Lynn Hunt said "empathy depends on the recognition that others think and feel as we do, that our inner emotions are alike in some fundamental fashion." Some fundamental fashion? "[Empathy] is the ability," Hunt writes, "to understand the subjectivity of other people and to be able to imagine that their inner experiences are like one's own."
To identify the existence of the emotional lives of others, to acknowledge these others' ability to feel and experience, and to empathize with how their subjective inner self is affected by what they are experiencing is the very foundation, in my opinion, of veganism.
This ability to identify across social, racial, gender, and species lines is acquired in many ways. Reading, experiencing, thinking, etc. are each means to this end. However, underlying this all is one's willingness to listen to an infant calf's distressed whine after being forcefully torn from his "dairy-cow" mother (cow milk is for human beings not baby cows?), tethered and immobilized in a stall for veal-calfs, for example. You have to listen, first. Listen to the vegan who say's "please, just watch this video."
Adam Smith argued that reason, conscience, and principle are "the great judge and arbiter of our conduct" - our defense against self-interest, and immorality. This is an accurate insight, however, we have to be willing to listen to the subjectively experiencing others that populate this planet with us. If not, what are we but a species of de-evolved hedonists, hardly in a position to judge those human animals who use rape as a weapon of war, for example. We hear about it happening, but just don't look and abracadabra we can go meet our friends at the bar with a clean conscience.
Leave a comment