ways
that the various objects and people around me relate to me and each
other’ (Wrathall 2005, p. 44). To understand human being in terms of
being-in-the-world is to recognize the relational character of existence.
Recognizing this relationality means rejecting the Cartesian epis-
temology on which moral status science is based. If in experience and
practice we are already related to one another, there is no Cartesian
problem of ‘other minds’ and there is no need to provide proof of an
‘external world’. According to Heidegger, to demand such proof (not
its lack) is the real ‘scandal of philosophy’ (Heidegger 1927, p. 190). If
one wanted to construct such a proof, one would have to construct ‘an
isolated subject’ (p. 191), as Descartes did, but this would be to forget
that we are always already in the world and that our being-in-the-world
is already a being-with others:

The clarification of being-in-the-world showed that a mere subject

without a world “is” not initially and is also never given. And, thus,
an isolated I without the others is in the end just as far from being
given initially. (Heidegger 1927, p. 109)

The Cartesian subject or ego as well as the ‘external’ world are construc-
tions that themselves depend on a social–transcendental ground.
Others are always already there with us, and it is only on this basis
that we can construct ourselves as individuals that stand apart from the
 Societies and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together 99

world – a world which is always already social (see also my discussion of

Heidegger’s term Mitsein in the next section).
Thus, on the one hand, Heidegger’s approach is opposed to objectivism.
But, with its emphasis on our practical engagement with the world, it
is also opposed to subjectivism if this means ‘being concerned with the
mental’ or the ‘mind’ as an ‘inner’ realm. Thinking is always dependent
on the body, on experience, on our relation with the ‘outside’ – if such a
dichotomy still makes sense at all. Understanding is not so much cogni-
tive (understood as ‘mental’) but is social and is, as we will see later, a
way of doing, a skill. Even interpretation is not cognitive in this sense
but is a matter of use – a matter of knowing how to use (see below).
If this is true, action should also be reinterpreted. Heidegger’s view
implies that we should question the view that action concerns a relation
between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, between a mental command and some-
thing that happens in the external world.
Let me make the point in terms of intentionality. According to
Dreyfus, Heidegger wanted to go beyond views that explain action
in terms of mental states. Authors such as Searle analyse action as a
kind of ‘bodily motion caused by a reason’ (Dreyfus 1993). Heidegger,
by contrast, showed that there is also a different kind of intention-
ality, which does not involve experience of intentional content. With
Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty (1962), Dreyfus argues that in everyday
activity we are absorbed:

According to Merleau-Ponty, in everyday absorbed coping, there

is no experience of my causing my body to move. Rather acting is
experienced as a steady flow of skillful activity in response to one’s
sense of the environment. (Dreyfus 1993)

Such a kind of activity does not require mental representation. According

to Dreyfus, philosophers usually stick to describing ‘the conceptual
upper floors of the edifice of knowledge’ but ignore ‘the embodied
coping going on on the ground floor’ (Dreyfus 2006). For the latter, we
do not need representations but ‘nonconceptual embodied coping skills
we share with animals and infants’ (Dreyfus 2006, p. 43).
In their influential article ‘Towards a phenomenology of expertise’
(1991), Dreyfus and his brother have argued that moral expertise, like
any other expertise, requires skill rather than rules or principles alone.
In particular, they hold a developmental view of morality: novices may
need rules or principles, but experts have the skill to cope with (moral)
problems without relying on rules or principles.
100 Growing Moral Relations

Dreyfus has argued that therefore the project of artificial intelligence

is bound to fail, at least if it focuses on representation rather than skill.
In What Computers Can’t Do he argues that the aim of the initial AI
project was Platonic: the search for explicit definitions and instructions
(Dreyfus 1979, p. 67), ‘a total formalization of knowledge’ (p. 69). This
was also the dream of Leibniz, Turing and ‘classic’ AI. But, as Dreyfus
shows, this AI project rests on false assumptions: the brain does not
process information by means of discrete operations (biological assump-
tion), the mind does not operate by means of formal rules (psychological
assumption), not all knowledge can be formalized in terms of logical
relations (epistemological assumption), and not all relevant informa-
tion about the world is analysable as ‘a set of situation-free determinate
elements’, a set of independent facts (ontological assumption) (p. 156).
What is missing here is bodily and situated experience. Dreyfus argues
that, in contrast to what Plato and Descartes taught, the body is not
‘getting in the way of intelligence and reason’ but is ‘indispensable for it’
(p. 235). Our ability to respond to new situations depends on ‘our ability
to engage in practical activity’, our ability to experience and engage with
the world as embodied beings: with our ‘involved, situated, material
body’ (p. 236). Moreover, meaning is – to use Ihde’s words – ‘unstable’.3
Dreyfus uses Gestalt theory to argue that objects have different aspects
and that we respond to the whole object (pp. 240–241). Our experience
is holistic. Furthermore, our world is prestructured. There are no pure
objects; they always embody our concerns and values (p. 261). The situ-
ation is organized from the start. Human experience is ‘being-already-
in-a-situation in which facts are always already interpreted’ (p. 290).
Otherwise they would be ‘meaningless, isolated data’ (p. 262). This is
why usually we feel at home in the world. It is a personal and social,
public world, not a collection of brute data and hard facts.

My personal plans and my memories are inscribed in the things

around me just as are the public goals of men in general. [ ... ] My
plans and fears are already built into my experience of some objects
as attractive and others as to be avoided. (Dreyfus 1979, p. 266)

The rule-model abstracts from this being-in-the-world and engagement

with the world. It is our world: ‘We are at home in the world and can
find our way about in it because it is our world produced by us as the
context of our pragmatic activity’ (Dreyfus 1979, p. 272).
In his introduction to the MIT Press edition of What Computers Still
Can’t Do (1992), Dreyfus argues that the problem of AI is not how to
 Societies and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together 101

represent knowledge, but how to give to the computer ‘the everyday

commonsense background understanding that allows us to experience
what is currently relevant as we deal with things and people’ – in other
words: ‘a kind of know-how’ (Dreyfus 1992, p. xi). Background under-
standing is not ‘a system of implicit beliefs’, as representationalism thinks
(xvii), but know-how that cannot simply be represented as knowing-that.
Storing context-free facts and using meta-rules is not enough.
Dreyfus gives the example of knowing how to give an appropriate
gift, which requires ‘cultural savoir faire ’ that cannot be provided by
factual knowledge. Even knowing ‘the facts of nature’ such as the behav-
iour of water requires learning from experience: ‘For natural kinds like
water, then, as well as for social kinds of gifts, common sense seems to
be based on knowing-how rather than knowing that’ (Dreyfus 1992,
p. xxvii). We already have a kind of familiarity.

In general, human beings who have had a vast experience in the

natural and social world have a direct sense of how things are done
and what to expect. Our global familiarity thus enables us to respond
to what is relevant and ignore what is irrelevant without planning
based on purpose-free representations of context-free facts. [ ... ] Our
everyday coping skills and the global familiarity they produce deter-
mine what counts as the facts and the relevance of all facts [ ... ].
(Dreyfus 1992, p. xxix)

If Dreyfus is right, what is needed in robotics and AI – at least if we care

to build human-like systems at all – is skill and its related sensibilities.
I take contemporary social and humanoid robotics, in so far as it tries
to build learning robots that learn not by means of representing the
external world, but by what we may call ‘coping’ with that world, to
attempt precisely that.4
With regard to the problem of moral status, this emphasis on expertise
and skill means that relating to other entities in a good way is not a
matter of representing their properties and ascribing moral status, but,
rather, requires a kind of skilled coping with these entities based on
experience and practice. There must be a background understanding.
Whereas a ‘moral novice’ would use rules, a ‘moral expert’ relies on
her skills, involving the whole body. Hence this approach redefines the
problem of moral status: instead of a problem of representation, ascrip-
tion or declaration, it has become a problem of coping, of improvising,
of fine-tuning. If anything, it has become a (moral) art rather than a
(moral) science.
102 Growing Moral Relations

More generally, this Heideggerian approach implies that value and

moral status should not be objectified. Heidegger writes the following
about viewing value as a property:

The addition of value predicates is not in the least able to tell us

anything new about the being of goods, but rather only again presup-
poses for them the kind of being of pure objective presence. (Heidegger
1927, p. 92)

The same can be said for all kinds of entities to which we ascribe a
moral status: it is only because the entity shows up to us as an objective
presence that we then can attach that status to it. Its status comes as
no surprise, so to speak, since it already appeared as a thing. To ascribe
moral ‘status’ presupposes that the entity has the kind of being of pure
objective presence, a thing, to which we can then attach moral status.
The properties approach to moral status ascribes moral status to it in
the same way as Heidegger says value is ascribed to goods: it objectifies
entities. Talking about moral status is like talking about values, which,
according to Dreyfus, is an outcome of the same philosophical tradition
on which classical AI is based.

Although talk of values is rather new in philosophy, it represents a

final stage of objectification in which the pragmatic considerations
which pervade experience and determine what counts as an object
are conceived of as just further characteristics of independent objects
[ ... ]. (Dreyfus 1979, p. 274)

In the end, Dreyfus argues, we risk objectifying ourselves as humans. If

the ‘computer paradigm’ becomes stronger, we will think of ourselves
as ‘digital devices’ and we may become ‘progressively like machines’
(p. 280). The result of objectification and formalization is that ‘people
have begun to think of themselves as objects able to fit into the inflex-
ible calculations of disembodied machines: machines for which the
human form-of-life must be analysed into meaningless facts, rather
than a field of concern organized by sensory-motor skills. Our risk is not
the advent of superintelligent computers, but of subintelligent human
beings’ (Dreyfus 1979, p. 280).
Combining these observations with the developmental approach
Dreyfus argued for, we may view the habit of defining moral status
as a property and using rules for moral status ascription – indeed, the
activity of moral status ascription itself – as reflecting morally immature
 Societies and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together 103

ways of relating to other entities. Moreover, this habit of thinking is

an exception rather than the default mode of thinking. In everyday
dealings with other entities, we do not first think about their moral
status and then act; instead, ideally, and in difficult cases where rules
are of no help, we cope with them without thinking (viewed as mental
representation). They do not even appear as ‘entities’ at all – let alone
entities with a ‘status’. Thinking of them in terms of moral status, then,
is not very successful when it comes to the problem of coping with
other entities; we need a different kind of expertise. With Dreyfus, we
should reject the Platonic project, the ‘myth of the mental’, and the
Cartesian dualism this view presupposes, and develop an alternative
approach to moral knowledge and moral status based on skilled and
embodied engagement.
With regard to this point about the importance of (non-conceptual)
skill, embodiment and non-dualism, Dreyfus is close not only to
Merleau-Ponty but also to contemporary currents in cognitive science
that stress ‘embodiment’, in particular as developed by Verela, Thompson
and Rosch (1991) and Lakoff and Johnson (1999).
Verela et al. have argued against representationalism: according
to them, cognitivism has failed to do justice to situated, embodied
thinking. Instead, they propose the ‘enactive’ approach. Cognition is not
rule-based information processing but active shaping of environments.
We (humans, artificial intelligent robots, etc.) do not need models that
represent the world, but bodies and dynamic interaction with the world.
There are no realities in themselves; if we would achieve mindfulness
there is no little watcher of experience ‘inside the head’ (Varela et al.
1991). Similarly, Lakoff and Johnson have argued that there is no ‘fully
autonomous faculty of reason separate from and independent of bodily
capacities such as perception and movement’ and that ‘our bodies,
brains, and interaction with our environment provide the mostly
unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of
what is real’ (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, p. 17).
For moral status, this implies that, for what philosophers call ‘moral
status ascription’, we usually rely on this unconscious ‘everyday meta-
physics’. We categorize, of course, but according to Lakoff and Johnson
categories – including moral categories – are ‘not a product of conscious
reasoning’ but something that emerges from our bodies, brains and
ways of interacting with the world.

Living systems must categorize. Since we are neutral beings, our

categories are formed through our embodiment. What that means is
104 Growing Moral Relations

that the categories we form are part of our experience! [ ... ] Categorization
is thus not a purely intellectual matter, occurring after the fact of
experience. Rather, the formation and use of categories is the stuff
of experience. It is part of what our bodies and brains are constantly
engaged in. We cannot, as some meditative traditions suggest, “get
beyond” our categories and have a purely uncategorized and uncon-
ceptualized experience. (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, p. 19)

This insight is in line with Heidegger’s transcendental point. According

to Heidegger, both kinds of activities (intentional mental representation
and everyday coping) rest on a transcendental ground. As Dreyfus says,
‘both modes of intentionality presuppose being-in-the-world, which
Heidegger calls originary transcendence, and which he claims is not a
kind of intentionality at all but the condition of the possibility of both
active and contemplative intentionality’ (Dreyfus 1993).
Thus, we rely on a kind of background familiarity with things,
which enables us to act and cope. Coping is neither purely concep-
tual nor purely perceptual or bodily. As Johnson and Lakoff say about
their embodied-mind hypothesis: this view ‘radically undercuts the
perception/conception distinction’ (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, p. 37). It
is non-dualist, not in the sense that we go beyond all categories, but
in the sense that it refuses to cut up experience and activity into an
intentional conceptual part (mind) and an unconscious perceptual part
(body).
For the question concerning moral status, this view implies that moral
status ascription is something we do consciously and deliberately, but
that this kind of thinking is only derivative of everyday coping, when
we do not question the moral status of other entities. We act upon them
or with them in particular ways, without considering the ‘moral status’.
We have a kind of competence or skill (see also Chapter 9) to cope with
them. This kind of ‘background’ understanding of entities is already
presupposed when we start to think about entities, when we represent
them, when we ascribe moral status, and so on. What Heidegger writes
about meaning is also applicable to moral status: ‘Meaning is an exist-
ential of Da-sein, not a property which is attached to beings, which lies
“behind” them or floats somewhere as a “realm between.”’ (Heidegger
1927, p. 142)
The problem of moral status, like that of meaning, is about how
things appear to us and should appear to us (and about what makes
it possible that things appear to us in a certain way); moral status is
not itself a property of these things. Therefore, with Dreyfus we must
 Societies and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together 105

criticize and reject Searle’s view that we impose meaning on ‘brute

facts’. For Dreyfus, such a view is incompatible with the Heideggerian
view: ‘the logic of both constitution and of rational reconstruction
conflicts with the experience of our everyday involvement with already
meaningful things’ (Dreyfus 2001, p. 181). In the first view, ‘meaning
must be brought into the meaningless universe, from outside as it
were, by meaning-giving minds. Existential phenomenologists claim
that human beings are always-already-in a meaningful world’ (p. 186).
The social world is not constructed; we are always already in a social
world:

As Heidegger points out, we normally are not first detached minds

confronting meaningless material objects to which we subsequently
assign functions. Rather we are from the start socialized into a world
in which we cope with equipment. (Dreyfus 2001, p. 187)

Thus, the concept of a ‘moral status function’, which I construed by

using Searle (see the first sections of the previous chapter), is misguided,
since it rests on a misguided epistemology. In everyday experience,
other entities do not appear as entities. They do not appear as entities
with particular properties that allow us to give them a particular status.
Their ‘moral status’ is already part of our experience, of how they appear
to us, prior to any (conscious, deliberate, intentional) scientific descrip-
tion or moral status ascription. We simply cannot experience a ‘brute’
entity, which then needs to be given a status. With a Wittgensteinian
phrase, we could say about moral order and moral value that they are
not imposed or declared, but rather resemble light that ‘dawns grad-
ually over the whole’ (Wittgenstein 1969, §141, p. 21e).
Interestingly, this approach also leaves room for different cultures
and different ‘forms of life’ (see the next chapter on Wittgenstein), each
of which implies different experiences of ‘moral status’ – if this term is
used at all. At most, there are different ex post moral status ascriptions
(if this is done at all) and indeed different moral ‘styles’, since there are
different a priori ways of experiencing entities.
These different cultural forms are part of a more primordial being-
in-the-world that is universal, that is, a particular human way of being.
With Heidegger, we could name this ‘dwelling’.

Dwelling
Ingold’s distinction between building and dwelling, which was implicit
in the relational view I have articulated so far, is based on Heidegger’s
106 Growing Moral Relations

essay ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ (Heidegger 1971; Ingold 2000,

pp. 185–187). For Heidegger, to occupy a building does not necessarily
involve dwelling (in it). Dwelling is not the occupation of a house; it
is much more than that. Building is part of dwelling rather than the
other way around. A building is not the result of a preformed plan
but a continuous process. But what is dwelling? Heidegger relates the
meaning of dwelling to the form of (human) being.

The way in which you are and I am, the manner in which we humans
are on the earth, is Buan, dwelling. To be a human being means to be
on the earth as a mortal. It means to dwell. (Heidegger 1971, p. 147)

Cultivation and construction are part of dwelling, but dwelling is much

broader: it is ‘the basic character of human being’ (p. 148). This means
that, whatever cultural differences there may be in the way we regard
other entities (and indeed other humans), our human way of being in
the world is something that we share.
This sets limits to the range of possible moral status ascriptions:
they are limited by dwelling as a transcendental condition of possi-
bility. We can only relate to other entities as dwellers: our human being-
in-the-world constrains how we can relate to other entities. There are
different ways of experiencing entities, but we cannot go beyond human
experience.
This experience is shared. Both being-in-the-world and the ‘univer-
salism’ implied in Heidegger’s notion of dwelling should not be inter-
preted in an individualist way, as being about how we as individuals can
experience and relate. Dasein is not ‘individual’. Let me explain this in
the next section and draw conclusions for moral status ascription.

7.3. Moral status as given in a Mitwelt

Much of Being and Time gives the impression that Dasein is individual.
Heidegger’s view of the social seems to be limited to ‘Das Man’ or ‘the
one’: like other philosophers of his time, he emphasizes the danger
of conformity, mass existence. Thus, it seems as if we have the choice
between either extremely individualist existence (as promoted by Sartre,
for instance) or anonymous mass existence. However, if we attend to
Heidegger’s analysis of Mitsein and its relation to being-in-the-world,
we can highlight a different view of the social that can still be called
Heideggerian and that allows us to further develop a relational–tran-
scendental approach to moral status.
 Societies and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together 107

Mitsein can be translated as ‘being-with’. What does Heidegger mean

with this term? Consider his argument against isolationalist inter-
pretations of subjectivity (and against what we might call individu-
alism, solipsism or even contractarianism). If we start from an isolated
subject, ‘a transition from this isolated subject to the others must then
be sought’ (Heidegger 1927, p. 111). But, according to Heidegger, this
is a misunderstanding. We are always already social. What does this
mean? Heidegger employs a transcendental argument again: it is not
a scientific claim (e.g. about the social nature of humans as proven by
evolutionary biology and psychology, or a factual claim about others
being present), but a claim about the conditions of possibility of experi-
ence and a claim about human existence. Of course we might construct
others as ‘objectively present’, as ‘individuals’ or as ‘everybody else but
me’. However, in Heidegger’s view even such constructions are only
possible on the basis of a deeper ‘existential’ ground: I already share
the world with beings that are like me. Being-in-the-world is being in a
Mitwelt (with-world).

On the basis of this like-with being-in-the-world, the world is always

already the one that I share with the others. The world of Da-sein
is a with-world. Being-in is being-with others. (Heidegger 1927,
pp. 111–112)

Heidegger himself has stressed the transcendental meaning of Mitsein.

The point is not that there are others (present), but that being-with
structures my existence.

The phenomenological statement that Da-sein is essentially being-

with has an existential-ontological meaning. It does not intend to
ascertain ontically that I am factically not objectively present alone,
rather that others of my kind also are. [ ... ] Being-with existentially
determines Da-sein even when an other is not factically present and
perceived. The being-alone of Da-sein, too, is being-with in the world.
The other can be lacking only in and for a being-with. (Heidegger
1927, p. 113)

This has implications for thinking about empathy. The problem

of empathy is not one of an individual mind which then needs to
(imaginatively) build a bridge to another individual mind. In the same
way as the experience of loneliness is only possible on the basis of a
social–transcendental ground, empathy is made possible by it. Empathy
108 Growing Moral Relations

does not construct the social but presupposes it. What we call empathy
is only possible on the basis of Mitsein as an a priori. Heidegger writes:
‘“Empathy” does not first constitute being-with, but is first possible on
its basis’ (Heidegger 1927, p. 117).5
Here too Dreyfus’s interpretations of Heidegger are helpful in order to
further develop this analysis of being-with and to apply it to thinking
about moral status. In Being-in-the-world (1991) Dreyfus understands
Mitsein (being-with) as an aspect of being-in-the-world. ‘Dasein’s famil-
iarity with significance’ is a kind of ‘background familiarity’ that must
be understood as

an agreement in ways of acting and judging into which human

beings, by the time they have Dasein in them, are “always already”
socialized. Such agreement is not conscious thematic agreement but
is prior to and presupposed by the intentionalistic sort of agreement
arrived at between subjects. (Dreyfus 1991, p. 144)

Thus, Dreyfus criticizes Searle’s contractarianism, which involves a

view of the social that comes about as a result of intentional agreement
between rational subjects. Instead, there is already a background famil-
iarity; there is already a society: ‘Society is the ontological source of the
familiarity and readiness that makes the ontical discovering of entities,
of others, and even of myself possible.’ (Dreyfus 1991, p. 145)
This transcendental argument has interesting implications for
thinking about the conditions of possibility of moral status ascription.
It implies that ascribing status to entities is ‘social’ in the sense that
entities (human or non-human) can only appear to me as particular
entities on the basis of a background familiarity that is inherently
social. In other words, it is because I am already socialized in a world – a
social world – that I can talk about the moral and ontological status of
entities. Neither ‘I’ nor ‘we’ intentionally give moral status to entities.
They already appear to us ‘with’ their moral and ontological status. The
social already includes these categories. Even before I encounter other
entities, as a social being I already have ‘a readiness of dealing with
them’ (Dreyfus 1991, p. 149). How I cope with them and how I treat
them is part of my (way of) dwelling, which is always social.
In Heidegger’s idiom, this means that Mitsein is an essential constituent
of being-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world is always a Mitsein as the
condition of possibility for being-with-others. Because Dasein is already
Mitsein, it is possible that we can be with others and even that there can
be others for us at all, that others appear as others to us, that the world
 Societies and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together 109

discloses itself to us as a social world. According to Heidegger, we can

only care for others – ‘authentically’ or not – on the basis of Mitsein as an
existential structure. We are social–relational beings and this preformats
our understanding of the world and our acting in the world – including
understanding other entities and acting towards other entities. We are
nurtured into our way of experiencing. Wrathall writes:

Before we ever really begin thinking or making decisions for

ourselves, the people with whom we live have introduced us to a
particular understanding of ourselves and the world around us. This
means that I am never in a position to decide for myself how I will
understand things from the ground up, or to invent my own way
of being in the world independently of any relationship to other
human beings. Every innovation, every act of rebellion, every inde-
pendent decision is shaped by our shared understanding and norms
of behaviour. (Wrathall 2005, p. 52)

For moral status, this means that changing moral status, that is, chan-
ging our relation to other entities, changing our world – including our
moral world – is not possible as an individual act of will. I cannot invent
a different moral order because I decide to do so. If Heidegger is right,
reinventing moral status means to reinvent the world, which is always a
social world. This task is bound to fail if it is conceived of as a modernist
revolutionary project – if it could ever succeed at all.
The point is not that moral change is impossible, but rather that this
change and the possibility of this change depend on a transcendental
ground that both enables and limits moral experience and action.
But is Mitsein exclusively human? Let me discuss this issue by
responding to Olafson’s study of Mitsein. He understands Mitsein as
the ‘ground’ of ethics (Olafson 1998). According to his interpretation
of Heidegger, human beings are in the world together in a way that
‘discloses other entities and themselves’ (Olafson 1998, p. 8). Olafson
says that ‘there is a relationship in which we stand to one another that
is in some sense prior to all the substantive ethical rules under which
we live’ (p. 11).
Olafson, like Heidegger, focuses on Mitsein as the ground of human
ethics and does not consider the possibility of a sociality that includes
non-humans. However, we need not be bound by this limitation.
I propose to modify his Heideggerian thesis in a way that includes non-
humans in several ways. To understand Mitsein as the ground of ethics
then implies that other entities (including human beings) can only
110 Growing Moral Relations

appear to us as such (that is, as the particular entity and being we think
they are) on the basis of Mitsein as the social ground of appearance or
disclosure. This Mitsein can be interpreted as being exclusively human,
but it can also be extended to non-humans.
Let me first stay close to Olafson and start with the first option:
Mitsein as exclusively human. What is, in this view, the relation between
Mitsein and moral status? As human sociality, Mitsein is also the ground
of moral status ascription and of the (related) ethics of how to treat non-
humans. If such ascriptions and norms have any authority at all, it is
because they are grounded into human sociality. According to Olafson’s
interpretation of Heidegger, ‘the first and primary milieu of human
life must be constituted, not as a self-contained system of objects, but
as what Heidegger calls a Mitwelt ’ (p. 20). This implies, among other
things, that the question of ‘other minds’ – and, I would add, similar
questions about the properties of non-human entities – already presup-
poses this social world: ‘we are in effect trying to call into question
something that has enabled us to reach the point at which we can pose
the question’ (p. 25). Similarly, the contractarian view of the social,
according to which we live side by side, presupposes a social, transcen-
dental ground that is much more relational than the views that grew
out of it. Thus, expressions of naturalist, objectivist, individualist and
contractarian accounts of the social and their ethical counterparts turn
out to depend on a sociality that is very different in nature.
This view also calls into question the famous is/ought distinction,
which, as Olafson points out, supposes the existence of brute and indi-
vidual facts (p. 43), whereas to call something a fact is itself dependent on
a transcendental relational ground that is already normative. Olafson:

our life with other like beings constitutes a relation between us that
has a normative character, and it is that relation that finds expres-
sion in the “ought”. (Olafson 1998, p. 97)

I disagree with Olafson on the requirement that the relation and life
must be with ‘like beings’ if that is taken to mean ‘humans’. I draw
the following, more radical implication for moral status: the ‘ought’
that is connected to moral status ascriptions has its roots in a more
basic sociality which includes non-humans, a relational transcendental
ground that is already normative. If we say that a particular animal has
moral status and that we have obligations to that animal, for instance,
then these ascriptions of moral status to the animal and of obligations
to humans are only possible since there is already a relation between
 Societies and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together 111

humans and animals, a being-with-animals. By this I mean a relation

that is part of dwelling, of our human way of life, but also a particular
relation between particular humans and particular animals, a particular
being-with – all of which act as conditions of possibility of moral status
ascription to that animal. (The same could be said about robots or other
artificial entities, at least if and to the extent that our relation to them
would constitute a Mitsein, a being-with.)
Thus, there are two ways to fashion a transcendental argument about
moral status ascription to non-humans: either moral status ascription is
taken to presuppose an exclusively human Mitsein, which then enables
and limits what we can say about other entities, or this Mitsein is under-
stood as being itself – in principle – open to relations to other entities.
The two ways are not mutually exclusive: we can consistently claim that
moral status ascription is made possible by a being-with-humans and
a being-with-animals. We can construe being-with as a hybrid of both
kinds of Mitsein. Answering the question of moral status of another
entity then means to answer the question about the relation to that
entity, which is ultimately the question about being-with that entity:
we want to know if it is-with us and, if it is-with, then we want to know
how to be-with it.
But, in so far as Mitsein is human being-with, how does this kind
of Mitsein relate to Heidegger’s Das Man? Does this approach to moral
status imply that we have to treat animals like ‘others’ do and because
“others also do it like that”? For example, do we have to regard animals
used for food production as animal resources and treat them as things
because ‘they’ also see those animals in this way and treat them as
such? Can we continue to eat a lot of meat because ‘they’ also eat a lot
of meat? With the term das Man (the ‘one’ – as in “what one does”),
Heidegger referred to inauthenticity in the public sphere, where we do
what others do, what ‘one’ (German: man) does, and subject ourselves
to the gaze of others. Like Kierkegaard, Heidegger regarded the public
sphere as the tyranny of opinion and disengagement. It is also the
sphere of inauthentic being as ‘busyness’ (Heidegger 1927, p. 166). Is
this what Mitsein amounts to? Is this emphasis on the social dimension
of being-in-the-world a plea for ‘inauthenticity’ conformity to society,
for example conformity to society’s definitions of moral status of non-
human entities and society’s norms concerning the treatment of non-
human entities?
In order to answer this question, it is instructive to review a discus-
sion between Dreyfus, Olafson and Carman in the mid-1990s in Inquiry
about how to interpret Heidegger on Mitsein. In what we may regard
112 Growing Moral Relations

as a conversation between ‘Berkeley’ and ‘San Diego’, Olafson accused

Dreyfus of equating Mitsein with Das Man, which, according to Olafson,
must rather be defined as ‘a deformation of Mitsein’ (Olafson 1994,
p. 59). He accused Dreyfus of ascribing ‘cultural determinism’ to
Heidegger (p. 60). If Mitsein means Das Man, then individual agency
and choice disappear. Instead, Olafson argued, Heidegger described
‘a Dasein that awakens out of this tranquilized state and reclaims its
responsibility and power of individual choice in a very radical way’
(Olafson 1994, p. 63). Elsewhere Olafson interprets Heidegger in a way
that brings him close to Sartre: Das Man ‘relieves us of the necessity to
choose’, whereas we should not hide from ourselves and ‘choose choice’:
we must will to have conscience and this is what ‘constitutes authentic
responsibility’ (Olafson 1998, p. 47). Thus, Olafson affirmed an individ-
ualist–existentialist interpretation of Heidegger against what he takes
to be Dreyfus’s social–cultural determinism. Carman then replied to
Olafson that he has an over-individuated notion of Dasein and that Das
Man can also have a constitutive role. According to him, Heidegger’s
view must be distinguished from the individualism of Kierkegaard and
Sartre (Carman 1994, p. 205). If I call myself an individual, then this is
only possible ‘against a background of collective social existence that
makes individuality itself intelligible’ (p. 216). The same is true for
authenticity: ‘although existence is always my own, authentic selfhood
is not ontologically basic. I start out with a self-managing practical
orientation in the world, but I do not necessarily have any determinate
conception of myself as an individual subject or agent’ (p. 216). Carman
gives the example of eating: I manage to eat without having a descrip-
tion of myself. I have a skill. More generally, we do not need a concep-
tion of ourselves in order to engage in practical activities. Thus, if we
identify ourselves as individuals, this is only possible on the basis of
‘the prior intelligibility of the world itself’ (p. 218). If we talk about ‘Das
Man’ or make other ethical claims (e.g. moral status ascription), these
claims only make sense against that background, which already has a
normative dimension.

What makes ethical phenomena possible in the first place is this

kind of normative social understanding that governs our everyday
impersonal dealings with one another. (Carman 1994, p. 219)

This interpretation is in line with what I have said on the previous

pages. However, Carman then interprets this transcendental ground
in ‘deterministic’ terms. Das Man ‘determines’ how we experience
 Societies and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together 113

the world, and this is the way Heidegger’s claim that we are ‘given’ to
ourselves in terms of Das Man must be understood. Carman: ‘I am never
in a position to have a fresh encounter with the socialized world of
das Man since my own understanding is itself already an embodiment
of the understanding of das Man’ (Carman 1994, p. 221). This makes
it appear again as if we must choose between, on the one hand, total
determinism and conformity (Carman) and, on the other hand, abso-
lute freedom and authenticity (Olafson).
Dreyfus’s reply to Carman and Olafson first confirms Carman’s tran-
scendentalist interpretation: the ‘background familiarity which under-
lies all coping’ is something in which human beings are ‘always already
socialized’ (Dreyfus 1995, p. 425). Therefore, Mitsein is not something
that must arise on top of an individualized Dasein (as in contractari-
anism) but refers to the social world, the world I share with others, out
of which all understanding arises – including Olafson’s individualist
interpretation and Carman’s determinist interpretation. We need that
social world – even if we revolt against what ‘one’ expects. The social–
relational ground carries us as experiencing and active beings. In this
sense, we need a good deal of conformity in order to carry on with our
daily lives. As Wrathall interprets Heidegger:

It would be a disaster if you constantly had to decide on every little

thing that you were going to do (what to wear, what to eat, which
side of the road to drive on, etc.). By organizing our common world,
conformity provides the basis upon which we are free to make
important decisions. (Wrathall 2005, p. 56)

This means that even ‘authentic’ Dasein must at least act ‘in conformity
with public norms of intelligibility’ (Dreyfus 1995, p. 426). Thus,
even a ‘new’, ‘authentic’ proposal with regard to moral status always
takes place against, and depends on, a social background and must be
rendered intelligible if it is to be heard at all. Moreover, I cannot ques-
tion my relations with other entities (their ‘moral status’) all the time;
as Wrathall suggests, conformity has its benefits. This is especially true
if we consider how children are raised and necessarily must be raised:
what they learn and what they have to learn is how ‘one’ does things,
how ‘one’ names things, and how ‘one’ thinks of things.
This is also true for moral status: if we want that our children
become part of the (shared, social) world, that they become worldly
in a Heideggerian sense, then they have to learn how ‘one’ relates to
particular kinds of animals, robots, and so on. For example, young
114 Growing Moral Relations

children learn that there is a difference in ‘moral status’ between plants,

animals and humans by looking at what ‘one’ – that is, their parents and
others – does with plants, animals and humans and by imitating this.
They learn, for example, that it is OK to kill a fly in certain situations,
but that it is usually ‘not done’ to kill a cat or a dog, let alone a human
being (‘one’ does not do that; in German: Das macht man nicht).
Dreyfus’s (and Carman’s) interpretation seems to be well supported
by Heidegger’s text, which qualifies the everyday self as the ‘they’
(the ‘one’):

The self of everyday Da-sein is the they-self [ ... ]. Initially, “I” “am”
not in the sense of my own self, but I am the others in the mode of
the day. Initially, Da-sein is the they and for the most part it remains
so. (Heidegger 1927, p. 121)

And also:

the self is initially and for the most part inauthentic, the they-self.
Being-in-the-world is always already entangled. (Heidegger 1927,
p. 170)

However, if we follow Dreyfus’s interpretation, these statements should

not be taken as meaning that we are determined by Das Man (the one)
or that there is only one ‘Das Man’ (our culture is more diverse), but,
rather, that the way we are in the world is always a social way. Even
the discourse of authenticity depends on this transcendental ground,
is made possible by being-with. Thus, Dreyfus’s interpretation, which is
in tune with the later Wittgenstein’s private language argument (see the
next chapter), is a transcendental argument.
Let me further clarify this point in order to fine-tune my argument
concerning moral status. Dreyfus helpfully distinguishes between two
positions. If Heidegger is taken to make a claim about the danger of
conformism, then this is an ‘ontic ‘position, criticized by Olafson. I
also take Carman’s point about determinism to be an ‘ontic’ point. But
Heidegger’s claim is ‘ontological’, that is, concerned with the social as
a transcendental (back)ground that makes possible the ontic (Carman’s
position). (Although elsewhere in this book I did not use this distinc-
tion between ‘ontic’ and ‘ontological’,6 since there was no need for it,
here I think the distinction does some work.)
According to Dreyfus, which interpretation of Heidegger we choose –
ontic or ontological – depends on what we want to do, on our goals
 Societies and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together 115

(Dreyfus 1995, pp. 428–429). Since I want to bring out how moral
status ascription depends on the way the world is already disclosed
to us ‘before’ we ascribe moral status, I go with the ontological inter-
pretation and emphasize the social as a background condition that
makes possible moral status ascription. This implies that the ‘danger’
associated with ‘Das Man’ – the danger of conformity – is given less
attention here. I do not say that Olafson is wrong when he attributes a
Sartrean individualism to Heidegger – I accept that there are passages
that warrant such an interpretation. And it may be true that there is a
danger in following received views of moral status or about anything
else (although I am sceptical about expressing these concerns within a
discourse of authenticity), as it may also be true that we should be more
care-full (have more Sorge) concerning our relations to other entities
and perhaps try to change them. But these claims remain at the ontic
level. Rather, given my aim here, I endorse and emphasize Dreyfus’s
and Heidegger’s transcendentalism and argue that such ontic claims
and the ontic language game with its criteria for truth that belongs to
it – that is, the ontic claim that entity X has moral status S, which comes
with criteria that refer to particular properties P of the entity that justify
the claim – presuppose the ontological structure of the social. The social
is the background against which ontic claims can be foregrounded, the
transcendental ground on which the ontic grows as the disclosure of
entities and their status from within a particular world view or way of
doing – from within what Wittgenstein called a ‘form of life’.
Indeed, Dreyfus’s transcendentalist interpretation of Heidegger links
his thinking to the later Wittgenstein and some of his most insightful
interpreters, to whom I now turn. However, in contrast to many of
Heidegger’s and Wittgenstein’s interpreters, I will not employ the tran-
scendental argument to re-enforce a sharp distinction between the
human and the non-human, but rather to call that distinction into
question. The social transcendental ground, I will argue, is much more
hybrid than Heidegger and Wittgenstein supposed.
8
Societies and Cultures (2):
Forms of Life

A different way of making the argument in the previous two chapters

would be to say that moral status ascription presupposes ‘a form of
life’. What does this mean, and what can be gained by using this term?
Wittgenstein’s concept ‘form of life’ (Lebensform) lends itself to different
interpretations. Here I will respond to what we may call Gier’s ‘pluralist’
interpretation, which takes ‘form of life’ to have linguistic, behavioural,
cultural and biological aspects. But let me start with Wittgenstein’s own
words.

