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THE PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
ANIMAL ETHICS SERIES

Human/Animal
Relationships
in Transformation
Scientific, Moral and
Legal Perspectives
Edited by
Augusto Vitale · Simone Pollo
The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series

Series Editors
Andrew Linzey
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics
Oxford, UK

Clair Linzey
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics
Oxford, UK
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ethics of our
treatment of animals. Philosophers have led the way, and now a range of
other scholars have followed from historians to social scientists. From
being a marginal issue, animals have become an emerging issue in ethics
and in multidisciplinary inquiry. This series will explore the challenges
that Animal Ethics poses, both conceptually and practically, to traditional
understandings of human-animal relations. Specifically, the Series will:

• provide a range of key introductory and advanced texts that map out
ethical positions on animals;
• publish pioneering work written by new, as well as accom-
plished, scholars;
• produce texts from a variety of disciplines that are multidisciplinary in
character or have multidisciplinary relevance.

For further information or to submit a proposal for consideration, please

contact Amy Invernizzi, amy.invernizzi@palgrave-usa.com.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14421
Augusto Vitale • Simone Pollo
Editors

Human/Animal
Relationships in
Transformation
Scientific, Moral and Legal
Perspectives
Editors
Augusto Vitale Simone Pollo
Center for Behavioural Sciences and Department of Philosophy
Mental Health Sapienza Università di Roma
Istituto Superiore di Sanità Rome, Italy
Rome, Italy

ISSN 2634-6672     ISSN 2634-6680 (electronic)

The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series
ISBN 978-3-030-85276-4    ISBN 978-3-030-85277-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85277-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Preface

Ethics of Human/Animal Relationships is a growing field of academic

research and a topic for public discussion and regulatory interventions
from law-makers, government and private institutions (such as scientific
societies and farming industries). In our societies human/animal
­relationships are in transformation and understanding the nature of this
process is crucial for all those who believe that the enlargement of moral
and legal recognition to non-human animals is part of contemporary
civilization and moral/political progress. Understanding the nature of
this process means analysing and critically discussing the philosophical/
scientific/legal concepts and arguments embedded in it. This book aims
at contributing to such analysis by means of collecting ideas and reflec-
tions from leading experts in the fields from different disciplinary
approaches and theoretical/scientific perspectives. Scopes of this book are
both depicting the state of the art of the transformation of Human/
Animal Relationships and presenting ideas to foster this process. In pur-
suing those aims the approach of this book is plural in a double meaning.
First, contributors are plural in their backgrounds and expertise in order
to provide a rich interpretation of the questions at stake. Second, plural-
ity regards the subject matter of the various analyses: Human/Animal
Relationships (and transformations affecting them) are not a monolith.

v
vi Preface

Animal species are many and different and human interactions with them
are equally many and different. The various contributions to the book
move from the awareness of the great variety of human/animal relation-
ships in order to foster the theoretical debate and the public discussion
about the scientific and ethical reasons underlying the changes in our
approaches to animals, a fact that nowadays irreversibly characterizes our
societies.

Rome, Italy Augusto Vitale

 Simone Pollo
 Series Editors’ Preface

This is a new book series for a new field of inquiry: Animal Ethics.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ethics of our
treatment of animals. Philosophers have led the way, and now a range of
other scholars have followed, from historians to social scientists. From
being a marginal issue, animals have become an emerging issue in ethics
and in multidisciplinary inquiry.
In addition, a rethink of the status of animals has been fuelled by a
range of scientific investigations which have revealed the complexity of
animal sentiency, cognition and awareness. The ethical implications of
this new knowledge have yet to be properly evaluated, but it is becoming
clear that the old view that animals are mere things, tools, machines or
commodities cannot be sustained ethically.
But it is not only philosophy and science that are putting animals on
the agenda. Increasingly, in Europe and the United States, animals are
becoming a political issue as political parties vie for the “green” and “ani-
mal” vote. In turn, political scientists are beginning to look again at the
history of political thought in relation to animals, and historians are
beginning to revisit the political history of animal protection.
As animals grow as an issue of importance, so there have been more
collaborative academic ventures leading to conference volumes, special
journal issues, indeed new academic animal journals as well. Moreover,

vii
viii Series Editors’ Preface

we have witnessed the growth of academic courses, as well as university

posts, in Animal Ethics, Animal Welfare, Animal Rights, Animal Law,
Animals and Philosophy, Human-Animal Studies, Critical Animal
Studies, Animals and Society, Animals in Literature, Animals and
Religion—tangible signs that a new academic discipline is emerging.
“Animal Ethics” is the new term for the academic exploration of the
moral status of the non-human, an exploration that explicitly involves a
focus on what we owe animals morally, and which also helps us to under-
stand the influences—social, legal, cultural, religious and political—that
legitimate animal abuse. This series explores the challenges that Animal
Ethics poses, both conceptually and practically, to traditional under-
standings of human-animal relations.
The series is needed for three reasons: (1) to provide the texts that will
service the new university courses on animals, (2) to support the increas-
ing number of students studying and academics researching in animal
related fields and (3) because there is currently no book series that is a
focus for multidisciplinary research in the field.
Specifically, the series will

• provide a range of key introductory and advanced texts that map out
ethical positions on animals,
• publish pioneering work written by new, as well as accomplished,
scholars, and
• produce texts from a variety of disciplines that are multidisciplinary in
character or have multidisciplinary relevance.

The new Palgrave Macmillan Series on Animal Ethics is the result of a

unique partnership between Palgrave Macmillan and the Ferrater Mora
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. The series is an integral part of the mis-
sion of the Centre to put animals on the intellectual agenda by facilitat-
ing academic research and publication. The series is also a natural
complement to one of the Centre’s other major projects, the Journal of
Animal Ethics. The Centre is an independent “think tank” for the advance-
ment of progressive thought about animals, and is the first Centre of its
 Series Editors’ Preface ix

kind in the world. It aims to demonstrate rigorous intellectual enquiry

and the highest standards of scholarship. It strives to be a world-class
centre of academic excellence in its field.
We invite academics to visit the Centre’s website www.oxfordani-
malethics.com and to contact us with new book proposals for the series.

Oxford, UK Andrew Linzey

 Clair Linzey
 Acknowledgements

This book originates from a workshop held at the Lorentz Center, at the
University of Leiden, in September 2017. During that event, we gathered
together with colleagues from different areas of research and different
contexts to discuss animal welfare and human/animal relationships.
Those five days of stimulating discussions made possible the project of
this book and among the contributors of this book many participated in
the workshop. We would really like to thank the staff of the Lorentz
Center for their kindness, mixed with a level of impeccable professional-
ism. Without the relaxed and inspiring environment provided by the
Lorentz Center, this book would have never been even thought of.

xi
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
Simone Pollo and Augusto Vitale

Part I Philosophy and Ethics of Human Animal/

Relationships   7

2 Darwinian Biology and the New Understanding

of Animals  9
Simone Pollo

3 Animal Detection and Its Role in Our Attitude towards

Other Species 31
Giorgio Vallortigara

4 The Moral Value of Animal Sentience and Agency 47

Federico Zuolo

5 Affective Animal Ethics: Reflective Empathy, Attention

and Knowledge Sub Specie Aeternitatis 67
Elisa Aaltola

xiii
xiv Contents

Part II Transformations in General Scenarios  91

6 Perceiving Animals Through Different Demographic and

Cultural Lenses 93
Pim Martens and Bingtao Su

7 Animal Welfare in Context: Historical, Scientific, Ethical,

Moral and One Welfare Perspectives119
E. Anne McBride and Stephen Baugh

8 The Two Sides of the Human-Animal Bond: Reflections

on Using and Abusing Animals149
Jan L. M. Vaarten and Nancy De Briyne

9 A Proposal for a Multi-Dimensional Profile of

the Animal Researcher171
Augusto Vitale

10 The Two Sides of the Non-Human-­Animal Bond:

Reflections on Using and Abusing Companion Animals193
Michał Piotr Pręgowski, Karin Hediger, and Marie-José
Enders-Slegers

Part III Transformations in Cases and Contexts 219

11 Farms, Landscapes, Food and Relationships221

Pasqualino Santori and Clemens Driessen

12 Biotechnologies and Animals: The Impact of Genetic

Engineering on Human-Animal Relationships241
Susanna Pietropaolo

13 Coexisting with Wild Nonhuman Primates in a Brazilian

Semiarid Habitat273
Noemi Spagnoletti
 Contents xv

14 Companionship and Wellbeing: Benefits and Challenges

of Human-Pet Relationships289
Marta Borgi and Francesca Cirulli

15 Human-Wildlife Coexistence in the Urban Domain:

Promoting Welfare Through Effective Management,
Responsibility and the Recognition of Mutual Interest317
Oliver Adrian Wookey

