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It’s a common thing nowadays to be cynical about human beings — and when we look around, at politics, environmental destruction and social media, it seems indeed that human beings are not much more than technologically enhanced, vicious animals: monkeys with atomic bombs.
For Kant, human beings are special because they have autonomy, which means that they are able to freely decide how they want to act, even being able to act against their own interests or against their natural instincts. This autonomy is the basis for human dignity and human rights, in Kant’s view.
The theory of Darwinian evolution has been contributing to the view that we are just slightly more developed apes. Don’t worry, I’m a biologist myself, so I’m not going to question evolution. But the correctness of a theory is a distinct thing from its effects on the popular imagination. Older societies in Europe deeply believed that God had created humans in his image, and thus saw human beings as something special, a link between the animal kingdom and the sphere of the divine. In contrast, we today believe that we are just another animal — not different in principle from a dolphin, a dog, or even a worm.
The truth is that we share over 98% of our genes with chimpanzees, about 90% with cats and 85% with mice, but this biological fact does not do us justice.
Are we just another animal?
For example, if we go down this route, we lose an important justification for human dignity. And the special dignity of humans is sometimes used to explain human rights. We are special, we have an infinite value, each one of us, the argument goes. This is true of all humans, whether they are rich or poor, black or white, big or small. And this special value is why we should all have those special rights of freedom, of free speech, of being allowed to make our own decisions about our lives, why we should not suffer degrading treatment or torture.
You can see how the biological argument threatens this whole view. If I am essentially the same as a chimp, and 90% the same as a cat, then why should I have rights that chimpanzees and cats don’t have? There are two ways out of that problem: either I give up my human rights and consent to be treated like any other animal, or I give animals all the rights that humans used to have. The problem is that, in both cases, the human rights get …
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