8.1. Moral status as given in a form of life: using

Wittgenstein

In the Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein 1953), Wittgenstein

introduces the term as follows:

to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life (§19, p. 11)

speaking of a language is part of an activity, or of a form of life
(§23, p. 15)
it is in their language that human beings agree. This is agreement not
in opinions, but rather in form of life. (§241, p. 94)

In his Philosophy of Psychology (also known as part II of the Philosophical

Investigations) he adds:

What has to be accepted, the given, is – one might say – forms of life.
(§345, p. 238)

116
 Societies and Cultures (2): Forms of Life 117

These passages must be related to Wittgenstein’s so-called ‘private

language argument’ in §§243–271 (and following) of the Philosophical
Investigations. Wittgenstein asks if it is ‘conceivable that there be a
language in which a person could write down or give voice to his inner
experiences [ ... ] for his own use?’, that is, in a language which another
person cannot understand (§243, p. 95). His answer is negative. If we
use ordinary language, that language is already shared, public. Of course
we could emit ‘an inarticulate sound’. But even such a sound ‘is an
expression only in a particular language game’ (§261, p. 99). Otherwise
it is not meaningful. Thus, there is no ‘private language’ if this means
that it can be known only to the speaker; if an utterance is to be
meaningful at all, it must be subject to public rules and shared under-
standing. Wittgenstein’s concept ‘form of life’ can be taken to refer to
such a kind of shared background understanding, which is ‘given’ – not
constructed. Speaking of a language is part of an activity; it should not
be isolated from life.
Moreover, Wittgenstein moves from agreement in a contractarian
sense (‘agreement in opinions’) to agreement ‘in form of life’. If he
says that when we speak we must presuppose a shared background
understanding, this ‘sharing’ should not be understood as a rational
agreement among rational subjects. Rather, we have grown into it by
learning the use of words, by learning how to do things (with words
and with things), by growing up in a world of things and people, by
what Heidegger would call being-in-the-world: before we speak, we are
already engaged in the world and we already live in a language. We live
in what we may call a ‘language-world’.
Applied to moral status ascription, this means that, when we ascribe
moral status, this presupposes a language – it is a moral language if
you wish – which in turn depends on something given: an activity or
a ‘form of life’. What we can say about the moral status of entities is
both enabled and limited by this ‘given’. In this sense, moral status
ascription is already ‘in’ language, that is, it is given ‘in’ a particular
form of life. This view contrasts with the contractarian view of moral
status ascription as agreement: we must not suppose a moral–linguistic
contract but a form of life, in which moral status ascriptions are given
and shared.
On the basis of my interpretation so far, we could say that moral
status ascription is a language game, which presupposes a form of
life. Consider some of the examples of language games provided by
Wittgenstein: giving orders, reporting an event, making up a story,
118 Growing Moral Relations

telling a joke, cursing (§23, p. 15). When you tell a joke, for instance,
this joke will only ‘work’, that is, make sense, if the participants in the
game share a form of life. This is why some jokes do not work when they
are translated; telling jokes may well be a ‘universal’ language game but
telling and understanding a particular joke always presuppose a shared
form of life and becomes meaningless when this precondition is absent.
Similarly, moral status ascription is a language game that presupposes
a form of life, in the absence of which the words would become mean-
ingless. Perhaps the particular moral status ascription game played in
Western modern philosophy does not make as much sense in other
cultures, at least in so far as it presupposes the Western scientific atti-
tude and a way of relating to things which Heidegger described in terms
of ‘Gestell’ and ‘standing-reserve’. It is only because we already live and
experience in a way that presupposes a world of bare facts and naked
entities that do not stand in relation to one another that we can play
the game of moral status ascription or that we can ask, as contractari-
anism does, which principles should guide society, how society should
be constructed.
Thus, there is moral agreement not in opinions but in a ‘form of
life’, an agreement that is given, that must be presupposed before we
can speak, before we can express any moral opinion, for example any
opinion about moral status, about the environment or about how to
build and structure society. But what, exactly, are ‘forms of life’? When
I use the term ‘language-world’ and give the examples of translating
jokes – do I mean a ‘culture’?
In order to answer this question, we need to clarify Wittgenstein’s
epistemology. Wittgenstein emphasizes a skill-oriented conception of
knowledge, and this has influenced Dreyfus (see the previous chapter).
According to Wittgenstein, knowledge is an ability or competence: ‘One
has already to know (or to able to do) something before one can ask
what something is called’ (Wittgenstein 1953, §30, p. 18). Asking about
the name of something (that is, attaching a name-tag to the entity) is
a language game, which belongs to a form of life. Learning a language
is growing into a world. As I will further argue in the next chapter,
knowledge is not a matter of representation, but is a kind of know-how.
Wittgenstein writes:

The grammar of the word “know” is evidently closely related to the

grammar of the words “can”, “is able to”. But also closely related to
that of the word “understand”. (To have ‘mastered’ a technique.)
(Wittgenstein 1953, §150, p. 65 – compare also §205, p. 88)
 Societies and Cultures (2): Forms of Life 119

Applied to moral status, this means that any questioning concerning

the moral status of an entity and indeed any ascription of moral status
to an entity, if it is to be meaningful, presupposes that we already know
the entity, or, rather, that we are already able to do what is morally
required – that is, that there is already a form of life that enables us to
(meaningfully and morally) relate to the entity. The entity has already
a name – its ontological and moral status is already preconfigured in
language, so to speak, it is already part of our world – and we have
already our ways of relating to it in experience and activity. Both are
intrinsically connected; learning a language is learning a form of life.
Moral status ascription requires moral know-how; it requires that we
master the technique of relating to the entity. Coping with the entity
has already been shown and done before we can speak about it. If we
forget this and ‘naively’ play the game of moral status ascription in a
very abstract way, for example as being about moral status functions or
about the relation between ‘the truth about this object’ and the ‘moral
property of this object’, then our ‘language goes on holiday ’ (§38, p. 23).
In itself (uttering) a moral status function is meaningless; it implies
that – to say it in a Wittgensteinian way – ‘nothing has been done’
(§49, p. 28), unless the utterance is embedded in a context of meaning,
an activity, a practice and a background of meaning – a form of life.
Highly abstract moral status functions are ‘inarticulate sound’; they are
meaningless.
This background cannot easily be formulated; it is more tacit or implicit
knowledge. We may refer here to Polanyi, for sure, but also directly to
Wittgenstein. Consider Wittgenstein 1953 §75, p. 40, his remark about
tacit presupposition in the Philosophy of Psychology §31, and, of course,
Wittgenstein 1953, §89, p. 47, where Wittgenstein quotes Augustine’s
famous words in the Confessions about the definition of time: si nemo ex
me quaerat scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio: when no-one asks me,
I know; when I want to explain it I do not know. Compare also the text
Wittgenstein added to §138, p. 59: ‘Don’t I also sometimes think I under-
stand a word [ ... ] and then realize that I did not understand it?’ We
do not know language in the form of propositional knowledge; rather,
the know-how is presupposed. This know-how acts as a condition of
possibility for speaking about moral status. Wittgenstein’s transcenden-
talism (see also later in this chapter) shows itself when he writes:

Thinking is surrounded by a nimbus. – Its essence, logic, presents

an order: namely, the a priori order of the world; that is, the order of
possibilities, which the world and thinking must have in common.
120 Growing Moral Relations

But this order [ ... ]. It is prior to all experience, must run through
all experience; [ ... ]. But [it] does not appear as an abstraction, but
as something concrete, indeed, as the most concrete, as it were the
hardest thing there is [ ... ]. (Wittgenstein 1953, §97, p. 49)

In the following pages of this book I hope to develop a notion of moral

status ‘ascription’ as skill that presupposes a form of life, understood
as an a priori ordering of the world that is very concrete and practical.
I will say more on the notion of skill and its relation to morality in
the next chapter. But at this point we first need to know more about
what Wittgenstein means with a ‘form of life’, that is, which will allow
us to further explore the landscape of the conditions of possibility
of moral status ascription. Let me discuss different interpretations of
Wittgenstein’s term ‘form of life’ – its ‘family of meanings’, so to speak –
and apply them to the problem of moral status (ascription).

8.2. The cultural–social interpretation

Peter Winch has offered a social–cultural interpretation of the concept

‘forms of life’. In The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy
(Winch 1958), he re-enforces Wittgenstein’s private language argument
and says that languages are ‘based on a common life in which many
individuals participate’ (Winch 1958, p. 33). Language use makes sense
only within a social context. According to Winch, then, elucidating
the concept of a form of life equals understanding ‘the nature of social
phenomena’ (p. 42), which in turn depends on understanding the rela-
tion between social relations and language. He criticizes sociology and
social psychology for neglecting the question of what it means to use
and to have a language.

The impression given is that first there is language (with words having
a meaning, statements capable of being true or false) and then, this
being given, it comes to enter into human relationships and to be
modified by the particular human relationships into which it does so
enter. What is missed is that those very categories of meaning, etc.,
are logically dependent for their sense on social interaction between
men. [ ... ] There is no discussion of how the very existence of concepts
depends on group-life. (Winch 1958, p. 44)

In light of the relational arguments in Part I, we need to be critical of

Winch’s restriction of social interaction to inter-human interaction.1
 Societies and Cultures (2): Forms of Life 121

But Winch’s main point is clear and supports what has been said in the
previous chapter: words, concepts and their meaning – including moral
words and concepts, we may add – are not independent tools by which
we can give an (objective) account of social relations but presuppose the
social life.
In order to develop this claim, let us consider again Wittgenstein’s
stress on language use, which he relates to habit, (social) institutions
and technique:

To follow a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game

of chess, are customs (usages, institutions). To understand a sentence
means to understand a language. To understand a language means to
have mastered a technique. (Wittgenstein 1953, §199, p. 87 – compare
also §205, p. 88)

Thus, language games are inherently social. The emphasis is on habit

and (social) practice. According to Wittgenstein, following a rule (which
one does in a language game) cannot be done privately but is a matter
of practice: ‘otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the
same thing as following it’ (Wittgenstein 1953, §202, p. 88).
For Winch, even the criteria of logic depend on the social: they ‘arise
out of, and are only intelligible in the context of, ways of living or modes
of social life’ (p. 100). Formal systems presuppose the social relations
and activities from which they have been removed. But, as Winch says,
‘like any abstraction not recognized as such, this can be misleading. It
may make one forget that it is only from their roots in this actual flesh-
and-blood intercourse that those formal systems draw such life as they
have’ (p. 126).
Note that this is a much broader ‘linguistic turn’ than that promoted
by early analytic philosophy. In contrast to many of his twentieth-
century followers, Wittgenstein moved from an ‘atomistic’ and ‘repre-
sentational’ view of language (in the Tractatus) to a non-objectivist
view, ‘rejecting the idea that the function of language was primarily to
provide a description of the world’ (Easton 1983, p. 132). As Rubinstein
remarks in Marx and Wittgenstein:

Wittgenstein’s suggestion that philosophical problems are deeply

rooted in social life has not been followed up by philosophers
attempting to use his methods. Instead, philosophical inquiry has
been focussed on linguistic usages narrowly defined. (Rubinstein
1981, p. 137)
122 Growing Moral Relations

Instead, for Wittgenstein language is ‘inconceivable apart from social

life’ (Rubinstein 1981, p. 173). Like Benton and Easton (Easton 1983),
Rubinstein goes as far as to link Wittgenstein to Marx. Both thinkers
‘contend that human consciousness implies a human body’, they
think that ideas, actions and meaning must be related to their social
context, and they share ‘a social conception of the person’: they hold
that ‘the human individual is inconceivable apart from the history
of participation in a human community’ (Rubinstein 1981, p. 186).
Benton also ascribes to Wittgenstein the view that language use is
‘inseparably tied to social practice’ (Benton 2002, p. 150). But, what-
ever the relation to Marxist thought, Winch’s, Gier’s, Rubinstein’s,
Benton’s and Easton’s interpretations of Wittgenstein bring out the
social aspect of language use.
I infer that moral status ascription, understood as a form of language
use, depends on social relations, on the social context which renders
the sounds we make meaningful. If ‘principles, precepts, definitions,
formulae – all derive their sense from the context of human social
activity in which they are applied’ (Winch 1958, p. 57), then moral
status ascription and its principles must be understood as inherently
and deeply social. Knowing how to ascribe moral status, then, is not
about knowing the right formula or principle, but is itself a way of
doing, a know-how in a social context in which it makes sense. And
learning how to do things is what Dreyfus would call learning a skill.
This does not mean that we (should) all do the same thing, but that
learning a skill is always social learning. Like Dreyfus, Winch makes a
distinction between different levels of expertise when he distinguishes
imitation from rule-following:

Learning how to do something is not just copying what someone

else does; it may start that way, but a teacher’s estimate of his pupil’s
prowess will lie in the latter’s ability to do things which he could
precisely not simply have copied. (Winch 1958, p. 58)

Thus, when raised in a particular culture, a person will learn that an

entity X counts as Y in a particular social context. That person will
learn a rule. But, with Dreyfus, we can say that, if the person is to
become a ‘moral expert’ with regard to moral status, (s)he will have to
acquire a level of know-how that relies on intuition rather than rule-
following. For example, when the person encounters an entity she has
never encountered before, rule-following may not suffice. Moreover,
both the rule and the ‘expert’ intuition will always depend on forms of
 Societies and Cultures (2): Forms of Life 123

life understood as the social life. As said, moral status ascription only
makes sense within a social context. For example, ascribing moral status
to animals is only meaningful in a context of specific human–animal
relations, which have become problematic (for example when vegetar-
ians argue that it is not necessary to eat meat or when new methods of
farming or slaughtering are proposed). But dealing with these problems
cannot be done from a ‘view from nowhere’; there is already a form of
life within which the problem and the entity show up in the first place.
In this sense, moral status ascription presupposes the social institutions
and ‘ways of life which give [ ... ] acts their meaning’ (Winch 1958, p. 83).
Its rules, ‘like all others, rest on a social context of common activity’
(p. 84). We have learned to do things in a certain way; what we do – for
instance, eating meat or not eating meat – is part of a common way
of doing things. As Dreyfus puts it in his interpretation of Heidegger’s
view of technology:

The shared practices into which we are socialized, then, provide a

background understanding of what counts as things, what counts
as human beings, and ultimately what counts as real, on the basis of
which we can direct our actions toward particular things and people.
(Dreyfus 1997, p. 44)

For moral status ascription, this means that the moral status we ‘give’
to animals and things – and indeed to humans – depends on existing
practices and our socialization into these practices. In this sense, moral
status ascription presupposes a whole culture (for instance, a ‘meat
culture’). Therefore, when we question and try to change the concepts,
principles and rules related to moral status ascription, we do not chal-
lenge a particular moral status or (better) way of ascribing moral status;
we are challenging a way of life. This is why Diogenes was an outcast
and why Socrates was sentenced to death. To challenge a form of life is
usually regarded as a scandal.
Today our societies tend to be or become more tolerant. However,
even if we now have more freedom to challenge accepted social norms,
the transcendental–phenomenological view that emerges here teaches
us that we have to learn to accept the limits of what moral status ascrip-
tion can do. The limits meant here are not visible or explicit political
restrictions on our freedom, but, rather, invisible, salient constraints on
our thinking and our ways of doing that have to do with the form of
life ‘in’ which we live. These borders of (moral status) thinking can be
as constraining as other borders and we cannot simply change them.
124 Growing Moral Relations

From a Heideggerian point of view, there is a ‘clearing’ in which things

and people appear, but we do not produce the clearing; rather, ‘it
produces us’ (Dreyfus 1997, p. 44). Can we really change our way of life,
that is, can we change our culture or is it something that happens to us?
Perhaps we should ‘await’ a new culture?
Even if we reject this Heideggerian fatalism (or at least a fatalistic
interpretation of Heidegger), we ‘first’ have to understand what we are
doing before we can try to change our way of ascribing moral status (for
example, proposing a relational theory). What we can change with regard
to the moral status of non-humans is limited by existing social relations
among humans and between humans and non-humans. Our way of
thinking is constrained by our way of seeing and doing; this makes it so
hard to change. Moral change requires us to get rid of bad habits (habits
of thinking and doing), which cannot simply be changed because they
are part of a larger form of life. Changing thinking and changing doing
are entangled. Introducing new ideas, a new way of looking at things,
goes hand in hand with ‘the adoption of new ways of doing things
by people involved’ (Winch, p. 122; my emphasis). Developing a new
habitus is difficult. Our ways of thinking are embodied in social insti-
tutions, but these institutions are themselves rooted in practices and
social relations. Therefore, changing views about moral status requires
changing society, changing culture, changing forms of life understood
as ‘cultural forms, styles, and structures’ (Gier 1980, p. 253).
If we wish to come up with a new way of moral status ascription,
therefore, we will always have to answer those who say: “This is what
one does” or “This is what we do” – as humans and as members of a
particular society and culture, maybe also as inhabitants of a particular
village or community. In the end, changing moral status ascription
means changing our world view (Weltbild ), the life form at its most
general level, which, according to Gier, constitutes an ‘inherited back-
ground’ (p. 254), the background against which we ascribe moral status
and make other conceptualizations, distinctions and categorizations.
Introducing a different way of talking about non-humans, therefore,
means introducing a different way of viewing the world. And this would
require creating a different world that rests on different practices – with
‘world’ being understood in a Heideggerian and Wittgensteinian sense.
If this can be done at all, it cannot be a matter of ‘individual’ action
alone – doing things with things and doing things with words. If
cultures are ‘made’ at all, they are not made by ‘individuals’. And, if we
could propose something new, we would most certainly incur the risk
that the persons we address do not understand us or see us as ‘dogs’.
 Societies and Cultures (2): Forms of Life 125

A new culture has to grow, and at most we (as ‘individuals’) participate

in that process of growth. Our ways of seeing reality and moral order
cannot be transformed but must grow.

8.3. The biological–material interpretation

However, Wittgenstein’s concept ‘form of life’ must not be interpreted

in social–cultural terms only. This interpretation is not ‘wrong’, but
our analysis needs to be broadened. In preparation of the argument
in the following chapter, which discusses bodily and material condi-
tions of possibility, let me draw the reader’s attention to the biological
interpretation of Wittgenstein’s concept ‘forms of life ’. This interpret-
ation has initially been proposed by Hunter, but in this section I shall
follow Gier (1980; 1981; 1990) and Benton in their efforts to make this
interpretation compatible with the social–cultural interpretation. They
claim that language (use) does not only depend on our social–cultural
ways of doing things, but also presupposes our ways of living, by which
they mean our ways of being and doing as biological organisms reacting
to our environment. Having a form of life is not only about having a
culture but also about having a body. Thus, using a language – including
ascribing moral status – is not just something ‘mental’ but involves the
whole body. As Gier summarizes Hunter’s view on this:

Learning a language [ ... ] is a type of tacit knowing that involves very

little cognition. It is more akin to training and practice, training that
is not different in kind from training an animal. Furthermore, the
language of pain, for example, is integrally connected with facial
expressions and other reactions of the bodily organism. Therefore,
humans, because of the natural history of their species, speak a
universal language of pain. (Gier 1980, p. 247)

Applied to moral status ascription, this implies that ascribing moral

status to a particular non-human is not just a ‘mental’ matter, some-
thing that goes on in the ‘head’, or a matter of (ways of) doing things
in relation to social–cultural norms alone (i.e. how we act and how we
use to act in a particular culture); it also depends on how we bodily,
physically re-act to the non-human. As a bodily being, we react differ-
ently to a stone than to a highly developed animal. Our response is
partly entrenched in bodily patterns that have evolved in the course
of natural history. For example, humans can respond empathically to
humans and to some ‘categories’ of animals (those called “pets”), but
126 Growing Moral Relations

this process does not generally take off in relation to other entities.
Another example: we use particular gestures when we deal with pets,
whereas our body does different things when we deal with ‘wild’
animals. We have certain ways to deal with particular animals; we have
embodied know-how.
This does not mean that ‘morality is in the genes’, but rather that
moral status ascription presupposes concrete flesh-and-blood interac-
tions in which humans as mental–bodily–cultural beings respond and
react to the entities they encounter. Nature and nurture go together. We
learn to express our (bodily) feelings; our experience is mediated by the
culture in which we live. This insight also entails that our response, in
so far as it is both ‘biological’ re-action and ‘cultural’ response, escapes
our full intentional and individual control. It means, for example, that,
while we know that a particular robot is not human (propositional know-
ledge), we may still react in a social way as if the robot were human or
show confusion about how to react (in need of different know-how or
lack of know-how) due to our common biology and due to the way
we are raised in a particular culture. Another example: someone who
was raised in a family with a dog will most likely respond to dogs in
a different way than someone who has little experience with these
animals, and both will react to it in a way that is not fully under their
control – even if they know things about dogs or about that particular
dog that is supposed to justify another reaction. Our (moral) language
use, and our language as a whole, depends on these bodily–material
conditions, which are at the same time biological and cultural. Perhaps
this is how we should interpret Wittgenstein’s sentence:

Giving orders, asking questions, telling stories, having a chat, are

as much part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking,
playing. (Wittgenstein 1953, §25, p. 16)

Similarly, dealing with other entities is as much part of our natural

history as walking, eating, drinking and playing. Moral status ascription
and other language games depend on what we do as biological, natural
beings; for example, how we experience other entities and act towards
them as embodied beings. Moral order does not belong to a separate
domain ‘culture’ that is inscribed on a bare ‘nature’, like ink engraved
into a blank piece of paper; it grows out of social–natural activity and
experience (see also the next chapter). Forms of life are forms of life.
This argument does not amount to an absolute naturalization or
materialization of the concept ‘forms of life’; rather, it seeks to go
 Societies and Cultures (2): Forms of Life 127

beyond modern, Cartesian dualism. The body should not be construed

as something entirely separate from the mental or from (social) activity
and (social) practice. Therefore, as Gier rightly argues, this biological
interpretation of forms of life should not be viewed as an alternative
to the social–cultural interpretation. The biological is entangled with
the cultural. At the level of activities or skills, both aspects are rele-
vant. They involve learning of rules as well as physiological changes.
As Gier says, ‘there is as much sociology in such activities as biology’
(Gier 1980, p. 249).

When Wittgenstein tells us to observe how in fact our common lives

are structured, he is not only exhorting us to look at ourselves as
an animal species, but also to look at our inherited cultural ways of
viewing things. (Gier 1980, p. 251)

Culture is natural to humans (Gier 1980, p. 254) and – I would like to

add – there is no ‘pure’ nature apart from our cultural ways of seeing
(see also the next chapter). Hence, unless the socio-logical interpret-
ation by Winch is revised to include a bio -logical dimension, it is too
one-sided a definition of Wittgenstein’s concept.
But does this stress on biology mean that we should exclude the
‘artificial’ and the technological from our analysis? Certainly not: to
emphasize life means also to emphasize our technological, material
relation to nature. To argue why this is so, it is useful to turn to Marx
again, in particular Benton’s interpretation of Marx. The concept that
links biology and technology here is needs (this chapter) but also skill
(see especially the next chapter).
Let us start with needs. Bodily beings have needs and forms of life,
and respond to, and are shaped by, those needs. Like Gier, Benton criti-
cizes Winch’s neglect of the biological, bodily, material dimension of
forms of life – with a focus on the latter. From his Marxist perspec-
tive, he observes that Winch failed ‘to grasp the “metabolism” between
human societies and their naturally given conditions of existence”
(Benton 2002, p. 154). In Marx’s view, the social life is always engaged
with nature ‘in order to derive the material requirements of individual
and collective life’, an engagement with nature which in turn requires
cooperative activity (p. 159). Benton describes the relation between the
natural and the social as follows:

Humans are themselves materially embodied, while forms of social

life persist at all only insofar as they have social organisation,
128 Growing Moral Relations

technical skills, and so on sufficient to sustain the bodily functions

of their members, as well as the material and energy requirements
of their social life through continuous interchange with nature.
(Benton 2002, p. 154)

In his Marxist interpretation of Wittgenstein, playing language games

(and I add: playing what we may call ‘the moral status game’) is only
possible on the basis of ‘certain facts about our own nature and that
of material objects, media and substances’ (Benton 2002, p. 155). Here
Benton comes close to a transcendental argument:

These features of both ourselves and the natural world are, for
Wittgenstein, preconditions for meaningful social interaction, and
for language itself. They are therefore prior to and independent of
the language-games they enable us to play, the meanings they allow
us to express. (Benton 2002, p. 155)

This view also opens up the idea that there may be a shared natural
basis for ‘cross-species understanding’ (Benton 2002, p. 158). Benton
even suggests the idea of engaging in ‘serious study of the forms of
life of non-human species’ and encourages us to think about ‘human
commonality with other species’ (p. 158).
There are further commonalities between Marx and Wittgenstein that
bring out the biological dimension of forms of life, and its entangle-
ment with materiality and with sociality. For example, Schatzki has
interpreted the later Wittgenstein as a ‘natural historian’: Wittgenstein
stressed activity and activity is ‘inherently social’ (Schatzki in Kitching
and Pleasants 2002, pp. 57–59). But, as I said, this does not exclude
the biological: Schatzki suggests that Wittgenstein and Marx did not
assume an opposition between nature and society. Both thinkers see
society as a part of nature and vice versa (p. 60); our ‘evolved sociality’
is transformed through its ‘entanglements’ with nature. Rubinstein
even notices ‘hints of an evolutionary psychology in Marx and
Wittgenstein’:

The rooting of language-games in “natural, instinctive” reactions

resembles the claim that culture is built around evolved dispositions.
And, contrary to Marxist critics of evolutionary psychology, Marx
himself described humans as developing in relation to the natural
environment, seeing nature as “the inorganic body of man” [ ... ].
(Rubinstein in Kitching and Pleasants 2002, p. 71)
 Societies and Cultures (2): Forms of Life 129

However, Rubinstein immediately adds that neither Marx nor

Wittgenstein believed that this implies that our practices are controlled
or constrained by biology – by which Rubinstein probably means: our
practices are not caused by ‘biology’. In other words, while culture
depends on nature (and on materiality), they do not determine our prac-
tices or our societies. Indeed, Rubinstein proposes to read Marx and
Wittgenstein in a non-deterministic, non-reductionist way:

Marx is inclined to exaggerate the rootedness of culture in material

existence and Wittgenstein its autonomy. But both ultimately back
away from the reductionism of those who believe that one or another
factor “ultimately” drives behaviour. (Rubinstein in Kitching and
Pleasants 2002, p. 74)

This position also implies that the natural and the material are not
free-standing or autonomous either. Cultural practices also mediate the
material. Rubinstein interprets Marx and Wittgenstein as making ‘the
argument that we cannot say what a machine or an ox is, except in rela-
tion to a “form of life”.’ Rubinstein concludes that neither culture nor
nature is more ‘basic’ (Rubinstein in Kitching and Pleasants 2002, p. 75).
These are interesting ideas in the light of the question of moral
status. First, as I argued, moral status – initially defined as dependent
on ontological status – can only be defined in relation to a ‘form of life’.
Moral status ascription, if we must use this term at all, does not make
sense outside such a form. However, instead of viewing this relation in
terms of a (Marxist or Hegelian) ‘dialectic’ of culture and nature, which
presupposes a divide between language/thought/culture on the one
hand and biological/natural life on the other hand, I propose a transcen-
dental argument, which I take to be more in tune with Heidegger and
Wittgenstein: forms of life are conditions of possibility for moral status
ascription, and they are at the same time cultural and biological.
Second, the concept of forms of life, to the extent that it has a
biological dimension, may be applied to other biological entities and
perhaps even material entities. The concepts Mitsein and forms of life
are usually only applied to humans. Heidegger and Wittgenstein viewed
human beings as having their own specific way of being (their way of
being-in-the-world), their own form of life. They did not apply the term
to non-humans. But, if we take seriously the biological dimension of
forms of life, there is a lot humans and animals share – not only in
terms of properties but also and more importantly in terms of activities
and ways of doing – and hence their forms of life merge to some extent.
130 Growing Moral Relations

We may use Gadamer’s term Horizontverschmelzung (merging of hori-

zons) to name this merging of forms of life – however, then we use
the term not in the sense of mutual ‘interpretation’ but in the sense of
doing and thinking things in a similar way.
On this account, we can conceive of the possibility of a merging of
horizons between humans and robots, at least if and to the extent that
human and robotic ways of doing overlap. This interpretation would
require us to emphasize the social–cultural aspect of forms of life, but
it is not incompatible with the material interpretation. I do not know if
in the future we might come to witness a form of human–robot Mitsein,
which is neither purely ‘cultural’ nor purely ‘material’. But it is plaus-
ible that if, and to the extent that, humans and robots share a way of
doing, some kind of being-with might emerge, or at least this is how it
may appear to the human subject and how it may shape the lives of the
humans involved.
For moral status of animals, this approach would imply that we
replace (alleged) context-free discourses on the moral status of animals
by the recognition of their preconditional basis in relations between
humans and other species, shared natural–existential features and
species-specific forms of life – forms of life which have material and
biological aspects. Again, some forms of being-with can be said to
emerge in specific contexts, especially if we consider not only shared
needs but also what some humans and animals do together in these
contexts – partly to meet those needs.
This approach implies that we accept that our ‘moral status game’
is limited by the forms of life we can imagine – ‘singular’ and ‘mixed’
ones. If, for instance, we try to ascribe moral status to imagined extra-
terrestrial aliens, then such an exercise is futile and meaningless, unless
there is some (imagined) similarity in form of life between humans and
these aliens. But the situation is different and much less complicated
with many (known) animals, whose forms of life partly overlap with
human forms of life in both a biological and a social–cultural sense.
We can conclude from Benton’s theory that, if someone strongly
resists ascribing any moral status to animals, that person unjustly
denies shared natural–existential features and similarities in form of
life – and therefore denies not only the nature of the other being but
also a part of her own nature. This is a moral–epistemological failure.
However, I resist Benton’s apparent scientific–objectivist form of
naturalism here: the mentioned similarities in natural ‘features’ and
forms of life cannot be viewed from an ‘objective’ point, a view from
nowhere; we always already interpret these features and similarities
 Societies and Cultures (2): Forms of Life 131

from our human point of view. Moral status ascription is a human

language game, which presupposes a human form of life – even if
this may never be a ‘purely’ human form of life but always already
‘mixed up’ with animal forms of life (and perhaps even robotic forms
of life). In this sense, but in this sense only, moral status ascription
must remain ‘anthropocentric’. 2
To accept the existence of ‘mixed’ forms of life or overlap between
forms of life between different kind of entities, human and non-human,
is not to deny that there are (parts of) forms of life (Wittgenstein) or
‘existentials’ (Heidegger) that are specifically human. For example, I
agree with Wittgenstein that animals cannot hope (Wittgenstein 1953,
p. 229), at least in the human sense of the term, since they do not have
human language. Thus, ‘emotions talk’ as a language game is specific-
ally human. But this does not exclude the fact that humans and some
animals share the possibility of having feelings and expectations, which
has to do with our shared evolved biological make-up. (Perhaps some
species can have a species-specific form of ‘hope’.) More: ‘emotions
talk’ as a language game is itself dependent on this condition of possi-
bility: our human language and our knowledge of emotions are not
(merely) propositional knowledge but an embodied kind of know-how.
We learn to hope as an embodied being in relation to specific people,
things, animals and gods; in this way we become skilled at hoping, we
develop a hope habitus.3 But some animals can have a similar experi-
ence and habit, even if it cannot experience it as “hope”. In humans and
(particular) animals, both experience (for example emotional experi-
ence) and its conditions of possibility partly overlap.
Note also that ‘hope’ is a good example for how the cultural and the
biological merge in the concept of form and life-form. Emotions are
neither merely biological (a matter of feeling) nor merely cultural (a
matter of belief, cognitive); their specific form depends on our ways of
doing things and our ways of life – biological and cultural. Therefore,
I prefer not to call ‘hope’ itself a form of life. The language of hope
depends on forms of life as its condition of possibility (but not its
cause).
A good way of taking distance from the vocabulary of causation,
facts and objectivity is to use the term appearance. Life-forms render it
possible that things appear in a certain way. Let me briefly return to the
discussion about Marx and Wittgenstein in order to clarify this point.
Andrews writes of what Marx called ‘commodity fetishism’: ‘under a
system of commodity production, commodities appear in fact to be crys-
tallised labour’ (Andrews in Kitching and Pleasants 2002, p. 89). What
132 Growing Moral Relations

happens is that labour gets objectified, but this is only possible under
a system of commodity production, that is, under what Wittgenstein
called a form of life. Andrews generalizes this point:

Value, then, is a social relation which appears as an objective

property of objects, as exchange-value; this objectivity is grounded in
an activity, a form of life. (Andrews in Kitching and Pleasants 2002,
p. 91)

Applied to moral status, this means that the value of entities appears
as an objective property of these entities, which appear as objects only
because there is an activity or form of life that makes them appear as
such. This is not imposed from ‘above’, but occurs as a result of the
very activity itself. Our ways of doing – for example, certain ways of
treating animals, such as factory farming – make it possible that these
animals appear as objects with a certain value and with certain proper-
ties, for example as material resources or ‘commodities’. These appear-
ances then re-enforce and perpetuate the form of life in which they
are rooted, which makes it hard – but not completely impossible – to
imagine and live different forms of life. In this sense, moral appearances
are neither ‘illusion’ nor ‘real’. We must take appearances seriously, not
as a new type of ‘objects’ (‘phenomena’), but as emerging from a rela-
tion between ways of seeing and forms of life (understood as ways of
doing). As Read remarks about ‘capital’ as a construction: ‘Because we
are living this illusion, and because while we live it it is not only illusion,
it is in us, and all around us.’ (Read in Kitching and Pleasants 2002,
p. 277). And, as Andrews notes: ‘The value language-game is one that
continues to have relevance in the capitalist world today’ (p. 93). Moral
status ascription, then, in particular if it is construed in a Searle-like
way, belongs to a bourgeois language game obsessed with objects and
properties. But this game does not constitute mere ‘beliefs’ about moral
status, if that means they belong to an ethereal ‘cultural’ sphere that
has nothing to do with bodies or matter. They are not ‘illusionary’ or
‘fantastic’. Instead, these ways of seeing and ways of talking are firmly
rooted in widespread bodily–material practices, which make them
pervasive and vibrant throughout the world at hand, and indeed shape
that world: the practices and habits create and sustain that ‘value’ world
and its dualist assumption that objects ‘have’ value (the discourse on
intrinsic value) or that we ascribe value to ‘naked’ objects (Searle-style
moral status ascription). As I will conclude, to get beyond moral reifica-
tion and to foster a relational view of ‘moral status’ instead (that is, one
 Societies and Cultures (2): Forms of Life 133

which does not fall into the trap of objectifying relations) requires not
more or less than changing our world.
Perhaps we should not be too pessimistic about the possibility of such
a change: if ‘illusions’ have to be lived in order to remain ‘real’, then
changing to a different ‘illusion’ requires changing our lives – our lives.
If and to the extent that that is possible, we can grow into a different
world. The ‘system’ – capitalist or not – only exists if we live it. On the
other hand, is there anything more difficult than changing one’s form of
life? Life-forms are not like products on the shelves of the supermarket;
we cannot simply switch to a different one if we are not satisfied with
it and if we rationally decide to choose another one; life-forms are all
around us and in us. It is the form of sociality (and personality) itself,
with its ‘cultural’, ‘material’ and ‘bodily’ aspects. We are formed by it as
much as we contribute to its perpetuation.

