The rights of flora and fauna
Hello Rabbi,
I remember that you said in the past that animals have no rights, but that humans have a duty to refrain from harming them unnecessarily. The question of whether animals have rights or not is not important to the degree of coercion that should be exercised to protect animals. After all, when there is a violation of a right, it is appropriate to coerce against the violation, whereas when there is a violation only of a duty, it is generally inappropriate to exercise coercion (for example, there is a duty to give charity and it is not appropriate to coerce the giving of charity, at least in the moral aspect). It is seemingly intuitively clear to any reasonable person that it is appropriate to exercise coercion against casual abuse of a helpless animal, and this intuition shows that something in the basic assumptions was not correct. Therefore, it might be correct to define that animals have a tenuous right to protection from abuse without sufficient justification. Similarly, someone who burns down an entire forest just seems to be worth enforcing against this act because of the plant’s tenuous right to live, and perhaps we can also talk about the inanimate object’s right to exist (for example, if someone could make Jupiter disappear with the push of a button, it seems to me that it is worth preventing it by force).
Do you think there is room to talk about such tenuous rights for living and nonliving things?
I have great doubts about whether it is possible to talk about the rights of animate or inanimate objects, and I also do not think there is a need for it. There is an obligation to prevent people from abusing animals because they suffer (not inanimate or vegetative objects because they apparently do not suffer). You are right that the goal of intervention is not only to save the abuser from a crime (as in coercion of a commandment) but to prevent the result (in this sense it is like coercion of money). But that is because here we are dealing with a crime of consequence and not a crime of action, regardless of rights.
Regarding plants or inanimate objects, it is only a question of enforcing the commandments (of the Shoref, “Do not destroy”) or preventing harm to other people (ecology).
Regarding the star Tzedek, this is an interesting question. I tend to think that there is no reason to prevent it from doing so unless someone would be harmed by it (including people who in the future want to settle there). It does remind me of the words of the Ramban that are usually brought up in discussions about cloning and other genetic manipulations. The Ramban on the prohibition of hybrids explains the prohibition by saying that there is interference with creation. I doubt whether the explanation is correct, and even if it is – there is a reason for the reading here and it is doubtful whether it can be extended to other interventions in creation. But if these commentators on the Ramban are right, then perhaps the destruction of Tzedek is also interference with creation and its change.
Although many things we do are interventions in health (including surgery and taking medications. And it is tempting to say that this is only permitted because the doctor was given permission to heal). And it is tempting to distinguish between different levels of intervention. But all of this is very dubious in my opinion.
Why is there a duty to prevent people from the offense of abuse and not from any other offense? Either it is enforced against all offenses, or it is not enforced against offenses at all. (By the word offense here I mean a violation of duty and not a right.)
Regarding interference in creation, I think that we need to distinguish between constructive interference and destructive interference (the two-crack experiment 🙂 ). There are things that God gave us knowledge of so that we could complete creation, such as what is written in Tractate Pesachim 45:1:
Two things came to the mind of the Creator on the eve of Shabbat and were not created until the evening of Shabbat, and on the evening of Shabbat the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the first Adam knowledge of a kind of example of excellence, and he brought two stones and ground them together and light came out of them. And he brought two animals and put them together and a mule came out of them.
It can be seen with regard to the creation of fire and the mule that this was done by the will of God (unlike the Ramban with regard to the jinn), and this is probably because these are things that perfect creation and complete it (constructive intervention). But if it were to be shown that it was possible to create something that only harms creation or simply an act that corrupts creation (destructive intervention), it seems to me that this would be wrong (and unlike a simple offense such as eating leaven on Passover, an offense of Bel Tashachit involves harming something outside the offender, i.e. a kind of harm to the right of something else, and in situations such as these it is more appropriate to impose a penalty). This is perhaps also the reason why there are laws that force people not to hunt endangered animals, or to pick rare flowers (and to protect plants). It does not seem to me that the intention is only for the benefit of man, but also to protect the "rights" of animals/plants.
This is what I explained, that prevention is not from the offense but from the result. Incidentally, there is an obligation to prevent people from any offense and even to nullify a deed, perhaps even by beating them to death. See Kitzvah, Natiyam, and Shovev Netivot Khutsam 3:3 at length. But all of these speak of saving a person from offense and ensuring the creation of a mitzvah. As I wrote, in animal abuse there is prevention of the result. Therefore, in my opinion, we do not need to reach a discourse of rights to understand this.
Destructive intervention is prohibited because of the “do not destroy.” Although in simple terms this is said only about what serves a person (a food tree), there are sources from which it goes beyond that. See a little in my article on Tu B’Shvat.
By the way, a poem for the protection of plants was written about women who are sexually harassed: "Only no one is watching over me. If I had calyx leaves, then my situation would be different."
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