Part IV Recognising Transformations 339

16 Political Representation of Animals’ Voices341

Robert Garner

17 Animal Law: What Is Left to be Said by the Law About

Animals363
Marita Giménez-Candela
 Notes on Contributors

Elisa Aaltola is a philosopher, specialized in animal and environmental

ethics, moral psychology. She works at the University of Turku and is
researching the influence of emotions on our treatment of non-­human
animals and nature. Aaltola has written numerous articles, together with
a number of Finnish monographs and edited volumes. In English, she
has also written the books “Varieties of Empathy: Moral Psychology and
Animal Ethics” (2018) and “Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture”
(2012), and edited the volume “Animal Ethics and Philosophy:
Questioning the Orthodoxy” (2014) with John Hadley. Her English blog
can be found at www.philosophyhounds.com.
Stephen Baugh, BSc (Hons) BVM&S MRCVS SFHEA, is an experi-
enced companion animal veterinary surgeon and an academic. Baugh is
Principal Lecturer in Animal Health and Welfare at Harper Adams
University and Programme Manager for a suite of animal courses. Baugh
has taught animal health, welfare and animal ethics to undergraduate and
postgraduate students studying Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary
Bioscience, Clinical Animal Behaviour, Veterinary Nursing, Veterinary
Pharmacy, Veterinary Physiotherapy, Applied Zoology and Agriculture.
Baugh has published in peer-reviewed journals and veterinary profes-
sional journals and has contributed chapters to academic books in the
areas of animal health, welfare and animal ethics.

xvii
xviii Notes on Contributors

Marta Borgi is a researcher at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome,

Italy. She received her PhD in Animal Behaviour from the University of
Florence, studying children’s attitudes towards animals and human
response to infantile features in pets. Her research focuses on the effect of
human-animal interactions on human health and well-being, particularly
in the context of animal-assisted therapeutic programmes. She is also
conducting research for the development of reliable methods for evaluat-
ing animal welfare during animal-assisted interventions.
Francesca Cirulli is a senior researcher in the Center for Behavioural
Sciences and Mental Health at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome,
Italy. She holds a PhD in Neurobiology from Stanford University (USA).
She investigates the interaction between stress and energy metabolism in
susceptibility to mental disorders. She also works on human-animal
interactions and the role of animals in psychiatric rehabilitation. She is
the past President of the European Brain and Behaviour Society (EBBS)
and Treasurer of the Federation of Neuroscience Societies (FENS).
Nancy De Briyne studied veterinary medicine in Ghent (Belgium).
After working as a veterinary practitioner in Belgium and the UK, she
joined in 2000 the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE). In 2015,
she became diplomate of the European College of Animal Welfare and
Behavioural Medicine, subspecialty Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and
Law. Within FVE she works on animal welfare, veterinary medicines,
education and communication. Presently, she is Executive Director of the
FVE. She published in 2009 an overview of animal welfare teaching in
veterinary undergraduate education. She is the author of several publica-
tions on animal welfare issues.
Clemens Driessen is a more-than-human geographer working as an
assistant professor in the Cultural Geography group at Wageningen
University, the Netherlands. He is interested in the messy relations
between plants, animals, technologies and humans. Through collabora-
tions with scientists, farmers, artists, designers—and seeking to enlist
­voluntary non-human involvement—he develops ambivalent interven-
tions in a variety of practices in agriculture and nature conservation. He
has initiated an effort to design video games for intensively farmed pigs
 Notes on Contributors xix

to play with humans, contributed to a documentary on back-bred dedo-

mesticated cattle, and was a collaborator on the Countryside exhibition
at the NY Guggenheim Museum.
Marie-José Enders-Slegers is a clinical and health psychologist. Her
field of interest is the human-animal bond and animal-assisted interven-
tions in health care and education. Her research includes the develop-
ment of the human-animal bond, the meaning and effects of
human-animal interactions and animal-assisted interventions for vulner-
able people. She is interested in the link between domestic violence and
animal abuse. She works as Professor in Anthrozoology, Faculty of
Psychology, Open University Heerlen, the Netherlands, is President of
IAHAIO, International Association of Human Animal Interaction
Organizations, is ISAZ fellow, fellow of the Denver University. She is the
author of many articles and book chapters.
Robert Garner (FRSA) is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of
Leicester. He has published widely on the politics and philosophy of animal
rights. His books include The Oxford Group and the Emergence of Animal
Rights (with Yewande Okuleye) (2021), A Theory of Justice for Animals (2013)
and the Animal Rights Debate (with Gary Francione) (2010).
Marita Giménez-Candela is Professor of Law at the Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). She is a Humboldt Scholar and a visit-
ing professor at many universities across the world. She has published an
important number of articles, papers and books about animal law, com-
parative law and Roman law. She is the founder and chief editor of the
www.derechoanimal.info website. In 2009 she established, and has since
managed both the onsite and online Master in Animal Law and Society
which is a pioneer initiative in Europe. She is the Director of ICALP
(International Center for Animal Law and Policy). She manages two col-
lections of books on “Animals and the Law”. She is as well the Founder
and Editor-in-Chief of the, indexed by SCOPUS, Journal of Animal
Law: dA. Derecho Animal (Forum of Animal Law Studies, https://revistes.
uab.cat/da/index).
Karin Hediger is a psychotherapist and researcher at the University of
Basel, Switzerland. She investigates the effects of animal-assisted inter-
xx Notes on Contributors

ventions and human-animal interactions. She is endowed chair of

Anthrozoology at the Open University in the Netherlands. She com-
pleted her PhD in Rostock, Germany, in human-animal interaction and
holds certification in animal-assisted therapy, a diploma in equine-assisted
therapy and founded a centre for animal-assisted psychotherapy. She is
the President of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Human-
Animal Relationship (IEMT), Secretary of the International Society for
Animal Assisted Therapy (ISAAT), Board Member of the International
Association of Human Animal Interaction Organizations (IAHIAO).
Pim Martens has a PhD in Applied Mathematics and Biological Sciences
and is Professor of “Sustainable Development” at Maastricht University
(the Netherlands); he is a member of the Dutch Royal Academy of
Science’s Planetary Health Committee. He has published over 120 jour-
nal papers and has written and edited 12 books. Martens is founder of
AnimalWise, a “think and do tank” integrating scientific knowledge and
animal advocacy to bring about sustainable change in our relationship
with animals.
E. Anne McBride has a degree in Psychology and a PhD in Animal
Behaviour, both from University College London and Certificate in
Conservation from Birkbeck, London. A Senior Lecturer in the School of
Psychology at the University of Southampton, UK, she lectures on ani-
mal behaviour, welfare and human-animal interactions nationally and
internationally and has published extensively on the same in journals,
book chapters and books. She has been awarded Honorary Membership
of the UK veterinary and veterinary nursing professions and, in 2021,
was made Fellow of the International Society for Anthrozoology.
Susanna Pietropaolo has started her career studying behavioural neuro-
biology at the Italian National Institute of health (ISS), in Rome. She has
then obtained her PhD at the ETH of Zurich after 5 years of extensive
training in the behavioural validation of mouse models of neuropsychiat-
ric disorders. She worked afterwards as a post-doctoral fellow at the
Institute of Cognitive and Integrative Neuroscience (INCIA) at the
University of Bordeaux where she became assistant professor in 2012.
Since then, she has carried out research on genetic mouse models of
 Notes on Contributors xxi

developmental disorders, with a special emphasis on Fragile X syndrome

and autism spectrum disorders.
Simone Pollo is Associate Professor of Moral Philosophy in the
Department of Philosophy at Sapienza Università di Roma. His research
interests are animal ethics, the biological foundations of morality and
topics in philosophy of biology such as the epistemology of evolutionary
theory, animal cognition and philosophical aspects of ethology. He is the
author also of two monographs (in Italian) on animal ethics: Umani e
animali. Questioni di etica (2016) and Manifesto per un animalismo demo-
cratico (2021).
Michał Piotr Pręgowski is a sociologist and assistant professor at the
Warsaw University of Technology, Poland. His research interests include
social construction of companion animals in the contemporary West,
social contexts of animal abuse, as well as cultural practices of commemo-
rating deceased animals. He has published four books, including edited
monographs Free Market Dogs: The Human-Canine Bond in Post-­
Communist Poland (2016) and Companion Animals in Everyday Life.
Situating Human-Animal Engagement within Cultures (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016).
Pasqualino Santori is veterinarian, farmer and expert in bioethics. He
is President of the “Veterinary Bioethics Committee” (CBV now CBV-A)
since 1997 and President of the Institute of Bioethics for Veterinary and
Agro-Food (IBV-A) since 2018. He is Vice-president of the ethics com-
mittee for animal testing (OpBA) of Tor Vergata University in Rome
since 2008. He has been member of the Italian National Bioethics
Committee from 2002 to 2006 and member of the Scientific Committee
of the Bioparco (Zoo) of Rome from 2004 to 2013. He is the Director of
the series “Documents of Veterinary Bioethics Committee” (Turin, Italy).
Noemi Spagnoletti is a PhD in Animal Biology. Her studies focused on
ecology and evolution of non-human primates’ behaviour, primates’ cul-
ture and human-wildlife interactions. She was Young Talented Researcher
and post-doc at Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of
Psychology, University of São Paulo (IP-USP) in Brazil and research asso-
ciate at the CNR Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC)
xxii Notes on Contributors