8.4. Conclusion: Wittgenstein’s transcendental

argument

In sum, using Wittgenstein, Gier, Benton and others we can under-

stand moral status ascription as a linguistic activity that is dependent
on forms of life, which have biological–material and social–cultural
dimensions and which make moral status ascription possible and at the
same time constrain it.
If we emphasize the cultural dimension, moral status ascription is
viewed as dependent on human life-forms (which have a biological but
human biological dimension). But, if we really take seriously the biolog-
ical–material dimension, we can conclude that moral status ascription
to non-human entities presupposes not only exclusively human life-
forms that constrain the ascription, but also ‘mixed’ life-forms: forms of
relations between humans and non-humans which are always already
normative.
The relation between moral status ascription and forms of life can be
described with the term ‘transcendental’. I agree with Gier, therefore,
that we must take forms of life to ‘perform a transcendental function’
as the ‘existential equivalents of Kant’s Bedingungen der Möglichkeit der
Erfahrung ’ (Gier 1980, p. 257) or, as Gier says elsewhere, as Heidegger’s
transcendental “existentials” in Being and Time (Gier 1990, p. 280).
Benton, too, suggests that Wittgenstein’s illustrations can be ‘repre-
sented in the form of transcendental arguments’ (Benton 2002, p. 155).
However, whereas Benton says this with a view to bringing Wittgenstein
closer to his own naturalism and realism, Gier rightly concludes that
134 Growing Moral Relations

Wittgenstein was doing phenomenology. Indeed, Wittgenstein expli-

citly wrote in the Philosophical Investigations that his investigation was
directed ‘not towards phenomena, but rather, as one might say, towards
the “possibilities” of phenomena’ (Wittgenstein 1953, §90, p. 47). Whereas
the early Wittgenstein was close to (early) Husserl, the late Wittgenstein
was closer to Heidegger’s existential phenomenology: ‘both Heidegger
and Wittgenstein preserve phenomenology’s transcendental method,
one directed at forms of life rather than facts of life’ (Gier 1990,
p. 285). This means that, if we take Wittgenstein’s approach seriously,
the concept ‘forms of life’ cannot be used as a scientific concept.

The concept of Lebensformen is not to be taken as a factual theory,

one dealing with certain biological, psychological, or cultural facts.
Forms of life are the formal framework that make society and culture
possible, but they cannot serve any sociological theory. Lebensformen
do not answer any “why” questions; they have no explanatory
power. [ ... ] Wittgenstein is concerned with the meaning of life and
the concepts we use, not their causes, empirical content, or onto-
logical status. (Gier 1981, p. 31)

For the purpose of giving meaning to our lives and understanding rela-
tions to human and non-human others, it is not useful to resort to
scientific atomism and essentialism in order to establish a moral status
science, in particular if we borrow their habits to try to uncover the
underlying reality, to strip off appearance in order to see underlying
reality, to make visible what is invisible. As Pleasants writes about his
brand of Wittgensteinian Marxist social criticism:

What is needed is description that promotes change in their way of

seeing that reality, not explanation that “reveals” its hidden essence.
For the purposes of radical social criticism, “nothing is hidden”
(Wittgenstein [PI] §435) – that is, not hidden in the way that the
molecular, atomic and sub-atomic universe is hidden from scientif-
ically unaided thought and perception. (Pleasants in Kitching and
Pleasants 2002, p. 177)

Instead, we need to show the forms of life. For example, if we want to

understand the moral and ontological status of robots and informa-
tion technology in a critical way, it is of little use to us to ‘reveal’ the
computer programs (the code; compare to DNA or to cultural codes) or
to ‘reveal’ the material parts of the robot or the computer as a material
 Societies and Cultures (2): Forms of Life 135

object. Instead, we should attend to how these technologies appear to

us and how this appearance is related to forms of life that make that
appearance and ascription possible – forms of life that are so familiar to
us that we might easily overlook them, since we always live in a form of
life (for example, a scientific form of life).
Thus, forms of life must be understood as transcendental conditions,
forms that make ascriptions of ontological or moral status possible. They
do not themselves explain moral status, but they allow us to make sense
of moral status ‘ascription’ and of the activities and practices related to
the ‘object’ of moral status. These forms of life cannot be explained in a
scientific way, since that way is itself (part of) a form of life.
Pleasant’s use of the term ‘description’ is a little misleading here,
since it may suggest to scientifically minded persons (and today we
all are such persons to some extent – philosophers and others alike)
that there is an ‘object’ to describe. But Wittgenstein talks about form.
We cannot describe the forms of life that make moral status ascription
possible – we cannot describe any form of life. It can only be shown.
As Wittgenstein noted in his Philosophical Remarks: ‘A form cannot be
described: it can only be presented (dargestellt)’ (Wittgenstein 1975,
p. 208). We have a Weltbild and a Weltanschauung (world image and
world view), which make particular moral status ascriptions possible
and exclude others. A form of life is not a “fact” or a collection of
“facts”, but a form of experience and praxis, a way of seeing and a way of
doing: a way of life. Therefore, changing thinking about moral status
would require changing our world view and our way of life: it is a world,
a social–biological Umwelt (Husserl, Heidegger) or life-world in which
we live, our a priori horizon that makes possible and limits experience
and praxis.4
In this sense, we may infer, Wittgensteinian philosophy is always
necessarily ‘environmental’ philosophy (Umweltsphilosophie) and
‘philosophy of life’ (Lebensphilosophie). This is ultimately why, as Gier
remarks, in Wittgenstein’s concept of the life-world (Lebenswelt) nature
and culture merge (Gier 1981, p. 124). To conclude, with Gier we must
read Wittgenstein as a ‘philosopher of life’ (Lebensphilosoph), not only a
philosopher of language (Gier 1990, p. 285).
In addition to the reasons already given, it must be noted that
Wittgenstein also stressed lived experience (Erleben) and what Polanyi
called ‘tacit knowledge’ as opposed to acquiring knowledge (Erkennen),
which brings him close to Spengler and even Goethe (Gier 1981, p. 61).
And Wittgenstein might have borrowed his term ‘form of life’ from
Spranger, a student of Dilthey, who wrote a book called Lebensformen.
136 Growing Moral Relations

Gier suggests that Wittgenstein might have read it (or at least heard of
it), given his Viennese background (Gier 1981, p. 55). But, whether or
not there were direct biographical connections to ‘philosophers of life’
and their works, Gier’s comparisons with Lebensphilosophen (Gier 1981)
are convincing, and the bio-cultural interpretation summarized above
gives us good reasons to call Wittgenstein a Lebensphilosoph, a philoso-
pher of life.
As said, Wittgenstein can also be understood as a phenomenolo-
gist, since he used phenomenology’s transcendental method, which
he distinguished from the scientific method. Phenomenology is about
possibility and meaning, not about truth or falsehood. For example, in
this book I am concerned with the question of whether moral status
ascription is meaningful and with what makes moral status ascription
possible. With Wittgenstein, I can say: ‘Our investigation, however, is
directed not toward phenomena, but [ ... ] towards the “possibilities” of
phenomena’ (Wittgenstein PI §90, p. 47).
Thus, a form of life must be understood as an ‘a priori’. This tran-
scendentalism renders Wittgenstein somewhat Kantian, although
Wittgenstein held that what mediates experience is not categories but
‘grammar’ and related forms of life. But this should not be understood
as a move from the ‘mental’ to the ‘external’, cultural and biological.
Forms of life are neither ‘external’ nor ‘internal’. As Gier writes in
Wittgenstein and Phenomenology (1981):

Wittgenstein does accept the Kantian idea that we do not have any
direct apprehension of things-in-themselves, but he rejects Kant’s
assumption that there are innate categories of the mind which insure
the universality and objectivity of knowledge. [ ... ] We shall see that
both Wittgenstein and phenomenology have overcome the trad-
itional distinction between an interior mental realm and an external
nature. (Gier 1981, p. 13)

According to this non-dualist, phenomenological view, there is no

distinction between two realms, but a stream of life; there is experi-
ence.5 In this chapter and in the previous chapter I suggested that the
way dualism can be overcome is by means of notions like skill (Dreyfus)
or ‘lived experience’, which draw together ‘inner’ experience and mind
and ‘outer’ activity and matter to such an extent that the distinction
collapses. I will further articulate this idea in the next chapter and use it
to elaborate my analysis of the conditions of possibility of moral status
ascription.
 Societies and Cultures (2): Forms of Life 137

Finally, note that in using Gier’s interpretation of Wittgenstein I

have downplayed the aspect of Wittgenstein that emphasizes rules and
instead focused on the ‘forms of life’ aspect understood as a transcen-
dental argument. This use of Wittgenstein is also in line with Dreyfus’s
use of (the late) Wittgenstein and, more generally, with the stress on
implicit knowledge (know-how, skill) and transcendental analysis in
this part of my book.
I conclude that forms of life are not the causes of moral status ascrip-
tions, but that they structure what we can say about other entities and
their moral status; they are the transcendental ground of moral status
ascription. In the next chapter, I shall further discuss the bodily, material
and indeed technological dimension of this transcendental ground.
Note that by calling a form of life a ‘ground’ I do not suggest that it
is the absolutely stable epistemological fundament traditional philos-
ophers have always looked for. With Heidegger and Wittgenstein, we
must construe it as a social ground, which is not fixed in the sense of
being a basis of absolute truth in an eternal sphere, but which is stable
enough for what we do, for beings like us. Hence we must revise the
Nietzschean problem definition I started with in this book. Nietzsche
and his followers are right that we need a kind of ground, that without
it we lack orientation. But this ground is not a fixed moral and onto-
logical order; it is the social order – broadly defined. When we lost the
idea of a moral and ontological order, therefore, we did not fall into an
abyss. There is a social, transcendental ground that carries us. It is what
Dreyfus calls a ‘nonground’ in Being-in-the-world:

Philosophers seek an ultimate ground. When they discover there is

none, even modern philosophers like Sartre and Derrida seem to think
that they have fallen into an abyss [ ... ]. Whereas Wittgenstein, and
Heidegger in Division I [of Being and Time], see that the nonground is
not an abyss. Counting on the shared agreement in our practices, we
can do anything we want to do: understand the world, understand
each other, have language, have families, have science, etc. (Dreyfus
1991, p. 156)

What is really problematic, then, is not the denial of moral order by

nihilism, but the denial of the social: the transcendental, relational
ground that allows us to live – including ‘ascribing moral status’ to
other entities and treating them as if there were a ‘moral order’. Even
those who think that we are thrown into a moral desert as individuals
and that we have to do everything ourselves, that we have to create the
138 Growing Moral Relations

world, that we have to try to become Übermenschen or gods, even those

unfortunate beings (and perhaps we all are such unfortunate beings
to some extent, in so far as we are modern beings) can only make this
claim safely from within the womb of the social–relational world that
feeds their thoughts and allows them to grow.
Acknowledging this social–relational ground also has implications
for the use of reason – by ‘reason professionals’ or others. On the
one hand, we need to do the work of construction, which is always
a construction of relations. If philosophers use their logos in order to
understand the world, then, it is not logic they must use but what Gier
(inspired by Heidegger’s analysis of the term) calls “broad reason”: the
‘capacity to “put together” a world that makes sense’ (Gier 1981, p. 196).
Verstehen (to understand, the aim of hermeneutics) is always verbinden
(to connect). As philosophers, and perhaps more generally as thinkers,
we should be connectors and gatherers. The point of thinking is not to
gather facts but to relate. As Gier writes, the ‘rough ground’ of lived
experience ‘will not yield clear and distinct ideas or answers’, but we
can try to get an overview, Übersicht (Gier 1981, p. 228). But, on the
other hand, with Heidegger and Wittgenstein we should stress that we
can only connect and gather what is already given to us. The forms
shown in the overview emerge from what we already experience, from
what we already do and from what we can do (know-how). Keeping in
mind the transcendental argument, the following paradox makes sense:
we can only relate what is already related. The social–linguistic–cultural–
biological forms we construct in our language games as philosophers
are already experienced, practised, lived. They have grown. The chal-
lenge for thinking – if thinking can ever constitute a real challenge at
all – is to form what has already been formed, to connect conceptually
what has already grown. The practical challenge is to make it flourish,
and to flourish ourselves.
However, in contrast to what many Heideggerians and Wittgensteinians
tend to believe, the ‘already related’, the social transcendental ground
that makes growth and flourishing possible, the social–relational world-
soil, is not exclusively human. It includes relations with and between
other entities. Influenced by Ingold, I will further question the human/
non-human, natural/cultural and natural/artificial distinctions in the
next chapters.
9
Bodies and Things: Forms of
Feeling and Making

A discussion of linguistic and cultural conditions may be misinterpreted

as implying that the transcendental ground of moral status ascription is
a matter of ‘higher’ symbolic forms that have nothing to do with ‘lower’
bodily and material factors. Wittgenstein’s work in particular may give
rise to that misinterpretation, given his emphasis on framing philosoph-
ical problems as problems of language – an emphasis that has been main-
tained by most twentieth-century analytic philosophers, who defined
themselves as philosophers of language. However, as I have argued in
the previous chapter, the ‘forms of life’ are not just linguistic in nature –
they are at the same time social–cultural and biological–material; they
are forms of life. Language and culture are firmly connected to the
bodily and material–technological.
It is important to repeat that this connection is not causal: (moral)
language and culture depend on the body and on technology, but not
so much since the mind is dependent on the brain (on neurons etc.)
and since we need tools to sustain the ‘hardware’ on which our ‘soft-
ware’ depends, as naturalism has it. Rather, the linguistic–cultural and
the bodily–material are interdependent because forms of speaking and
doing depend on forms of bodily experience and perception and on
forms of techno-human growth; at the same time, forms of speaking
and doing also form and re-form the body and bodily experience. In
other words, the point is not that there are causal relations between
mind and brain or between technological transformations and bodily
functions, but rather that there are formal relations between, on the
one hand, what we say – for example moral status ascription – and,
on the other hand, lived, bodily experience of the world and engage-
ment with the world. My purpose in this chapter is to further show the
significance of these conditions of possibility, not the ‘causes’ of moral

139
140 Growing Moral Relations

status ascription. What we can say about the moral status of entities
is limited by the bodily, material and technological (back)ground that
makes possible our (moral) language. Hence, I will argue that answering
the question of the moral status of technology (understood as ‘artefacts’,
for example robots) depends on ‘technology’ itself. In order to make
sense of this paradox, I will need to elaborate an alternative conception
of technology: technology as skill. I will use Ingold’s and Dreyfus’s work
again for this purpose.
As I will show, this different orientation implies that the very idea
of ‘ascription’ or ‘inscription’ must be abandoned. To ascribe status to
something or to inscribe status into something presupposes that there
is a real, natural world independent from us in which we inscribe our
civilization and culture, that there are entities independent from us to
which we ascribe status and onto which we inscribe culture (domesti-
cation). But the relational–phenomenological view I am developing in
this book rejects these assumptions.
However, let me first further discuss the bodily, material and techno-
logical conditions for moral status ascription by outlining some condi-
tions of possibility for human–animal relations.

9.1. Human–animal relations: social and

material–technological conditions

The form human–animal relations take, and the corresponding moral

status that is given to animals, are dependent on (but not caused by)
social–cultural and material–technological existential conditions,
which are themselves interdependent and make up a transcendental
ground for the form of human–animal relations and for moral status.
Consider the following brief and tentative overview of possible forms,
which have been developed in the course of human history, or, rather,
human–animal history.
In a hunter-gatherer society the animal is hunted in what we would
now call “the wilderness”; the animal is still “untamed” and “wild”.
As Ingold shows (see Chapter 5), however, the hunter-gatherer would
consider them to be part of the same life-world. In this sense it is neither
‘tame’ nor ‘wild’; this suggests too much human control. It is ‘up to the
animal’ to show itself, to reveal itself. Humans have no full control over
the animal. Hence its status is high; there is something sacred about it.
It is up to the animal to give itself to humans. The animal itself is seen
as a spiritual being (animism, for example Shinto) or seen as engen-
dered by the vital, spiritual force of the land (totemism, for example
 Bodies and Things 141

Aboriginal societies).1 Spirituality is distributed over the world; there

are many spirits and gods. It is up to the god to reveal himself. These are
not ‘beliefs’ in the sense of independent propositions; they are part of
the form of the human–animal relation, which depends on hunting as
a material–technological condition of possibility. The material–techno-
logical constrains the way people live their lives and think their world.
In an agricultural–pastoral society, we find different material–
technological conditions. The animal is now tamed and part of the
economy, that is, part of the household. A difference is made between
tamed animals and wild animals. Only the tamed animals are consid-
ered to be part of the life-world. They still have a relatively high status,
since humans know they are dependent on them, but the human–
animal relation changes now. Animals have to be taken care of. The
human becomes the care-giver, the shepherd. Moreover, the animal is
no longer killed by hunting. Rather, it is slaughtered. The human is the
master who determines when the time of the animal has come. He is
the judge of life and death. And, if the animal is a work animal, he is
the animal’s lord and master. Similarly, in monotheism the human–
god relation is a sheep–shepherd relation. Consider, for example, the
famous Psalm 23, with its explicitly pastoral imaginary: ‘The Lord is
my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters’, and so on. The monotheistic god is the
central controller, the master who takes care of his slaves, the lord who
takes care of his servants, the farmer who takes care of his cattle. But the
slaughter still has something sacred: it is an offer and it is ritual killing.
The animals are offered to the god, that is, presented to them (and in
Christianity God offers His Son: Christ is the ‘Lamb of God’). These
animals are a kind of gift, not a product.
This changes with the rise of industrial society and industrial produc-
tion. Animals leave the sphere of the house and the household. They
no longer live in or near the house (with the humans), but are reared
in industrial complexes. Animals become products: they are produced;
that is, the animals – or rather their meat – are the output of a produc-
tion process, or they are turned into production units themselves (e.g.
“milk cows”). Humans no longer dwell with animals.
In one of his Bremen lectures in 1949 (‘Das Ge-Stell’), Heidegger
compared the industrial production of animal meat to the production
of (human) corpses: ‘Agriculture is now a motorized food-industry –
in essence, the same as the manufacturing of corpses in gas chambers
and extermination camps’ (Heidegger, translated in Sheehan 1988,
pp. 41–42). Whether or not this comparison is entirely appropriate,
142 Growing Moral Relations

Heidegger manages to capture the industrial character of contem-

porary agriculture, and indeed of the related human–animal relation.
Animals become products and the humans involved become producers
and controllers. Here we are far removed from hunting spirituality and
pastoral sacrifice. The status of the animal is that of a ‘raw material’ for
the production of meat or that of a ‘machine’ or ‘robot’ for the produc-
tion of milk. God is death; humans take over the role of god–creator,
but without the promise of salvation. They make and take, they produce
and consume.
In the information society, finally, meat production becomes infor-
mation processing. The animal is tagged, linked, connected, bluetoothed,
embedded. It becomes a node in a network. It becomes a (bar) code
or a DNA code that is manipulated. It becomes an information object.
Disembodied, it becomes an element within a production system and a
logistic system. In other words, in our perception the animal becomes
bloodless. Gone is the blood of the hunted animal, the blood of the
sacrifice, and even the blood that was streaming down the production
lines of the industrial farms and slaughterhouses. We have filtered out
the red colour from our moral screen. We are arriving at the provi-
sional climax of the progressive de-sacralization and disembodiment
of the animal. At the same time, the status of the human becomes that
of an information processor. The ‘farmer’, who was already a (produc-
tion) manager, now becomes a user, a webmaster and a system super-
visor, a system controller. The consumer ‘downloads’ milk or meat from
the system; newborn animals are ‘uploaded’ to the system. The status
of humans is always coupled with the status of animals: both statuses
evolve simultaneously.
In response, we try to re-naturalize the animal – and the humans. This
can take at least two forms. A first option is the romantic re-naturaliza-
tion of the animal we can observe today, which must be interpreted as a
form of “re-wilding”. In an attempt to give it back its high moral status,
the animal is liberated from the system and ‘given back’ to nature. At
the same time, the human tries to liberate herself from the system and
wishes to return to nature. However, this ‘solution’ is problematic, since
it comes too late: we already have left the common life-world; we have
left what we now consider as ‘wilderness’. The decisive step away from
a hunter-gatherer society, which constituted the simultaneous domesti-
cation of animals and the humans related to them, cannot be turned
back. The only way to ‘re-naturalize’ the animal, therefore, is, paradox-
ically enough, to socialize it. Instead of searching for a pure nature, we
can understand the natural as the social, and the social as the natural.
 Bodies and Things 143

To understand the natural as the social means to show that the ‘wilder-
ness’ was a common life-world, was already social: full of human–human
but also human–animal relations. To understand the social as natural
means to see animals too as fellows and companions. But this has a
biological basis. Being a companion originally means: eating the same
bread. In other words, we can include animals in the social by recog-
nizing our shared biological basis. ‘They’ too have (the same) needs; they
too have a (similar) body. Again we can borrow Shakespeare’s words here,
which I already quoted in Chapter 1, and let the choir of animals sing:

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?

However, this argument for giving animals (a higher) moral status

should not be confused with Singer’s utilitarian argument based on
the property of sentience; this would be to relapse into the proper-
ties approach. The body I refer to here is a different kind of body: not
the body of properties or the body as property or instrument to feel
pain and pleasure, the body we can ‘have’; I mean something else. In
the next section, I will clarify my claim that moral status depends on
‘bodily’ conditions of possibility.

9.2. Moral status and the body: Merleau-Ponty

and embodied cognition

Although in ‘traditional’ modernity the properties-based approach to

moral status tends to focus on mental properties such as consciousness,
free will and so on, there is no reason in principle why the body could
not play a role within such an account. More: its properties can be seen
as highly relevant for determining the ontological and moral status of
the entity in question, for example when the ‘sentience’ and ‘ability
to suffer’ criterion is used (as Singer did), or when it is argued that the
entity should be capable of feelings. However, in this role the body is
mainly seen as a carrier of properties and is itself the property of the
entity (or of the mind of the entity). Entity x is said to have a body b
which has morally relevant property p; therefore, or so it is argued,
entity x has moral status s. For example, a pig can be said to have a body
that is capable of suffering and robots are said to lack such bodies. The
properties-based approach may even require a combination of bodily
and mental properties. Various ‘mixed’ versions are possible.
144 Growing Moral Relations

What is problematic about this Cartesian approach to moral status

ascription is not that the body plays a role (or not), but rather that it is
given the wrong kind of role. People who use the properties approach
make the body appear as if it stood in the same relation to an entity
(or the mind of that entity) as the owner of a car relates to her car: the
body appears as the vehicle of the entity (or of the mind of the entity),
which allows the entity to move about. The body appears as the prop-
erty of the entity, in the same way as a car is the property of its owner.
And the car itself has certain properties. The car can transport you;
the body too. The car has the function of giving you pleasure, but it
can also give you pain when it breaks down or when it crashes; the
body has similar functions. But this form of appearance, this kind of
experience of the body, is only one form, one particular way of experi-
encing the body – a very modern one. There are other possibilities,
other ways of relating to ‘your’ body, other ways of being (a body), of
bodily being.
Let me turn to Merleau-Ponty to explain this and to reinforce the
point I already made in the previous chapters. The relation of entities to
their body is assumed to be what Merleau-Ponty calls ‘having a body’
(Merleau-Ponty 1962; see also my previous discussion of Dreyfus and
Heidegger). Instead, we and (other) animals usually experience our
body not only as something we ‘have’, as if it were an object, but also as
us. This is what Merleau-Ponty calls ‘being a body’. I am my body rather
than I ‘have’ it. In daily experience and perception, in so far it is not
framed by an objective–scientific outlook, we usually do not see and
treat our body as a thing, but we live and are our body.
If we nevertheless see our body as a vehicle – or indeed as a robot-
body we control – it is because we are now used to forming our bodily
experience in a ‘motorized’ and ‘robotic’ way, because we live in a
modern age that since Descartes (and to some extent already since
Plato) has split us into two parts: body and mind. If we have become
the captains, pilots and drivers of our own body, the controllers of
our ‘own’ robot-body (including our brains as the CPU: the Central
Processing Unit), it is because we not only started to ‘believe’ the
Cartesian myth, but also and especially because we have perceived
and transformed our world and ourselves accordingly. The industrial
revolution and the information revolution were made possible by
Cartesianism and its corresponding mechanization and robotization of
the body. The latter completes the process of alienation from our body.
Once we view ourselves as the controllers of our robot-body, it is a small
step to imagining enhancing, rebuilding and remote-controlling our
 Bodies and Things 145

robot bodies, or even disconnecting from them altogether by means

of ‘uploading’ ourselves to a virtual world or to another body, as some
transhumanists imagine.
What is the alternative? Varela et al. (1991) might be helpful here.
They continue Merleau-Ponty’s thinking, although they emphasize the
compatibility of the two ways of seeing. They view the body as physical
and at the same time as lived, experiential; according to the authors,
these ways of seeing are not opposed, but are two sides of ‘embodiment’
(Varela et al. 1991, p. xv). More interestingly, however, they use this
insight in order to develop a new theory in contemporary cognitive
science, moving from cognitivism to ‘enaction’, which they connect
with a Buddhist view of the self.
What does this mean? As I already explained in the previous chapters
when referring to Varela et al., cognitivism is based on representation
and its central metaphor is the computer that works with symbols as
representations (see also Dreyfus). Cognitivism and early AI understand
the human mind in these terms. Instead, enaction stresses ‘context-
dependent know-how’, which it takes to be ‘the very essence of creative
cognition’ (Varela et al. 1991, p. 148). We do not represent the world;
we bring forth meaning ‘from a background of understanding’ (p. 149).
This understanding depends on us having a body, on our embodi-
ment. Our capacities of understanding depend on lived, bodily experi-
ence. According to this view, the transcendental ground referred to in
the previous chapters is bodily. In other words, if we want to imitate
human intelligence, it is not enough to equip a computer with models
of the world; the ‘brain’ needs a (robot or biological?) ‘body’ in order to
become ‘mind’. In humans, embodied being-in-the-world is a condition
of possibility for thinking. Knowledge needs to be understood as know-
how. For example, colour ‘must be located not in a pregiven world but
rather in the perceived world brought forth from our structural coup-
ling’ (p. 165). With the term ‘structural coupling’ they mean to empha-
size the entanglement of entity and world.
Varela’s approach is non-dualistic. In tune with what has been said
in the previous chapters, Varela et al. think there is no ultimate ground
in the sense understood by the Western philosophical tradition, but
they think that the discovery of the ‘groundlessness in our culture’
(p. 253) is not a bad thing: in the Buddhist tradition there is no such
absolute ground, yet ‘mindfulness/awareness’ can help us to engage in
‘building and dwelling in worlds without ground’ (p. 254). Based on
the previous chapter, we could answer: there is no ‘ultimate’ ground
but there is a transcendental ground: forms of life, which must not only
146 Growing Moral Relations

be understood in linguistic–cultural terms but also in bodily–material

terms. Considering again what has been said in the previous chapters,
we see that Varela’s approach is similar to that of Lakoff and Johnson
(thinking depends on metaphor as rooted in embodiment) but also to
(Dreyfus’s) Heideggerian phenomenology, which is equally non-dual-
istic when it draws out the implications of being-in-the-world.
Varela et al.’s phenomenological orientation, inspired by Merleau-
Ponty, is somewhat at odds with their scientific orientation. The authors
attempted to combine both, but I doubt if they succeeded. As I have
said several times before, the relation between thinking/experiencing/
talking, and so on, and its transcendental ground should not be under-
stood in causal terms. But Varela et al. and especially their AI cousins
risk remaining captivated by a scientific form of life (which is, ironic-
ally, ‘proof’ of the phenomenological side of their argument). In so far
as they do cognitive science, the possibilities for revealing the transcen-
dental ground as forms of life are limited. If these two language games
are indeed largely incommensurable and if one wishes to move beyond
cognition in the way proposed by Varela et al., then perhaps one should
not only move beyond classical AI but also abandon the very project of
a ‘cognitive science ’.2
Moreover, if we wish take Varela’s non-dualism seriously, then perhaps
we should move beyond the very term ‘body’ altogether. Following the
work of Varela et al., it is fashionable today to talk about ‘embodied
cognition’. However, we should be careful of expressing this approach
in terms of the body or embodiment. Varela et al. argue against Cartesian
dualism, but their language of ‘embodiment’ remains somewhat dual-
istic. If, in response to Cartesianism, we emphasize the body over the
mind or suppose that there is a something (a mind, mental properties,
etc.) that is ‘em-bodied’ in the sense that it has a body (animals) or is
given a body (robots), then we simply revert to Cartesian dualism and
therefore remain dualist. Then the concept of ‘embodiment’ does no
justice to most human and non-human experience of life and engage-
ment with the world. The very idea of having a body or of embodying
something can only emerge in the alienated, detached mode of the
scientific outlook on things – which is only one particular mode of (dis)
engagement with the world, not the only reality or ‘the truth’ about
‘the’ world. Interpreting embodiment in this way rests upon the argu-
ment I criticized in Part I: it supposes that, while most of the time we
do not experience our body as a thing, as an instrument to realize our
purposes (intentions and other mental stuff), this is only appearance and
not reality. But even this way of talking itself depends on a more primal
 Bodies and Things 147

ontological a priori, which is fundamentally relational and knows no

separation between bodies and minds, between bodies and environ-
ments. Our scientific outlook on things itself (and the related approach
to moral status ascription) has grown out of that ground as a way of
coping with highly complex environments, but the scientific view of
the world should not be mistaken for that ground, which constitutes
its conditions of possibility, the relational soil on which various weeds
can flourish.
When we ascribe moral status to entities and make a strict distinc-
tion between ‘us’ and ‘them’, therefore, we should recognize that this
ascription, and even asking the very question concerning moral status
ascription, is only possible since we are already standing in relation to
these entities. The question of moral status is really about how to shape
that relation and its related practice, activities and experiences, rather
than which properties the (separate, discrete) entity has. Moreover, the
language by which we ascribe moral status is suffused with ‘having’
metaphors, but even this way of seeing an entity depends on ‘us’ being
bodies and ‘them’ being bodies and on the relation between the two. It is
not so much the case that we ‘have’ sentience and they ‘have’ sentience;
rather, both of us live and engage with the world in a particular way.
Within the human–scientific form of life, other, non-human entities
appear as having particular properties and as discrete entities.
One may object that surely we want to avoid the view that morality
depends on technology, in the sense that moral status ascription
depends on what kind of technology (e.g. robots) we develop. But why
should we avoid this view? Of course, this view is mistaken if we inter-
pret ‘dependence’ as a causal relation: technology should not determine
moral status. This would be transgression of the is/ought distinction.
However, it makes sense to see technology as a condition of possibility
for moral status ascription, at least if it is regarded not as a ‘thing’ but
as a process: a process not only of ‘making’ but also of ‘growth’ and
perhaps even ‘revelation’. Let me explain this.

9.3. Moral status and technology: beyond Marx

If we want to make sure that moral status ascription, as belonging

to ‘culture’, is understood as rooted in material–technological condi-
tions, an obvious route would be to draw on Marxist thought. Marxism
famously sees a link between the material (means of production) and the
cultural (social relations and politics based on ownership of the means
of production). Moreover, according to Marx we can attain freedom by
148 Growing Moral Relations

transforming nature. Thus, both the personal and the social are under-
stood as firmly connected to the material–technological. Based on
Marx, therefore, one could argue that moral status ascription must be
situated within personal and social structures of self-realization, need
and power. Moral status ascription is not done in a vacuum, but is influ-
enced by how we live as personal, natural and social beings: what we
say about other entities (e.g. animals) depends on larger social–material
structures, on how we socially organize technology understood as the
transformation of nature, which is at the same time the transformation
of self. If this is true, then discussing moral status without discussing
technology does not make much sense.
These are attractive and powerful ideas, and with the help of Benton’s
interpretation of Marxism we have been able to take significant steps
in the direction of relational thinking (Chapter 4 but also the previous
chapters). In this section, however, I wish to take distance from Marxism
on at least three points.
First, as Foucault has shown, Marxism and its heirs (e.g. Habermas)
are mainly focused on power related to ownership of production means
and state power (say ‘big’ politics) and neglect the more subtle ways in
which power is exercised over people and their bodies (see Foucault’s
studies of disciplining, e.g. Foucault 1975). (I already noted this in my
discussion of Benton’s view in Part I.)
Second, in so far as Marxism is a science, the relation between
material conditions and society/culture is seen in causal and deter-
ministic terms. Instead, I wish to view technology as a transcendental
condition of possibility that does not ‘cause’ moral status ascription
but, rather, makes it possible and at the same time limits its range of
possibilities. It enables and limits our moral imagination and prac-
tice. Thus, this argument goes further than Benton’s naturalist view
in at least two ways: it attends to our moral language and then makes
a transcendental argument about its conditions of possibility. In this
way, it is also social–relational and natural–relational at the same
time, but it does not reconcile the social and the natural at the onto-
logical level (instead, they are interwoven in the transcendental rela-
tional ground) and adds the level of linguistic relations. (This step has
been largely achieved by the authors who tried to reconcile Marx with
Wittgenstein, as discussed in the previous chapter, but the move from
science to transcendentalism needs to be completed.)
Third, as Benton has proposed, we must reject strict distinctions
between humans and other natural beings when it comes to defining
the social. However, Benton’s continuum, with its emphasis on needs,
 Bodies and Things 149

remains naturalist and caught in the language of Marxist modernism.

In so far as it seeks to transform human–animal relations and wishes to
create a new moral order, Benton’s thinking dwells within the modern
language of transformation. By contrast, I suggest (following Ingold)
that the Marxist idea of a transformation (of nature) must be replaced
by non-modern and relational metaphors such as growth, metaphors
which do not assume a strict distinction between ‘man’ and ‘nature’
(feminist critique might say: between a male civilized force and the bare
body on which it inscribes itself, female, uncultured and wild body), but
instead see the human and the non-human in non-dualist, relational
terms and hold a unified view of the world. Technology, then, is not a
matter of making discrete entities (‘artefacts’, ‘things’) which are formed
by humans on the basis of ‘raw’ natural materials. Instead, Ingold’s work
suggests a different metaphor: things ‘grow’. This means that ‘the form of
the artefact is not prefigured culturally but arises through the unfolding
of a field of forces that cuts across its developing interface with the envir-
onment’ (Ingold 2000, p. 290). Let me explain this further.

