Q&A: Rights of Animals, Plants, and Inanimate Objects
Rights of Animals, Plants, and Inanimate Objects
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I seem to remember that in the past you said that animals do not have rights, but rather that human beings have a duty to avoid harming them unnecessarily. The question whether animals have rights or not is important for determining the degree of coercion that should be used to protect them. After all, when a right is violated, it is appropriate to use coercion against the violation, whereas when only a duty is violated, it is generally not appropriate to use coercion (for example, there is a duty to give charity, but it is not appropriate to coerce charity-giving, at least on the moral plane). Intuitively, it seems obvious to any reasonable person that it is proper to use coercion against pointless abuse of a helpless animal, and that intuition suggests that something in the basic assumptions was not correct. Therefore, perhaps it would be right to define animals as having a slight right to protection from abuse without sufficient justification. Similarly, someone who burns down an entire forest for no reason also seems like someone it would be proper to stop by force because of a slight right of plant life to live, and perhaps one could even speak of a right of inanimate things to exist as well (for example, if someone could make the planet Jupiter disappear with the push of a button, it seems to me that it would be proper to prevent that by force).
In your opinion, is there room to speak of such slight rights of animals, plants, and inanimate things?
Answer
I very much doubt that one can speak of rights belonging to animals or inanimate things, and I also don’t think there is any need for that. There is a duty to stop people from abusing animals because they suffer (not in the case of inanimate things or plants, since they presumably do not suffer). You are right that the purpose of intervention here is not only to save the abuser from committing a transgression (as with coercion regarding commandments), but to prevent the result. In that sense, it is like coercion over monetary matters. But that is because here we are dealing with a result-based transgression and not an action-based transgression, unrelated to rights.
Regarding plants or inanimate things, that is only a question of coercion regarding commandments (of the one doing the burning, under the prohibition of “do not destroy wantonly”) or preventing harm to other people (ecology).
As for the planet Jupiter, that is an interesting question. I am inclined to think there is no reason to prevent him from doing so unless someone would be harmed by it (including people who in the future might want to settle there). However, this reminds me of the words of Nachmanides, which people often cite in discussions of cloning and other genetic manipulations. Nachmanides, on the prohibition of mixed species, explains the prohibition by saying that it involves interference in creation. I doubt that this explanation is correct, and even if it is, this is a scriptural rationale, and it is doubtful whether it can be extended to other kinds of interference in creation. But if those commentators are right in their reading of Nachmanides, then perhaps destroying Jupiter would also count as interfering with and altering creation.
Still, many things we do are interference in creation, including surgery and taking medications. And it is strained to say that this is permitted only because permission was given to the physician to heal. One could, with some difficulty, distinguish between different levels of intervention. But all of this seems very dubious to me.
Discussion on Answer
That is what I explained: the prevention is not from the transgression but from the result. By the way, there is a duty to stop people from every transgression, and even from neglecting a positive commandment, perhaps even by beating them to the point of death. See Ketzot HaChoshen, Netivot HaMishpat, and Meshovev Netivot on Choshen Mishpat, section 3, at length. But all of those are discussing saving a person from transgression and ensuring the fulfillment of a commandment. As I wrote, in abusing animals there is prevention of the result. So in my opinion there is no need to resort to the language of rights in order to understand this.
Destructive intervention was prohibited because of “do not destroy wantonly.” Although in the plain sense this was said only about something that serves human beings (a fruit tree), there are sources that imply more than that. See a bit in my article on Tu Bishvat.
By the way, “the laws for the protection of plant life” was written about women who are sexually harassed: “Only over me does no one keep watch; if I had cup-shaped leaves, my situation would be different.”
Why is there a duty to stop people specifically from the transgression of abuse and not from every other transgression? Either we should coerce against all transgressions, or we should not use coercion at all against transgressions. (By the word “transgression” here I mean a violation of a duty and not of a right.)
Regarding interference in creation, I think we need to distinguish between constructive intervention and destructive intervention (the two-slit experiment 🙂 ). There are things for which the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us intelligence so that we would complete creation, along the lines of what is written in tractate Pesachim 54a:
Two things arose in thought to be created on the eve of the Sabbath, but were not created until after the Sabbath. And on the Saturday night, the Holy One, blessed be He, gave Adam understanding resembling the pattern above, and he brought two stones and rubbed them against one another, and fire came out from them. And he brought two animals and crossbred them with one another, and a mule came out from them.
One can see with regard to the creation of fire and the mule that this was done in accordance with the will of the Holy One, blessed be He (unlike Nachmanides regarding mixed species), and that is apparently because these are things that improve and complete creation (constructive intervention). But if one could imagine creating something that only harms creation, or simply an act that involves destroying creation (destructive intervention), it seems to me that this would be invalid. And unlike an ordinary transgression such as eating leavened food on Passover, the transgression of “do not destroy wantonly” involves harm to something outside the offender, meaning something like an infringement of something else’s right, and in situations like these it is more fitting to use coercion. That may also be the reason there are laws that compel people not to hunt endangered animals or pick rare flowers (and laws for the protection of plant life). It does not seem to me that the point is only human benefit, but also the protection of the “rights” of animals and plants.