in Rome, Italy. She co-edited the special issue “Primates in anthropogenic

habitats: implications for sustainable human-primate coexistence”,
International Journal of Primatology. Her research interests are biodiver-
sity conservation, human-wildlife coexistence and gender equality in
science.
Bingtao Su is an associate professor in Shandong University, China. She
received her PhD degree from Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Su
is project leader of several projects including the Chinese National Social
Science Fund and some provincial and ministerial-level funds. These
funds are related to sustainable development, in the context of farm ani-
mals’ ecological and carbon footprint, the environmental impacts of food
consumption and sustainable human-animal relationships.
Jan L. M. Vaarten, DVM, was trained as a veterinarian. From 2003 until
his retirement in 2020, he was Executive Director of the Federation of
Veterinarians of Europe (FVE), a federation of 46 national veterinary
organizations in 39 European countries and representing around 350,000
European veterinarians. From 2010 until 2020 he was Executive Secretary
of the World Veterinary Association (WVA), the global veterinary profes-
sional organization. Both FVE and WVA are based in Brussels (Belgium).
He is chair of the Ethical Committee of the Royal Dutch Veterinary
Association and involved in research projects on animal health, animal
welfare and public health.
Giorgio Vallortigara is Professor of Neuroscience at the Centre for
Mind/Brain Sciences of the University of Trento, Italy. His major
research interest is the study of the neural bases of cognition in a com-
parative and evolutionary perspective. He has published more than
300 refereed papers. He is the author of Born Knowing (2021) and
with L.J. Rogers and R.J. Andrew of Divided Brains (2013). He has
been the recipient of several honours and prizes, including the Geoffrey
de St. Hilaire Prize for Ethology, and a doctorate honoris causa from
the University of Ruhr in Germany.
Augusto Vitale holds a PhD in Behavioural Ecology from the University
of Aberdeen (Scotland). He is a researcher in animal behaviour at the
Center for Behavioural Sciences and Mental Health at the Istituto
 Notes on Contributors xxiii

Superiore di Sanità, Rome. He was President of the Italian Association of

Primatology, and is General Secretary for the European Federation of
Primatology. He collaborates with the EU Commission on the use of
NHP in laboratory research. He evaluates projects involving the use of
animal models for the Italian Ministry of Health. He has authored several
publications and book chapters on ethology and ethics of research.
Oliver Adrian Wookey holds a Masters in Animal Law and Society
from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Following an
internship at the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe, he continues to
work as an Editorial Secretary at the International Centre for Animal
Law and Policy (ICALP) based at the UAB, collaborating primarily by
editing, translating and contributing to the dA. Derecho Animal (Forum
of Animal Law Studies) journal.
Federico Zuolo is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy at the
University of Genova (Italy). Before joining the University of Genova, he
was Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow at the Universities of
Berlin and Hamburg, and research fellow at the University of Pavia. He
published a book on politics and animals (Animals, Political Liberalism
and Public Reason, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), and a number of articles
about respect, toleration, equality and animal ethics.
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Schematic representation of some of the stimuli used to

document predispositions for static and dynamic features
typical of animate objects shown by visually naïve vertebrates
at birth (mainly humans and chicks but evidence is also
available for monkeys, see Rosa-Salva et al. 2020 for details).
For each pair of stimuli, the preferred stimulus featuring the
predisposed trait and a control one are shown. From above,
stimuli used to test the preference for hen-like objects (a
stuffed junglefowl-like hen versus a scrambled version of a
similar specimen) in newborn chicks. In the following rows a
pair of similar stimuli obtained from stuffed chick models; a
stuffed duck with her wings occluded compared to a similar
exemplar with the head region occluded; a schematic
face-like stimulus and a non-face control image. The last
stimulus pair evokes similar preferences in human newborns
and newly hatched chicks. The first two images of the second
panel depict a point light display of a walking hen and a
control stimulus with random motion of the same points of
light (the silhouette of the hen is added for illustrative
purposes). In the following two rows a schematic representa-
tion of a speed changing stimulus and its speed-constant
control; an object that always moves in the direction of its
main body axis and its control stimulus. In the last row, on

xxv
xxvi List of Figures

the left the sequence of movement of a self-propelled red

object hitting and putting in motion a non-self-propelled
purple object (the sequence has to be read from above to
below). In this case, chicks preferentially imprint on the red
objects. On the right, both objects appear self-propelled and
chicks display no preferences between the two. Human
newborns show similar preferences for self-propelled objects
as well. (See for complete references Rosa-Salva et al. 2021) 37
Fig. 7.1 Extensive sheep hill-farming (courtesy of Gary Farrell) 124
Fig. 7.2 Intensive feedlot system for beef cattle (from Addison 2012) 125
Fig. 13.1 Study area showing the 49 households present. (Image
courtesy of Alison Howard) 278
Fig. 13.2 Sex and age classes of interviewed. W=woman; M=man 279
Fig. 13.3 Interviewed income (N = 71) 280
 List of Tables

Table 6.1 Background details of the respondents 98

Table 6.2 Summary of multivariate analysis of the effects of ethical
idealism, ethical relativism, gender, and age on public
attitudes toward animals (measured by Animal Attitude Scale
[AAS] and Animal Issue Scale [AIS]) 103
Table 6.3 Important variables influencing the Animal Issue Scale (AIS)
score in the Netherlands 106
Table 6.4 Important variables influencing the Animal Attitudes Scale
(AAS) score in the Netherlands 108
Table 13.1 Characteristics of the 36 houses belonging to respondents 281

xxvii
 1
Introduction
Simone Pollo and Augusto Vitale

During the last decades human/non-human animals relationships have

been under increased interest of scientists and under growing scrutiny of
the general public. At the beginning of the 70s of twentieth century the
new field of animal ethics was established as a systematic philosophical
inquiry about the moral status of animals and the ethics of various types
of human/animal relationships. Also, thanks to the work of leading schol-
ars of animal ethics, animal advocacy activism became a social phenom-
enon of growing importance, resurrecting from the oblivion in which it
rested during great part of the twentieth century after its birth and flour-
ishing during the nineteenth century. In the last decades a greater
awareness of the moral relevance of non-human animals has brought

S. Pollo
Department of Philosophy, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy
e-mail: simone.pollo@uniroma1.it
A. Vitale (*)
Center for Behavioural Sciences and Mental Health, Istituto Superiore di
Sanità, Rome, Italy
e-mail: augusto.vitale@iss.it

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

A. Vitale, S. Pollo (eds.), Human/Animal Relationships in Transformation, The Palgrave
Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85277-1_1
2 S. Pollo and A. Vitale

legislators and scientists to promote changes in the way humans and non-
human animals interact in different contexts, such as, animal compan-
ions, farming animals, animal experimentation, animal-assisted
interventions in health care and wild animals threatened by human
impact on ecosystems. Examples of this developing situation are the
increasing number of lawyers who dedicate time and effort to deal with
animal issues, the publication of the Directive 2010/63/EU on the pro-
tection of animals used in scientific procedures, as well as the growing
urge in the field of animal-­assisted interventions for developing (manda-
tory) legislation, procedures and best practices.
Animals are used in different contexts and interactions with humans
happen for a great variety of reasons. The use of animals in scientific
research, farming and animal-assisted intervention (AAI) has significant
effect on science and society, as well as it is the product of scientific and
societal dynamics. Two are the major conceptual and practical issues at
stake: the nature of the human/non-humans relationships and the con-
cepts of animal welfare. These two issues are significantly connected: the
ways we understand and regulate our relationships with animals are based
on the idea of what animals are, what their welfare is and how human and
animal welfare interconnect and interdepend.
However, the very same term animal welfare could be intended in very
different ways, depending on the field of application. A question, for
example, is whether the concept of animal welfare employed in biomedi-
cal research is defined in the same way in other contexts, such as farming
and relations with companion animals. The animal welfare and, in the
case of sentient species, how they are perceived by humans should not be
affected by the kind of utilisation the animal is subjected to. However the
perception of its welfare and then the way it is measured and considered
can vary depending on the context. Public perception of suffering changes
as well depending on the field of application. Laboratory animals, for
example, are thought to suffer often, whereas pet animals are generally
considered safe from suffering, and their level of welfare very rarely com-
promised. As a matter of fact, pets represent a very strong form of rela-
tionships between humans and animals, and a very interesting case-study
about how people understand the differences between us and the other
animals.
 1 Introduction 3