9.4. Using Ingold’s metaphors: making,

growing, revealing

In what sense do things ‘grow’? As I noted in Chapter 5, Ingold’s analysis

is based on studies of so-called hunter-gatherer societies. The (perhaps
rather modern) categorical scheme that comes out of his discussion may
be summarized as ‘making’, ‘growing’ and ‘revealing’. I interpret Ingold’s
scheme as showing three ways in which we can interpret technology.
Technology as making is the common meaning of technology as
the production of things and often involves the dualist assumptions
mentions above: humans and technology are seen as strictly separated.
It also suggests that we can fully control the material in our hands.
Conceiving of technology as growing tries to paint a different picture
by using an ecological and agricultural metaphor. This allows us to
achieve a more relational understanding of what technology is: it is not
so much about (trans)forming what is ‘naturally’ given, but about inter-
vening in human and non-human processes of life and growth that
are already going on and that are strongly related. Organisms engage
in their environment. Ingold writes that there are ‘patterns of skilled
activity’ which ‘give rise to the real-world artefactual and organic forms
that we encounter, rather than serving – as the standard view would
claim – to transcribe pre-existing form onto raw material’ (Ingold 2000,
p. 345). He gives the example of a basket, which ‘arises through the work
150 Growing Moral Relations

itself’ (p. 345). It grows (from) within the system of relations: ‘The arte-
fact, in short, is the crystallisation of activity within a relational field’
(p. 345). In Ingold’s view, form does not follow from design, but is the
outcome of that process of growth. He argues that objects should not be
removed from ‘the contexts of life activity in which they are produced
and used’ as if they were ‘static objects of disinterested contemplation’;
instead, they should be restored to the human practices in which they
belong (p. 346). “Practices” should be interpreted as referring not only
to production-as-growth but also to use-as-growth. With Wrathall, we
can relate Ingold’s view to Heidegger’s theory of truth, which concerns
how entities become unconcealed:

Assertions and beliefs play a role in the “truth” – i.e. the uncovering
or making manifest – of entities [ ... ]. But entities are best uncov-
ered when we can do more than merely talk about them – when we
have practices and skills for dealing with them in the appropriate
manner. A chair is most clearly uncovered as a chair, for example,
by the simple act of sitting on it. The action shows the “truth” about
the chair more clearly and convincingly than an endless amount of
chatter about it. (Wrathall 2005, p. 74)

Thus, the “truth” about entities – technological or otherwise – lies in

practice and skill rather than in detached theory. Employing Ingold’s
Heideggerian vocabulary, we can conclude that ‘dwelling’ precedes
‘building’ (or that ‘building’ presupposes ‘dwelling’).
For moral status, this means that the question of how to relate to
other entities is not to be decided (primarily) by means of assertions
concerning the entity, for example assertions that have the form of a
moral status function; rather, our moral language itself depends on the
practice and skill we use in dealing with the entity. Its moral status lies
not in detached definition but in ways of doing (active aspect) and in
things ‘being done’ (passive aspect). Building theoretical constructions
depends on dwelling. Technological objects and their (moral) status
grow in production and in use. They also grow ‘back into’ the body and
vice versa. The notion of skill connects technology to the body. Using
the language of growth, Wrathall writes about skill:

As we become skilful at anything, our ability settles into our bodies

and roots itself in the equipment we use so that, like the roots of a
plant, our bodily dispositions and the equipment we use support our
actions inconspicuously. (Wrathall 2005, p. 78)
 Bodies and Things 151

In this sense, the cultural, the technological, and the natural are all
part of, and depend on, living, relational growth.
Moreover, understanding technology as growing also enables us to
stress that we can never fully control ‘nature’ – basically because we
are ‘nature’ and we are already deeply related to that which we hope to
control and which is the condition of possibility for our lives. Growth
can never be fully put under our control.
Technology as revelation, finally, is a meaning of technology I construct
based on my interpretation of Ingold’s analysis of hunter-gatherer soci-
eties. Remember that the game animal shows itself to the hunter, ‘gives’
itself to the hunter (or not). It reveals itself to the hunter – if and when
it wants to. Again there is an absence of control. I infer that technology
is often like that as well. We depend on it as if it were a ‘land’ which
provides an abundance of ‘food’ we can gather (condition of affluence),
a bush in which entities show themselves. A technological “object” can
be seen as having spirit and life (animism) or as an entity that is itself
dependent on the vital ground, the life process (totemism). Technology
as growing and revelation is not a ‘system’ outside the life-world but
itself co-constitutes a life-world, is itself at the same time something
growing and the ground for the growth.
Consider contemporary information technologies, in particular the
internet and related technologies. Cyberspace is not so much a ‘tech-
nology’ in the sense of a transformation of nature, but something that
grows and provides its inhabitants with plenty of information food. They
live from the (virtual) ‘land’. Information is ‘given’ to them. Information
is not so much there as ‘data’, a kind of raw material which then needs
to be data-processed – that is the old, 1980s way of thinking about infor-
mation technology. Instead of being about information-processing or
calculating systems (computers) with an input and an output (an indus-
trial production metaphor), information technology today rather resem-
bles the biosphere; it is full of informational organisms that grow and
that are grown. Information is not to be analysed in terms of discrete
entities or elementary particles, but rather in ‘rhizomatic’ terms (Deleuze
and Guattari 1980; see also Ingold). Hyperlinks are like rhizomes that
grow horizontally in all directions. Tree structures are replaced by non-
hierarchical planar structures without original. There is a network, and
the network is like the wilderness, but a wilderness in which we live.
Information, then, is to be hunted and gathered in this virtual bush,
this information ecology which is all too real since it is our life-world.
Sometimes we can only hope that the information we are looking for
shows up, reveals itself – if it ‘wants’ to, if it ‘gives’ itself to us.
152 Growing Moral Relations

If we ascribe moral status to a particular virtual entity, then, we can

only do that given this cyber a priori, this relational web that is already
there and of which we are already part. The point concerning ‘moral
status’ is not to ‘determine’ the status of a particular entity and classify
it by studying its properties (this belongs to the tree approach, with
which the rhizomatic approach is contrasted), but rather to shape and
reshape our (already existing) relation to the entity in question. There
is no separate cyberspace (as there is no separate ‘wild’ nature) or virtual
reality as opposed to the real world. It is on the basis of pre-existing rela-
tions within the world wide web that we talk about the moral status of
the entity. The entity and we are part of the same world. That entity is
not merely made by computer programmers (similarly, plants, animals
and humans are not merely made by nature or by a god as a programmer
who wrote the DNA code); it is not simply the output of a process. As
we experience it, it has a ‘life’ of its own; it grows and lives in the web
of relations that cuts through the virtual/real distinction. It cannot
be considered separate from its hybrid human/non-human and real/
virtual environment.
This view renders the very term ‘moral status ascription’ problematic,
since that approach to moral status seems to assume that ‘first’ there
is the entity, stripped of its relations and environment, to which we
‘then’ can give moral status as a kind of dress that fits the essential–
ontological properties of the entity. For such a process of purification
we have to deny the existence of the very ground that makes possible
the process; we have to deny the womb that nurtures our thoughts, we
have to deny the (ground of our) world.

9.5. The fiction of the automaton, human

and non-human

This way of viewing moral status ascription ‘revives’ moral status but
does not ‘naturalize’ it; rather, it reaffirms the social as the transcen-
dental ground of moral status ascription. But the social is not orphaned
from nature and cannot be conceived of as separate from technology.
Robots, for instance, are often seen as ‘machines’. But, as Ingold
shows in his work on skill, “the machine” is a particular way of viewing
technology (in terms of mechanics and causation; the world itself is a
big machine), not the ‘essence’ of technology itself. Ingold shows that,
in hunter-gatherer societies, technical skills are ‘constituted within the
matrix of social relations’ (Ingold 2000, p. 289). It is only later, especially
in modern times, that there is a process of ‘externalisation’: a process of
 Bodies and Things 153

‘disembedding of the technical from the social’ (p. 290). Skilled making
is divorced from human experience and human agency and is seen as
the execution of a design, the implementation of scientific knowledge.
Today we understand technology as being separate from humans and
society.
Intelligent autonomous robots are an interesting case in point here.
On the one hand, they are the summum of externalization: they are no
longer a ‘tool’ at all, but assume independence: as self-moving and ‘self-
thinking’ entities, they might seem independent from humans and
society. They are the ultimate machine or automaton: something which
does not derive its power from the human body and is therefore autono-
mous.3 On the other hand, when we ‘use’ such robots we do not really
or merely ‘use’ them (we do not treat them as a tool) but we interact with
them. Perhaps we even have relations with them. This is only possible
since they are already and necessarily embedded in the social, which is
the relational a priori for seeing them as ‘independent’ entities. This is
especially true for so-called ‘social robots’, which are designed to live
with us. But other ‘autonomous’ robots (automata) are also already part
of existing social–material relational structures concerned with energy
production, energy distribution and energy use; in this sense, they are
not independent. Hence, talk about fully ‘autonomous’ intelligent robots
(which then would have a different moral status) is as much a fiction as
the fiction of the fully autonomous, atomistic human individual.
This paradox can be further clarified by Ihde’s concept of the quasi-
otherness of technology, which he thinks is particularly applicable to the
automaton (Ihde 1990, pp. 98–108). If the robot has a particular appear-
ance, we start to treat it as if it were an other (see also Coeckelbergh
2011a). Now this appearance and this way of seeing robots as ‘separate’
machines or even as ‘others’ are only possible if we assume a social–
relational ground, which allows us to draw robots into the social sphere,
and then ascribe a different moral status to them. The robot is already
part of the relational fabric in which we live, and as such it appears
in certain ways and not in other ways. Hence, what moral and onto-
logical status we ascribe to the robot will depend on our form of life
(for example a scientific form of life) and perhaps also on the robot ’s
skills and ‘form of life’: how it develops and grows from within and
into the material–social–cultural fabric that is already there, the ‘world
of persons, objects and relations’ in which we are continuously and
unavoidably involved.
Similarly, it would be wrong to oppose ‘technology’ to ‘nature’,
as Latour and Ingold remind us (see also Chapter 5). Nature is not
154 Growing Moral Relations

something non-human which then is brought under human control and

transformed by technology. Ingold shows that tools are not necessarily
to be seen as instruments of control: in hunter-gatherer societies they
are, rather, ‘instruments of revelation’ (Ingold 2000, p. 320); they are
part of the relational world which is the precondition for both modern
and pre-modern (or non-modern) understandings of nature and tech-
nology. Metaphors of domination and control (e.g. master–slave meta-
phors) constitute only one perspective on human–nature relations; they
are not ‘what technology really is’ and they do not exhaust the range
of possibilities for dealing with non-humans – or, indeed, with other
humans. As Ingold puts it:

What we have in reality are human beings, living and working in

environments that include other humans as well as a variety of non-
human agencies and entities. [ ... ] [In] this mutually constitutive
interrelation between persons and environment there is no absolute
dichotomy between human and non-human components. (Ingold
2000, p. 321)

Thus, technology cannot be sharply distinguished from society or from

‘nature’; it is embedded in the relational, social world which consists of
both humans and non-humans. In this sense ‘none of us are Westerners’
(Ingold 2000, p. 323) and ‘we have never been modern’ (Latour 1991) –
which is why ‘we do not even have to leave the bounds of our own
society in order to discover the challenge presented by supposedly non-
Western perspectives to the dominant categories of Western thought’
(Ingold, p. 337). Actually, if the transcendental argument is right, we
cannot really leave those bounds anyway. We can travel to distant places
and ‘other’ cultures, but our thinking remains on the ground and our
gestures and our skills remain rooted in the form of life in which we
grew. At most, we can try to stretch the bounds in thought and practice,
and this may slowly change our form of life.
This view of social change rejects Marxist determinism, since mate-
rial–social conditions are not seen as one term which then causes
change in another term (human relations, human freedom) but as part
of the relational fabric which we ourselves weave. Moreover, it also
avoids Heideggerian fatalism. On the one hand, it is true that we cannot
‘simply’ change the a priori ground of our practices and thinking. To
say so assumes that this ground is something that is disconnected from
human agency; it assumes that ‘first’ there is something external which
 Bodies and Things 155

we ‘then’ can manipulate. The metaphorical structure of this view is

similar to the image of a bare ‘earth’ or ‘nature’ which is then cultivated
by humans (or the image of the young child as a blank slate on which
we write culture). Rather, what we want and do already swims in the
relational ocean that carries our volitions and actions. In this sense,
Heidegger’s use of the terms Geschick (fate) and Gelassenheit in his later
philosophy (see, for example, Heidegger 1959) are appropriate: in a sense
we have to ‘wait’ for change. However, this view risks becoming fatal-
istic if it is interpreted as ‘doing nothing’. It is true that the world will
not change at will; it will not yield to our intentional actions. However,
we should not assume that there is, on the one hand, a world (which
must be controlled) and, on the other hand, human will and action.
Human activity is already part of the world, brings forth that world.
Therefore, it is not true that we do nothing. We already ‘do’ the world,
we already world (verb), by dwelling. This implies that of course we can
change it, since this is what we are doing and have been doing all along.
But this change is not done from a god’s eye point of view, by us, by
the human understood as the Great Manipulator, the Great Controller,
the Judge, or the Gardener; instead, the change is immanent in the
process of relational life itself; it is immanent in the dynamic world of
humans, animals and things. We are already part of the ‘machine’ and
it is part of us; we already live in the ‘garden’, and it is only as such that
we contribute to its shape as one of the nodes in its living, breathing,
vibrating network.
For ethics, this means that we should replace an ethics of distance,
of disengagement, with an ethics of immanence and engagement.
We can no longer externalize “Evil” but have to understand responsi-
bility as being responsive to and within the deep-relational world and
its constituents – human and non-human entities. If the language-
activity of ‘ascribing’ moral ‘status’ must be part of this relational
understanding at all, it can only emerge as one of the many ways in
which we shape and reshape our relations to other entities, that is, as
one of the ways we shape and reshape our form of life – and therefore
also reshape the form of life of other entities. Surely some ways of
doing things, some ways of relating to other entities, are better than
others, but this cannot be decided a priori from a ‘point of nowhere’
(Nagel). In the spirit of Dewey’s pragmatism, we can say that it is,
rather, a matter of (imagination as) improvisation: it is experimental,
trying out. In this sense, we must go ‘beyond good and evil’, to use a
Nietzschean phrase.
156 Growing Moral Relations

This relational critique challenges influential currents in philosophy

of technology in so far as they assume a strict distinction between the
human–technological and the natural. This is the case for many twen-
tieth-century philosophies of technology, who assume that there is
such a thing as ‘Technology’ as an autonomous sphere. Not only is the
term ‘technology’ as used by these thinkers far too general, as Verbeek
has argued (Verbeek 2005), but it is also misleading if it suggests that
technology is something entirely external to us and to nature, or some-
thing that has nothing to do with how we live our lives.
Critical philosophies of technology, rooted in the Frankfurter Schule,
also remain dualist in this respect. For example, Habermas distin-
guishes between the System and the Lifeworld and then argues that
the Lifeworld (how we, humans, live our lives) has been ‘colonized’ by
the System (technology or, more broadly, instrumental rationality).
Similarly, Feenberg’s claim in Between Reason and Experience (2010) that
‘democracy’ has ‘intervened’ or been ‘extended’ into the ‘technical’
sphere assumes a dichotomy between the human–political and the
‘technical’. But the dichotomies assumed by these arguments, whose
structure parallels a dualist, Manicheistic view of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as
much as they parallel the industrial labour–leisure dichotomy (and
perhaps also a male–female dichotomy), are untenable in the light of
the relational view I am developing here. Based on Ingold’s interpret-
ation of Heidegger, we must acknowledge a plurality of worlds as ways
of seeing and doing that depend on their social–relational ground,
which is not separate from the life-world. What these philosophers
call instrumental rationality and the ‘System’ is not something alien
to the life-world, but emerges from it in a specific cultural–historical
period. It is not something external which then penetrates our lives;
it is already part of our lives. We are not raped by technology; tech-
nology is already ‘in’ us from the start; in a sense it is us and we are
technology.
For philosophy of technology, this view of the relation between
humans and technology implies that artefacts – and, more generally,
‘things’ – should also be understood in relational terms. For Heidegger,
things gather and are therefore not mere things.

Our thinking has of course long been accustomed to understate the

nature of the thing. The consequence, in the course of Western
thought, has been that the thing is represented as an unknown X to
which perceptible properties are attached. (Heidegger 1971, p. 153)
 Bodies and Things 157

Heidegger responds here to what I have called the properties-based view

in the beginning of this book, which is a non-relational view of artefacts.
Instead, Heidegger argues, we are always related to things. Even if we
turn ‘inward’, he says,

we come back to ourselves from things without ever abandoning our

stay among things. Indeed, the loss of rapport with things that
occurs in states of depression would be wholly impossible if even
such a state were not still what it is as a human state: that is, a staying
with things. (Heidegger 1971, p. 157)

This is again his transcendental argument: there is a relational–existen-

tial ground that acts as a condition of possibility for perception, experi-
ence and action – even for the appearance of things and of ourselves
as ‘individuals’ or as ‘atoms’. Heidegger’s term ‘dwelling’ refers to this
pre-existing relational ground. ‘Ground’ is slightly misleading, since it
suggests something fixed, whereas it is something moving, living; this
is why ‘dwelling’ is perhaps a better term. If we try to build or construct
something (a building, a formal language, a system, a logos, etc.), this
is only possible on the basis of living relations, which include things.
Language itself is ‘alive’.
In Being and Time Heidegger already said that initially the Greeks
understood language as ‘discourse’, that is, as speaking. It was not
understood as logic ‘based on the ontology of objective presence’
(Heidegger 1927, p. 155). Thus, language was initially understood
as something living and something social, not as something about
statements (or “propositions”) and logos. Similarly, technology is
not so much about things as about what we do (together). In later
work Heidegger analyses the Greek word techne, which means ‘to
make something appear, within what is present’ (Heidegger 1971,
p. 159). The thing makes appear the relations, our practice, dwelling.
Therefore, we may conclude, an artefact is not a purely external some-
thing; it is part of how we exist, how we live. We are already engaged
with it. Technology as techne is part of dwelling, part of life; it is not
its enemy.
Another way to elaborate this non-instrumental view of technology
is to say that technology is a ‘form of life’. In the mid-1980s, Winner
already introduced this term in his social and political philosophy
of technology. Like McLuhan, Winner argued that technologies are
not mere tools and are not just having ‘impacts’ and ‘side effects’.
158 Growing Moral Relations

The relation between technology and society (or technology and

humanity) is not a matter of cause and effect:

New worlds are being made. There is nothing “secondary” about this
phenomenon. It is, in fact, the most important accomplishment of
any new technology. The construction of a technical system that
involves human beings as operating parts brings a reconstruction of
social roles and relationships. [ ... ] We do indeed “use” telephones,
automobiles, electric lights, and computers [ ... ]. But our world soon
becomes one in which telephony, automobility, electric lighting, and
computing are forms of life in the most powerful sense: life would
scarcely be thinkable without them. (Winner 1986, p. 11)

Winner uses Wittgenstein’s term to argue that technology changes

patterns in perception, thought and behaviour. Although it may ultim-
ately change ‘the very conditions of life itself’, for example by ‘genetic
engineering’, he argues that usually it creates variations of old patterns
(Winner 1986, p. 13).
Winner’s view of technology is also interesting for how we deal with
other entities. He writes that when we interact with computers – and,
we may add today, with robots – we ‘carry with us highly structured
anticipations about entities that appear to participate, if only minim-
ally, in forms of life and associated language games that are parts of
human culture’ (p. 14). This suggests that, if we interact with social
and humanoid robots, what matters to the form of this interaction is
not the (physical) properties of the robots, but the relation between
their appearance and human forms of life, that is, human culture,
human social life and human biology. Their acceptance will depend on
whether or not they fit within a certain form of life; in so far as these
forms of life differ between cultures, our interactions with, and atti-
tudes towards, robots will differ as well.
Interestingly, Winner does not only draw on Wittgenstein but also
on Marx – although he also rejects Marx’s determinism. In The German
Ideology (Marx and Engels 1846) Winner reads that a mode of produc-
tion is a mode of life: ‘By changing the shape of material things, Marx
observes, we also change ourselves’ (Winner 1986, p. 14). But this is not
a deterministic, mechanistic process; metaphors of industrial produc-
tion are inappropriate here:

In this process human beings do not stand at the mercy of a great

deterministic punch press that cranks out precisely tailored persons
 Bodies and Things 159

at a certain rate during a given historical period. Instead, the situ-

ation Marx describes is one in which individuals are actively involved
in the daily creation and recreation, production and reproduction of
the world in which they live. (Winner 1986, p. 15)

Indeed, when they set out their premises, Marx and Engels start from
the active individual, which is a living individual (Marx and Engels
1846, p. 31). They argue that language, conceptions and consciousness
are products of the language of life, the actual life process:

The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first

directly interwoven with the material activity and the material inter-
course of men – the language of real life. [ ... ] Consciousness can
never be anything else than conscious being, and the being of men
is their actual life-process. [ ... ] In direct contrast to German phil-
osophy which descends from heaven to earth, here it is a matter of
ascending from earth to heaven. (Marx and Engels 1846, p. 36)

This emphasis on the life-process in relation with technology shows an

often neglected dimension of Marxist thought and has already been
discussed in the previous chapter: Marx’s materialism is at the same time
a kind of naturalism, and the material basis of language and thought
can be reinterpreted as a transcendental ground. Hence the language of
moral philosophy is rooted in the ‘language of real life’. But Winner, in
contrast to Ingold’s language of growth, stays close to Marx and Engels
in so far as he expresses his interpretation of Marx in terms of modern
production/creation metaphors. Nevertheless, like Benton and others, he
makes an interesting link between Marx and Wittgenstein, who ‘direct
our attention to the fabric of everyday existence’ (p. 15). Whatever the
differences between them may be (Winner ascribes ‘passive tradition-
alism’ to Wittgenstein), Winner shows that both thinkers had a thor-
oughly relational view in which the human and the technological, the
social and the material are firmly connected:

the philosophies of Marx and Wittgenstein share a fruitful insight:

the observation that social activity is an ongoing process of world-
making. Throughout their lives people come together to renew the
fabric of relationships, transactions, and meanings that sustain their
common existence. Indeed, if they did not engage in this continuing
activity of material and social production, the human world would
literally fall apart. All social roles and frameworks – from the most
160 Growing Moral Relations

rewarding to the most oppressive – must somehow be restored and

reproduced with the rise of the sun each day. From this point of
view, the important question about technology becomes, As we
“make things work,” what kind of world are we making? (Winner
1986, p. 17)

In other words, in this powerful statement of the main question philoso-

phers of technology (and, indeed, engineers, policy-makers, and others)
should ask, Winner – though not explicitly – goes beyond determinist
and causalist thinking by embracing Heidegger’s and Wittgenstein’s
transcendentalist approach: technology is a condition of possibility for
human culture and society in general as much as it is a condition of
possibility for what we can say about entities, natural or artificial. Our
talk about their moral and ontological status presupposes this ongoing
social activity, this continuous process of world-making in which worlds
of entities and the relations between them are shaped.4 Moreover, this
transcendentalist ground is ‘given’, but, with Winner, we should inter-
pret this emphasis on the given not as an invitation to traditionalism
(following the beaten track); the ‘given’ is at the same time constituted
by our, human activity (we make the track). However, it is good to keep
in mind that we cannot simply change our patterns of activity, that is,
our form of life, by single acts of human will, which are then supposed
to cause the desired effect. Worlds are shaped by us as much as we are
shaped by worlds.

9.6. Nature, virtue and skill

The relational critique of nature–society and nature–technology

distinctions also helps us to challenge dominant scientific–naturalist
and romantic–naturalist approaches to ‘nature’ itself. With Ingold,
we should criticize modern biology, in particular neo-Darwinism: as
I noted before, it is relational only in the weak sense that it under-
stands evolution in terms of the relation between an organism and its
environment (change by natural selection as organisms adapt to their
environment), but the organism itself is not usually seen in relational
terms: it is the result of genetic changes, that is, the result of an internal
program or code, the ‘blueprint’ of the design. It is ‘built’ by ‘nature’.
Instead, Ingold attributes changes in living organisms to ‘transform-
ations in the whole field of relationships within which they come into
being’ (Ingold 2000, p. 366). He goes so far as to say that ‘the genotype,
conceived as a programme or blueprint for the growth of the organism,
 Bodies and Things 161

does not exist’ (p. 372). The ‘genotype’, the ‘bio-logos’, is an abstraction
that exists only in the mind of the biologist (pp. 382–383). But biology
is not genetics. DNA (the genotype) is not the form which is then real-
ized (the phenotype); rather, forms are ‘an emergent property of the
total system’ (p. 383). Forms and changes in form are to be attributed
to the whole system, not to genes only. The genome exists, but does not
contain ‘a specification of the essential form of the organism, or of its
capacities for action’ (p. 385). Genes and words ‘gather their meanings
from the contexts of activities and relationships in which they are in
play’ (p. 387); they should not be abstracted from ‘the manifold forms
of life that have actually appeared in history’ (p. 390), from the ‘rela-
tional contexts of their development’ (p. 391). Ingold gives the example
of cycling: it is a skill which is neither ‘innate’ nor merely ‘culture’; it is
neither phenotype nor genotype (p. 385).
This implies that we should abandon strict distinctions between
‘natural’ history and ‘human’ history, between natural evolution and
technological evolution, between evolution and history. For example,
there is no strict distinction between, on the one hand, what is ‘innate’
and ‘biological’ and, on the other hand, what is cultural. Ingold rightly
argues that we are not born with an innate ‘language program’ to which
content is then added (semantics and syntaxis); instead, our ‘equip-
ment’ is developed as we live our lives (p. 379), emerging ‘in the context
of [the child’s] sensory involvement in a richly structured environment’
(p. 397). Similarly, there is no ‘body’ understood as something autono-
mous, separate from its environment; what we call ‘body’ arises and
continuously changes in a field of relationships. ‘Natural’, ‘social’ and
‘technological’ changes in form can all be understood as emerging within
one relational whole, and this process cannot adequately be described in
terms of industrial metaphors. Ingold writes: ‘People inhabit one world,
not because their differences are underwritten by universals of human
nature, but because they are caught up – along with other creatures – in
a continuous field of relations, in the unfolding of which all difference
is generated’ (Ingold 2000, p. 391).
Finally, this view of ‘nature’ – that is, this rejection of such a dualist
term – and this view of the relation between humans and their envir-
onment also have consequences for ‘green’ or ‘environmental’ politics.
If such a politics wishes to be really ‘environmental’, it cannot be a
politics of ‘nature’ and of ‘nature conservation’, since that assumes the
very distinctions which I criticized in the previous pages. It assumes
that a pure, virgin ‘nature’ has been ‘colonized’, ‘transformed’ and
‘raped’ by human technology. If the problem is defined in these terms,
162 Growing Moral Relations

environmental ethics must necessarily be an ethics of restraint, limiting,

self-control and containment: the ‘natural’ should be protected (at all
costs?) against the “Evil” brought about by humans and technology.
Therefore, the argument goes, humans should limit their influence on
‘nature’, leave it alone.
If, on the other hand, we see humans and technology as in-corpo-
rated in the relational natural–social–technological world-body, world-
activity and world-life, then we need a different kind of ethics: an ethics
that concerns the question of how to shape forms of life, an ethics of
life and growth, of metamorphosis perhaps – which is an ethics of abun-
dance and excess rather than scarcity and restraint. ‘Shape forms of life’
should not be understood as implying that ‘first’ and external to us
there are ‘given’ forms, which we then manipulate and transform from
the outside. Rather, it means that life reshapes itself, that there is meta-
morphosis, and humans are part of that process – albeit an active part.
Humans can try things out, explore possibilities, and then perceive
and experience which forms are good, which forms lead to more flour-
ishing – human flourishing and other flourishing. According to this
view, knowledge of good is neither pre-fixed in a moral–metaphysical
catalogue nor the will given by a divine being. Good is neither a prop-
erty of (human or divine) will nor an outcome of independent (human
or divine) judgement. Instead, it is a know-how and wisdom that grows
as forms of life grow out of the social world-ground, branch out rhizo-
matically into new bio-moral possibilities, and change shape within a
thriving relational network.
This view has implications for virtue ethics, in particular for an
upcoming branch called ‘environmental virtue ethics’ (see, for example,
Sandler and Cafaro 2005 and Hursthouse 2007). To end this chapter,
let me offer a reflection on the relation between virtue and skill, and
suggest an ethics of skill as an answer to the ‘environmental problem’.
In particular, I will make suggestions for rethinking virtue ethics: the
understanding of ‘nature’ and especially the notion of ‘skill’ (as found in
Dreyfus and Ingold) allows us to tackle the problem of motivation envir-
onmental virtue ethics struggles with and to develop a non-romantic
and non-Stoic view of virtue, ‘nature’ and its relation to technology.5
Standard environmental virtue ethics assumes a dualism between,
on the one hand, a body of moral knowledge (the virtues) and, on
the other hand, practices which transform nature. This then natur-
ally raises the problem of motivation: a gap between (propositional)
knowledge and action. We know what to do (we know the environ-
mental virtues), but we fail to act according to the principles (we fail
 Bodies and Things 163

to act virtuously). Furthermore, neo-Stoic and Romantic solutions

(see Chapter 2) try to reach out to nature by means of imagination, in
particular by imagining that we are part of nature, but still presuppose
strict distinctions between humans, technology and nature. Humans
and nature remain separated and are only bridged in imagination, that
is, in thought – not in practice. Furthermore, technology is mainly seen
as an instrument in relation to virtue: there are good uses and bad uses.
Nature is seen as the soil which is cultivated or as “wilderness” threat-
ened by technology.
However, in this chapter a different view has emerged that enables
us to move beyond the view of nature as a separate thing, beyond the
instrumental view of technology, and beyond the colonization view
of technology (see also the previous section). Nature is not something
outside us; we are always already ‘in’ an environment as embodied,
relational beings. Technology, likewise, does not exist apart from
experience, skills, practices. Therefore, neither nature nor technology
is the subject or object of control. Control has always been the central
(Greek) virtue. But now we need different virtues. If the view of moral
knowledge developed here is adequate, then such virtues cannot really
be known a priori, but are formed in practice and grow as skill grows,
as know-how grows. Perhaps formalization of virtues can be useful
for novices (see again Dreyfus’s developmental model of skill), but it
cannot be the goal of moral knowledge. ‘True’ moral knowledge is in
the skill and in the activity, in which good is experienced and done. In
this sense, there is no truth or good (nouns); there is only true-ing and
good-ing (verbs).
For technology, this means that it is to be seen as part of this devel-
opmental process, part of the growth of skill. It is not a thing, but a
human-mediated form of metamorphosis, in which all parties change
(technology, human, nature, etc.). Furthermore, for environmental
virtue ethics the problem of motivation identified in Chapter 2 evap-
orates: according to this view, if we engage in skilled and practical
activity, achieve know-how and experience good, there is no longer a
gap between moral knowledge and action, since moral knowledge is
no longer understood as a ‘logos’ (or design, laws, etc.) separate from
wisdom achieved in concrete practices. Moral knowledge is about know-
how, about learning and practising. The traditional distinction between
know-how (practice) and know wherefore (value) collapses: value grows
in practice. If we nevertheless experience a gap between knowledge and
action, this is a sign that we do not know how to flourish; it is ethical
failure itself. Then there is no problem of moral motivation in the sense
164 Growing Moral Relations

that we know what we should do, but we don’t do it; instead we don’t
know what we should do because we haven’t done it.
To take up again Cafaro’s suggestion in response to Thoreau: if we
have never slaughtered an animal, we do not really know what we
are doing when we support animal factories by eating the meat they
produce or when we write about killing animals. And, if we want to
know the good life, we have to experiment, try out different possibil-
ities. Our lack of ethical knowledge is not a lack of theory (insight) but a
lack of experience. We need know-how. The problem is not what nature
is, but how to handle it.
If we need imagination at all, then, it is not imagination as representa-
tion (representing the real logos of the universe) or as feeling (the Romantic
imagination) but a ‘moral imagination’ or ‘ecological imagination’, as
Fesmire says it in his Deweyan vocabulary (Fesmire 2004; 2008): the
capacity for dramatic rehearsal and moral improvisation, which is not
self-absorbed – like the Stoic or romantic imagination – but allows us
to relate to the world, is engaged. We should not cultivate apathy (as the
Stoics recommended) or indulge in fantasies about ‘the earth’ (as the
romantic ecological movements of our time all too often do), but swim
in the world and simultaneously try out how to swim better and how to
make better water.
Thoreau’s view promotes practical engagement with nature, yet was
still too romantic and Stoic in its retreat from the city and in its stress on
self-cultivation and self-sufficiency. Moreover, like Borgmann, Thoreau
seemed to have privileged a range of activities ‘a priori’. Borgmann
called them ‘focal practices’. In Thoreau, and certainly in Borgmann,
we can still read much natural–artificial dualism between the lines.
But Thoreau did it: his view ethics as an engaged, experimental ethics
survives. In this sense, Walden supports the view that emerges here:
knowledge about the good life is a matter of know-how: it is only
through experience and skill that we can acquire it. We have to live it.
For moral status ascription, this view of moral knowledge implies that
we should not try to (re)construct the logos of the moral universe (and
imagine ourselves as related to other entities and to ‘nature’ accord-
ingly) or ascribe special status to anything “wild” or “natural”. Instead
of performing these detached activities, we should realize that we can
only ‘ascribe’ moral ‘status’ within concrete practices, within the rela-
tions in which we are deeply engaged. If, given this insight, it still makes
sense to perform the activity of ‘ascription’ at all, it should only be seen
as one aid in ongoing processes of coping with, and living, the world: a
process of improvisation in the face of uncertainty, a process of dancing,
 Bodies and Things 165

not imagining, of participating in the dance of all entities to which/to

whom we are related. Changing moral status means developing new
skills, trying out new moves. The choreography of humans, animals
and things is not pre-given but grows in the process of coping, which
we cannot fully control. As new lines and patterns show up, meaning
dawns upon us and a new world rises, breathing and damping of life.
Is this a new kind of mysticism? It is certainly not a detached, contem-
plative form of mysticism. In the next chapter I will ask the question of
how this view might be related to religion and spirituality. Let us start
with a little preview, which complements the analysis in this chapter.
If we want to change our nature-talk, then we have to look into the
transcendental conditions of this language game: its social–cultural
conditions and its related bodily and material–technological conditions.
But even if in the West we might think of this as a “secular activity”, we
should not forget that both our nature-talk and its conditions of possi-
bility are deeply related to Western modernity and religion. For example,
if we talk about nature as a sphere separate from the human sphere,
this talking and thinking are made possible by a post-Christian secular
modernity, which is shaped by Jewish–Christian thinking: once the
‘creation’ (object) was separated from the Creator (subject), we could
think of the former as un-spiritual. It was the precondition of modern
thinking. Modern science has bracketed the Creator, and what remains,
it seems, is a meaningless universe of things, in which subjects feel
alienated, especially as they are increasingly seen as machines, robots –
that is, things. But the romantic response was also modern: it projected
the feelings of the subject onto the empty canvas of the natural world.
Nature became a reservoir for our feelings, a container of our inflated
self. But, when feeling was gone, what remained was a collection of
facts, things, and organisms as systems. It turned out that this attempt
to counter dualism failed. If we want to really avoid (the experience of)
alienation, therefore, we need to move beyond modern thinking and
question the transcendental patterns that make possible this kind of
thinking; we need to question what Wittgenstein called our form of
life. We need, among other things, to conceive of a different society, a
different technology and a different spirituality.
10
Spirits and Gods: Forms of Religion

10.1. The secularization of moral status

and the purification of religion

At first sight, it might seem that moral status has nothing to do with
how we feel about entities, let alone with religion or spirituality. Standard
approaches to moral status often explicitly aim to find a rational justi-
fication of moral status. The properties approach, in particular, can
be understood as a way to rationally determine the moral status of an
entity by examining its properties. As I said in the first part of this
book, this is a scientific approach to moral status. Science and philos-
ophy-as-science are what we may call outgrowths of the habit of rational
thinking. For example, Singer’s approach proposes to base justification of
moral status on the property ‘sentience’, and utilitarianism, as a moral
philosophy, is a scientific approach par excellence. The purpose of such
philosophies is that of the rationalistic strand of the Enlightenment
movement: liberate people from their dogmatic beliefs and let the truth
shine. With regard to moral status, it implies that Singer and others try
to help us to think about moral status in a rational way, by using our
faculty of reason, rather than relying on our feelings and intuitions – let
alone “superstitious” beliefs. Viewed in this way, most standard theories
of moral status can be seen as heirs of the history of secularization and
rationalization, which is a history of de-spiritualization.
The first steps in this history were taken not by Enlightenment
philosophers, or even by early modern philosophers, but by Jews,
Muslims and Christians. They have made painstaking efforts to
eradicate polytheism and what we now call, in a Christian fashion,
paganism. By emphasizing that there is only one god, they have also
delegated all spirituality to the One.1 This redistribution of spirituality,

166
 Spirits and Gods 167

an accumulation in ‘spiritual capital’ which made God (and his

Church, in Christianity the body of Christ) a monopolist in spiritual
matters, effectively removed spirit from the world. Gradually no other
spirits and certainly no other gods were allowed. Nature was de-sacra-
lized long before modernity. Nature became purified of spirit and
the pantheon became a mono-theon: no other gods were welcome in
the temple. First the gods and the people who worshipped them were
excluded from the city and from the Church. The villagers came to be
regarded as pagans, who would still believe in the ‘old’ gods and spirits.
Unless they could be converted, these pagans were useless as soldiers of
the Church; they were “out”. Later, the monotheistic religions would
do everything to ban other gods and spirits completely and to convert
everyone to monotheism, even in the village: either by emphasizing
again and again that there is only one god, or by adopting the ‘pagan’
rituals and spirits to some extent and transforming them into some-
thing else (the latter strategy has been followed by Catholicism). This
was combined with a ‘Greek’ reverence for logos. If anything – any
object – became holy and full of spirit, it was their holy Book, which
contains the Word of God, the divine Logos, and which contrasts with
the non-spiritual world. As the opening of the Gospel of John states:
‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God.’ And, according to Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenic
Jewish philosopher who tried to reconcile Greek philosophy (Plato and
Stoicism, for instance) and Jewish religion, Logos was God’s blueprint
for the world.2 In this way, the monotheistic religions prepared the
way for the modern split between the natural and the spiritual, and
between, on the one hand, logos, words, rationality, mind and the spir-
itual and, on the other hand, the absence of logos, silence or beastly
screaming, irrationality, passion, body, the material and the natural.
Once the natural world was purified, the sciences could study its laws
and objects.
In modern times, this process has been described as secularization.
Weber used the term ‘disenchantment’ for the belief that

principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into

play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calcula-
tion. This means that the world is disenchanted. One need no longer
have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the
spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed.
Technical means and calculation perform the service. (Weber 1919,
p. 139)
168 Growing Moral Relations

Indeed, it is often believed that magic and spirit no longer exist in the
modern world. Once science replaced religious experience, the spell
is gone. However, is this true? Have the monotheistic religions and
science been entirely successful in expelling spirit and magic from the
world? Several authors have questioned the secularization thesis. There
is much to say for the thesis not only that ‘we have never been modern’,
as Latour argued, but also that we have never been secularized – at least,
not completely. First, as I already suggested, the history of science is
itself related to religion. Viewed in this way, I think Szerszynski is right
that science and technology must be seen as ‘a distinctive product of
the West’s religious history’ (Szerszynski 2005, p. 814). This means that
our current way of conceptualizing moral status is also a product of
this religious history. Second, even today we do not always see things as
‘spiritually neutral’ objects with a status that has nothing to do with the
spiritual. This takes at least two forms (for a more elaborate discussion
see Section 10.3. and Coeckelbergh 2010): the first is neo-paganism;
the second neo-animism. Neo-paganism, which re-enchants nature by
ascribing spiritual value to nature and to natural beings, must be under-
stood as postmodern in the sense that, since we entered modernity, it
is no longer obvious that nature is spiritual – we have lost our ‘inno-
cence’, so to speak – and, if we had a scientific education, we have to
make an effort to detach ourselves from the modern way of looking
at nature. The scientific way of thinking, as a condition of possibility,
constrains the way we see things. Neo-animism is another, perhaps less
self-conscious, movement, which refers to the experience that some
objects, for example, ‘even’ technological objects, have spirit. We do not
only anthropomorphize computers, robots and so on; we also spiritualize
them. Turkle already observed in the 1980s that children think that
something is alive when it moves and that computers are also treated in
this way (Turkle 1984, p. 61). But adults, too, sometimes have animistic
experiences, and this is especially so in the case of humanoid robots,
which move and appear to have agency. We first experience and respond
to them in a spontaneous, animistic way – only afterwards (usually very
soon afterwards) we return to scientific perception, especially if we are
in a scientific environment such as a robotics lab.
The response of the scientist–philosopher to such experiences is, of
course, that of the Enlightenment thinker. If people anthropomorphize
things, they are said to be deceived, to be under the spell of ‘ideology’,
gliding back into Plato’s cave where we are captured by appearances.
If Enlightenment champions are kind, they want to help us out of the
darkness. If they are malicious, we only hear their laughter echoing
 Spirits and Gods 169

in the cave they think we are imprisoned in. “Of course there is only
one reality, one universe (the scientist is a mono-realist). We should not
confuse our irrational beliefs, emotions, feelings, and so on with the
body of scientific propositions that represent the one and true logos of
the universe.”
Even some modern monotheists may respond to us in a similar way,
at least in the following sense. These people would not argue that we
should take a scientific point of view, but they might say that we fail to
see religious truth and that we fail to make a crucial distinction between
science and religion. In the sphere of religion, we should worship the
(one) god; in the sphere of science, we should regard things for what
they are: objects, without spirit. To paraphrase a well-known Christian
saying: give the scientist what belongs to science (scientific truth, the
universe of objects, the “facts”), and give God what belongs to Him
(revealed truth, divine nature, the spiritual). Their imperative is: “Do
not mix these two worlds, these two ‘cities’.” There is the university
and there is the church, and never shall their ways meet again. Thus,
both the scientist–philosopher and the modern monotheist share the
presupposition that there is a sharp distinction between science and
religion (and between one, real natural universe and the religious beliefs
of people) – the relevant difference being that the scientist–philosopher
wants to explain away, tolerate, limit or eradicate the monotheist’s reli-
gion and all forms of religion and ‘superstition’, whereas the monotheist
wants to explain away, tolerate, limit or eradicate only non-monotheist
spiritual experience and practice.
But these efforts of purification are in vain. There never has been
a purely ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ sphere, in the same way as there is
no purely ‘natural’, ‘technological’ or ‘social’ sphere. As Ingold and
Szerszynski point out, pre-modern cultures experience their world as
already natural, social and sacred at the same time. But this does not
fundamentally change in a technological culture. We remain dependent
on nature, and, even if in modernity we feel alienated from it, this does
not threaten our existence, since we are still carried by it. We also start
to develop new dependencies: we built new natures. We created a second
nature full of artefacts. We also created what I call a ‘third nature’: the
world wide web (which is also connected to the second nature). Our
spiritual experience does not stop at the borders drawn by science or
monotheist religion. Spirit lives where we live: in the natural–social–
technological world we inhabit, experience and co-create.
We can conclude that the attempt to purify religion (by scientists and
by monotheists), which tries to distinguish religion from the social, the
170 Growing Moral Relations

natural and the material–technological, fails since our ways of doing

are still firmly grounded in, that is, made possible and limited by, a
religious–social–natural–material a priori, which constitutes the tran-
scendental ground for both our scientific and religious discourse about
religion and moral status. This means that moral status ascription must
be discussed in a way that recognizes the religious dimension of human
experience and the religious dimension of its transcendental ground.

