Consciência e emoção na filosofia moral de Hume: reflexões sobre uma ética animal

Abstract

Is it possible to own a life? This anguish, the driving force behind this reflection, emerged from the realization of the domination exercised daily by human beings over non-human animals, through the suffering imposed on the later by the former, being used as means to (unnecessary and superfluous) human ends. When faced with this observation, we identified that seminal thinkers in the field of animal ethics, such as Peter Singer and Tom Regan, did not address the aspect of (animal) ownership, but Gary Francione did. From the discussion based on the three authors, a hypothesis emerged that speciesism is an ideology, which means violent and domineering. Therefore, after suggesting the possibility that human beings are not capable of understanding the animal world, we came to the question of whether it would be possible to think of ethics beyond human reason. We tackled this question based on David Hume's moral philosophy, from which we reflected on the capacity of animals for ethical behavior, coming to the conclusion that their inclusion in the moral community is urgent.