The nature of our relationships with the other animals, how they
develop, and how they are influenced by internal (personal) and external
(cultural, societal) influences, and how they have changed with time, are
at the basis of this book. Although the topics of human/non-human ani-
mal relationships and animal welfare have been discussed since many
years now, the aim of this book is to actually bring together different ways
of interacting with animals. The very idea is not to simply put together
views from different disciplines, but to provide a framework in order to
elaborate new concepts that aim at incorporating all our different knowl-
edge about animals. This book also aims at being original in pairing the
more common issue of non-human moral/legal status to the topic of
human/non-human relationships. In fact, this book focuses on the differ-
ent reasons and modalities of the transformations that are taking place in
the different contexts of human/animal relationships. Furthermore, all
the authors aim at elaborating perspectives that move from a solid knowl-
edge of the empirical features of contexts and situations in which the
different human/animal relationships take place.
The first part, Philosophy and Ethics of Human Animal/Relationships,
aims at reconstructing the theoretical, both philosophical and scientific,
background of discussions and reflections about the changes and devel-
opments of human/animal interactions. In the first essay, Darwinian
Biology and the New Understanding of Animals, Simone Pollo tackles the
issue of our understanding of non-human animals after the revolution is
provoked by Darwin’s evolutionary theory: the development of Darwinian
biology, especially the scientific study of behaviour, provides new tools
and concepts to understand non-human animals. From ethological stud-
ies a new understanding of animals as agents emerges and it could entail
some important consequences for the conceptualisation of animal wel-
fare. The understanding of animals is the topic also of Giorgio Vallortigara’s
chapter, Animal Detection and Its Role on Our Attitude Towards Other
Species: from a scientific point of view a distinction can be made in verte-
brate brains between mechanism aimed at recognising animate objects
and distinguishing them from inanimate ones. Such a distinction is inter-
twined with the propensity to attribute mental states to animals, a key
issue in the interpretation of the nature of animal lives and our propen-
sity to anthropomorphise them. From the point of view of ethical
4 S. Pollo and A. Vitale

reasoning the question of which feature of a subject should be recognised

as relevant to attribute him/her/it a moral status is a crucial one: in his
chapter, The Moral Value of Animal Sentience and Agency, Federico Zuolo
deals with such a question and discusses the alternative between sentience
and agency as properties granting moral status. Such a discussion raises
the problem of how to combine moral status recognition with the adop-
tion of a basic principle of equality. Recognition of moral relevance of
animals is also the topic of Elisa Aaltola’s essay, Affective Animal Ethics:
Reflective Empathy, Attention and Knowledge Sub Specie Aeternitatis, in
which she offers a perspective centred on human capacity to empathise
with animals’ emotions. Rather than focusing on animals’ capacities and
subsequent moral status Aaltola stresses the importance of development
and perfectioning of humans’ reflective empathy in a holistic framework.
Essays of the second part, Transformations in General Scenarios, are
focused on some key ideas and facts involved in the contexts in which the
ongoing transformation of human/animal relationships takes place. In
Perceiving Animals Through Different Demographic and Cultural Lenses
Pim Martens and Bingtao Su empirically investigate the correlation
between public attitudes towards animals and ethical ideologies, acknowl-
edging the relevance of such correlation for decision-making processes
regarding animals and their uses by humans. E. Anne McBride and
Stephen Baugh in Animal Welfare in Context: Historical, Scientific, Ethical,
Moral and One Welfare Perspective examine the plurality of meanings of
animal welfare and how this produces different definitions and practices
of animals. The variety of animal welfare approaches (and their link with
human welfare) affects the way human/animal interactions are under-
stood and their reform is conceived. Survival of the Fittest: When an
Evolutionary Advantage Becomes Such a Threat to the Welfare of Other, Non
Human Animal Species that It Threatens Our Own Species by Jan
L.M. Vaarten and Nancy De Briyne discuss the human “domination” of
other species from an evolutionary perspective. From this perspective
Vaarten and De Briyne present arguments for the role of veterinarians in
improving human/animal relationships in their professional practice and
in promoting a similar improvement in the general public. Use of ani-
mals in research is the topic of A Proposal for a Multi-Dimensional Profile
of the Animal Researcher by Augusto Vitale. The chapter is focused on the
 1 Introduction 5

role of the scientist at the intersection of the different dimensions of

researches using animals. Awareness of such dimensions by researchers
could lead to more transparent and open attitudes towards the public
debate on ethical issues of animal experiments. Michał Piotr Pręgowski,
Karin Hediger and Marie-José Enders-Slegers in the chapter The Two
Sides of the Human-Animal Bond. Reflections on Using and Abusing
Companion Animals examines the variety and complexity of interspecies
relationships focusing on the human/animal bond, especially in assisted
interventions and contexts where animals serve humans. The chapter
unveils the reality of possible animal abuses entailed in such contexts.
The third part Transformations in Cases and Contexts moves closer to
the specific contexts of human/animal interaction providing detailed
analyses and examinations of particular cases. Farms, Landscapes, Food
and Relationships by Clemens Driessen and Pasqualino Santori presents
an overview of understandings of the relations between farmers or farm
workers and the animals on their farm. Also the role of the consumers of
food products coming from the work of farmers is discussed, questioning
the role of society as whole for improving quality of life of animals and of
the humans involved in their care. Susanna Pietropaolo in the chapter
Biotechnologies and Animals: The Impact of Genetic Engineering on Human-­
Animal Relationships overviews the biotechnologies that mostly affect
human attitudes and approaches to animals. In particular genetic modi-
fications of laboratory animals are examined in bioethical and scientific
terms evaluating their advantages and limitations. Animals in wilderness
and how humans interact with them are the topic of Noemi Spagnoletti
essay Coexisting with Wild Non-Human Primates in a Brazilian Semiarid
Habitat. Interviews of people living in a Brazilian community coexisting
with a wild population of bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidino-
sus) provide important details on the framework in which a non-conflic-
tual relationship can take place. A different kind of relationship is
examined by Marta Borgi and Francesca Cirulli in Companionship and
Wellbeing: Benefits and Challenges of Human-Pet Relationships. Moving
from the current literature in the field of animal-assisted interventions
Borgi and Cirulli analyse the potential for domesticated animals for pro-
viding emotional and physical opportunities to enrich the lives of many
frail subjects. Such relationships are examined from the concept of
6 S. Pollo and A. Vitale

“One-­Health” and its application both to humans and animals. Another

kind of human/animal interaction with wild animals is examined in the
last chapter, Human-Wildlife Coexistence in the Urban Domain: Promoting
Welfare Through Effective Management, Responsibility and the Recognition
of Mutual Interest, by Oliver Adrain Wookey. The essay examines the
threats posed by humans to welfare of wild animals in urban environ-
ments and proposes suggestions to improve human/animal relationships
in this context.
The fourth and final part, Recognising Transformations, examines the
two public dimensions in which animal status and transformations of
human/animal relationships are advocated and brought into practice,
politics and law. Robert Garner in the chapter Political Representation of
Animals’ Voices examines the “political turn” of animal ethics, that is the
growing interest of scholars for the issue of representing animals in the
political arena of democracy. The “enfranchisement model” for animals’
representation is supported against rival alternatives. The last chapter by
Marita Candela, Animal Law. What Is Left to Be Said by the Law About
Animals, offers an overview of the motives that have brought to the ongo-
ing inclusion of animals under the umbrella of law from their absence in
legal systems. The key notion for the “animal turn in legal studies” is
animal sentience, whose recognition fosters the de-objectification, the
constitutionalisation and the globalisation of animals.
Scholars and students at different levels will find in the book new theo-
retical analyses contributing to the discussion in the fields of animal eth-
ics and animal studies. Common denominator of the chapters is the
effort to bring new ideas to the debate and to progress towards a new and
contemporary relationships between us and our fellow animals.
 Part I
Philosophy and Ethics of Human
Animal/Relationships
 2
Darwinian Biology and the New
Understanding of Animals
Simone Pollo