10.2. Two conceptions of religion: genealogical

spirituality and life-spirituality

Let me now reconnect this view of religion to the argument made in

the previous chapters. To say that there is no autonomous thing called
‘religion’ is not a scientific claim about the true nature of the universe,
but is, rather, the view that human experience and existence cannot be
understood in secular terms alone, since our ways of thinking, seeing
and doing are not entirely secular and will never be entirely secular:
human experience and existence are made possible by, and constrained
by, a ground that also has a religious–spiritual dimension. For under-
standing religion, this transcendental claim has at least two implica-
tions. First, religious language and thinking – in particular religious
metaphor – are not ‘autonomous’ but depend on the forms of life, of
living together, of growth discussed in the previous chapters. The way
we talk about religion and spirituality depends on how we live, how
we live together, how we make things, and so on. Religious thinking is
firmly connected with the social–natural–technological ground. In a
strict sense, we cannot talk about religion, as if it were an autonomous
sphere, an object we can take distance from and then talk about; rather,
we talk religion as we live religion. And living religion means at the
same time living society, living technology, and so on. When we talk
religion, we do not leave our body, our tools and our society at home.
(Similarly, when we talk moral status, we do not leave our body, our
tools and our society at home.) Second, forms of religious experience are
also dependent on this relational, primal ground, the ground which I
identified as the transcendental a priori of moral status ascription.
Perhaps we can call this ground ‘sacred’, but not because it would
be a separate sphere divorced from ‘the secular’. Rather, it is at the
same sacred and natural, spiritual and technological, holy and social.
Compare our dependence on this ground to dependence on a ‘pagan’
well or stream: it is spirit and it is water, it is holy and it is what people
do together. It is not ‘religious’ if that means something autonomous,
 Spirits and Gods 171

something about “higher spheres”; rather, it is simultaneously a way of

thinking and a technique of living, indeed, a way of life.
Religion attempts to (re)connect with this ground. The origin of the
term ‘religion’ lies in the verb religare: to bind, to link, to relate. This
may be interpreted as an attempt to restore an ‘original’ world order (an
order of the past, perhaps a world or a temple constructed according to
an ‘original’ blueprint, the Word of the Architect). Religion may try to
reconnect what has been broken, to heal what has been ripped apart.
However, it may also be interpreted as being the continuous attempt to
relate, to grow and connect in the present; that is, it may be interpreted
as life itself.
Note that trying to reconnect conceptually what has been ‘broken’
by modernity might itself be viewed as an effort of re-sacralization, of
trying to restore a whole, or it might be viewed as an attempt to relate in
the present. In this sense, Latour, Ingold and Szerszynski are ‘religious’
writers.
We can now connect these interpretations of religare to remarks about
logos and rhizomes in the previous chapter and construe two kinds of
religion, by which I mean more than conceptions of religion: two kinds
of religious–social–technological discourse, thinking, experience and
action.
The first kind of religion is genealogical in Ingold’s sense: it tries to
connect to the past, to trace us back to a time when everything was ‘in
order’. It is not so much conservative as restorative and reactionary in
kind. It sees spirituality as something that is ‘passed on’ from a creator-
God to its creatures. Our ‘spiritual’ DNA is passed on. And perhaps
we pass it on to our creatures, to the artefacts we make – for instance,
robots. They are our ‘children’; religious history is a history of fathers
and forefathers (God being the Father). This kind of religious thinking
loves tree-structures; its society has a hierarchical tree-structure, and its
thinking about morality is tree-based: there are codes based on princi-
ples, there are moral status categories based on ontological classes based
on properties. Religion is basically a practice of remembering, or at least
a particular kind of genealogical remembering. Acts of the past have to
be re-acted.
The second kind of religion does not suppose that there is an ‘Original’
act (e.g. an original creation, an original act, etc.) but sees the present
as fundamentally historical, as moving on, as being alive, but not in
a straight line. Here cyclical and rhizomatic thinking is appropriate.
Religion is about making connections now, about continuous spiritual
non-linear growth. Spirit is not a Word that is passed on from generation
172 Growing Moral Relations

to generation, that is distributed among the people by a ‘Father’, but

something that is already there in the world, already shared between
entities, present in entities. Here moral status is not something that is
decided from ‘above’ by or in the original act of creation or in the re-act
of moral status ascription; it is already lived and presupposed when the
relation to other entities is in question, and it can and is allowed to
change. This kind of religion involves forms of immanent spirituality.
In both cases, moral status ascription is a ‘word’, it has a certain
linguistic form, but in the first kind of religious thinking there is a
first word which is also the last word, the first and the last letter (the
alpha and the omega), which is spoken by the Creator. Afterwards, there
is only re-creation and (‘secondary’) pro-creation by ‘His’ creatures. In
order to know the moral status of an entity, we have to ‘download’ the
Word, get to know the Idea, the Original Form. In the second kind of
religious thinking, there is no blank, dark world of matter onto which
the Creator then speaks a word, inscribes his ontological and moral
Book. There is no female earth-body or mute slave body waiting to
be fertilized and inscribed by the Man and his Logos. Instead, ‘moral
status words grow’ as much as the world on which they depend grows.
There is no one Speaker but a dynamic, living network in which words
take different shapes. In a sense, there is no ‘creation’, since there is no
sharp boundary between ‘creator’ entities and entities that are created.
The ‘word’ of moral status is not to be found in a Book (which then
needs interpretation by the community of readers) but emerges from a
continuous dialogue in a network of relations between entities. Spirits
come and go, relations change. There are no discrete entities with
linear histories from birth to death (see also Ingold); instead there is
moral metamorphosis: form that changes not in the way of a ‘designed’
and ‘made’ transformation but in the way biological entities change
form. This kind of spirituality does not hold on to a Past (when every-
thing was in order) or a Future (when everything will be in good order
again), but plunges into the uncertain currents of the present and waits
patiently until spirit reveals itself or joyfully finds it in a world where it
is at home. There is plenty of spirit. Spirit can be shared; it is not a scarce
resource distributed by the Judge. Both value and spirit are ‘given’ to
us – but not by a god and not long ago or in the future. Value is lived,
not ascribed. This is a spirituality of abundance, a spirituality of growth
and a spirituality of life.
The latter form of religion also implies that a philosophy of tech-
nology cannot be a philosophy of alienation, if this means that – by
means of modern technology – we have lost an original state or
 Spirits and Gods 173

world. This was the view of many twentieth-century philosophers of

technology. It seemed that we had lost ‘original’ humanity and that
we had been divorced from ‘nature’. But in the alternative view I am
articulating here there is no assumption of ‘Original Sin’: no act which
divided us from the divine and by which we are now locked up in the
material world. In contrast to this Gnostic (dualism) and Christian view
(doctrine of original sin), it is held that there has always been a relational
ground, that we have always been related, and that the spiritual and the
material are already connected. There is no reconnection (re-ligare, reli-
gion) needed. If there is anything to heal, it is not a restoration of a lost
unity, a lost world order (compare also: a lost moral order), but regaining
experience and awareness of the already existing and living relations –
which are also always already moral relations.
Note that this distinction between two kinds of religions should not
be understood as (mutually exclusive) categories that have nothing to do
with one another. If the transcendental argument is right, both kinds of
thinking and experience are only possible on the basis of a common,
social–relational, material and, indeed, spiritual ground.
In order to develop my argument about spirituality and moral status,
let me now fine-tune it by distinguishing between various spiritual
forms and infer how thinking about moral status depends on these
forms.

10.3. Forms of spirit and moral status ascription

As I argued in the first section, in spite of what has been called seculariza-
tion and disenchantment (to use Weber’s term), in modernity – Western
modernity and perhaps also Eastern modernity – human experience
has not been fully secularized and the world has never been entirely
disenchanted. Secular moderns believed that the world was purified of
spirit. This has been a condition of possibility for the very idea of ‘moral
status ascription’: it is only when the world itself is devoid of meaning
and value, when objects are ‘neutral’ in this sense, that we can ascribe
moral status to it. Moral status is inscribed on a spiritually and morally
blank slate. But when it comes to actual moral status ascription and
experience, that is, when we look at what and how people value, then it
turns out that particular kinds of spirituality frame those ‘moral status
ascriptions’; that they are enabled by, and limited by, what we may call
‘forms of spirit’. Developing previous work (Coeckelbergh 2010), let
me describe a few forms of spirit and their corresponding moral status
experiences.
174 Growing Moral Relations

Natural spirits. Many contemporary changes in perceptions of moral

status seem outgrowths of a romantic attempt to revalue nature and the
natural, undertaken in opposition to what is perceived to be a world
without meaning and value. Indeed, romanticism is the flip side of the
rationalist, ‘disenchantment’ side of the Enlightenment. Romantic artists
such as Caspar David Friedrich ascribed a soul to nature, in particular
to the landscape. However, the romantic revaluation of nature must be
distinguished from nature religions and their contemporary neo-pagan
heirs. The romantic observer is detached from nature and uses it (e.g. the
landscape) as a mirror of her own feelings – mystical feelings, feelings of
love, and so on. Romanticism is a form of Idealism: spirit is ascribed to
the world, but what counts is the mind and experience of the observer.
It disguises itself as an attempt to become one with nature, but turns
out to be a form of disengagement, an aesthetic contemplation of spirit
rather than a being-with spirit. For the romantics, nature was a projec-
tion screen; it did not have what we would now call ‘intrinsic value’ or
spirit. For Philipp Otto Runge, another early romantic artist, for example,
the landscape was a symbol of religion. Moreover, the Enlightenment
thinkers – romantic or rationalist – stayed close to Christianity, even
in their romantic or spiritist thinking. In Friedrich’s paintings we find
symbols of the Christian god, not natural spirits or the gods of nature.
And Swedenborg3 saw himself as a Christian mystic.4
Nature religions, by contrast, ‘ascribe’ spirit to (what from a scientific
point of view can be described as) natural objects and natural events;
or, rather, they do not ascribe spirit, but find it. Often the whole of
‘nature’ is seen as sacred. Nature religions are relational par excellence.
Humans are connected to (other) animals, stones, mountains, and so
on. What counts are not the feelings of the romantic observer, but the
natural entities themselves and the natural whole of which they are
part. Whereas romanticism and other (anti-)Enlightenment currents
are entirely compatible with strongly anthropocentric approaches to
moral status, nature religions reveal the moral world order as a web
of relations with a non-anthropocentric and less hierarchical distribu-
tion of moral status. Within this form of spirituality, which is some-
times called ‘animism’, it is impossible to single out one entity (a god)
or class of entities (humans) as the masters of the universe. Nature reli-
gions are deeply pluralistic. The world is viewed as already meaningful
and spiritual. Humans and non-humans live side by side (though not
necessarily in harmony) rather than in a hierarchy of beings. There
is no strong metaphysical distinction between things and animals or
between humans and (non-human) animals.
 Spirits and Gods 175

Contemporary relational views of moral status, therefore, if they are

truly relational, have more affinity with nature religions than with
romanticism. I suspect that most ‘green’ views of moral status are made
possible by a curious mixture of romanticism and nature religion: we
ascribe moral status to animals and nature, but what counts is our feeling
that nature matters, or perhaps even our calculation (in the case of ration-
alist utilitarians) as masters of the universe who, as good Christians,
should take care of God’s creation. From our tower we see that animals
are suffering, feel bad about it (or calculate), and then we help out. We
do not live with them.
The liberation of spirit. Next to romanticism there is another anthropo-
centric view that ‘competes’ with the more ‘horizontal’ orientation of
nature religion: Gnosticism. Like secularism, it supposes that we live
in a world without spirit. In response, it turns to the self, where it
finds a ‘divine spark’ which can and must be liberated. The contem-
porary equivalent of this view is what Aupers and Houtman (2005) call
‘cybergnosis’: in order to overcome alienation, one transcends the
material world and finds liberation in the digital realm. In the sacred
cyberworld, we can shed our moral bodies and become spirits. What
counts here is the status of the human soul. Humans can become virtual,
that is, spiritual. No one cares about non-human entities; they are left
behind in the dark material world. Moral status, one can infer, belongs
only to those beings who can liberate themselves by means of scientific
gnosis (knowledge) and technology and can reach immortality. In other
words, it belongs only to humans, and perhaps to entities who already
belong to the digital sphere. The earthly world was never spiritual in
the first place. Since animality and naturalness are part of ‘evil’ earth,
they do not get moral and spiritual status, or perhaps only what we may
call negative moral and spiritual status.
The spirit of the creator. At first sight, the creational view of the mono-
theist religions, which are still very influential today, is close to that
of Gnosticism. It seems that making a distinction between creation
and created is to locate spirit only on the part of the creator, which
leaves the creation de-spiritualized. As I said, it seems that, long before
secularization, the monotheist religions have disenchanted the world.
I have questioned this view and I have suggested the possibility of an
entirely different kind of spirituality. However, there is a way to deny
the disenchantment thesis and still remain within creational mono-
theist thinking: one could argue that there is a spiritual relation between
creator and creation in a form that is more than a ‘divine spark’: the
parental bond. We are the children of the one God; he is our Father.
176 Growing Moral Relations

Moreover, animals and natural elements are, while not created in the
image of God (imago dei ), still creatures of God. Hence, when it comes to
ascribing moral status, it follows that humans have the highest moral
status, whereas animals and natural elements have a lower, but still
significant, moral status as parts of God’s creation. Perhaps even artifi-
cial objects can enjoy some kind of spiritual and moral status, since they
stand in a ‘parental’ relation to humans, who have the highest moral
status of all creatures. Artefacts then get a kind of ‘indirect’ moral rela-
tion due to their ‘grandchild’ status. (This seems especially applicable
to robots, who are created in the image of humans.) Thus, in principle,
monotheistic creationalism allows giving a moral status to all created
entities, although it is always some form of derived moral status. The
entity has no intrinsic moral status but carries it as a gift of its divine or
human creator. In modernity this gift becomes a property. If there is no
creator-god who gives and takes, then we no longer ‘borrow’ ourselves
and our status, we own it. Then we no longer thank our creator for His
gift, but claim our rights.
Spirits in and of the network. In our time network metaphors are popular
and can also be used to describe the possibility of a kind of spirituality
that is very similar to that of nature religions. In a network – digital
or otherwise – entities are related to other entities, and, although the
entities do not necessarily have equal spiritual power, spirit is already
distributed rather than concentrated in one divine agent and then
distributed by that agent (it is not “distributed from the start”, since
that formula would suggest an origin). Moreover, perhaps the whole,
the network, could also have some kind of sacred nature. Such a ‘neo-
pagan’ network spirituality would allow a moral status distribution that
crosses the digital/non-digital and the natural/artificial divide. Moral
status then becomes something that may arise not only in natural rela-
tions but also in artificial and ‘digital’ relations. Then spirit and moral
status are not exclusively natural, as in nature religions, but also not
exclusively digital, as in contemporary cyber-gnosticism. Furthermore,
then spirit and moral status do not only emerge from parental–
creational relations, as in monotheistic creationalism, but there is the
possibility that they arise from other kinds of relations as well.
This idea of a networked spirituality and moral status distribution
corresponds to the view that emerged at the end of Part I, but here it
is even further removed from a dogmatic description of a relational
ontology and spirituality. Rather, it is an exploration and interpretation
of the spiritual conditions of possibility for a relational approach to
moral status ascription. Let me explain this further in the next section.
 Spirits and Gods 177

10.4. Shopping in the spiritual supermarket?

I have distinguished two kinds of religion and – in a more fine-grained

analysis – various forms of spirit. Is this an invitation to choose between
different forms? Are these various forms ‘on offer’ (perhaps with a
‘discount’ if they are based on older forms of spirituality: “Christianity
for sale”)? Are these forms “options” similar to lifestyle options in
liberal–capitalist society? Are they lifestyles themselves? Is it ‘up to you’
which one you choose?
In order to answer this question, let me reintroduce my transcendental
argument, which stresses that it is not a matter of choice at all: we live
in a particular culture – also a particular spiritual culture – and there-
fore we cannot simply ‘switch’ or ‘shift’ to a different spiritual thinking
and way of life. Our particular way of spiritual thinking and its related
moral status ascriptions cannot be changed by choice or words alone.
Let me explain this.
The forms of spirit (and of spiritual experience) discussed here are
not part of ‘culture’ or ‘religion’ if these terms are meant to designate
separate spheres, set apart from other human activities and from nature.
Instead, they are rooted in forms of life – forms which have material–
technological dimensions as well. For example, nature religion and
animism appear to be linked to hunter-gatherer societies, monothe-
istic creationalism to pastoral and agricultural societies (and, if we
draw on Ingold again, perhaps also to industrial societies, which do not
reproduce but produce, but still execute ‘original’ designs, pass on the
code, and so on), and network spirituality to late modern information
societies.
These connections to the social–economic dimension are already
implicit in the metaphorical schemes we can use to describe these
forms of spirit and related types of spirituality and ways of ascribing
moral status. For example, the ‘horizontal’ nature religions and their
‘network spirituality’ offspring seem to correspond more to egalitarian
mixed human/non-human communities than to the agricultural soci-
eties which know the rule of a divine Lord, a human lord, a Master of
creation, a master of the house, a master of slaves, and so on.
This does not mean that it is pointless to discuss moral, social,
linguistic and spiritual change. The point of my transcendental
argument is not to show that these different societies and material–
technological forms determine our thinking and experience, cause us to
use particular metaphors, to experience the world in certain ways, and
to engage in particular ways of thinking. Rather, my claim is that, if as
178 Growing Moral Relations

critical philosophers we want to question the basic forms of our spir-

itual and other thinking (including moral thinking, moral language,
moral experience, etc. – which turn out to be at the same time reli-
gious and spiritual), it is wise to analyse their conditions of possibility
as a way to interpret and contextualize that thinking in order to better
understand what we are doing and to explore what else we could do (say,
experience, think, write and so on), how we could live differently, and
what the limitations are when we attempt to live–think–talk differently.
Growing up involves exploring one’s powers and one’s limitations.
11
Fences, Walls and Maps: Forms
of Historical Space

11.1. Two conceptions of space and time

In philosophy, space and time are often conceived of as Kantian condi-

tions of possibility. Kant argued in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787)
that they prestructure our experience. They are not themselves objects,
but they preform our perception of objects. This conception of space
and time has informed philosophical accounts of how the human mind
works when engaged in natural sciences and mathematics (or at least
modern science and mathematics; as far as I know, in contemporary
physics space and time would not be regarded as independent condi-
tions or as conditions that have to do with the human mind). Before we
can study the objects and laws of nature, and before we can formalize
these laws, we have to presuppose the categories of space and time as
an a priori.
The space and time I will be concerned with in this chapter, however,
have little to do with these abstract, universal and ahistorical concepts.
Following the phenomenological tradition, the scientific way of looking
at the world is not taken for granted and is shown to be problematic
when applied to all human activities and reflection, that is, when it is
used outside the language game of modern science. In the first part of
this book I have questioned the practice of moral status ascription as
a moral science, according to which moral status is ascribed to objects
after examination of their properties. In my attempt to go beyond the
‘dissection theatre’ of moral status science, I have explored a different,
relational approach to moral status. Moreover, in the preceding chap-
ters I have not examined the conditions of possibility of scientific know-
ledge of moral status, but the conditions of possibility of any knowledge
of moral status, especially common, everyday experience of moral

179
180 Growing Moral Relations

status and everyday moral practices of moral status ascription. The

space and time that prestructure this kind of experience and practice,
then, are not the space and time of mathematics or physics, but what
we may call ‘historical space’: a form of space that is the materialization
and condition of possibility of a particular way of seeing and doing, a
particular form of life which developed throughout history, which is
open to interpretation, and which profoundly shapes our thinking –
including our thinking about moral status. What I hope to introduce
and briefly examine here are patterns of moral geography, in particular
moral status geography: meaningful patterns of ‘moral status doing’
that form space and are formed by space. What these forms of historical
space reveal and make possible is not (only) the work of the mathem-
atician, scientist or philosopher, but the perception and praxis of all
people, including farmers and traders, for instance. Without offering
a comprehensive description of all moral–geographical patterns, it is
instructive to discuss some of them, in particular those relevant to
moral status ascription.
First I will offer a brief discussion of the relation between culture and
space, which will reveal modern thinking as a form of distancing. I will
put concepts such as earth, land, territory, universe, globe and network
within a history of distancing. In the next section I will further develop
this interpretation and turn to a particular condition of possibility of
major importance that continues to prestructure our thinking about
moral status: the city–countryside–wilderness pattern. I will attempt to
describe this significant moral–geographical structure in order to show
how moral status ascription and the moral distinctions that come with
it are entangled with the ways we have structured our space, that is,
they are made possible and shaped by the way humans have lived and
the way they have perceived and treated others – humans and non-
humans. In the last section I will expand this analysis by discussing the
earth-space pattern and show its implications for how we think about
moral status.
Hence, by reconnecting them to their historical–geographical soil,
this chapter shows that moral distinctions are living distinctions. Moral
status becomes historicized and localized.

11.2. Cultures and space

We are used to thinking of the relation between culture and space

as a contingent one. In modernity we separate thinking (the mental,
belonging to the ‘inner realm’) from the ‘outer’ domain, the material
 Fences, Walls and Maps 181

and the biological. Space is thought to belong exclusively to the latter

category. Of course, we acknowledge that different cultures are situated
in different places, but it is assumed that if, for example, the ancient
Greeks had lived somewhere else, they would have had the same culture.
The Greeks just happened to live on the territory we call Greece; the
Persians just happened to live on the territory we used to call Persia.
And when today we try to appreciate cultural difference we take a god’s
eye point of view, which is an over view, and see that there are different
cultures living in different places and that there are different cultures
living in one place (for example in one nation state). Having understood
this, we try to tolerate difference. We learn to take distance from our
own culture.
This multiculturalism thus assumes that there are culturally neutral
territories on which cultures happen to live: sometimes they live
together on the same territory, sometimes they have different terri-
tories. Earth is not something that sustains life and that is part of life,
but a neutral, two-dimensional plane on which cultures have inscribed
themselves. Of course this changes the landscape, but this is regarded as
a one-way, causal relation. It is assumed that there is a certain amount
of land, which was once available for use (it is ‘standing reserve’, as
Heidegger would say) and was then divided into territories and proper-
ties belonging to different cultures and to different people: farm-land,
national territory, and so on.
Although we are now used to thinking of earth and land in this way,
viewed from a historical perspective it is a rather extraordinary and
relatively recent idea. It was the attitude of the Europeans when they
arrived in North America: by conceiving of the land as something that
is not intrinsically related to peoples and their cultures, they could
define its status in such a way that it could be taken (in the worst case)
or bought (in the best case). In other words, the earth (terra) becomes
a territorium, a domain: it becomes an object that can be owned. The
condition of possibility of this perception of the land is that it is first
purified, stripped of its inhabitants (those who are in the habitus of
living there) and their culture. At the same time, culture was purified
from earthly elements. This allowed those Europeans to take and buy
land, and it is still our Western, now post-colonial, attitude: of course,
today most of us think the land is ‘theirs’ or should have been ‘theirs’,
as a matter of social justice; however, this way of thinking is still post-
colonial, since we can only conceive of the land as something that is
owned. And if it is not owned it must be appropriated. The question of
justice limits itself to the issue of by whom it must be appropriated.
182 Growing Moral Relations

This way of thinking pervades influential theories of justice. For

example, Nozick’s view of nature in Anarchy, State, and Utopia follows
Locke’s theory of acquisition: the land is an object, a natural asset, a
natural resource (rather than a source), which is previously un-owned
and which is then appropriated, that is, made property (Nozick 1974).
This modern view of the earth has roots in Christian thinking. As
Locke argued in his Second Treatise of Government, God has given us
the earth, with its fruits and beasts, and we have to use it:

God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given
them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life, and
convenience. The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for
the support and comfort of their being. And [ ... ] all the fruits it natu-
rally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as
they are produced by the spontaneous hand of nature. (Locke 1690,
p. 18)

However, this is only an initial state, a state of nature. Then the earth,
with its fruits and beasts, is appropriated by mixing one’s labour with it
(Locke 1690, p. 19). This is the birth of private property: civilized men
do something with the objects of nature, they labour, whereas the ‘wild
Indian, who knows no inclosure’ (p. 19) still lives in the state of nature.
Cultivation as appropriation thus means in Locke’s view to mix one’s
labour with the natural object: the natural object is used as a resource
and culture is the outcome of the process. More generally, in modern
thinking either culture is seen as something that is entirely unrelated
to earth and land, or it is seen as the outcome of the labour process. In
both cases, there is no pre-given, intrinsic relation between nature and
culture. It is assumed that nature and culture are two entirely different
things. To inscribe culture onto the land or to mix the human with the
natural is to assume that we ‘first’ have a nature understood as a readily
available standing-reserve, a resource we ‘then’ can use in the writing
or production of culture.
The roots of this dualistic view are also the roots of the Western trad-
ition broadly conceived: a combination of Jewish–Christian–Islamic
thought with Greek thought. Next to the already mentioned view
that nature is given to us by God, we should also consider the Greek
idea of the cosmopolis: the Stoics thought that we are citizens of the
world. This has influenced Christianity (through the writings of Paul)
and made it a world religion: it no longer mattered whether you were
a Jew or a Gentile, it no longer mattered where you lived, you could
 Fences, Walls and Maps 183

be a Christian everywhere (similarly, one can be a Jew or a Muslim

everywhere). We are the children of God, but we are also the chil-
dren of Logos. The Word is spread everywhere. This idea has made it
possible that distance was taken from the earth and from the land: we
became more abstract, reasonable beings – users of logos and faithful
receivers of Logos. Moreover, as remarked before, since spirit was seen
as belonging to God alone, spirits (plural) were removed from the land.
Nature, earth and land became secularized – albeit not completely, as
argued before.
Thus, what emerges here is a history of the West as a history of distan-
cing (or alienation), which may be problematic in itself, but nevertheless
very helpful to understand our current relation to land and earth.
First people belonged to the land and the land nourished spirits,
humans, animals. This is what Ingold refers to when he talks about
the Aboriginals, and this is what Leopold and Callicott try to recover:
a sense of land as neither owned nor un-owned, a land that cannot be
described in those categories. Nature and culture are dimensions of one
life-world. Culture and place cannot be disconnected.
Then a first, very influential distancing occurs: when agriculture
develops, people start to think of the land as an object they can
appropriate and are entitled to, especially when we mix it with our
labour. We do not belong to the earth; the earth – and its creatures –
belong to us. It is given to us by God as something we can make
use of for the support and comfort of our being (to paraphrase Locke).
Land becomes farm-land and fences are built (I will return to this
in the next section). Earth is no longer the soil of natural–cultural
growth, but the ingredient of a nature–labour mix, a raw material
sliced up and cooked up by us to make ourselves comfortable. It is cut
up in domains that can be owned privately. What we do in the private
domain is – literally – our business; only in the public domain is there
room for politics.1
In the industrial age, further distance is taken from the earlier percep-
tion of the land. The land is something to be landscaped and created
(‘taken’ from the sea, for example). We are not only the cultivators but
also the producers of land. Once everything is taken, once everything
is colonized, we are still hungry for property. The desire for appropri-
ation has given us the globe, but the globe is not enough. After we
took all space and thereby eliminated the very notion of it (see below),
we started appropriating the seas and even what we call ‘space’, extra-
terrestrial ‘territory’. But our technologies limit how far we can go. We
need better technologies.
184 Growing Moral Relations

In the information age, we find a very creative solution: we develop

and use information technology to create an entirely new kind of
‘land’ and ‘space’: cyberspace. The World Wide Web does not only
help us to complete the process of globalization; it also gives us new
objects and hence the possibility to acquire new property and to set up
new fences. It is not only ‘worldwide’; it also expands our world. We
can now mix our labour with information objects and create a digital
culture. The web demands from us that we continuously appropriate
new information. New digital land can be created infinitely. 2 God has
given us nature, but we have given ourselves a present that is far more
appealing: we can now create or appropriate as many domains and
sites as we want to. The sky is not the limit, since there is no longer
a sky. There is no longer an earth. There is the net. Labour means
net-working.
But what happens to the ‘old’ land? In earlier times, land had already
become the 3-D representation of our maps and our satellite pictures.
It was already the skin that covered the globes in our cabinets. Now
we take even further distance from the earth: we become cursors, that
is, those who follow a course on our screens. There is no ‘environ-
ment’, only décor. We become screenagers and inhabitants of virtual
(game) worlds. We become abstract nodes of a network. ‘Place’ is
defined by your connections. We are not nomads, since nomads follow
tracks and traditions; they still belong to the land, even if this land is
stretched out. We people of cyberspace, by contrast, no longer belong
anywhere. We have become place-less. We no longer in-habit; we do
not live ‘in’ a culture-space. What the Stoics wanted has now been
nearly fully realized: the world has become a universum, that is, it is
turned into one. This has eliminated ‘place’ as such. Mono-theism and
mono-realism are followed by mono-localism, which destroys the very
idea of a locus. If you are everywhere, you are nowhere. Moreover, the
distinction between private and public space disappears, since space
itself disappears. In desperation, the most important question to ask
each other becomes: Where are you? But, when we give our position,
we realize that we could as well say ‘nowhere’. When place becomes a
grid position or a network node, place no longer matters. It is decoupled
from the material and the natural. Mobile devices do what millennia
of Stoic reason and Gnosticism have never completely managed to do:
distance us from the earth.
What does this mean for moral status? In the next sections I will
further refine and elaborate this history of distancing and explore its
implications for moral status.
 Fences, Walls and Maps 185

11.3. The city, the countryside and the wild

One way of describing the practice of moral status ascription, as it

developed in Western thinking, is to say that it is about giving an entity
a place, in particular the right place. For this purpose, we usually rely on a
kind of moral order, a structuring of moral space (see also my introduc-
tion). The problem with new entities, for instance some kinds of robots,
is that we find it hard to ‘give them a place’; they do not fit well in our
present, given moral world order. For animals, by contrast, we have a
structure available, or at least so it seems: based on divine revelation
or modern science, we can reconstruct a kind of moral hierarchy (e.g.
based on Aristotle or the Bible) or apply a criterion such as sentience
(based on biology) in order to give them a place. However, these trad-
itional ‘metaphysical’ and ‘moral science’ approaches to moral status do
not only incur the problems I identified in the first part of this book; in
the past decades they have also been largely unsuccessful in reshaping
our intuitions about the moral status of animals and in motivating us
to treat them differently. In fact, they have caused moral–motivational
deadlocks such as: “I know that this animal (e.g. a pig) is intelligent and
sentient and that according to Singer’s criterion it should be treated
better and perhaps not be killed at all, but at the same time this is an
animal that has been bred for feeding us and this has been the case for
ages; it is a farm animal and it is part of our livestock.” Or: “I know that
from a relational point of view, this animal is part of the ‘biotic commu-
nity’ and hence should be treated as a fellow rather than a living piece
of meat, yet it seems that humans have always eaten it, ‘they’ eat it, and
if we were to release it into the wild, it could not survive without us.” In
order to better understand these and similar troubles, and more gener-
ally to understand why, in spite of new scientific and moral insights, our
ways of doing and our moral perceptions and intuitions are remarkably
inert, let us look at how the city–countryside pattern has long prestruc-
tured, and continues to prestructure, our moral status perceptions and
practices concerning animals and other non-humans. (This will also
refine the history of distancing I started in the previous section.)
In order to reveal this moral–geographical pattern and relate it to
moral status, we have to take ‘giving animals a place’ far more liter-
ally than philosophers or scientists are inclined to do. For example, in
light of one of the most significant cultural–historical developments in
the history of humanity, we can reformulate the moral status question
regarding animals as follows: Do animals belong to the city or do they
belong to the countryside? Or do they belong to neither and should
186 Growing Moral Relations

they be ‘given back’ to the ‘wilderness’, to ‘nature’? And, in order to

understand common answers to these questions, indeed in order to
understand moral status ascription to animals, we should also ask: And
how did they end up there in the first place?
In the course of history, there have been at least two developments
that deserve our attention here: domestication and civilization. My
description of these developments does not aim at correspondence
with historical facticity (if there is such a thing), but at offering added
hermeneutical value to my discussion of moral status ascription: we
want to better understand this common, yet at the same time very
curious, practice.
Domestication refers to drawing the entity into the sphere of the
domus, the house (that is, the villa and the village), which is a transi-
tion from ‘nature’ or the ‘wilderness’ to the human world, in particular
the human world of farming. This has happened with animals, but
also with humans, who only became fully cultural by a process of
‘unwilding’ or domestication. Cultivation of the land (agriculture) went
hand in hand with culturing of the human, a culturing of mind and
body, a learning of new skills. Herding went hand in hand with herding
humans. Next to hunting and gathering, humans learned to transform
earth into land, and land into the fruits of the land, and the fruits of
the land into songs and dances of sorrow, joy and thankfulness for the
fruits of the land. They learned, for the first time, to take care of animals
(and of humans) and to see animals (and humans) as stock, available for
manipulation (handling) and calculation: as supply for future use, it
can be slaughtered, owned and traded.
Those who did not manage this transition into the (agri)cultural herd
were regarded as ‘wilds’, such as the native population of North America
and Africa. They were given a different, lower status. Indeed, domesti-
cation is not only a historical–geographical operation, but also a moral
one. With the rise of agri-culture, the moral status of humans and
animals changed. Hunters and gatherers became land-builders (see, for
example, the Dutch word for farmers, landbouwers, or the German word
bauern), housewives and husbands (original meaning: house-dweller).
Humans and animals no longer belonged to the Land. The non-
farmland became wilderness, a place where no belonging is possible. Farm-
land was created by mixing labour with nature. Humans and animals
came to belong to the house and the farm-land in the same way as their
cattle came to belong to the farm-land. Humans and animals often lived
together in the house. Economy was about house holding: working on the
land, taking care of the animals, keeping stock, and so on.
 Fences, Walls and Maps 187