1 Premise
Together with the Copernican revolution the “Darwinian revolution” is
the scientific event that has most affected human civilization. On one
side Copernicus and Galilee removed the human being from the center
of the universe and proved the corruptible nature of the skies. On the
other side Charles Darwin irrevocably debunked the idea of teleology in
nature, proving the Homo sapiens (like any other organism) to be not the
outcome of a benevolent project but the result of a historical process
without purpose. The consequences of both those scientific revolutions
are enormous since they contributed in many intertwined ways to the
abandonment of traditional ideas deeply embedded in human cultures
(mostly Western, but not only).
In this chapter I will especially focus on one aspect of the influence
Darwinian revolution has had and is still having on human civilization,

S. Pollo (*)
Department of Philosophy, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy
e-mail: simone.pollo@uniroma1.it

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 9

A. Vitale, S. Pollo (eds.), Human/Animal Relationships in Transformation, The Palgrave
Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85277-1_2
10 S. Pollo

whereby “civilization” must be understood to include the human under-

standing of reality (human nature included), and moral/political beliefs
and practices. This aspect is the understanding by humans of non-human
animals and the moral beliefs about their moral status (and the following
practices and behaviors). This is an enormously wide and articulated
topic and its history dates back to Darwin himself when in Notebook B
he wrote:

If we choose to let conjecture run wild then animals our fellow brethren in
pain, disease death & suffering & famine; our slaves in the most laborious
work, our companion in our amusements, they may partake, from our
origin in one common ancestor we may all be netted together. (Darwin 1987)

Using words like “fellow brethren,” “slaves,” and “companion” Charles

Darwin was pushing his thoughts beyond the borders of scientific realms
and he was entering into the territory of ethics (assuming that clear bor-
ders between science and ethics exist).
My aim will not be to provide a detailed account and analysis of the
impact of Darwinian evolutionary biology on the understanding of non-­
human animals and on the moral reflection on them. Rather I will focus
on one aspect of such impact. I will analyze how Darwinian revolution
produced a novel science in the framework of contemporary biology,
which is the scientific study of behavior or ethology (a more precise defi-
nition will be provided later on). More precisely I will claim that the birth
of ethology may represent a “change of paradigm” in the scientific under-
standing of animals affecting moral beliefs and practices. In a nutshell,
my claim is that the birth of ethology and its ongoing development and
flourishing represent a crucial part of that process of transformation of
the human/animal relationship ignited by Charles Darwin’s revolution-
ary work. Such a process is still in progress and it continues to be fueled
by ethological research (mostly by study of non-human cognition—as I
will claim at the end of this work).
From a methodological point of view, I want to stress that my aim is
not a historical reconstruction of the birth and development of ethology
within the framework of life sciences and evolutionary biology. Remarks
from the history of science will be functional to the theoretical argument
 2 Darwinian Biology and the New Understanding of Animals 11

but they shall not be understood as part of an effort to write a chapter in

the history of science. The aim of this chapter is rather to elaborate a
theoretical argument about the role and function of the scientific study of
behavior both in theoretical reflection (mostly about ethics) and in ordi-
nary human life (mostly in ordinary moral beliefs). In a sense, what will
follow should be understood as a contribution to a “philosophy of ethol-
ogy.” At present, such a definition seems to be rarely used and when it is
employed it seems mostly in reference to philosophical discourses about
“animality” spelled with the voice of continental and hermeneutical phil-
osophical tradition (Chrulew 2014). On the contrary, my use of “philo-
sophical ethology” must be understood as embedded into the domain of
the philosophy of biology within the framework of philosophy in analyti-
cal tradition and style. In this sense, philosophical ethology must be
regarded as a part of philosophy of biology rather than a self-standing and
autonomous domain of enquiry.

2  umans and Animals: A Short History

H
of Everything
I anticipated that my aim would be to show the role of ethology as a
change of paradigm in the understanding of animals capable of affecting
and transforming actual relationships humans have with non-human ani-
mals. In order to pursue such scope, a preliminary recognition of how
human beings understood animals before Darwin’s revolution and the
rise of ethology is required. It seems evident that such a task cannot be
analytically performed here. A detailed and complete account of human
understanding of animals before Darwin is such a wide and articulated
topic that it could not even be fully addressed in a book. What can be
done here is to highlight some key ideas that have commonly character-
ized the human understanding of animals in Western culture and civiliza-
tion. More precisely these ideas are some of those that have been deeply
challenged by ethology and whose questioning leaves room for change
and transformation of human/animal relationships. Before presenting
12 S. Pollo

those ideas three general premises about human/animal relationships and

the human understanding of animals are required.
When talking of human relationships with animals at least three gen-
eral premises have to be made. These premises help to set the general
framework for discussion and to avoid some common mistakes that are
usually made when talking about human/animal relationships (not only
in ordinary discourse and public debate, but also in more refined theo-
retical discussion). The first premise regards the very nature of the second
term implied in the locution “human/animal relationships,” that is “ani-
mal.” Animals are the organisms belonging to the biological kingdom
Animalia. About one million and a half currently living animal species
belong to that kingdom and an unknown number of yet to be discovered
and classified belong to it also (the total number of species is a hard mat-
ter of scientific controversy: Mora et al. 2011). “Animal” in “human/
animal relationships” refers to such a huge number of species (minus the
Homo sapiens, that of course is also part of the Animalia). This clarifica-
tion is required as a premise in order to keep in mind that talking of
“animals” in theoretical analysis is always a tremendous oversimplifica-
tion. This oversimplification can be justified and required to perform a
general analysis like the one that will be provided here, but the need to
precisely identify the exact species involved (or taxa or other appropriate
taxonomic categories) should never be forgotten when discussing specific
contexts of human/animal interaction. When labelling the enormous and
astonishing variety of organisms included in the kingdom Animalia as
“animals” it should never be forgotten that when we talk of “animals” we
are talking of forms of life that can be dramatically different among them
regarding their specific features, both behavioral and ecological.
Indeed, the specific contexts of human/animal interactions are the
topic of the second premises. “Animals” comprise a huge number of liv-
ing and different living organisms and, in a similar manner, “relation-
ships” include many different kinds of interactions humans entertain
with animals. Factory farming and lab experiments are the most evident
uses of animals by human beings (and the most debated both in society
and animal ethics), but many other types of interaction happen and they
can be of very different natures. Some of them can be hardly recognized
but they take place and affect a huge number of animals (often
 2 Darwinian Biology and the New Understanding of Animals 13

jeopardizing their welfare and chances of survival) as in the case of all

human actions impacting ecosystems. Therefore, another oversimplifica-
tion has to be accepted but at the same time kept under strict control:
“relationships” can include very different kinds of interactions (that is
different scopes, various human attitudes, and different outcomes for ani-
mals). What must never be forgotten is the fact that all those different
relationships are deeply intertwined with past and present human forms
of life and their evolution, both biologically and culturally. For example,
domesticating animals and using them for food and work have repre-
sented—together with agriculture—the turning point in human evolu-
tion leading the Homo sapiens to the evolutionary “success” and the
civilization we live in (Diamond 1997). Therefore, any attempt to give
detailed accounts of human/animal relationships means describing the
human form of life, since animals (and relationships with them) are
everywhere (Herzog 2010; Pollo 2016). Also, for the very same reason,
efforts to transform the real-world different types of human/animal rela-
tionships (i.e., the use of animal for food) are characterized by the pecu-
liar difficulty of dealing with habits and practices so deeply embedded in
human life. Of course, this not a reason to drop such efforts if they are
morally justified (as a matter of fact a key feature of moral reflection is the
critique of tradition), but as something that has to be necessarily taken
into account in order to produce moral reflections (and calls to action)
compatible with real life and therefore likely to really produce some
effects and changes in real life.
The third and final premise regards human attitudes toward animals
and aims at debunking a commonplace about those attitudes. A wide-
spread idea (not just in ordinary opinions but also in theoretical analyses)
is the belief that before Charles Darwin the most common view about
animals (endorsed almost universally) was akin to the one philosophically
elaborated by Descartes, who regarded all animals as soulless machines
whose behaviors are just the outcome of finely designed mechanisms (just
like clocks). Reserving the soul just for human beings Descartes drew an
impassable border between animals and humans (an ontological border
whose moral consequence is the limitation of any moral consideration
just to humans) (Harrison 1992). Descartes’ philosophical view about
this border is the most well-known and influential elaboration of the
14 S. Pollo

creationist view represented in the biblical tale of the creation of the

world and its living inhabitants. Notwithstanding the deeply pervasive
influence of Judeo-Christian thought on Western culture, regarding that
view as universally accepted and endorsed seems to be a mistake. On one
side, many philosophers and scientists argued in favor of continuationist
views and, on the other side, in ordinary life, human beings interacted
with animals attributing them mental states such as intention and emo-
tions. This does not mean that the biblical/cartesian creationist view has
not been influential (and it continues to be so nowadays), since animals
have been mostly universally regarded as available means for human pur-
poses (Steiner 2005). Nonetheless, in real-life interactions (and seldom in
science and philosophy) animals were often regarded not as mindless
machines but as living beings with features analogous to humans. In a
sense, folk psychology anticipated cognitive ethology and comparative
psychology (Shipman 2011).

3 Ethology, Philosophy,
and the Darwinian Paradigm
Apparently, the last of the three premises I set out in the previous para-
graph seems to undermine the claim that represents the backbone of this
chapter, that is, the idea that Darwinian science of behavior represents a
paradigm shift in understanding animals. To clarify this point I must
specify what “paradigm shift” means here. As it is well-known, the expres-
sion “paradigm shift” was introduced by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure
of Scientific Revolution—one of the most important contributions to
twentieth-century epistemology and philosophy of science (Kuhn 2012).
Here I do not mean to endorse Kuhn’s theory as a whole and to adopt his
conceptual apparatus to support my view. I use the notion of “paradigm
shift” here just to stress the incommensurability (another Kuhnian idea
embedded in the concept of “paradigm shift”) of pre-Darwinian biology
with Darwinian biology. For example, whereas teleology could make
sense in biology ante Darwin, it no longer has room in Darwinian evolu-
tionary biology. In the present context the incommensurability of ante
 2 Darwinian Biology and the New Understanding of Animals 15

Darwin biology with the post one means that the Darwinian and etho-
logical understanding of animals relies upon scientific and theoretical
grounds that make such understanding discontinuous with respect to
former ideas and concepts. Furthermore, it allows the use of new con-
cepts for describing and understanding animals. Such concepts were not
commonly used before Darwin and ethology, or they were poorly and
improperly used.
Before trying to show the paradigm shift ethology produced in under-
standing animals, some remarks must be made on the connection between
Darwin’s work and the scientific study of animal behavior. As anticipated,
my aim here is not to provide a historical reconstruction, and therefore
the following remarks could appear incomplete. Nonetheless, my scope is
just providing some key points about the collocation of ethology within
the framework of Darwinian evolutionary biology. The first point that
must be highlighted is the novelty of ethology and its structural connec-
tion with the key ideas of Darwinian theory and its subsequent develop-
ments. Of course, animal behavior has always raised the interest and
curiosity of human beings and, therefore, one could legitimately ask
whether it would be possible to locate the birth of ethology before
Darwin. This is an open question for historians of science and here I just
adhere to the view that warns against the abuse of modern and contem-
porary definitions and labels for research programs from the past. In a
sense, for example, Aristotle could be defined as the first ethologist
because of his wide and absolutely innovative scientific study of animals.
Nonetheless, that definition and calling his studies on animal life “ethol-
ogy” (or “biology”) appear to be mistakes. Ethology, like other modern
and contemporary fields of scientific enquiry, makes sense only within
the framework of modern biology (Cunningham 1999). This idea is well
expressed by Konrad Lorenz in his The Foundations of Ethology:

Ethology, the comparative study of behavior, is easy to define: it is the dis-

cipline which applies to the behavior of animals and humans all those
questions asked and those methodologies used as a matter of course in all
the other branches of biology since Charles Darwin’s time. (Lorenz
1981, p. 1)
16 S. Pollo

The role of Darwin for the foundations of ethology is crucial, and this
role is not just limited to his theory, but also to the scientific methods he
employed to elaborate that revolutionary theory (Burkhardt 2005).
Stressing the necessary and essential role of Darwin’s theory for the birth
and the development of ethology allows to the paradigm switch that this
new young scientific discipline produces in the understanding of animals
to be fully recognized.
Darwin’s theory is the essential framework within which ethology rose
and continues to flourish, but at its very origins, different methods and
fields of inquiry can be found. As a matter of fact, another open historio-
graphical question regards the other cultural and scientific sources consti-
tuting the basis upon which ethology has been built. Today, ethology can
be regarded at least as the outcome of the hybridization of the classic
study of behavior (Lorenz and Tinbergen) and comparative psychology
(and this hybridization is evident when one looks at some methodologi-
cal flaws caused by the influence of comparative psychology: De Waal
2016). Putting aside these questions, with “ethology” (or “scientific study
of behavior”) I am referring to that field of research organized around the
classic four questions of Tinbergen (Tinbergen 1963) plus the fifth intro-
duced by Burghardt in order to recognize animal minds among the legiti-
mate topics of ethology (Burghardt 1997, 2009).
Darwin’s heritage for ethology can particularly be appreciated by look-
ing at two of his fundamental works: The Descent of Man and The
Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. In both of them we can rec-
ognize many of the key ideas that will flow into the research program of
ethology and its practice. One of these ideas is the continuity of human
behavior and non-human behavior. Biological mechanisms underlying
human and animal behaviors are the same. Different capacities among
animals (humans included) cannot be regarded as substantial differences,
but merely differences of degree of analogous (or homologous) capacities
and the outcome of different evolutionary stories. Behaviors of humans
and animals share the same biological mechanisms and they are the prod-
uct of evolutionary histories. This well-known paragraph from The
Descent of Man perfectly summarizes those two ideas:
 2 Darwinian Biology and the New Understanding of Animals 17

The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely,

that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts,
would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intel-
lectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed,
as in man. (Darwin 1981, pp. 71–2)

Human/animal continuationism and historicity also characterize the

capacity that has always been regarded as the most peculiar and unique to
humans: moral faculty. Human moral behavior has biological causes and
is a product of evolution like any other behavior of any other animal.
These ideas elaborated and developed by Charles Darwin are the theoreti-
cal core of ethology and they represent key features of that paradigm
shift. More specifically, I will try to show how that paradigm shift is evi-
dent in a new understanding of the concept of agency both for humans
and animals. In a nutshell, my idea is that ethology dramatically contrib-
uted to the revision and advancement of the notion of agency, making
some interpretation of this notion obsolete and unavailable. Here, a
detailed analysis of the main approaches and theories of agency is not
possible (for a map see Schlosser 2019). The task that can be pursued here
is sketching some ideas that, emerging from ethology, affect (or maybe
should affect) the notion of agency and its analysis. Such influence is
what produces that paradigm shift, and renders some notions of agency,
and ideas connected to such notions, no longer available.
First of all, a clarification of the reasons for linking ethology to the
scientific study and the philosophical analysis is required. These reasons
could be self-evident, but a brief remark could be useful anyway.
Traditionally, agency is defined as the capacity to initiate an action, and
action is defined as something that originates from the subject. In gen-
eral, an observer could consider a movement of my arm an action if I am
trying to grab a cup of coffee. The same observer, on the contrary, could
not regard another movement of an arm as an action if it had been pro-
duced by an involuntary collision with an inattentive passerby. In the first
case, the movement is defined “active,” whereas the second seems to be
clearly “passive”. Ethological research aims at scientifically understanding
behaviors that are events that, at least prima facie, appear to observers as
actions or part of actions. Behaviors are originated by the behaving
18 S. Pollo

organism and therefore they are actions. Of course, some philosophical

approaches to action and agency could identify this conclusion as errone-
ous. Maybe we should have a theory of action before labelling something
as an action. Maybe by scratching on the terrace door to let me know that
he wants to go outside (and looking at the street barking at passing dogs
and howling at ambulance sirens) my dog is not really acting; maybe he
just behaves that way because he is a finely programmed mechanism, as
Descartes believed.
That kind of objection is no longer tenable from a naturalistic approach
to philosophical problems, especially after Darwin and within the frame-
work of Darwinian evolutionary biology. In brief, according to a natural-
ized Darwinian approach to philosophical problems, concepts and
definition come after empirical observation, and they do not precede
experience, and are superimposed to it (for a presentation of philosophi-
cal naturalism: Papineau 2020). Therefore, in other terms, from a natu-
ralized point of view, we should look at behavior to elaborate a notion of
agency, and not look for agency in behaviors. This is a first aspect of the
paradigm shift triggered by Darwin’s theory and ethology (and in general
by evolutionary biology as a whole): a solid methodology embedded in a
solid theoretical framework allows the production of explanations of all
the features of living beings (humans included) recurring just in the
empirical realm and from the bottom. Obviously we can debate what
“naturalism” precisely means and how it should be “applied” in philoso-
phy (De Caro 2004), but after Darwin, non-naturalized philosophical
analyses appear to be completely out of date. This is another face of the
paradigm shift caused by Darwin’s theory: naturalism was the preferable
option before evolutionary theory also, but there was still room for some
kind of non-naturalized hypothesis (think, for example, about teleologi-
cal explanations of life: without Darwin’s explanation, intelligent design
was still a viable option, even if vulnerable to profound criticism: Hume
1990). After Darwin, naturalism, variously declined, is the only accept-
able option for philosophical analysis (Dennett 1995).
 2 Darwinian Biology and the New Understanding of Animals 19