Those who lived in the wild did not know how to ‘hold house’. They
lived like wild beasts, or so it appeared to the cultured villagers. Wild
animals means animals who are untamed, uncultured, undomes-
ticated. They belong to ‘nature’, to what is on the other side of the
moral–geographical fence. Tamed animals, however, have moral super-
iority, since they allow the farmers to make a living. They are livestock;
they have value. Rules are created: “Do not kill an animal for pleasure
(alone); only kill it for eating. Follow the rules. And you are the ruler
of animals. We humans determine when their time has come, just as
the divine Lord determines when your time has come.” Animals outside
the village are outside culture. They can be hunted for food (the older
way of living), or they must be killed if they threaten the livestock (this
is the Big Bad Wolf morality: evil is what threatens my livestock). The
wild, for example the forests and the mountains, and its wild animals,
was mainly seen as at best useless and at worst dangerous. Forest must
be turned into land, and mountainous terrain cannot be turned into
land, it cannot be cultivated; therefore it is situated outside culture.
Moreover, the wild animals are not domesticated, they are not tame;
therefore they are useless and have no moral value. Only much later,
in the romantic imagination, do these terrains and animals get a more
positive meaning and sometimes also a higher moral status. Still today
many people say that they wish to ‘return to nature’. A few of them
try to live like hunter-gatherers. Most of them, however, mean with
‘returning to nature’ that they want to become villagers; that is, they
turn away from the ville (French word for city) to the village. To under-
stand this, we need to describe another development: domestication
was followed by civilization.
Civilizing means drawing an entity into the city. To civilize the
entity is to make it a resident of the city. This has mainly happened to
humans, not to animals (I will soon show why). Cities arose when some
people were liberated from their bond with the land and found liberty
within the walls of the city, where they had no lord or master and were
neither lord nor master themselves; there was only a major, as a kind
of best among equals, a primus inter pares. These ‘free men’ received
rights and could trade, that is, make their own tracks (original meaning
of the word trade) and buy and sell the goods that were produced by
others. Thus, rights were seen as the privilege of a few; only relatively
late in history has there been a process of enlarging the boundaries
of citizenship, which went hand in hand with enlargement of the
physical boundaries of cities (followed by the global virtual city of the
world wide web). Only recently have some people suggested that some
188 Growing Moral Relations

animals should get rights as well, that is, should be liberated (“animal
liberation”) and politicized, that is, drawn into the polis.
In order to better understand the concept of civilization as liberation,
and to grasp why the idea of animal rights might have sounded ridicu-
lous and outrageous to our ancestors (and to many people today), it is
helpful to oppose citizenship to other statuses. In the same way as the
domesticated need their wilderness to define their own status, citizens
need their uncivilized others: ‘nature’ and wilderness, for sure, but also
and in particular the villagers (house-people) and the slaves (who also
belonged to the household, but in an even stronger sense). As traders,
the citizens were removed from agricultural production, and they liked
to see themselves as having higher status than the peasants, the people
from the country (French: du pays), the pagans. Once they enjoyed the
status of free citizens, everything that was outside the city walls became
country-side, as opposed to civilization-side. In the same way as the
fence of the farmer served to distinguish his culture from the wilder-
ness, the city wall served the citizens by distinguishing their civiliza-
tion from the barbary on the other side of the wall, the new wilderness
outside the wall. Within the city walls there was liberty; outside, one
could only find labour and slavery.
This way of understanding civilization is supported by Arendt’s view,
which opposes political freedom to the life process and its associated
labour. In The Human Condition (1958) she explains the concept of
ancient Greek politics by opposing the freedom and equality of the citi-
zens to the labour and servitude of the oikos, the household: a place for
labour and slavery. Only citizens could achieve freedom. According to
Aristotle (see again Book I of the Politics and my Chapter 2), the use made
of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; they are ruled by the
needs of life. We may conclude from Aristotle and Arendt that those
who were engaged in household activities would not have been seen as
political subjects at all. More generally, one might say that, according
to this way of thinking and doing, any entity that is not a citizen, any
entity that does not have its place in the city, has no political status
and considerably less moral status. In this Aristotelian world, only the
citizens make full use of their capacity of reason, of their logos. If your
moral status is lower (that is, if your place or position is lower), you may
have the capacity but not use it (country men, slaves working on the
land) or you may not even have the capacity (wild men, animals).
Indeed, civilization is opposed not only to the uncivilized, barbarous
countryside (the new wilderness), but also to the wilderness of ‘nature’.
Wilderness or barbary is the absence of logos. In Book I of the Politics
 Fences, Walls and Maps 189

Aristotle says of animals that they are incapable of logos; only humans
have the gift of speech (1253a10–13; see also Chapter 2). He mainly
referred to tamed animals, but his view seems to be applicable, a fortiori,
to ‘wild’ animals. The human and non-human animals in the wild may
make noise, but they do not speak. They have their low moral status
because they roam in a realm where reason is silent. And, in such a
silence, neither trade nor political discussion is possible.
To conclude, histories of domestication and civilization have created
moral–geographical patterns, ways of doing and thinking about
humans and non-humans, that are surprisingly persistent and influ-
ence our discourse and thinking about the moral status of animals.
We can conclude that these patterns constitute moral fences and walls
that prestructure contemporary moral experience and hence act as
conditions of possibility in the sense that they limit changes in moral
status thinking and, especially, doing. Furthermore, the moral changes
that have occurred seem to amount to a kind of moral distancing. It is
only by distancing ourselves from entities in thinking and doing (by
means of domestication and civilization), and by building fences and
walls between us and them, that we can give them the status ‘wild’ or
‘livestock’, that we can give them rights or not, and so on.

11.4. Space morality

The city as a space of liberation, in which citizens have rights, has been
gradually expanded to include nations and, eventually, the whole of
mankind. While at first rights were the privilege of a few, they have
been generously distributed to an ever wider circle of space (at least, in
theory). First, rights were given to all ‘citizens’ in the state, then to all
‘citizens of the world’. The idea of a world citizenship, then, expands
civilization over the whole world, at least the human world. The rights
of the bourgeois became human rights: rights all humans have, regard-
less of other properties and forms of citizenship.
To make possible the ‘veil of ignorance’ (if I may borrow Rawls’s term)
involved in this ‘human rights’ reasoning – a veil behind which all other
distinctions disappear and only the human/non-human distinction is
left – it was also very helpful that humans could literally take sufficient
distance from their own social–spatial context and take a ‘higher’ moral
stance. Moreover, world citizenship united the human world (together
with globalization; see the first section), but it could be strengthened if
it was accompanied by a territorial division of space, now along human/
non-human lines. The citizen always needed a non-citizen to confirm
190 Growing Moral Relations

his moral–political identity; the city needed a non-city to define itself.

When, after slaves, peasants, women and children, ‘even’ animals are
civilized, our ‘preferred other’ disappears: we have a problem. But a solu-
tion has been found, again by making use of technology. Our non-city
is now the extra-terrestrial space (except perhaps the orbital space and
the moon, which have been colonized and are part of civilization now).
Indeed, a cynic may argue that if we wanted to make sure that the idea
of world citizenship is realized to a much larger extent than it is today,
it would be extremely helpful if we were to discover extra-terrestrial
aliens, especially less intelligent ones: if they lacked the Aristotelian
capacity of logos (they might scream but be incapable of speech), they
could then be constructed as the new barbarians, that is, those who
are not part of our civilization. Setting up this new ‘we’ and ‘them’, a
moral distinction firmly anchored in a clear division of territorial space,
would probably do more to unite the peoples and bring world peace –
that is, peace on earth – than the idea of human rights and the mono-
theistic religions have done so far.
Before concluding this book, therefore, I wish to discuss one more,
related, moral–geographical pattern, which is part of a development
that Arendt has named ‘earth alienation’, and which is very relevant
to the present discussion about moral status. I already alluded to it in
the first section: distancing can take the form of taking distance from
the earth.
Arendt has argued in The Human Condition that modern science has
alienated us from the earth, in particular by means of instruments such
as the telescope and by means of space exploration. Today one might
add Google Earth, GPS navigation, webcams, and similar software and
electronic devices. Arendt’s point was that these are not merely techno-
logical developments but that they also changed our thinking. Let me
briefly summarize her position and explore its implications for moral
status ascription.
Arendt observes that people interpreted the launch of Sputnik 1 in
1957 as an attempt to escape ‘men’s imprisonment to the earth’ (Arendt
1958, p. 1), which she thinks is illustrative of our attempt to escape the
human condition altogether, for example by extending our lifespan.3
According to Arendt, explorations of the globe with its mapping, indi-
vidual expropriation following the Reformation, and the invention of
the telescope and the airplane have created a form of alienation that is
both beneficial and problematic. Taking distance helps us to survive,
and without it we could not have discovered the earth and enjoyed the
benefits of this discovery, but ‘any decrease of terrestrial distance can
 Fences, Walls and Maps 191

be won only at the price of putting a decisive distance between man

and earth, of alienating man from his immediate earthly surroundings’
(Arendt 1958, p. 251). Science, in particular, has contributed to this
alienation by seeing things from what Arendt calls ‘the Archimedean
point’: it has enabled ‘earth alienation’ (p. 264) by formulating universal
laws, using algebra, and indeed by inventing technologies that allowed
humans to escape the earth. The scientist, who ‘acts into nature from
the standpoint of the universe and not into the web of human relation-
ships’ (p. 324), removes us not only from the human, social world but
also from the earth.
With regard to the moral status problem, I wish to highlight the
moral dimension of this relation between technology and thinking.
If we look at the earth from a space point of view, then this percep-
tual elevation is also a moral elevation: we remove ourselves from the
earth and its entities and look upon them in a way that is comparable
to how humans always imagined that gods viewed them: from above
and from a (large) distance, without necessarily caring about them. This
is also the position of modern science, and it is the position of many
moral philosophers. Like the ‘household’ morality and ‘city’ morality
related to domestication and civilization, this ‘space morality’ as moral–
geographical alienation involves a form of elevation by distancing.
Human moral superiority or apathy is asserted not by the fencing in
and fencing out of other humans and non-humans (domestication) or
by walling in and walling out other humans and non-humans (civiliza-
tion), but by removing oneself from the earth and its entities, making
these entities part of the (over)view, disconnected from the observer
(alienation). Moral status is ascribed to entities once one has mapped
them – ontologically and morally. And, once territories and entities
are mapped, they can be controlled and mastered by the philosopher–
king, the ruler of the moral realm. In other words, the space morality
approach is a form of moral colonization.
Thus, this earth alienation goes further than civilization, or is a
grotesque form of it. The cosmopolis includes all humans and at the
same time excludes non-humans by taking the view from outer space.
But this new viewpoint also does something to the status of humans:
it renders them abstract earthlings, members of a species on a planet.
By looking upon them as earthlings, the human observer stops being
an earthling himself, since in order to take up his position he has
already alienated himself from the earth. By seeing humanity as a
species, the philosopher–astronaut stops being a member of the species
and stops being situated on the planet. And, by looking at the world
192 Growing Moral Relations

polis, he stops being part of that world city. From this position he can
finally hide the appearances and the relations behind his veil of ignor-
ance and ascribe true moral status. Unless extra-terrestrial beings are
discovered, the only relation that remains is that between the god–
mapper and the ones who are mapped and categorized, between the
one who has the overview (the divine geographer, the mapper) and
the ones who are seen (those ‘on’ the map). To him belongs not the
freedom of the citizen, which is still earth-bound, but the freedom of
the god.
The mapper I talk about is, of course, not literally located in extra-
terrestrial space, or at least not usually. This is about you and me. For
example, when philosophers ascribe moral status they take up this
position. After the mapping, the ascriber of moral status assumes
the role of a tenant of the moral order, who keeps stock and guards
the objects, the distinctions, the fences. Both objects and concepts
are subject to her rule. Domestication is followed by management of
the material and conceptual oikos. On one side of the fence there is a
process of cultivation of entities, concepts and distinctions; this order is
then protected from external attacks. What is needed, in all these activ-
ities, is proper distance. The Lord–philosopher does not dance with the
villagers. The astronaut–philosopher looks upon her moral ontology
and smiles condescendingly, without descending to the earthly world
which she has come to experience as the map or the picture that was
supposed to represent it. Humans and non-humans on earth become a
3-D representation of the elements on her moral map. As the carriers of
reason (the bearers and Guards of Logos), they have become universal,
un-placeable, and therefore re-placeable – since unbound by space.
And, when the moral subject takes that much distance, the object is
also released from spatial limitations and can finally be processed as
an information object, one of the most abstract objects ever conceived.
Both humans and non-humans are subjected to digital farming and
processing, and the ‘place-less position’ of the Farmer or Controller can
be taken up by any ‘logical’, reasoning subject, perhaps even an artifi-
cially intelligent one.
But is this form of ‘thinking and doing moral status’ avoidable? It is
avoidable, in principle: a condition of possibility is not a cause; there is
no determinism. There is the possibility of a kind of engaged and rela-
tional thinking, which stays closer to the earth, which can give space
to entities, and which can crumble the fences and the walls. There is
the possibility of a different form of life. However, the point is that, if
 Fences, Walls and Maps 193

we wish to think and do differently, we are swimming against a strong

current, and it seems that we need to make extra effort to stretch the
boundaries of the linguistic, social, technological, spiritual and histor-
ical–spatial forms that limit our moral thinking, although there is no
guarantee that we will succeed in making a change. I will say more about
this in my conclusions.
12
Moral Metamorphosis: Concluding
the Transcendental Argument

12.1. Living value: moral status ascription

and forms of life

After these ‘dogmatic’ and ‘transcendental’ arguments for a relational

approach, it is time to draw conclusions for the moral status of non-
human and human entities, or, rather, for how to think about their moral
status.
Standard deontological and utilitarian approaches offer a method
that leads to a moral taxonomy: a method of moral status determin-
ation, classification, and sometimes calculation, which leads to a moral
status taxonomy. Linnaeus’s systema naturae was a classification of the
natural world; this approach attempts a classification of the moral
world. While most modern moral philosophers no longer assume that
there is a created moral order which should be reflected and represented
in a moral taxonomy, they assume that it is their task to (re)construct
the ‘right’, justified moral order by founding it on a pre-given
ontology (usually an individualist, contractarian and dualist society-
versus-nature ontology) and by providing criteria of moral status. ‘Wild’
nature and ‘wild’, yet unclassified, artefacts are covered with layers of
moral significance that must fit the world as it is, that fit reality. The
moral–architectural project here is a project of restoration: the onto-
logical foundations are there; what remains is the scientific task of
raising the moral building as it should be, along the lines given by
the foundations. The ultimate dream of contemporary moral taxono-
mists, then, is to make the ascriber of moral status into a kind of moral
status machine that performs this task by itself: if you give it a particular
input (the entity in question, the criteria) it determines its ontological
status and then, using that map, constructs (a model of) its moral status

194
 Moral Metamorphosis 195

(the output). The moral engineer only needs to provide the software
code with the moral status algorithm, a moral status function which uses,
for instance, sentience as a criterion. There may be problems in trans-
lating this into machine code (What does sentience mean at a lower
level of abstraction and a lower, more elementary level? How can this
moral philosophy be applied ?) but these are in se ‘technical’ problems
that can be solved by good moral science and good moral engineering.
So-called ‘relational’ arguments do not usually divert from this
overall method. They ‘merely’ replace individualist, contractarian and
dualist ontological maps by social–relational ones. I write ‘merely’
since, of course, such a modest ‘relational turn’ is a significant change
in thinking: it helps us to question the standard accounts of moral
status and encourages us to inquire into non-Western ontologies related
to different cultures removed from us in time and/or space. And,
even if it were not entirely successful on its own, perhaps such a turn
could constitute a necessary antithesis in a dialectical argument about
moral status, which then goes on to construe a ‘synthesis’ that takes
into account both individual and relational properties and dimensions
of entities, ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ properties (see also the ‘mixed’
accounts I discussed in Chapter 3).
However, I have argued in this book that a truly relational turn
(a deep relational view, as I have called it) requires not so much a change
of ontological map or taxonomy, but rather a change of the method itself.
The reasons that motivate and justify this change are not theoretical. To
call them theoretical would suppose that they stem from Anschauung, an
insight in the Greek sense of theoria: we have a different insight into the
nature of things, we come to see that ‘in reality’ the world is relational,
whereas we moderns always thought that it was all about elementary
particles, causes and properties; let us therefore change our ontologies
and construct moral status in a different way. Rather, the reasons are
practical: when we think about moral status and try to think in a more
relational way, we discover that we run into boundaries, which have
to do with our form of life: we cannot think more relationally without
living in a more relational way. I have argued that – paradoxically – the
reasons why it is so hard to think more relationally are to be found in
the very relational nature of human thinking and human being. In my
transcendental analysis I have indicated that what enables and limits
our thinking on moral status has to do with our existential depend-
ence on relations, with our being-in-relation: linguistic relations that
give meaning to the words we say and that structure these words into
sentences we use to ascribe moral status, social–cultural relations that
196 Growing Moral Relations

shape the form of life which is the womb of our thinking, experiential
and technological relations to our body and to the environment which
limit thinking about moral status, spiritual relations which co-structure
the way we shape these other relations and are themselves structured
by them, and spatial relations that cannot be disconnected from how
we think about moral status and how this thinking has changed in the
course of history.
Moreover, all conditions of possibility are themselves interrelated
and interdependent. For example, patterns of moral–geographical
space appear in the words we use and the words appear in the patterns.
And at a meta-level, where the philosopher’s mind likes to reside, the
dependencies are still in place. For example, my description of different
conditions depended on words and on technologies (writing, a word
processor program, a computer, etc.) which constrained and shaped the
form of my thinking (e.g. my thinking was perhaps more linear than it
needed to be). And the thinking–writing took place in those moments
when I disregarded my body (but nevertheless I drew on my experience,
which is always partly bodily, and I used metaphors anchored in bodily
experience) and when I was a ‘citizen’, that is, liberated from the trou-
bles of the household (yet I was never completely separated from it, and
my thinking was made possible by it).
Another way of expressing these limits to moral status reasoning is
to pick up again the emphasis on the relation between moral status and
the social as developed in the first part of this book, but with ‘social’
broadly understood. Any philosophical discourse on moral status must
be situated within and not outside the social theatre of humans, animals
and things. Changing moral status ascription is changing the bound-
aries of the social and hence changing our form(s) of life. How we should
relate to other entities, therefore, depends crucially on which worlds,
languages, bodies, technologies, spiritualities and spatial boundaries we
create or adapt, which are given to us, and which we (are prepared to)
live in.
The fruits of this essay for thinking about the moral status of animals,
robots and other entities (including ourselves), then, is neither a result
(the aim of science: one does research which should have results) nor
a method (the aim of philosophy understood as meta-science; it thinks
about the proper method for science). It is not a result, since, as an
opponent may sigh, after this work we still do not know what the moral
status of (particular) animals, robots and other entities is. It is neither a
scientific method, since it does not describe how to reach such a result,
nor a straightforward normative philosophical argument (for example,
 Moral Metamorphosis 197

about how we should treat particular kinds of animals or robots), and

it is not meant to be one. What is left instead, I hope, is a better under-
standing of what we do when we try to ascribe moral status to entities,
and the suggestion that the very question or problem of “moral status”
and “moral status ascription” must be replaced by different questions
and problems. If this book is right, then it makes a lot less sense to talk
about moral status or about moral status ascription. Let me unfold this
conclusion.
My claim that it makes little sense to talk about moral status may be
interpreted in at least two ways. The ‘dogmatic’ interpretation says that
we had better avoid talking about moral status given the relational nature
of entities, which makes them dynamic and non-discrete. This renders
the very idea of a ‘status’ inappropriate and void: ‘status’ suggests the
properties view of moral status, whereas we want to talk about dynamic
entities-in-relation. The relational dogma about moral status proclaims
that moral ‘status’ is itself relational, that is, dependent on the entities’
relations to their environment. In the language of value and property,
there is no ‘intrinsic’ value but only ‘extrinsic’ value. The ‘transcen-
dental’ interpretation of the claim, by contrast, does not itself make an
ontological, metaphysical claim, but changes the problem definition
and asks about the conditions of possibility of moral status ascription.
If we take this turn, then it no longer makes sense to talk about moral
status as if it were an objective property, since ‘moral status’ depends on
moral status ascription and its conditions of possibility.
But is ‘ascription’ still an adequate term, given what has been argued
in the previous chapters? If we take this approach seriously, the norma-
tive question also changes: instead of asking about the moral status of
entities, that is, what status we should ‘ascribe’ to them, we should ask
what kind of relations we want to have to them. Moreover, if the argu-
ment of Part II is right, this question boils down to the well-known,
ancient ethical question “How should we live?”, not interpreted as a
question concerning ‘ethical rules’ (modern ethics) or ‘virtues’ (at least
if interpreted as a kind of principles that are themselves external to life),
but understood as asking about what form our language, our common
life, our relations to nature, our spirituality and our space should have.
Moreover, at the end of Chapter 9 I have argued that answering this ques-
tion does not require a judgement from the outside, but a self-formation
and self-transformation of life, or, better, a moral metamorphosis, which
incorporates and from which emerges an ethics of growth and excess
that explores forms of life as ways of flourishing. Ethics, then, is seen as
part of life rather than something that controls/does not control ‘nature’
198 Growing Moral Relations

or restrains humans. It is the question of flourishing, which is now

understood more literally: life is used as its own best metaphor.
To accept these conclusions of the transcendental argument and to
change the normative question is not to embrace the end of morality;
at most it is the end of one particular way of thinking about morality
and its relation to life. It is the end of a morality focused on human
self-control and of a morality of good and evil, but it does not wipe out
the normative; it ‘only’ reinterprets the normative as an ‘imperative’ to
flourish, which is the ‘law’ of life itself rather than its containment and
control.
However, I am not sure that we are close to such an ethics and such a
form of life. More linguistic–conceptual change is needed and more and
different possibilities of life need to emerge. Philosophy can contribute
to linguistic–conceptual change, but in light of my argument about
forms of life it is good to keep in mind that its contribution is limited.
And the conceptual work done in this book is only one small part of a
continuously changing network of intertextual, inter-human, human–
technological, human–spiritual and human–spatial relations and
activities. In order to further develop the proposed approach to ‘moral
status’ and morality within philosophy, we need to further critique
and, if necessary, replace the architectural, bio-classificational, legal
and computational metaphors by other, better metaphors: metaphors
that express how the ‘moral status’ discourse is only one possible modus
of moral growth, of moral life.
Viewed from the perspective of (further elaborated) relational alter-
natives, the discourse about moral status may itself well turn out to be a
weed, a possibility which we might come to experience in the future as
not good and not useful for coping with being-in-the-world. However,
those philosophers, activists, lawyers and others who make a living
from it need not worry too much: if my transcendental argument is
right, then the discourse of moral status is here to stay for a while. We
cannot just change it and we do not know when it will go, since we are
surely not in the position of an all-knowing and all-powerful Gardener
or Judge. We do not know a priori what is good (we have to improvise)
and hence we cannot remove now what a posteriori turns out to be a
weed. Moreover, as said, we cannot ‘just’ or ‘simply’ change our thinking
without changing our living. Thus, linguistic–conceptual work done by
philosophers and others is not enough. If we continue to live as most
of us do, the moral status discourse is likely to be a very stubborn weed.
But Heidegger was wrong when he said that ‘only a god can save us’.1
It is true that we cannot bring forth the change by our thinking alone.
 Moral Metamorphosis 199

But we should not think of it as requiring external, non-earthly, divine

intervention. If there is anything to be ‘saved’ at all, it will be done by
us and other entities and it will happen to us and other entities as we
continue to try to live together as part of the relational world, try out
new possibilities, and thereby slowly but surely change the conditions
under which we express our despair. For this purpose, we need a phil-
osophy of life; not as theory but as activity and experience. We should
not love wisdom in a Platonic way but act and find it in the world; there
is no wisdom outside activity and experience. As Diogenes knew, we
have live wisdom and live value. Value is neither to be described nor to
be created; it has to be lived.

12.2. Can we move beyond modern and postmodern

thinking? Towards living philosophy

Recognizing these limits to linguistic–conceptual work is important,

since otherwise the transcendental argument becomes a modern argu-
ment for changing redesigning our moral outlook from the perception of
value (the moral order with its entities and properties) and the creation
of value (the modern idea) to ‘living value’ – with ‘living value’ inter-
preted as yet another moral paradigm or metaphysical dogma.
Paradoxically, if we want to avoid or go ‘beyond’ a modern interpret-
ation of the view of moral status I elaborated, we have to recognize and
accept the strengths, not only the weaknesses, of the modern way of
thinking and its continued influence on thinking that tries to shed
modernity. Let me explain what I mean here by briefly retelling and
reinterpreting the story of modern thinking once more.
Contemporary philosophy, in so far as it is modern, tries to ‘change
things with words’. This idea has its origin in a particular kind of reli-
gious thinking and practice that has been tremendously influential,
and still is influential in all monotheistic religions and post-monothe-
istic cultures in the world. Since at least the emergence of monotheistic
creational thinking, the world is not taken as given but as created, that
is, created by words. First there is the Word, then there is the creation.
The Word is not created. Everything is created – even time, as Augustine
wrote in Book 11 of his Confessions. Confronted with the question of what
happened before God created the world, he re-enforced the creational
idea. ‘Before’ there is nothing, that is, there is only the Creator. Since
there was not even time, it is even meaningless to talk about ‘before’.
According to this view, there is an unbridgeable gap between Creator
and Creation. (This is why some forms of monotheist thinking reject
200 Growing Moral Relations

images of God: there should be no image since there can be no image:

images are representations of something created, but God is understood
as non-created.) Moreover, the ‘means’ by which God creates cannot be
a thing, since all things are created. Therefore, the only ‘instrument’
God had was his Word. But what is this?
In the light of cultural–material history, we can historicize this divine
word. First, the ‘Word’ is hardly a word, it is more a Breath. God breathes
life into non-living matter. Breath is still connected to its environment;
it is still somewhat earthly. But then the Breath turns into something
that is removed from anything earthly. It becomes more abstract: a Word
that is spoken without breath. In a scriptural culture this idea of a breath-
less word is translated as: God has written the world. When today some
critics of technology say that we are ‘playing God’, this comparison
is understandable, for this is how we moderns think and live: we also
try to create new things, new humans and new worlds with words. We
believe in the power of the word, the concept, the idea. We also try to
bring non-living matter to life with our words, concepts and designs.
We try to create the Golem-robot. Always the same scheme is followed,
assuming a division between creator and created, between word and
matter. “First there was the Concept” is the beginning of the bible of
modern thinking. In this sense, modern art is by definition conceptual,
and shares this feature with industrial society and early information
society. We make things; things are our products. We build, construct.
But first there is the Code, first there is the Text. Then matter is formed
according to the word. Similarly, ethics is about applying the Moral
Code to bodily, natural creatures. Morally speaking, they are death; but
luckily God (later: human Reason) breathes life into them, forms and
transforms them.
Since this way of thinking is so forceful and influential, twentieth-
century postmodernism could only appear as a ‘footnote’ to modernity;
that is, it could only try to critique modernity by making references
to texts, codes and laws. It has called attention to con-text, it wanted
to de-construct, it called for more texts than only the One, but it
remains within the modern, conceptual–textual way of thinking. It
remains within the modern order of thinking. It tries to read between
the words, but words are still ‘first’. It wants to de-construct, but first
there is construction. It wants many stories, but first there is a text.
Postmodern ethics, too, remains textual. For Lyotard, the content of
the law must remain open, but ‘there is a law.’2 Thus, both modern and
postmodern thinking remain true to their roots in creational religious
thinking.
 Moral Metamorphosis 201

If we wish to move ‘beyond’ this kind of thinking to the non-modern,

we may consider the thinking and practice of various kinds of non-
modern cultures, as Ingold and Latour did. We may try to think about
what a non-modern ethics could look like. But it is wise to recognize
that these efforts are easily held captive by modern (and, more gener-
ally, Western) thinking for the same reason as our thinking about moral
status is held captive: we are both empowered and restrained by our
linguistic, social, bodily, material, technological, spiritual and spatial
forms, that is, by our form of life, and this form of life is still mainly
modern.
Consider the idea of a book. The very idea of writing a book is very
modern and proto-modern (e.g. Jewish or Greek): not because modern
technology is used to write and print it, of course, since books have
been written before, but because in a deeper sense writing books is
‘doing’ modernity par excellence: it assumes that first we need a word,
which then is supposed to have influence; that is, the writer hopes that
it will flow over the world as a kind of reviving spirit that nourishes
the barren, uncultivated lands. Philosophical words are supposed to
breathe life into the dry, dogmatic matter of received tradition. The
writer wants to rewrite history. The archetypical book is the Bible: the
word that re-formed history and time.3
Consider also my previous, all too modern suggestion that, if we want
to move beyond modern thinking, we have to look for different meta-
phors, for a different language. As I suggested, the transcendental argu-
ment calls the presuppositions of this claim into question. To ask for a
different language is a typically modern thing to do: it assumes that,
once we have a different language, a different concept, different words,
we can do things differently. It is assumed that, once we have different
words, we can de-construct and reconstruct the world. For example,
with status ascriptions (which have the form of a status function) we
can reallocate and redistribute moral status. And the same thinking
goes on at a meta-level, for example here in this book: with words we
can call attention to the transcendental conditions, a project which – in
a modern interpretation, at least – allows us to achieve a different, non-
modern view: a different concept, a different logos, a different meta-
physics, which can then be applied to different ways of doing. It is up to
the writer–philosopher to speak a different word, a new word, and then
that word is supposed to change the world. For example, we might want
to call for a philosophy of skill, and start to design an ontology, logic or
metaphysics of skill, in the hope that this idea will then change things
in the world.
202 Growing Moral Relations

It is only when we recognize how strong and attractive this way of

thinking is that we can even consider different routes, or perhaps only
the possibility of a different route. If we try to imagine a different route,
rather than walking it and living it, we remain modern. For example,
we can try to think of ‘living value’ as a verb and imagine philosophy as
skill (knowing-how to live) rather than writing a philosophy of skill (a
particular way of doing: the creation of an object). But, if this remains
a ‘concept’, then we have not moved beyond the very ideas and ways of
living we wanted to critique.
Of course, we can try to critique our discourse, for example the moral
status discourse. Consider what I am doing in this book. It seems to
me that moving away from a properties-based view has much to do
with moving from thinking based on nouns and adjectives (e.g. values
as nouns, things as nouns with certain properties, that is, adjectives)
to a thinking based on verbs. Rather than moral status of a thing,
understood as an adjective that belongs to a noun, moral consid-
eration is here reframed in terms of verbs: what matters is what we
are doing together as relational beings. Living value becomes a verb.
However, to the extent that this proposal remains a ‘philosophy of
language’ and proposes a different logos, it remains modern. Again
we try to move towards a different word, concept, image, which is
then supposed to transform things. It turns out that we are doing the
same thing ‘in other words’. It seems hard, if not impossible, to escape
this way of thinking. This is because our philosophical language, and
indeed our thinking itself, is modern and is deeply rooted in strong,
persistent religious traditions, which makes our thinking possible but
(because of that) also ‘bewitches’ and limits it (if I may borrow from
Wittgenstein here).
If it is at all desirable to move away from modern philosophy, which,
in tune with its roots, has become a philosophy of language in order to
understand itself, to a philosophy of life as suggested in this conclusion
(a life-philosophy or living philosophy rather than a philosophy of life),
then it is best to accept that such a philosophy will necessarily remain
modern if and to the extent that it remains theory, a ‘mere’ concept,
which ‘then’ has to be applied.
Does this conclusion imply that, if we really want to move beyond this
kind of thinking, we have to stop doing philosophy? This is a difficult
question and I do not know if I can answer it. Whatever the ‘ultimate’
answer, though, let me try out a route. If we feel that a change towards
a non-modern way of thinking and living is desirable, we can already
do some work within philosophy (in its current form) to further explore
 Moral Metamorphosis 203

what this would mean, even if this means that we are still largely bound
to modern thinking.
For instance, learning from the approach articulated in this book and
from the non-modern views it draws on, we could start with a reversal
of the relation between logos and non-logos. In the modern view, there
is ‘first’ the living word (or the Living Word, Christ), which then needs
to be applied to death matter (it needs to incarnate, to go into the flesh).
In order to ‘sense’ or ‘taste’ from a non-modern view (I avoid the meta-
phor of vision, which is typical for logos-oriented, theoretical views),
we can try to construct an antithesis (which is a very modern thing to
do, of course): ‘first’ there is life, with all its relational richness, from
which grows thought that becomes ‘death’ theory once it has turned
into logos. In response to this antithesis we could then try to construct
a synthesis and say that this dying is not necessary, that words can be
as ‘alive’ as the lips from which they entered the world. We should not
make the mistake of prohibiting words (similarly to prohibiting images)
in order to remove ‘death’ theory from its living stem as the removal
of the ‘false’ from the ‘real’. Whether or not words ‘live’ depends on
the environment in which they grow, and there is no ‘real’ apart from
the continuously changing environmental relations and process of
moral–natural growth. However, this ‘dialectical’ game, which tries
to arrive at a synthesis of logos (thesis) and life/experience (antithesis),
remains modern and breathes the strong desire for theory and theoret-
ical closure.
Perhaps we should accept that, living in these times, in this kind of
environment, and having the relations we have, we have this desire
for theory. We remain lovers of theory rather than lovers of wisdom.
We have the desire to be gods and (re)construct, rewrite, redesign the
world. But it is important to recognize that our desire to play god is
not arbitrary, not something we decided (and thus something we may
change by deciding otherwise): it is an outgrowth of a living relational
whole, which now has a particular form, one which nourishes that
desire. Now, how can we cope with this desire? We could argue that
we should try to control it. If we must have an ethics of control at all,
it is not so much one that tries to control particular ‘worldly’ desires,
but rather one that tries to ‘control’ the desire to control the world.
But this way of thinking remains modern. The language of modern
ethics is the language of control, and the idea of a kind of meta-control
does not fundamentally escape this way of thinking. Thus, this kind
of meta-control seems to make things worse rather than better, at
least if we believe modern thinking to be problematic. Any control
204 Growing Moral Relations

(in the ordinary sense of the term) itself strives for the absence of meta-
control. It wants to be the highest level of control; it wants to be ‘on top’:
it wants that everything submits to its power, even the desire to control
itself. But this is a serpent that eats its own tail, leading to a vicious
circle of control. Therefore, what we need should not take the form
of control – or at least not in the common sense of the word. It needs
to come from ‘outside control’. Heidegger used the word Gelassenheit
(letting-go) for the kind of attitude we need here. But what is it? What
is ‘letting-go’? Is it the kind of waiting or patience Heidegger proposes?
Is it waiting for a god who will save us? If we take seriously the non-
modern thinking explored earlier in this book, then letting-go should
not be conceived of, turned into a concept, but should be understood
as an activity and a skill. And expert skill cannot be written down but
must be shown, learned and done. Then what happens to our condi-
tion is something that changes and evolves, and improvement of this
condition does not depend on ourselves alone. But it is also not some-
thing that can be done by an ‘outsider’, by divine intervention. It must
be done by us, and at the same time it must happen to us. It is not so
much that ‘there is a Law’, as Lyotard said as a postmodern; rather,
‘there is activity’, ‘something is being done’ and ‘there is growth’.
Maybe this means that we ‘have’ to spend less time on philosophy as
the design of concepts and theory and start learning to do philosophy
as lovers of wisdom and flourishing rather than lovers of control and
creation; but it is not enough to issue an imperative, a word.
For moral ‘status’, this means that moral status has to be ‘done’ or
‘lived’. Rather than trying to categorize entities or ascribing moral status
to them, rather than treating them as objects that already have a certain
status as a kind of property or as naked objects that are clothed with
value by us, we should shape our (new or already existing) relations
with these entities as these relations (and thus ‘we’ and ‘they’ as well)
are changing and growing. Instead of regulating what we do, instead of
applying a Law or Code, instead of applying a pre-given form to matter,
we would do better to engage in the slow change of moral evolution and
moral metamorphosis: the form of the relation is not regulated inde-
pendently from the ‘outside’ (if that were even possible), but changes
as we change and as the relation changes. There is no ethics of growth
in the sense of regulation: there is no all-powerful and all-knowing
Gardener – a god or we ourselves – which manages the moral order as
a garden. There is change, but this change results from what we do in
response to other entities and our environment, and what this environ-
ment and other entities do to us. Shaping and formation are inherent in
 Moral Metamorphosis 205

the process, but it is not a top-down shaping. We form other entities as

we are formed by them. Form is neither fixed nor created; form evolves.
The question of moral ‘status’ abstracts from these processes of develop-
ment, growth and evolution. It treats entities as discrete objects which
are removed from life with its relations and its change. It treats entities
like dead butterflies pinned to cardboard in a stuffy cabinet. What
is needed, instead, is a moral philosophy as a life-philosophy. If that
philosophy still needs words at all, better they be words that do not
desperately try to form and re-form, but, rather, fly around and explore
old and new scents as they grow themselves into new, better-adapted
forms – this is their metamorphosis.
Is this picture of moral philosophy too frivolous? Does it take seriously
what is at stake? I believe it does. This approach takes seriously our
concern with other entities and with our relations to them, but suggests
that we should think twice before we voice and discuss this concern
in terms of ‘moral status’ and ‘moral status ascription’. It recommends
that we should accept the constraints on human agency due to the
form of life we live in. ‘Moral status’ is something that happens rather
than something that is made. As Nietzsche suggested, you cannot really
take seriously what you created yourself. Thinking that we create and
construct the world and its values with our words and our things, that
we give moral status to entities as if it were a property and a commodity –
that that is not taking the problem of ‘moral status’ seriously.