4 Animal Agency
From a naturalistic perspective rooted in contemporary biology, accord-
ing the status of agents to “persons”, mostly identified with human
beings, seems to no longer be a tenable view (Frankfurt 1971). In general,
if we recognize the presence of agency in human beings (at least some
human beings) then we should consider its presence (even in different
degrees) more likely in other animals, rather than its absence. This kind
of reasoning is the consequence of logic imposed by Darwinian natural-
ism. The same logic also forces us to reconsider and reframe the issue of
intentionality and, in general, particular mental states connected to
agency and required by it. Identifying a particular meaning of intention-
ality or some specific mental state (i.e., a particular type of belief ) to
define what agency is appears to be a top-down approach that is excluded
by a bottom-up naturalistic methodology. A more promising approach
consists in sticking to the idea that agency is basically met when some-
thing (or someone) initiates a course of action by herself/himself/itself.
According to this view, humans and animals (the most part or maybe all
of them) are capable of agency. For the present purposes the question
whether plants or artificial entities can be agents is left aside.
Humans and animals are capable of agency and ethology provides
insights into its features. Clear consequences for the understanding of
human agency are derived from its Darwinian and ethological under-
standing. The first has already been mentioned, and regards the loss of
uniqueness and specialness for human beings. Humans share the capaci-
ties for agency (like emotions and thoughts—as we will see later on) with
other animals and, like animals, their agency is explained by the Darwinian
understanding of life. In particular, placing human behavior within the
frame of ethology requires the acknowledgement that human behavior
(and therefore agency) is also a product of evolution, and can be explained
by means of evolutionary forces. Human behavior is not the product of a
pure free will, nor is it just the outcome of cultural development.
Famously, sociobiology expanded its aims to also understand human
behavior, and this fact raised a huge amount of controversy (Segerstråle
2000). Beside this controversy, it is without doubt that human behavior
20 S. Pollo

and agency are regulated by the same mechanism explaining animals’

behavior. This fact does not necessarily entail a reductionist account of
human agency, but places human and animal agencies on a continuum.
On one side, the evolutionary explanation abolishes the border
between humans and animals, and on the other side, ethology explains
the mechanism of agency and behavior of animals (and of humans). The
result is (or should be) the recognition of the agentive nature of animals,
and the fact that such nature is not categorically (or even ontologically)
different from the agentive nature of humans. From ethological research
we can affirm the nature of animals as agents and understand how such
agency works. A biologically informed concept of agency joins human
and animals and produces the paradigm shift. We can appreciate the
complexity of human behaviors and at the same time recognize that ani-
mal behaviors are not ontologically separated from that of humans.
Consequences of this paradigm shift for the understanding of human life
are various and profound (and of course, the consequences for moral
ideas and beliefs too), but these consequences are not the subject matter
here (a good place to start exploring the matter: Ruse 1986; Dennett
1995). The issue at stake here is how humans understand animals.
The basic notion of agency and the Darwinian ethological explanation
lead to the recognition of animals as agents not categorically different
from humans. Nonetheless, the categorical difference could be restored
through adopting a not-so-basic and more engaging notion of agency.
Defining agency in terms of certain mental states could reintroduce the
barrier abolished by the basic concept. As a matter of fact, in this case the
development of ethological research also provides evidence and argu-
ments to dissolve the border. As it is well-known, at its very beginning,
ethology (in particular in Tinbergen’s approach: Burkhardt 2005)
excluded the mental states of animals from its research programs. The
reason of this exclusion was not personal skepticism of ethologists toward
the existence of animal minds, but scientific skepticism of the possibility
of making animal minds a proper subject of scientific enquiry. Indeed,
the initial suspicion of ethology about the possibility of scientifically and
rigorously investigating the mental capacities of animals and their link
with behaviors gradually faded away. The founding of “cognitive ethol-
ogy” by Donald Griffin (Griffin 1976) adds a fifth question to Tinbergen’s
 2 Darwinian Biology and the New Understanding of Animals 21

classic four, and enlarges the agenda of ethological research to animal

minds. The fifth question—already mentioned above—has been formu-
lated by Burghardt, and it substantially refers to the inquiry into the
“private experience” of animals; that is, their mental life (Burghardt 1997).
Here there is no room to give even a brief account of the massive and
insightful achievements gained by cognitive ethology. A closer and
detailed look at cognitive ethology research would also show how a more
demanding and mentally focused concept of agency would be met by a
huge variety of animals (also by those commonly thought to be driven by
just automatic instincts, such as invertebrates, and not just the smart
cephalopods: Klein and Barron 2016; Godfrey-Smith 2016). In general,
cognitive ethology research testifies the diverse and sophisticated capaci-
ties of animals to plan behaviors and to flexibly adapt to social and envi-
ronmental stimuli, meeting the criteria of more articulated versions of
the concept of agency. Cognitive capacities of animals are sustained and
accompanied by rich emotional lives, as Darwin already clearly recog-
nized and analytically studied. Sophisticated emotional and cognitive
capacities sustain the complex and rich social lives of animals (and cer-
tainly those of social mammals). The study of animals’ social lives reveals
the agentive character of members of many animal species: how could
those sophisticated forms of sociality be explained without acknowledg-
ing the capacity for agency of the animals engaged in them? From cogni-
tive ethological research dealing with animals’ social lives, another
important fact emerges: just like humans animals have personality traits
(and the methodology for assessing them is substantially the same in both
cases) (Carere and Maestripieri 2013).
The recognition of personality in animals by means of ethological
studies strengthens the claim that animals are full-fledged agents. Besides
formal philosophical definitions, the concept of agency as it is commonly
understood in ordinary life seems to embed the idea that agency corre-
sponds also to a style of behaving and experiencing the world. We recog-
nize agency not just because of some basic features characterizing behavior
and its causes, but also because agents are different among themselves,
and we can differentiate one from another through the different ways
they act.
22 S. Pollo

5  eyond Sentience: Agency and Animals’

B
Moral Status
Part of the general paradigm shift produced by Darwin’s theory and
Darwinian evolutionary biology consists in the new understanding of
animals as agents. As I have anticipated, this is a paradigm shift not
because humans consistently denied animal agency before Darwin’s revo-
lution. It is a paradigm shift because, thanks to evolutionary biology and,
in particular, to ethology, we must accept the idea that there is just one
kind of agency within Animalia, and humans do not substantially differ
from other animals in this respect. In conclusion, I want to articulate a
reflection about the consequence of such understanding for our moral
reflection on animals’ moral status and human responsibilities toward
them. The idea is that a full and widespread understanding of animals as
agents could promote further transformations in human/animal relation-
ships across the various contexts within which they take place.
The turn in the philosophical and public debates on the treatment of
animals took place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. On one
side, philosophers started to consistently regard animal capacities in con-
tinuity with human ones. For example, even if he did not draw any moral
consequence, David Hume, in his Treatise of Human Nature, affirmed
that the very same passions at the core of human nature are shared by
animals. Furthermore, he also recognized that sympathy is a principle
operating in both humans and animals, which makes communication of
sentiments across the species barrier possible. Fifty years later, in 1789
Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, made one of the state-
ments that properly started the modern and contemporary philosophical
ethics debate on animals, in his Principles of moral legislation. Bentham
wrote: “The question is not Can they reason? Nor, Can they talk? But
Can they suffer?” (Bentham 2007). The capacity of feeling pain and plea-
sure was identified by Bentham as the criterion to have moral status inde-
pendently from species membership.
The recognition of the relevance of suffering for moral consideration is
a key idea of the transformation of morality and law that was ignited by
Enlightenment. As a matter of fact, the Enlightenment, commonly
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 XVI
Les Mères doivent voter

«Le vote est le droit à la considération, le

vote est le droit au pain.»

H. A.

La mère doit voter pour préparer un bon avenir à ses enfants. La

femme électeur ne peut pas comme le demandait un candidat, être un
satellite de l’homme. Elle doit déposer elle-même son bulletin dans l’urne,
et non se borner à multiplier la capacité sociale de son mari. Ce candidat
voulait qu’on donnât à la famille la prééminence politique à laquelle elle a
droit. Il préconisait le vote familial au lieu du vote des femmes.