12.3. Three imperatives for the art of living

Since modern ethicists love imperatives and classifications, let me

conclude this chapter with an overview of three types of ethics and
their corresponding ‘imperatives’. We can distinguish between three
ways of thinking and doing, three life-forms, which give us different
imperatives when it comes to the art of living:

1. Representation and imitation

2. Creation and revolution
3. Growth and evolution

First life-form. There is eternity. There is a Form, Logos, a Code, a Law.

There is Nature. There are norms. There is a design. We have to represent
the Logos as well as we can. Follow the norms. Copying as mimesis is the
skill we need. Art makes images of gods and nature. Texts are copied
in the monasteries. God is the Creator, we do not create. Humans are
206 Growing Moral Relations

natural and created. We should try to understand creation, the Logos

or Word of God. The Word is eternal. It is the beginning and the end.
Science tries to read the Code. Biology tries to know the Logos of life.
Technology is an instrument and represents natural functions. There
are natural ends and artificial means. Ethics means: see the value in
what is and apply the Code. The Law is imperative. There is an Origin –
make sure you know it and follow what comes from the Source. Use
your mimetic, representational imagination.
Second life-form. There is change. We need change. We should not
accept what is. We need revolution, re-formation, transformation.
Humans should create new things. The Creator is death. Our word
counts. We should make our own norms (autonomy) and law, our own
world. We create our own design and then produce it, print it. Find
the nature in yourself. Express your true self. Be authentic: make sure
that your ‘products’ follow your ‘design’, who you really are. All art is
conceptual art: first there is the concept. Art and science are biotech-
nology: we try to change, edit, perhaps rewrite the Code or write a new
code. Be original – you are the origin, you are the author of your life. Use
your creative imagination. Be a god.
Third life-form. There is growth and evolution. There is non-intended
change. There is no creation. There is no origin. There is adaptation.
‘Adapt’ is the ethical imperative: not adaptation to a pre-given or created
form, but adaptation to changing environments. There is growth and
development, but that growth is not directed. There are networks. Art
crosses the boundary between natural and artificial. It goes beyond
mimesis and creation. We are hybrid and mutating. There is no pre-
given bio-logos or norms, we have to grow and adapt. There is life, bios.
We have to try out what flourishes best. This is the living art of living.
Imagination is improvisation, experiment, practice. Forget about repre-
sentational or creative imagination: there is no pre-given or created
image, word or self. There is no origin and no end. Grow and flourish!
General Conclusion

A different moral epistemology: painting, breathing, living

I have argued in this book that moral status is not a property and not
like a property. If the reader insists it is a property of some sort, then
it is at least a property like colour, in the sense that it does not only
depend on the object but also on the subject. The object reflects light
in a particular way, but colour itself is always (also) in the eye of the
observer, and this receptivity is constrained in various ways. Similarly,
moral status arises in the relation between object and subject. It partly
depends on our way of seeing and what structures that way of seeing.
The philosopher who reasons about moral status then acts as a painter:
the moral painter tries to represent the moral colours of the object. But,
in doing that, there is always something of the painter in the painting;
there is something of the ‘eye’ in the colours of the object. The painting
is not an objective representation of an independent reality. Not even
a photograph can be that; there is the selecting subject, looking from a
specific angle, and so on. Our way of seeing influences what we see. We
cannot reach the thing-in-itself.
However, this book goes further than this post-Kantian position
and shows that moral status ascription is not even like the perception
of a property such as colour and not even like perception at all, but
presupposes active engagement with the world. What makes moral
status ascription possible is not a matter of seeing but of doing. In
other words, the moral epistemology suggested here attempts to be
non-Cartesian all the way. Cartesian moral epistemology presup-
poses a detached observer who lets in the rays of light and ‘takes a
photograph’ in her mind. According to that view of moral knowledge,
there is a strict separation of object and subject, and they do not

207
208 Growing Moral Relations

influence one another. We take a god’s eye point of view, a view from
an airplane or from outer space. From this point of view, we practise
moral ontology. We argue that moral status is a non-relational prop-
erty or we argue that it is a relational property. We argue that there
is intrinsic value or not. Perhaps we even argue that moral status is a
combination of intrinsic and extrinsic properties – a position that is
sometimes suggested to me and which I discussed in Chapter 3. But
even such a position would not leave the un-earthed point of view. It
would be a better moral ontology, perhaps, but we should also ques-
tion the project of a moral ontology itself, which seems to presuppose
that we can see and oversee the moral world order. Instead, the moral
epistemology I interpret and develop in this book holds that moral
status ascription depends on how the subject engages with the world.
This moral subject is no longer a perceiver or observer but a doer, who
actively relates to her environment.
If this is right, then in order to describe moral status ascription and
its conditions of possibility, and perhaps more generally morality and
its conditions of possibility, we need a different metaphor than seeing,
a metaphor which expresses the continuous contact and exchange
with the world. I think moral breathing is a more adequate metaphor.
Breathing is a continuous and active relating to the world in a very intense
way: we depend on it for our life. Whatever we do or say, we always
breathe, that is, we are always engaged in a basic but intense relation to
our environment. Similarly, when we do moral philosophy and ascribe
moral status, we do not do this from a vantage point outside the world.
Our thinking depends on the cultural–material air we breathe. A fish
cannot live outside the water, which enables and limits its activities;
similarly, our moral thinking depends on the linguistic, social, techno-
logical, spiritual and historical–spatial relations in which we live. Some
philosophical fish take a brave leap out of the water, but have to return
to it. They belong to the water. The words that leave our mouth can
only be spoken because we breathe, and they can be heard only by
those who breathe the same air. The transcendental–phenomenological
argument made in this book is nothing else than a proposal for a kind
of philosophical yoga: an exercise in becoming more aware of your
moral breathing.
Without this transcendental exercise, our thinking is uncritical – in
the Kantian sense of ‘critique’. To put it as a commentary on John 1:1:
in the beginning of moral reasoning is not the word, but the moral
breath, which presupposes that there is already a world, an ongoing
and lived relation between the reasoner and her environment.
 General Conclusion 209

Only gods may speak without breath; hence in the case of a divine word
it is possible that ‘in the beginning was the word’. But, for us mortals,
logos presupposes breath and air, that is, it presupposes active engage-
ment with the world, an acting in relation to the environment and a
close, vital contact with that environment. Moral reasoning divorced
from the moral life delivers dead words.
Consider again contractarianism and the Searle-style constructivism
I articulated at the beginning of Part II. This way of thinking assumes
that ‘in the beginning’ there is a ‘word’ that sets up (a part of) the
moral world order: it declares its principles and distinctions. Indeed,
creation is about making distinctions: by means of distinctions, a world
is created in the first place. Before creation, there was no distinction,
no form. The moral status ascriber (or ascribers, in the contractarian
view) are like the god of Genesis 1, and the ‘state of nature’ before moral
status ascription resembles the earth before distinctions were created:
‘The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the
deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters’ (Genesis 1:2).
In contrast to this moral epistemology, I suggest that there is not first
the moral word which constructs the moral world order and, at most,
only afterwards ‘becomes flesh’ (the ‘Christian’ view). There are not first
moral principles and distinctions, which then need to be applied to
the ‘earthly’ world. Rather, when it comes to moral status the word is
flesh from the beginning; it is already a living word. It is ‘among us’ in
the sense that what we say about other beings and about ourselves is
profoundly shaped by our form of life.
If this moral epistemology is right, then it looks as if we can throw
away the ladder of moral status ascription and focus instead on good
living. In agreement with all major wisdom traditions, I believe the
latter should indeed be the focus of ethics. But – and here I return to
a question I already touched upon in Chapter 12 – do we still need the
ladder, then? My provisional answer is “Yes and no”. On the one hand,
moral status ascription and, to some extent, all moral reasoning are part
of our current form of life, that is, of the moral–social water we swim
and live in. But to a large degree this ‘we’ is not only a particular society
or community, but probably most of humanity in so far as its cultures
and peoples have grown into Western (modern) thinking. In a sense we
‘need’ this thinking, since we live in a world that is transformed by it
and that ‘works’ in this way. Moral reasoning, as a product of evolution,
can be regarded as a set of conceptual tools humans living in this world
and this age now need to deal with the increasingly complex cultural–
material and social–technological world. Moral status ascription, and
210 Growing Moral Relations

more generally modern Western philosophy, is part of our current tool-

box. On the other hand, while we might not be able to dispense with
moral reasoning and moral metaphors altogether, it seems that we need
other conceptual tools than moral status ascription, and other moral
metaphors. I argued that the very term ‘moral status’ is misleading in
various ways, and I have explored other moral metaphors. For example,
in so far as the language of moral status presupposes the moral subject
of a disengaged observer who takes stock of the properties of an object
‘out there’, it does too little justice to the dynamic and relational nature
of the moral life. Instead, we could aim for right and good living
(including good relating to other entities), and from this starting point
decide which conceptual tools we need to assist us in this task. But we
do not know if we can reach that aim. We do not even know the aim. (In
a sense, if we knew the aim, we would have reached it.) We cannot aim,
but we can turn.
However, if the transcendental argument is right, this turn is not
entirely a matter of choice. Not only questions of right action and good
life, but also the meta-ethical questions asked in this book, are not asked
in the abstract but are asked and discussed as we live. Even the previous,
highly abstract meta-ethical question concerning the evolution and
evaluation of our moral–conceptual repertoire is rooted in our form(s)
of life, which means that our thinking about these matters is limited by
the language, social relations, culture, bodies, technologies and spiritu-
alities we live. Influenced by monotheistic creationalism, it has become
our habit to think as creationalists – even if we consider ourselves secu-
larized. Influenced by modern science and philosophy, it has become
our habit to live as Cartesians. The history of Western alienation, then,
is not so much one of domination by dictators or by technology, but is
mainly one of self-alienation. We alienated ourselves from the world
and from its ‘entities’, and now we have a moral philosophy that hangs
in mid-air. To the extent that moral philosophy is like an airplane or
spacecraft, it is time to land it, to re-root it, to re-vive it, indeed, to
resuscitate it. This turned out to be the main normative message that
emerged from what I did in this book. However, if we ‘choose’ this path
towards a more earthly, engaged philosophy, we should remain aware
of the limits to human agency when it comes to changing our ways of
thinking and living. Given these limits, the chances are high that our
children and grandchildren will still continue to talk about moral status
and at the same time continue to live in a way that renders everyone
and everything always slightly alien: this is what we do now to the
things we make, to the animals we live with, and finally to ourselves.
 General Conclusion 211

In this sense, our current failure to relate properly to the world may
well be a kind of fate, perhaps the tragedy of tragedies. Or is this too
pessimistic?

Morality’s womb

In my introduction I compared a moral tradition to a womb, in which

you can find moral safety and the conditions for moral growth. Like
other work in moral philosophy, this essay has left this safety in order
to explore a relational approach to moral status. But this book has taken
another, far less common, step, which indirectly supports the rela-
tional approach but engages in a different, ‘non-dogmatic’ exercise. In
response to the question of whether it is possible to change our thinking
about moral status in a more relational direction, I have examined some
important conditions of possibility of ‘moral status’ thinking and doing,
which limit what we can think and do in that direction. More generally,
the specific rules, principles and distinctions of a given moral tradition
do not only encapsulate the moral subject from the cold of nothing-
ness, but also limit its thinking. After questioning a moral tradition,
we realize that even this meta-ethical effort is not taking place in isola-
tion. This inquiry about moral status ascription suggests that reasoning
about moral status, and probably any kind of moral reasoning, is highly
dependent on a ‘deeper’ kind of womb: moral thinking and doing
grows in a state of symbiosis, that is, lives together with and cannot
live without the linguistic, social, technological, spiritual and spatial
forms of life that feed it and protect it from isolation. In other words,
moral thinking itself, including meta-ethics, is deeply relational. One
can leave a specific ‘local’ moral tradition, perhaps – although one then
soon has to find and build a new moral dwelling place – but it is much
more difficult, if not impossible, to leave a broader, more general form
of moral thinking and doing, one which is probably common to several
moral traditions, if not to the thinking of ‘humanity’ in a global world
(if that makes sense). Like many others, I have assumed that this is the
position of ‘modern’ thinking today: it is vibrant in ‘the West’ but it has
also mixed with other cultures, and both enables and limits the way we
think. Leaving that kind of thinking would mean leaving that shared
form of life. Is this possible? We can leave the village of tradition and the
city of conventional moral thinking and run into the forest, but then
we ‘have’ to follow the tracks made by people who have tried this before.
And, if we do not return or find another village or city, then we might
try to build a ‘new’ dwelling place, only to find that it looks surprisingly
212 Growing Moral Relations

similar to the one we left. Or can we really change this kind of form of
life? Can we make new tracks and find a new form of dwelling?
Philosophers have usually been either too optimistic or too pessim-
istic about the possibility of this kind of ‘deep’ change to our form of life.
Some of us think that we can change our ways of thinking and doing
by means of therapy or (meta)technology, that is, more rules and better
things. These technologies of the self (Foucault) and other technologies
are the classical ancient and modern solutions to the problem. Others,
like Heidegger, have questioned this technological way of thinking
(recall again Heidegger’s claim that only a god can save us from it). The
view I try to make explicit here tries to avoid both positions. It holds
that the specific linguistic–social–cultural–technological–spiritual–
spatial form of life – and, indeed, the specific form of moral thinking –
that emerged in the West is neither an illness that demands treatment
nor a kind of original sin that stands in need of salvation. The illness
metaphor does a good job of catching the living dimension of morality
and the forms of life on which it depends, and the salvation metaphor
rightly suggests the weight a particular form of thinking and form of life
can have on us; a weight which cannot be lifted by an act of human
will-power. Our way of thinking is ‘in’ us and the ‘cross’ of tradition is
heavy. However, both metaphorical–philosophical gestures are symp-
toms of the ‘disease’ they wish to treat and commit the same ‘sin’ as
the thinking they criticize, to the extent that even in their most crit-
ical moments they exemplify a modern, ‘activist’ and non-relational
approach to problems. They are modern, since they emphasize agency
and intervention from outside as a solution to the problem: the doctor
should do something about it or help me to do something about it; the
god should do something about it. In other words, both views assume
that we can diagnose and fix the problem. They bring back the scien-
tist–physician, the therapist–sage, the priest and the engineer (who is or
knows the divine designer) into the meta-moral domain. These consult-
ants ask of us a move of alienation: “Look at that sick body, behold your
black soul! But you will be healed, you might be saved.” Moreover, these
solutions are also non-relational, in the sense that they tend to regard
the ‘Western’ form of life as something that is isolated from other (real
and possible) forms of life.
This emphasis on agency and isolation must be questioned. As
I suggested before, it seems that, at this level of abstraction of the
problem, some Gelassenheit is to be recommended, given that it is so
hard to change a form of life – especially by willing the change, and by
doing particular things, making particular interventions. As individuals
 General Conclusion 213

and societies, we do not have much control over our own moral growth,
and much less over the living womb – the form of life – that makes that
growth possible. Moreover, forms of life do not ‘live’ in isolation but
are related to other forms of life. Without such relations, a form of life –
like anything living –simply dies if there is no exchange with the wider
environment. If we were to cut off our words, norms, objects and places
from our lives, they would die, that is, lose their meaning – unless they
were to live on by means of ongoing relations and to grow new rela-
tions (perhaps the art of mourning requires us to do both). This is also
true for the life-form as a whole, which is spread out, entangled, rooted
and connected. There has always been exchange between life-forms,
for example (and for lack of better terms) between ‘West’ and ‘East’
and between ‘North’ and ‘South’. There is no ‘pure’ life-form. There is
already growth and there is already some ‘therapy’ and ‘salvation’ in
this sense.
But, while we might need mediators who can travel between these
forms of life, we can dispense with the false impression of a meta-
ethical “Yes, we can” if this is understood in a simplistic way: change is
possible, of course, and we have our part to play in the theatre, but what
happens on the stage is not entirely up to us, and interventions by the
moral consultants of this world cannot change that fundamental limi-
tation. This meta-ethical limitation does not justify attempts to halt
normative philosophy and stop people who try to change the lives of
others and (far more rarely) of themselves. On the contrary, after the
death of ‘anything goes’ postmodernism (if it ever lived among philoso-
phers in the first place, if it was ever born at all), and given the current
problems in a ‘global’ world (which we tend to look upon from our
detached epistemological position in outer space), we probably need
more, not fewer, guides to ‘the good life’. However, as I have argued,
changing a life-form is not that easy, and the power of the ‘word’ is
limited. At the meta-ethical level, there is a tragedy for which no easy
remedy can be given. Perhaps philosophers and historians of ideas can
offer us ‘re-enactments’ of the story of moral philosophy, which can
give us the benefit of purification (catharsis): as spectators, we sympa-
thize with those thinkers who passionately try to change the moral
world order, but are ignorant of how their thinking remains within
morality’s womb. We pity and fear them when they try to fly higher
than they can; we watch their fall. Then passion calms down.
As my taking this spectator-view position shows again, this book also
is often all too modern, theoretical, and probably rather alienating as
well. It is an outgrowth or offspring of the life-form within which it is
214 Growing Moral Relations

written and within which it has grown. The ‘life’ of its words, if any,
depends on past and future relations between these words and other
words, and on relations between the words and the life-form in which
they have matured and to the growth of which they might contribute.
Moreover, relations with other life-forms are crucial in moral ecologies,
also at a meta-level. For example, I hope that some of what I have said
here can be fertilized and grow by making connections between the
ideas in this book and Eastern thought, in particular Buddhism, Taoism
and Confucianism. One could also say more about pragmatism (espe-
cially Dewey’s work) and explore its relation to the main ideas artic-
ulated in this book. And it may be interesting to discuss further the
political dimension of ‘moral status ascription’. But let me first expose
these reflections to the weather of the coming season. As an author
I must let go now, and I can only hope that the letting go becomes a
letting grow.
Notes

Chapter 1
1. Note that if these properties are not established by moral science, they might
resort to a more traditional view: the justification might be that if humans
refuse to make this contract, they are not acting according to the logos of the
universe with its well-distributed moral values. They are not recognizing
the intrinsic value of the entity in question. It seems that this view was
shared by the ancient Greeks (i.e. the Stoics) and by medieval Christians,
but also by early moderns who discerned a natural and moral order in the
universe. The idea that value itself is a purely contractual or conventional
matter seems to be a much more recent idea.

Chapter 2
1. See, for example, Westra’s questions in Sandler and Cafaro, p. 79.
2. I say more about the problem of motivation in environmental ethics later
in this section, in Part II and elsewhere; see, for example, Coeckelbergh
(2011b).
3. Perhaps it could rely on a non-essentialist view of human nature: applica-
tion could be left to phronesis (a practical wisdom that cannot and should
not be captured in theory and that could be acquired at individual and soci-
etal level), and motivation could be said to emerge from the activity and the
experience – see again Cafaro on Thoreau and my arguments in Part II.
4. See, for example, Holmes Rolston’s questioning of the relation between
human virtue and (intrinsic) value in nature (Holmes Rolston in Sandler
and Cafaro 2005, pp. 69–70).
5. Note that for Hannah Arendt this is an important distinction: speech
belongs to politics, whereas labour belongs to the non-political household
(Arendt 1958).

Chapter 3
1. One may also consider personalist theory, which seeks a similar ‘third way’
between individualism and collectivism.
2. This is his doctrine of ‘internal relations’.

Chapter 4
1. Building on what I said in the previous chapter, one could put more
emphasis on the political aspect of Aristotle here and stress the polis –world

215
216 Notes

distinction rather than the logos –world distinction: not the logico-political
order, not the polis, but the world is our body.
2. Note that Benton’s view is non-romantic in this respect: living together
with animals and living as ‘natural’ beings is not necessarily harmonious.
This orientation may derive from Benton’s Marxist approach, which in turn
takes its inspiration from Hegel.

Chapter 5
1. Latour is a prominent thinker of the so-called actor-network theory.

Chapter 6
1. Compare also §418–419, p. 133; § 359, p. 120; or Philosophy of Psychology
§ 20–21.
2. We are concerned here with human logos, as opposed to the ancient Stoic
logos diffused through the world or the logos of the monotheistic god. In this
view, in the beginning is not the divine word but the human word.
3. Note again that in principle there is not even need for a physical object.
Hence we may assign status functions to virtual objects such as avatars in
a virtual world or ‘informational objects’. This renders this view suitable to
applications in information ethics.
4. The term is from Rawls, but, in contrast to Rawls, Habermas makes the delib-
eration intersubjective; Rawls’s deliberation can be performed by a single
rational subject.
5. Rawls is almost mono-logical, and Searle may be interpreted as having a
collectivist version of mono-logos in so far as he supposes a ‘we’ as the
collective subject of status functions.

Chapter 7
1. For more on the importance of know-how and skill, see also the work of
Dewey (pragmatist tradition) and Dreyfus (phenomenological tradition).
2. Similarly, for Merleau-Ponty the body can only appear as a thing against
the background of embodied experience in an environment. We can only
experience ourselves as having a body because at the same time we are a
body. See also Chapter 9.
3. See also my reference to Ihde in Chapter 3.
4. I leave open here whether or not this attempt, if it tries to mimic human
skill, can ever be successful in principle.
5. Note that Heidegger includes only humans in his notion of being-with.
For Heidegger, the other being ‘has the kind of being of Da-sein’ (p. 117).
However, as I will argue, we also need to include non-human beings that
are ‘like-with’.
6. I use the term ‘ontological’ as referring to what Heidegger would call ‘ontic’:
the way I use it refers to ‘what is’ rather than to the structures of being.
 Notes 217

Chapter 8
1. One way to put the problem is that non-humans sometimes appear as quasi-
others or quasi-social, in which case it makes sense that social relations
extend to human–non-human interactions and relations.
2. As I said in Chapter 2, what I called ‘epistemological anthropocentrism’
cannot be avoided, but here I give it a much broader and novel interpret-
ation: our knowledge of other entities depends on human subjectivity, but
our human subjectivity depends on a form of life that is entangled with
non-human forms of life.
3. Perhaps in the West we live in a culture of hope. Christianity, or
post-Christianity, seems to be a case in point.
4. See also Schütz on the lifeworld as social praxis.
5. Gier argues that Wittgenstein is close to Schopenhauer on this point (Gier
1981, p. 54).

Chapter 9
1. For the distinction between animism and totemism, see Ingold (2000),
pp. 112–113.
2. It also seems to me that AI has never really taken up the non-representational
project proposed by Varela et al.: even though AI researchers took on board
evolution, learning, and so on, and therefore left the idea of the computer
or robot needing a fixed model of the world in order to find its way, they
still run computer simulations of the processes of evolution, learning, and so
on; in other words, their computers and robots still work with models. But
the very ideas of ‘modelling’ something and of ‘implementing’ something
in the robot are hopelessly dualistic. To the extent that this paradigm guides
AI, it is impossible in principle to build a robot that has a sense of ‘having’ a
body or ‘being’ a body – if such a thing could ever be done at all. Enacting
seems reserved for humans and animals.
3. See Mitcham’s distinction between tool and machine as quoted by Ingold,
p. 300. Note also that such robots (and humans) are seen as executioners of
a logos: a representation of the world or model programmed into the robot;
this is the early AI program.
4. See also Arendt’s reading of Heidegger.
5. A further elaborated version of this argument can be found in Coeckelbergh
(2011b).

Chapter 10
1. In Christianity we also find the idea of a trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit, but
they are to be regarded as one.
2. Philo borrowed Plato’s craftsman metaphor here: in Philo’s view, the creator
of the world is a craftsman, in particular an architect or town planner
(see Runia 1986, p. 168).
218 Notes

3. Note that Swedenborg influenced Kant, who seems to have shared

Swedenborg’s view that there is an invisible world of spirits which influ-
ences us and to which we can connect.
4. The main contact eighteenth and nineteenth-century thinkers had with
nature religion was indirect, through the recovery operation of ancient
Greek thought; see, for example, Nietzsche’s Dionysus. They were less inter-
ested in the folk religion of their time, which was a mixture of Christianity
and nature religion. One might also think of the Lebensreform movement
in the early twentieth century, with people like Kneipp and Steiner, who
wanted to go back to nature. But Kneipp was a Catholic priest and Steiner’s
spiritual philosophy had a central role for Christ. It would take longer for
people to become interested in non-Christian folk practices and nature
religion.

Chapter 11
1. See also Arendt’s distinction between household (oikos) and polis (Arendt
1958).
2. Perhaps this also means that the new property has less value, at least
according to the ‘old’ property theory and the economy of scarcity it was
concerned with.
3. Consider contemporary attempts at so-called ‘human enhancement’ and
trans-humanist visions of human enhancement.

Chapter 12
1. See the famous Der Spiegel interview.
2. See Lyotard’s book Just Gaming (Lyotard and Thébaud 1985, p. 52).
3. Other ‘archetypical’ ancient texts relevant to moral status ascription are
codes of law and inventories for the purpose of stock-keeping and taxation:
those who practise moral status ascription care about rules for treating
humans and non-humans (a moral codex), and as metaphysicians they
dream of an inventory of all entities with details of their ontological and
moral status: the high priests and kings of the moral order (humans) wish
to have an overview of their moral stock, a true representation of the moral
order, of the moral (e)state given to them by God. Humans are the stewards
of creation, and they tax it and take their rent (e.g. in the form of slaugh-
tering animals).
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Index

actor-network theory, 25, 63–4, 216 as pets, 20, 52, 67, 79, 85, 125–6
AI (artificial intelligence), 83, 92–3, political animals, 31–9
100–2, 145–6, 217 rational animals, 39
alienation, 8, 144, 165, 172, 175, 183, relations with, 52–7, 123, 140
190–1, 210, 212 see also social relations
earth-alienation (Arendt), 8, 190–1 as resource, 111, 132
aliens, 130, 190 rights, 3, 13, 17, 18, 53–6, 188–9
anatomy lesson, 17–71 as social beings, 52–3, 56
see also Rembrandt suffering of, 14, 27, 55, 143, 176
anatomy theatre, 17 tame, 140–1, 187–9
animals, 18, 39–44, 48–9, 53–71, 78, see also wild animals,
85, 88–9, 99, 111, 114, 123–32, domestication
140–4, 146, 148, 152, 155, as things, 54, 111
164–5, 174–6, 183, 185–90, uploading of, 142
196–7, 210, 216–18 wild, 52, 85, 126, 140–1, 187, 189
abuse of, 53, 56–7 and Wittgenstein, 131
and Aristotle, 189 animism, 69, 140, 151, 168, 174,
being-with-animals, 111 177, 217
as companions, 60, 62, 88, 143 anthropocentrism, 6–7, 26, 35, 42, 47,
condition, 39 131, 174–5, 217
construction of, 88–9 epistemological anthropocentrism,
domestication of, 48, 52, 62, 66, 26, 217
142, 186 apes, 2, 4, 15
ethics, 2–3, 13, 28–9, 53–6, 143, appearance, 4, 6, 17–18, 24–6, 36,
166, 185 44, 49, 60, 64, 67–9, 80–1, 89,
experience of, 49 110, 131, 132–5, 144, 146, 153,
experimentation, 53; 157–8, 168, 192
experimentation animal, 85 a priori
in factory farms, 54–7, 132, condition of possibility of
141–2, 164 experience and praxis, 135
intelligent animals, 39–40 condition of possibility of scientific
killing animals, 22, 141, 164 ontologies, 95
and the labour process, 54–6 conditions of possibility of moral
liberation, 2, 29, 61–2, 188 status ascription, 95, 170
as livestock, 53, 89, 185, 187, 189 cyber, 152
as meat, 18, 30, 53, 79, 111, 123, deciding, 155
141–2, 164, 185 form of life as, 136
moral status of, 41–3, 53–5, 78, 85, ground of our practices and
114, 123, 130, 143, 185–6, 189, thinking, 154
196–7 knowledge, 163
see also moral status knowledge of good, 198
nature, 39–40 lifeworld as, 135
needs of, 53–5 Mitsein as, 108

225
226 Index

a priori – continued biospheric egalitarianism, 47

ontological, 64, 69, 147 biotic community, 41, 47, 50–2, 185
ontological-relational, 64 blueprint, 160, 167, 171
ordering of the world, 119–20 see also code, logos
organism in its environment, 65 body, 1–5, 8, 19, 35–8, 44, 50, 52–6,
relational, 153 62, 88–96, 99–104, 122, 125–33,
religious-social-natural-material, 170 137, 139–65, 167, 170, 172, 175,
selection of good activities, 164 186, 196, 200–1, 210, 216–17
space and time as, 179 being a body v. having a body
transcendental, 170 (Merleau-Ponty), 144
Umwelt as, 135 bodily experience, 91, 139,
ways of experiencing entities, 105 144–5, 196
world in which we are already robotization of the, 144
engaged, 69 breathing, 9, 94, 155, 165, 207–8
architecture, 7, 19, 171, 194, 198, 217 see also moral breathing
Arendt, H., 188, 190–1, 215, 217–18 broad reason (Gier), 138
Aristotle, 31–43, 50, 60, 67, 185, Buddhism, 145, 214
188–90, 215
artefacts, 2, 4, 63, 66–7, 140, 149–50, Cafaro, P., 27–31, 162, 164, 215
156–7, 169, 171, 176, 194 Callicott, J.B., 41–2, 45, 49–51, 183
growing artefacts, 63 care, 31, 33, 62, 109, 115, 141, 175, 186
wild artefacts, 194 Carman, T., 111–14
with grandchild status, 176 Cartesian thinking, 38, 80, 90,
artificial, 2–5, 13, 18, 20, 25, 59, 78, 97–100, 103, 127, 144–6,
86, 93, 100, 103, 111, 127, 138, 207, 210
160, 176, 192, 206 categorization, 4, 20, 84, 103–4, 124,
companions, 20, 78, 88 192, 204
intelligence, 83, 92–3, 100–2, see also classification
145–6, 217 child-parent relation, 175–6
see also AI grandchild status, 176
natural v. artificial, 3–5, 59, 127, chimpanzees, 2
138, 164, 176, 206 Christianity, 21, 28, 141, 165–9,
ascription, see moral status ascription 173–5, 177, 182–3, 209, 215,
Austin, J.L., 77, 84 217–18
authenticity, 68, 111–15, 206 Church, the, 167
automaton, 152–9 doctrine of original sin, 173
Jewish-Christian-Islamic thinking,
barbarians, 188, 190 165, 182–3
being-in-relation, 195 and modernity, 182
being-in-the-world, 66–7, 95–117, 129, and monotheism, see monotheism
137, 145–6, 198 and pastoral relations, 141
beings-in-relation, 38 post-Christianity, 165
being-with, 98, 107–8, 111, 114, 130, citizens, 37–8, 70, 182, 187–90,
174, 216 192, 196
being-with-animals, 111 citizenship, 187–90
being-with-robots, 130 city, 60, 164, 167, 180, 185–92, 211
see also Mitsein city-countryside-wilderness pattern,
Benton, T., 6, 51–7, 63–4, 122, 125, 180, 185–9
127–30, 133, 148–9, 159, 216 see also moral-geographical patterns
 Index 227

civilization, 8, 65, 140, 186–91 creation

classification, 67, 71, 151, 194, creation vs. creator, 175, 199
198, 205 and making distinctions, 209
code, 21, 68, 80, 93, 134, 142, 152, Master of, 177
160, 171, 177, 195, 200, and moral status, 172, 176, 204
204–6, 218 of moral status, 172
cognition, 8, 93–4, 99, 103, 125, 131, of objects, 202
143–6 social reality, 84
cognitive science, 93–4, 103, understanding creation, 206
145–6 of value, 199
embodied cognition, 8, 94, 103, of words, 82
125, 143–6 of the world by God, 165, 171, 175
enaction, 145 of the world by humans, 159
collective, 8, 37–8, 58–63, 84–6, 112, creational thinking (creationalism),
127, 216 175–7, 199, 200, 210
collectivism, 37, 48, 50, 56, 215 culture, 8, 26, 45–6, 49, 58–68,
colonial thinking, 8, 181 92–149, 154–5, 158–61, 169,
colour, 16, 67, 142, 145, 207 177, 180–8, 195, 199–201,
communitarian, 6, 24, 27–51, 54, 68 209–11, 217
companions cyber a priori, 152
animal, 60, 62, 88, 143 cybergnosis, 175–6
artificial, 20, 78, 88 see also Gnosticism
robot, 78, 80, 88–9 cyberspace, 151–2, 184
competence, see know-how, skill cyber-world, 175
concentration camp, 57 cyborgs, 3, 71
conditions of possibility, 5–8, 26,
44–5, 54, 62, 69, 73, 75–7, dancing, 164–5, 186, 192
82, 84, 88, 92, 94–5, 98, 104, declaration, 7–8, 16, 19, 84–5, 101,
106–8, 111, 115, 118–20, 105, 209
125–31, 135–6, 139–51, 154, deep ecology, 46–52
157, 160, 165, 168, 173, 176, deep-relational, 45, 91, 155, 195
178–81, 189, 192, 196–7, 201, deep v. shallow, 48
208, 211 Descartes, R., 90, 98, 100, 144
biological-technological-material, design, 62, 80–3, 150, 153, 160, 163,
139–65 172, 177, 199–206, 212
historical-spatial, 179–93 design of concepts, 204
linguistic, 75–91 divine designer, 212
religious-spiritual, 166–78 Dewey, J., 29–30, 155, 164, 214, 216
social-cultural, 92–138 digital, 102, 175–6, 184, 192
see also transcendental argument culture, 184
consciousness, 13–15, 22, 24–5, 42, devices, 102
47, 49, 61, 80, 93, 103–5, 108, digital v. non-digital, 176
122, 143, 159 farming, 192
contractarianism, 5–7, 16, 19–24, 27, land, 184
33–8, 43, 77, 82–9, 93, 107–10, moral status, 176
113, 117–18, 194–5, 209, 215 network, 176
cosmopolitanism, 70, 182, 189–90 realm or sphere, 175
see also world citizenship relations, 176
craftsman, 217 spirit, 176
228 Index

Diogenes the Cynic, 6, 70–2, 123, 199 Enlightenment, 61, 63, 166,
disenchantment, 96, 167, 173–5 168, 174
dissection theatre, 25, 71, 179 environment(al), 6, 27–32, 38, 47–57,
distance, 4, 18, 28, 71, 155, 170, 181, 64–9, 82, 89–94, 99, 103, 118,
183–4, 189–92 125, 128, 147, 149, 152, 154,
distancing (forms of), 8, 180–93 160–3, 168, 184, 196–7, 200,
moral distancing, 189 203–6, 208–9, 215–16
DNA, 92, 134, 142, 152, 161, 171 ethics, 28–9, 47–51, 162–3, 215
see also code perception of, 64–9, 184
dogma, 6, 11, 69, 166, 176, 194, 197, philosophy, 27–32, 38, 47, 49,
199, 201, 211 64–9, 135
domestication, 8, 48, 62, 66, 140, 142, politics, 161–2
186–92 virtual, 152
of animals, 48, 52, 62, 66, virtue ethics, 27–32, 38, 162–3
142, 186 epistemological anthropocentrism,
of humans, 186–92 26, 217
Dreyfus, H., 5, 7, 65, 90, 93–5, ethics
99–105, 108, 111–15, 118, of abundance and excess, 162
122–4, 136–7, 140, 144–6, animal ethics, 2–3, 13, 28–9, 53–6,
162–3, 216 143, 166, 185
dualism, 37, 43, 63, 80–1, 85, 88–90, Aristotle on ethics, 31, 43
103–4, 127, 132, 136, 145–6, and biology, 39
149, 156, 161–5, 173, 182, Cafaro on ethics, 28
194–5, 217 Callicott on ethics, 50–1
non-dualism, 103–4, 136, 145–6, of control, 203
149, 161, 173 discourse ethics, 84, 87–8
dwelling, 63–82, 90, 92, 95, 105–6, environmental ethics, 28–9, 47–51,
108, 111, 141, 145, 149–50, 155, 162–3, 215
157, 186, 211–12 environmental virtue ethics, 27–32,
38, 162–3
earth, 8, 29, 38, 47–9, 106, 155, 159, experimental ethics, 29, 164
164, 172, 175, 180–6, 190, 192, feminist ethics, 41
199–200, 208–10 of the good life, 27, 29, 209
earth-alienation (Arendt), 8, 190–1 of growth, 197, 204
Eastern modernity, 173 see also ethics of life and growth
Eastern thinking, 9, 46, 213–14 of immanence and engagement, 29,
ecology, 6, 30, 41, 46–56, 61, 63–4, 66, 155
66, 68, 71, 149, 151, 164, 214 individual ethics, 16
egalitarian, 47, 58, 177 information ethics, 21, 216
biospheric egalitarianism, 47 of information technology, 29
elementary particles, 21, 26, 151, 195 of life and growth, 29, 162,
elementary (meta)physics, 21–6, 197–8, 204
151, 195 see also ethics of growth
emancipation, 16–17 meta-ethics, 72, 210–11, 213
embodied cognition, 8, 94, 103, Mitsein as the ground of, 109
125, 143–6 modern ethics, 28, 197, 203
engagement, 65–6, 69, 93, 98–100, and non-humans, 110
103, 111, 127, 139, 146, 155, non-modern ethics, 198, 201
164, 174, 207, 209 and the notion of human beings, 79
 Index 229

ethics – continued God, 1, 141–2, 166, 167, 169, 171, 174,

postmodern ethics, 200 176, 182–4, 199–206, 209, 212,
of robotics, 83 216, 218
of skill, 65–6, 162–3 as designer, 200
see also skill, philosophy of as doctor, 212
and social philosophy, 83 as father, 171, 175
and social relations, 50, 68 as gardener, 204
types of ethics and their as mapper, 192
imperatives, 205–6 as programmer, 152
evolution, 160–1, 204–6, 209, 217 as writer, 200
moral evolution, 204–6, 210 god-creator (or creator-god), 142, 171,
technological evolution, 161 176, 205, 209
examination table, 18, 179 the breath of, 200, 209
extermination camps, Heidegger in the image of (imago dei), 176
on, 141 images of, 200
extra-terrestrial, 51, 190, 192 the One, 166, 169, 175
the word of, 167, 183, 206
factory farms, 28, 56–62, 132 see also Christianity
see also intensive stock rearing gods, 34, 131, 138, 141–42, 152,
farming, 3, 62, 123, 132, 186, 192 166–78, 191, 198, 204–6, 209
digital farming, 192 god’s eye point of view, 155, 181,
factory farming, 62, 123, 132 191, 208
fate, 155, 211 Golem-robot, 200
Feenberg, A., 156 grammar, 7, 75–7, 82–7, 89,
fences, 179–93 118, 136
flesh, 9, 121, 126, 203, 209 and forms of life, 136
flourishing as skill, 89
human, 27–32, 138, 162, moral grammar, 77, 82–7
197–8, 204 of moral status ascription, 85–6
human and non-human, 138, 162, moral status grammar, 7, 85
197–8, 204 of ontology, 85
non-human, 32, 162, 197–8, 204 growth, 9, 44, 66–7, 69, 89, 93, 115,
food, 3, 8, 52, 57, 11, 141, 151, 187 117–18, 125, 126, 133, 138–9,
information food, 151 147, 149–53, 162–5, 170–2,
see also animals as meat, hunting 183, 197–8, 203–6, 209, 211,
forms of life, 5, 7, 9, 39, 77, 89, 91, 213–14
94, 102, 105, 115—139, 145–7, see also moral growth, moral status
153–62, 165, 170, 177, 180, 192, growth
194–8, 201, 205, 209–13, 217
mixed forms of life, 131 habit, 1–2, 5, 80, 92–3, 102–3, 121,
and Wittgenstein, 115–38 124, 131–4, 166, 181, 184, 210
Foucault, M., 8, 52, 56–7, 148, 212 Heidegger, M., 5, 7, 25, 29, 57, 59,
Friedrich, C.D., 174 64, 68, 75–6, 89, 91, 94–115,
117–18, 123–4, 129, 131, 133–5,
Gestalt, 81, 100 137–8, 141–2, 144, 146, 150,
Gier, N., 116, 122, 124–7, 133–8, 217 154–7, 160, 181, 198, 204, 212,
gift, 101, 141, 176 216–17
Gnosticism, 173, 175–6, 184 being-in-the-world, 66–7, 95–117,
cyber-gnosticism, 176 129, 137, 145–6, 198
230 Index

Heidegger – continued humans, 206

dwelling, 63–82, 90, 92, 95, 105–6, hybridity, 61–2
108, 111, 141, 145, 149–50, 155, hybrids, 3, 58–62, 111
157, 186, 211–12 relations, 58–62
Gelassenheit (letting-go, transcendental ground, 115
releasement), 155, 204, 212 world, 69
Geschick (fate), 155, 211
Gestell (framing), 118, 151 Ihde, D., 20, 44, 81, 100, 153, 216
Mitsein (being-with), 106–13 imagination, 8, 17, 32, 91, 94, 96, 148,
see also being-with 155, 163–4, 187, 206
Mitwelt (with-world), 7, 106–7, 110 implicit knowledge, 119, 135–7
ontic v. ontological, 114 see also tacit knowledge
standing-reserve, 118, 181, 182 inalienable features, 38
and technology, 123, 212 inalienable rights, 19
Umwelt, 135 individualism, 5–6, 16–18, 22–3, 27,
and Wittgenstein, 5, 29, 68, 75, 33–6, 55–6, 71, 106–7, 110–15,
91, 94, 115, 124, 129, 131, 134, 194–5, 215
137–8, 160 individualist-contractarian, 16, 23,
hierarchy of beings, 174 27, 33, 36–7, 55–6, 107, 110,
historical, 5, 8, 16, 19, 35, 37, 54, 59, 194–5
66, 82, 128, 156, 159, 171–2, individualist-existentialist, 112–15
179–93, 200, 208, 213 liberal-individualist, 16, 55–6
holism, 37, 49, 50, 100 non-individualistic, 34–5
Horizontverschmelzung (Gadamer), 130 industrial production, 141, 151, 158
human-animal relations, 47–57, 66, industrial society, 141, 200
123, 140–3, 149 information, 21, 42, 47–8, 80, 100,
human flourishing, 27–32, 138, 162, 103, 151
197–8, 204 age, 184
see also flourishing ecology, 47
human needs, 53–5, 127, 130, 188 ethics, 216
and animal needs, 53–5, 130, food, 151
143, 148 hunting, 151
human rights, 17, 19, 176, 187–90 information(al) object, 22, 142,
humans, 2–6, 15, 19, 22–31, 33–5, 192, 216
39–43, 51–64, 79, 93–4, 102, informational organism, 151
106, 110–11, 114, 123, 142, information(al) science, 47
148–9, 152, 154, 162–3, 174–6, ontology, 22
186–92, 205–6, 216–18 processing, 103, 142, 151
hunter-gatherers, 65–6, 69, 140–2, processor, 142
149, 151–4, 177, 186–7 revolution, 144
hunter-gatherer society, 140–2, 149, society, 142, 177, 200
151–4, 177, 186–7 technology, 3, 29, 42, 134, 151, 184
hunting spirituality, 142, 177 infosphere as biosphere, 151
hunting, 53, 65–6, 69, 140–2, 149, immanence, 93, 155, 172
151, 187 see also immanent spirituality
hybrid Ingold, T., 5, 6, 38, 45, 63–9, 89–95,
being-with, 111 97, 105–6, 135, 140, 149–54,
cultures, 45 159–62, 169–72, 177, 183, 217
environment, 152 on artefacts, 66, 149–50, 154
 Index 231

Ingold – continued transcendental argument, 5,

on being situated in an 94–5, 133
environment, 64–5, 92, 160–1 and Wittgenstein, 95, 136
and Benton, 63–4 know-how, 92–4, 99–101, 118–19,
and Dreyfus, 5, 65, 140, 162 122, 126, 131, 137–8, 145,
on dwelling, 64, 92, 105–6, 150 162–4, 202, 216
on ecological relations, 64–8, see also skill
160, 83 knowledge
and Heidegger, 5, 97, 105–6, a priori knowledge of good, 198
150, 156 conditions of possibility of
on human-animal relations, 66, knowledge of moral status, 179
140, 151, 217 implicit knowledge, 119, 135–7
on hunter-gatherers, 65–6, 68, 140, see also tacit knowledge
149–54 know-how, 92–4, 99–101, 118–19,
on language, 89–90 122, 126, 131, 137–8, 145,
and Latour, 45, 63–4, 68, 154, 201 162–4, 202, 216
and Marx, 63, 66–7, 149 see also skill
on metamorphosis, 67, 172 skill, 5, 33, 63–7, 82, 89–90, 93,
on nature and culture, 65–6, 161 99–104, 112, 118, 120, 122,
on nature and the social, 65–7, 154 127–8, 131, 136–7, 140,
on reality and appearance, 67 149–54, 160–5, 186,
on skill and know-how, 67, 89, 90, 201–5, 216
94, 152, 161–2 tacit knowledge (Polanyi), 119, 135–7
and Szerszynski, 68, 169–71
on technology, 149–54, 217 labour, 52–6, 62, 131–2, 156, 182–8,
on trust, 66 215
and Wittgenstein, 5 ladder, 209
inscription, 67, 87, 90, 93, 100, 126, land, 33, 41, 47, 50, 140, 151,
140, 149, 172–3, 182 180–8, 201
intensive stock rearing, 53–4, 57 digital land, 184
see also factory farms land ethic, 41, 47, 50
interdependence virtual land, 151
ecological, 52, 55 landscape, 49, 174, 181, 183
between humans and animals, language, 7–8, 26, 39–40, 54, 60,
52–3 68–71, 75–94, 114–22, 125–40,
internet, 86, 151 146–50, 155–61, 165, 170,
see also cyberspace 178–9, 196–7, 201–3, 210
see also linguistic
Kant, I., 5, 17, 24, 42, 76, 81, 94–5, language game, 89, 115, 117–18, 121,
133, 136, 179, 207–8, 218 126–32, 138, 146, 158, 165, 179
categories, 94, 136, 179 modern science as, 179
conditions of possibility moral status ascription as language
(Bedingungen der Möglichkeit), 5, game, 126–32
133, 179 nature-talk as language game, 165
critique, 24, 179, 208 language use as a social practice, 122
ends and means, 81 Latour, B., 6, 8, 25–6, 45, 58–65, 68,
and Heidegger, 95 153–4, 168, 171, 201, 216
space and time, 179 see also actor-network theory,
thing-in-itself, 17, 24, 76, 136 hybridity, purification
232 Index

laws, 20, 34, 43, 59, 75, 163, 167, 179, 114, 117–23, 128, 130, 134, 136,
191, 198, 200, 204–6, 218 145, 149, 151, 159, 161, 165,
Law (the), 204–6 174, 180, 187, 195, 213
and logos, 163, 200, 204–6 Merleau-Ponty, M., 8, 94, 99, 103,
Leopold, A., 41, 47, 50, 183 143–6, 216
letting-go, 204, 155, 212, 214 metamorphosis, 9, 67, 162–3, 172,
see also Gelassenheit 194, 197, 204–5
liberation, 2, 29, 61–2, 175, 188–9 moral metamorphosis, 9, 162, 172,
of animals, 2, 29, 61–2, 188 194, 197, 204
of citizens, 188–9, 196 transformation v. metamorphosis,
of spirit, 175 9, 63, 149, 151, 172, 197, 206
life, see forms of life metaphysics, 1, 5, 25, 45, 50, 94,
life-philosophy, 202, 205 103, 201
lifestyle, 177 elementary (meta)physics, 21–6,
lifeworld, 61–2, 67, 77, 80, 92, 151, 195
156, 217 metaphysical order, 2, 15
linguistic, 5, 7–8, 42, 44–5, 59, 75–91, of skill, 201
116–17, 121, 133, 138–9, 146, metaphors, 6, 8–9, 17–20, 25, 44–5,
148, 172, 177, 193, 195, 198–9, 66, 69, 81–2, 88, 90, 145–51,
201, 208, 211–12 154–5, 158–61, 170, 176–7,
linguistic turn, 7, 77, 83, 121 196, 198, 201, 203, 208, 210,
lived experience, 69, 94, 135–8 212, 217
living value, 194–205 Midgley, M., 3, 41, 48–9
Locke, J., 182–3 mimesis, 205–6
logos, 32–3, 60, 64, 87, 90, 138, 157, Mitsein, 95, 97, 99, 106–13, 129–30
157, 161–4, 167, 169, 171–2, see also being-with
183, 188–90, 192, 201–6, 209, Mitwelt, 7, 106–10
215–17 mixed communities (Midgley), 41,
bio-logos, 64, 161, 206 48–9
see also word, the modern, 6, 15–17, 28, 38, 43, 45,
54–68, 90, 95, 109, 118, 127,
machines, 3, 15, 18, 20, 44, 60, 62, 137–8, 143–4, 149, 152, 154,
69, 78, 80–8, 93, 102, 129, 142, 159–60, 165–73, 176–7, 179–82,
152–5, 165, 194–5, 217 185, 190–215
machine as slave, 86 early modern, 59, 166
see also robots Eastern modernity, 173
MacIntyre, A., 31, 37, 39–40, 45 late-modern, 60, 177
magic, 167–8 non-modern, 45, 58–62, 64, 149,
maps, 93–4, 184, 190–5 154, 201–4
ontological map, 195 postmodern, 63, 68, 168, 199–200,
Marx, K., 29, 53, 56, 121–2, 127–9, 204, 213
131, 147–8, 158–9 pre-modern, 59, 65, 67–8, 154, 169
and Wittgenstein, 121–2, 128–31, proto-modern, 201
134, 148, 159 science, 16–17, 64, 165, 179, 185,
Marxism, 6, 8, 46, 51–7, 63, 66, 122, 190–1, 210
127–31, 134, 147–9, 154, technology, 172, 201
158–9, 216 modernism, 109, 149
meaning, 1–3, 7, 25, 31, 45, 65, 68, monotheism, 141, 166–9, 175–7, 190,
76–82, 84–5, 89–93, 96–107, 199, 210, 216
 Index 233

post-monotheistic, 199 and biology, 2, 4, 31, 39, 64, 107,

moral anatomy, 17–18, 71 125–32, 158–61, 185, 206
moral breathing, 9, 208 and consciousness, 13–15, 22, 24–5,
moral change, 8–9, 54, 109, 124, 177, 42, 47, 49, 61, 80, 93, 103–5,
189, 194–214 108, 122, 143, 159
and dancing, 164–5 construction of, 7, 25–6, 61–2,
moral classification, 71, 194, 198, 205 77–92, 106–7, 132, 138, 150
see also moral taxonomy and culture, 8, 26, 45–6, 49, 58–69,
moral distancing, 189 92–161, 169, 177, 180–8, 195,
moral distinctions as living 199–201, 209–11, 217
distinctions, 180 of cyborgs, 3, 71
moral engineering, 195 derived, 176
moral epistemology, 33, 207–9 and ecology, 6, 30, 41, 46–56, 61,
moral expertise, 90, 99–101, 63–4, 66, 68, 71, 149, 151,
103, 122 164, 214
moral-geographical patterns, 8, 180, function, 82–7, 105, 119, 150, 195
185–96 grammar, 7, 85
moral grammar, 77, 82–7 growth, 44, 69, 93, 147, 153, 159,
moral growth, 9, 44, 126, 162–3, 205
197–8, 203–6, 211, 213 and Heidegger, see Heidegger
morality’s womb, 1, 9, 211–13 of humans, 2–6, 15, 19, 22–31,
moral metamorphosis, 9, 162, 172, 33–5, 39–43, 51–64, 79, 93–4,
194, 197, 204 102, 106, 110–11, 114, 123, 142,
moral motivation, 54, 163, 185 148–9, 152, 154, 162–3, 174–6,
see also motivation 186–92, 205–6, 216–18
moral ontology, 5–6, 11–72, 83, indirect argument for, 5–6, 23–4,
192, 208 26–35, 42, 45
see also ontology justification of, 3–5, 13–16, 24, 29,
moral order, 1–4, 51, 75, 105, 109, 32, 35, 166
125–6, 137, 149, 173, 185, 192, and language, 7–8, 26, 39–40, 54,
194–204, 215, 218 60, 68–71, 75–94, 114–22,
mapper and tenant of the, 192 125–40, 146–50, 155–61, 165,
moral painting, 207 170, 178–9, 196–7, 201–3, 210
moral science, 16–20, 60, 64, 71, 95, and meaning, 1–3, 7, 25, 31, 45,
98, 101, 179, 185, 195, 215 65, 68, 76–82, 84–5, 89–93,
moral status 96–107, 114, 117–23, 128, 130,
algorithm, 195 134, 136, 145, 149, 151, 159,
of animals, 1–3, 41–3, 53–5, 78, 161, 165, 174, 180, 187,
85, 88, 114, 123, 130, 143, 195, 213
185–6, 196–7 and modernity, see modernity
see also animals as a modern problem, 61, 109
ascription, 5–8, 74–214; and its and moral change, 8–9, 54, 109,
conditions of possibility, see 124, 189, 194–214
transcendental argument, of nature, see nature
conditions of possibility, and ontology, 5–7, 22, 24, 26, 32,
relations; as giving entities a 36, 44–5, 48, 44, 53, 58–9, 64,
place, 185; as a social practice, 69, 71, 79–80, 83–8, 95–7, 157,
122–4; as stock keeping, 192, 176, 192, 194, 201, 208
210, 218 see also ontology
234 Index

moral status – continued information society, 142,

and phenomenology, 24, 44, 71, 81, 177, 200
94–115, 134, 136, 146; types of and space, 7–8, 91, 179–93, 208,
(1st level, 2nd level), 44; see also 210, 213; cyberspace, 184,
Heidegger, Wittgenstein 151–2; space morality, 189–91
and place, 56, 89, 154, 179–93, and spirituality, 8, 140–2,
211, 213 165–78, 197
the problem of, 1–4 and technology, 139–40, 147–65
and properties, 5–6, 13–55, 61, see also technology
67–71, 75–6, 79, 86–8, 92, 95, and virtue, 5–6, 24, 26–33, 36–42,
97–8, 101–5, 110, 115, 119, 129, 70, 160–5, 197, 215
132, 143–4, 147, 152, 156–8, and Wittgenstein, see Wittgenstein
166, 171, 176, 179, 181–4, 189, moral taxonomy, 194–5
195, 197, 199, 202–10, see also ontological map, moral
215, 218 classification
see also properties motivation, 31–3, 54, 162–3, 185, 215
relational approach to, 4–9, 32, multistability (Ihde), 81
35–214
as relational theory of, 6, 36–69, nationalism, 37–8
124, 132 natural, 2–5, 13, 18–20, 30, 33–4, 40,
and religion, 5, 8, 91, 165–78, 182, 45, 47–70, 92, 101, 125–38, 140,
190, 199, 200, 202, 218 142–3, 148–9, 152–6, 159–76,
see also religion 179, 182–3, 194, 200, 203, 206,
and rights, 3, 13, 16–21, 25, 215–16
27, 34, 41, 49, 52–6, 85–7, natural ecology, 47–8
176, 187–9 naturalism, 52, 130, 133, 139, 159
of robots, 3–4, 8, 13–22, 31, 43–4, non-reductive, 52
60, 62, 71, 78, 80–9, 92–4, 101, scientific-objectivist, 130
103, 111, 113, 126, 130–134, natural relations, see relations
140–7, 152–9, 168, 171, 176, natural resources, 66, 182
185, 196–7, 200, 217 natural science, 18, 48, 51, 97, 179
see also robots natural v. artificial, 3–5, 59, 127, 138,
science, 85 164, 176, 206
and Searle, 7, 82–9, 92, 94, 99, 105, nature, 2, 6, 8, 17, 28, 31–2, 38,
108, 132, 209, 216 47–69, 79, 88, 91–2, 94, 97,
of slaves, 16–17, 33–4, 43, 66, 78, 101, 126–38, 142–3, 148–56,
82, 86, 141, 154, 172, 177, 159–65, 167–77, 179, 182–4,
188, 190 186–8, 191, 194, 197, 205–6,
as a social question, 5, 8, 16–19, 209, 215, 218
24–35, 51–7, 92–138 as collective, 38
and society, 6, 18–19, 26–7, 34–7, human nature, 31, 33–4, 39–40,
49–62, 70–1, 84, 87–8, 92–115, 107, 130, 215
124, 128, 134, 140–2, 148, mirror of, 79, 88
153–4, 158–60, 165, 170–1, nature religion, 174–7, 218
177, 194, 200, 209; agricultural nature-society, 61–2, 160
(-pastoral) society, 69, 141, 177, new natures, 169
188; hunter-gatherer society, re-naturalization, 142
140–2, 149, 151–4, 177, 186–7; as resource, 182
industrial society, 141, 200; return to, 187, 218
 Index 235

nature – continued paganism, 166–70, 174, 176, 188

second nature, 40, 169 neo-paganism, 168, 174, 176
and skill, 160–5 pets, 18, 20, 52–3, 67, 79, 85, 125–6
state of, 18, 34, 182, 209 pets as quasi-others, 20
third nature, 169 relations with, 52
wild nature, 28, 92, 152, 186, phenomena, 16, 21, 24–6, 45, 68, 71,
188, 194 80, 88, 112, 120, 132, 134, 136
needs phenomenology, 24, 44, 71, 81,
animals, 53–5 94–115, 134, 136, 146
human, 53–5, 127, 130, 188 types of (1st level, 2nd level), 44
humans and animals, 53–5, 130, see also moral status and
143, 148 phenomenology, Heidegger,
network, 25–6, 47, 58–64, 142, 151, Wittgenstein, transcendental
155, 162, 172, 176–7, 180, 184, argument
198, 206, 216 philosopher-astronauts, 191
of humans and things, actor- philosopher-dogs, 71
network theory (Latour), 58–63 philosopher-lord, 192
network ontology, 58–9 pigs, 18, 28, 143, 185
spirituality, 176–7 place, 56, 89, 154, 179–93, 211, 213
Nietzsche, F., 1–2, 94, 137, 155, place as grid position, 184
205, 218 Plato, 15–26, 67, 70–1, 80, 100, 103,
Nozick, R., 182 144, 167–8, 199, 217
politics, 5–6, 9, 16, 27, 31, 33–9, 55,
objectification, 44, 94, 96, 59, 61–2, 84, 123, 147–8, 156–7,
102, 132–3 161, 183, 188–90, 214–16
of the body, 44 pragmatic, 76, 100, 102
of entities, 96, 102 pragmatism, 29, 30, 155, 214, 216
of experience, 94 production, 3, 8, 18, 111, 131–2, 141–2,
of humans, 102 147–53, 158, 159, 182, 188
of labour, 132 properties, 5–6, 13–55, 61, 67–71,
of moral status, 102 75–6, 79, 86–8, 92, 95, 97–8,
of relations, 133 101–5, 110, 115, 119, 129, 132,
Olafson, F., 109–15 143–4, 147, 152, 156–8, 166,
ontological map, 195 171, 176, 179, 181–4, 189, 195,
see also moral taxonomy 197, 199, 202–10, 215, 218
ontology, 5–7, 22, 24, 26, 32, 36, approach, 13–15, 40–3, 51, 54, 71,
44–5, 48, 44, 53, 58–9, 64, 95, 197
69, 71, 79–80, 83–8, 95–7, purification, 59–62, 68, 152, 166,
157, 176, 192, 194, 201, 208 169, 213
information ontology, 22
moral ontology, 5–6, 12, 53, 71, quasi-other, 20, 81, 83, 85
192, 208 qua slave v. qua man, 43
network ontology, 58–9
properties ontology, 6, 32 rational dogma, 6, 11, 69, 176, 194,
see also properties 197, 199, 211
relational ontology, 36, 64, relational approach, 4–9, 32, 35–214
69, 176 deep-relational (v. shallow-
social ontology (Searle), 7, 83–8 relational), 45, 48, 91, 155, 195
types of (1-D, 2-D, 3-D, 4-D), 44–5 radically relational, 48, 50
236 Index

relations body, 144–6

environmental, 63–9, 94, 128, 147, as children, 171
160, 197, 208–9 as companions, 78, 80
human-animal, 47–57, 66, 123, construction of, 83
140–3, 149 created in the image of
internal, doctrine of, 215 humans, 176
linguistic, 75–91, 148, 195 humanoid, 13, 44, 101, 158, 168
metaphysics of, 39, 40, 45, 48 intelligent, 3, 13, 25, 44, 93,
natural, 40, 47–57, 64, 176 103, 153
natural and social, 51, 64 as machines, 44, 60, 78, 80–1
social, 7–8, 41, 51–7, 64, 68, as pets, 18
120–4, 147, 152, 210, 217; with as quasi-others, 81
animals, 52–7; see also society relations with, 153
spatial, 44–5, 179–93, 196, 198, 208 robot ontology, 80
spiritual, 44–5, 166–79, 196 robot rights, 3, 13, 17, 86
see also spirituality as slaves, 78, 82
religare, 171 romanticism, 18, 29, 32, 61, 63, 68,
religion, 5, 8, 91, 165–78, 182, 190, 70, 97, 142, 160–5, 174–5,
199, 200, 202, 218 187, 216
Christianity, see Christianity
nature religion, 174–7, 218 science, 2, 15–21, 25–6, 44, 47–51,
see also God, gods 58–71, 80, 85, 93–8, 101, 103,
Rembrandt, 17, 71 134, 137, 145–6, 148, 165–9,
representation, 50, 68, 78, 81–3, 90–4, 179, 185, 190–1, 196, 206
99–104, 118, 121, 145, 164, 184, cognitive science, 93–4, 103, 145–6
192, 200, 205–7, 217–18 ecology as, 47–51
responsibility, 1, 55, 112, 155 and logos, 206
revolution, 109, 144, 205–6 Marxism as, 148
information revolution, 144 modern science, 16, 64, 165, 179,
rhizomes, 151–2, 162, 171 185, 190–1, 210
rights, 3, 13, 16–21, 25, 27, 34, 41, 49, moral science, 95, 98, 101, 179, 185,
52–6, 85–7, 176, 187–9 195, 215
animal, 3, 13, 17, 18, 53–6, 188–9 moral status science, 85, 98, 134
see also animals natural science, 18, 48, 51, 97, 179
citizen, 37, 187–9 philosophy as, 166
habitat, 52 and religious experience, 168–9
human, 17, 19, 176, 187–90 social science, 26, 120
see also human rights Searle, J.R., 7, 82–9, 92, 94, 99, 105,
inalienable, 19 108, 132, 209, 216
meta-right, 19 declaration, 7–8, 84–5, 101,
robot, 3, 13, 17, 86 105, 209
see also robots speech acts, 77, 84
robots, 3–4, 8, 13–22, 31, 43–4, 60, status function, 7, 82–8, 105,
62, 71, 78, 80–9, 92–4, 101, 201, 216
103, 111, 113, 126, 130–4, see also moral status function
140–7, 152–9, 168, 171, 176, secularization, 8, 165–75, 183, 210
185, 196–7, 200, 217 Shakespeare, 17, 143
automaton, 152–3 Singer, P., 2, 13, 28–9, 55, 143,
autonomous, 153 166, 185
 Index 237

skill, 5, 33, 63–7, 82, 89–90, 93, spirituality, 5, 8, 28, 44–5, 140–2,
99–104, 112, 118, 120, 122, 165–78, 193, 196–201, 208,
127–8, 131, 136–7, 140, 149–54, 210–12, 218
160–5, 186, 201–5, 216 immanent spirituality, 172
ethics of, 65–6, 162–3 standing-reserve (Heidegger), 118,
and know-how, see know-how 181–2
and nature, 160–5 stock keeping, 186, 192, 210, 218
philosophy of, 201 moral status ascription as stock
slaves, 16–17, 33–4, 43, 66, 78, keeping, 192, 210, 218
82, 86, 141, 154, 172, 177, Stoicism, 21, 31–2, 162–4, 167, 182,
188, 190 184, 215–16
and animals, 188 Szerszynki, B., 68, 168–71
machine as slave, 86
qua slave v. qua man, 43 tacit knowledge (Polanyi), 119, 135–7
slave as living tool, 43 technology, 2–3, 15, 28, 29, 33, 42,
social ontology (Searle), 7, 83–8 49, 59, 61, 63, 66, 90, 123, 127,
social relations, 7–8, 41, 51–7, 64, 68, 134, 139–40, 147–65, 168, 170,
120–4, 147, 152, 210, 217 172–5, 184, 190, 191, 200, 201,
social, the, 4, 6, 8, 18–20, 23–4, 27, 206, 210, 212
35–6, 45, 49–60, 64, 66–8, 84, artefacts, 2, 4, 63, 66–7, 140,
86–8, 105–15, 121, 127, 137, 149–50, 156–7, 169, 171,
142–3, 148, 152–3, 159, 162, 176, 194
169–70, 196 artificial intelligence, 83, 92–3,
society, 6, 18–19, 26–7, 34–7, 49–62, 100–2, 145–6, 217
70–1, 84, 87–8, 92–115, 124, as autonomous sphere, as
128, 134, 140–2, 148, 153–4, System, 156
158–60, 165, 170–1, 177, 194, biotechnology, 206
200, 209 Heidegger on, see Heidegger
agricultural society, 69, 141, information technology, 3, 29, 134,
177, 188 151, 184
hunter-gatherer society, 140–2, 149, as making v. as growing, 149–51
151–4, 177, 186–7 modern technology, 172, 201
industrial society, 141, 200 and moral status, 139–40, 147–65
information society, 142, 177, 200 as revelation, 147, 151, 154
Socrates, 2, 24, 123 robots, see robots
space, 7–8, 91, 179–97, 208, 210, 213 as skill, 140, 163–4
space and time, 179 see also skill
space morality, 189–91 and spirituality, 168–9
space point of view, 191 techne, 157
see also extra-terrestrial territory, 180–3
speech act (Searle, Habermas), 77, 84, theatre, 5–6, 17–18, 25, 71, 77, 179,
87–8 196, 213
spirits, 5, 89, 151, 167–78, 183, 209, anatomy theatre, 17–18, 25
217–18 dissection theatre, 25, 71, 179
the liberation of, 175 of moral status ascription, 77
natural, 174–5 moral theatre, 18
in and of the network, 176 social theatre, 196
as resource, 172 theoria (insight), 195
the spirit of the creator, 175 desire for theory, 203
238 Index

Thoreau, H.D., 28, 164, 215 virtual objects, 86

the one (das Man), 106, 113–14 virtue, 5–6, 24, 26–33, 36–42, 70,
see also the they 160–5, 197, 215
the One (God), 166, 175, 200 virtue ethics, 5–6, 24, 26–33,
the they (Man), 106, 113–14 36–42, 162–3
see also the one
totemism, 140, 151, 217 walls, 179–93
transcendental argument, 5, 7, 9, walling in, walling out, 191
26, 32, 44–5, 61, 64, 72–5, 83, Warren, M.A., 40–4
94–8, 104, 106–15, 119, 123, web, 55, 142, 152, 174, 190–1
128–40, 145–6, 148, 152, 154, ecological webs of
157, 159–60, 165, 170, 173, 177, interdependence, 55
194–201, 208, 210 of human relationships, 191
transcendental-phenomenological, of relations, 152, 174, 191
9, 45, 72, 123, 208 webcam, 190
see also conditions of possibility webmaster, 142
transcendental ground, 75, 94, 97–8, world wide web, 152, 169, 184, 187
104, 107–15, 137–40, 145–6, wild, 164, 182, 185–9, 194
152, 159, 170 animals, 52, 85, 126, 140–1, 187–9
bodily dimension of, 145 see also animals
forms of life as, 145 artefacts, 194
of moral status ascription, body, 149
137–9, 170 nature, 28, 52, 152, 194
relational transcendental re-wilding, 142
ground, 110 wilderness, 92, 140–3, 151, 163,
religious dimension of, 170 180, 186, 188
the social as, 152 Winch, P., 120–4, 127
social-transcendental ground, 107, Winner, L., 157–60
110, 115, 137–8, 152 Wittgenstein, L., 5, 7, 29, 68, 75, 77–81,
technological dimension of, 137, 159 89, 91, 94–5, 105, 114–39, 148,
158–60, 165, 202, 217
Übersicht (overview), 138 form of life (Lebensform), see forms
of life
value, 1–5, 15, 22–3, 26, 30, 46–7, and Heidegger, 5, 29, 68, 75, 91,
50–1, 61–2, 76, 78, 84, 87, 96, 94, 115, 124, 129, 131, 134,
100, 102, 105, 132, 163, 172–4, 137–8, 160
187, 194–208, 215, 218 and Kant, 95, 136–7
facts vs. values, 61 language game, 117–18, 121
intrinsic value, 22, 25, 32, 51, 132, life-world (Lebenswelt), 135
197, 208 and Marx, 121–2, 128–31, 135,
lived value, 172 148, 159
living value, 194–205 as a phenomenologist, 134–6
spiritual value, 168 as a philosopher of life
value-neutral, 96 (Lebensphilosoph), 135–6
Varela, F., 94, 103, 145–6, 217 private language argument, 114,
view from nowhere (Nagel), 25, 117, 120 (aanvullen)
123, 130 and skill, 118–21, 137
see also space point of view, earth- Umgebung (surroundings), 89
alienation Umwelt (environment), 135
 Index 239

womb, 1, 9, 138, 152, 196, 211, 213 words, 5, 76–83, 118, 185, 196, 200,
form of life as a living womb, 213 208, 214
of morality, 9, 211–13 world citizenship, 70, 182, 189–90
of moral tradition, 1 world making, 159
of our thinking, 152, 196 world wide web, 152, 169, 184, 187
of the social-relational world, 138 as third nature, 169
word, the, 200–1, 208–9 see also internet, cyberspace
Word, the, 167, 171–2, 183, 199, 201,
206, 209 yoga, 9, 90, 208