«Ce que la femme doit vouloir, écrit-il, c’est la reconnaissance

légale de son existence sociale au même titre que le mari. La
question de savoir ensuite quelle sera la main qui portera dans
l’urne le morceau de carton représentant le bulletin familial, n’est
qu’accessoire.
«L’essentiel c’est que la femme existe. Et elle comprendra
qu’elle ne pourra conquérir ce droit éminent à l’existence qu’en
s’appuyant sur ses enfants, dont le nombre donnera autant de voix
à la famille. Ce sera là la grande force de la femme, qui ne doit se
considérer que pour ce qu’elle est naturellement: la multiplicatrice
de la capacité sociale de son mari».

Les hommes qui se moquent de Guillaume II parlant de sa royauté de

droit divin, disent aux femmes qu’ils ont sur elles une autorité de droit
divin, et que la politique est incompatible avec les fonctions de mères et
d’épouses. Mais le travail de mercenaire, de blanchissage, de portefaix
n’est pas incompatible avec ces fonctions.
On ne peut opposer la maternité, à l’exercice des droits de cette
quantité innombrable de femmes qui ne sont pas mères, qui ne le seront
jamais, qui ne l’ont jamais été.
On ne peut pas opposer, davantage, la maternité à l’exercice des
droits des femmes qui sont mères, parce qu’en aucun cas, un devoir ne
peut destituer d’un droit.
Quand il survient à l’homme des devoirs, les devoirs de la paternité, le
prive-t-on de ses droits civiques? Non. Alors pourquoi sous le prétexte
qu’elle est mère destituerait-on la femme des siens?
Est-ce que la paternité entraîne moins d’obligations que la maternité?
Est-ce que le soin d’élever l’enfant n’incombe pas solidairement aux deux
auteurs de sa naissance? Dernièrement, un candidat a enlevé un
auditoire d’hommes avec cette phrase: «Si les femmes votaient, vous
seriez obligés de garder les enfants.» Cet argument n’est pas heureux. Il
exprime avec un trop naïf égoïsme que si l’homme détient le droit de la
femme, c’est surtout dans la crainte d’être astreint à faire son devoir. Les
républicains excluent les femmes du droit, de crainte que la femme ne leur
échappe comme servante.
Qu’on n’allègue pas contre les mères l’impossibilité où elles seraient
de quitter leur enfant pour voter. Est-ce que les mères ne pourraient pas
se faire remplacer par le père près du berceau de l’enfant pour aller
préparer, par leur vote, un avenir heureux aux petits êtres qu’elles
adorent?
Est-ce que l’homme serait déshonoré parce qu’à son tour il garderait
l’enfant?
La maternité ne s’oppose pas plus à l’exercice des droits civiques,
qu’elle ne s’oppose à l’exercice d’un commerce, à l’exercice d’une
profession, à l’exercice d’un art.
Les femmes ne manqueraient pas plus à leurs devoirs familiaux en
contribuant par leur part d’intelligence au bien de la société, qu’elles n’y
manquent en allant à l’Eglise, au théâtre, au cinéma, dans les magasins.
Si la maternité absorbait la femme, au point de l’empêcher de
s’occuper de toute vie extérieure, alors il faudrait commencer par faire des
rentes à toutes les mères qui n’en ont pas, car l’obligation de gagner le
pain quotidien, l’obligation d’aller quérir les provisions du ménage,
éloigneront certainement toujours plus les mères de leurs enfants que
celle d’aller déposer dans l’urne un bulletin de vote un jour d’élection.
D’ailleurs, si la maternité n’était une allégation hypocrite pour refuser le
vote aux femmes, celles qui ne sont pas mères devraient pouvoir exercer
leurs droits, tandis qu’elles en sont tout aussi bien destituées que celles
qui sont mères.
Si nous demandons pour toutes les femmes, pour celles qui sont
mères, comme pour celles ne le sont pas, l’intégralité du droit, c’est que
nous savons que le sentiment de la responsabilité, qui résulte de la
possession du droit, éveille à un haut degré l’idée du devoir.
C’est que nous savons que la femme, une fois en possession de ses
droits civiques, marchera avec l’homme dans la voie du progrès, et que
ses enfants, après s’être nourris de son lait, s’assimileront ses idées de
justice et de liberté.
Si nous demandons pour la femme l’intégralité du droit, c’est que nous
savons que l’autorité de la Citoyenne est indispensable à la femme pour
être non seulement une mère selon la nature, une mère qui donne à son
enfant la santé, la force et la beauté du corps, mais encore, mais surtout,
une mère selon l’intelligence, une mère capable de donner à son enfant la
santé, la force et la beauté de l’âme, mens sana in corpore sano.
Quelques personnes nous disent: La famille serait désorganisée si
l’homme cessait de régner partout en roi absolu, si la femme avait sa part
de pouvoir dans la famille et dans l’Etat.
Profonde erreur. Qu’est-ce donc qui peut mieux établir la sympathie
entre les hommes que la solidarité des intérêts qui résulte de la
communauté du pouvoir?
Qu’est-ce donc qui pourrait mieux qu’une communauté de pouvoir
amener entre les époux la concorde, l’union de l’esprit? Union autrement
solide, celle-ci, que l’union du cœur!
Qu’est-ce qui pourrait mieux qu’une communauté de pouvoir, amener
chez les époux une communion de goûts, d’idées, d’aspirations, une
communion de vie intellectuelle?
Aujourd’hui, quand l’union si éphémère du cœur cesse d’exister, un
abîme se creuse entre les époux parce qu’ils n’ont pas un seul point de
ralliement. Aucun but moral, aucun intérêt élevé ne les réunit. Et dans ces
ménages où l’on ne cause, certes, ni de politique ni de sociologie, les
enfants sont le plus souvent abandonnés.
Tandis qu’avec cette chose rationnelle, la vie publique ouverte aux
femmes, la vie publique commune pour les époux, comme est commune
la vie privée, le niveau moral intellectuel s’élèverait bientôt dans chaque
ménage.
L’obligation pour les femmes de s’occuper de choses sérieuses qui
intéressent les hommes, établirait au grand profit de l’harmonie conjugale
entre maris et femmes, une émulation salutaire pour le progrès.
Les intérêts de la société, avant d’être discutés et rendus publics,
seraient d’abord discutés et résolus en famille. L’enfant témoin de ces
saines préoccupations grandirait heureux. Sa précoce initiation à la vie
civique aurait la puissance de l’éloigner des atmosphères vicieuses.
Donc, à ce triple point de vue, le bonheur de l’homme, l’intérêt de
l’enfant, l’harmonie de la famille, il est urgent que la femme, que la mère,
exerce au plus tôt ses droits civiques.
Les Français souverains ne font encore que jouer au progrès. Ils ont
badigeonné une façade de république, mais ils n’ont point la virilité
nécessaire pour accomplir les transformations fondamentales en
changeant la condition de celle qui donne aux mâles et femelles de la
nation les muscles et la moëlle. Cependant, si les milieux influent sur les
individus, combien plus exercent sur eux, d’action, les molécules d’où ils
tirent leur origine.
«Dis-moi d’où tu sors, je te dirai qui tu es!...»
Les Français, qui tous, sortent de serves, ne peuvent pas être
naturellement indépendants. L’absence de caractère, la veulerie ne se
surmonteront que quand les humains naîtront de mères libres.
La mère donne à l’enfant son empreinte. Le sein maternel fait ce qu’ils
sont, les humains.
Les femmes annulées, opprimées font des enfants à la mentalité
tordue. Pour que les enfants soient droits cérébralement il faut appeler
celles qui les créent à la plénitude de l’existence sociale et politique.
 Il faut affranchir la dispensatrice de la vie en proclamant l’égalité des
sexes devant la loi.
Les femmes n’ont pas seulement le droit de participer à la politique.
Elles ont besoin d’y participer, afin de trouver là un point d’appui quand,
par le fait de la disparition de leur compagnon, le sol manque sous leurs
pieds.
Les femmes concentreraient sur l’amélioration des conditions
d’existence leurs énergies accumulées qui pourraient aider à résoudre
des problèmes qui aujourd’hui semblent insolubles, parce qu’ils
concernent l’humanité toute entière et que les seuls efforts masculins sont
impuissants à en donner la clef.
Le droit qu’ont les femmes de faire valoir leurs droits civiques, se
double pour elles du devoir de changer pour les générations qu’elles
créent, la vie de privations en vie de satisfaction, de bien-être.
Le droit d’intervenir dans les arrangements sociaux est refusé aux
femmes par les hommes qui leur attribuent le plus grand pouvoir occulte.
C’est une anomalie de garder les femmes qui tiennent une si grande place
dans la position d’inférieures où elles sont.
Si l’instinct de conservation ne contraint les antiféministes à dire à la
femme: Tu n’es plus une poupée avec laquelle on joue et dont on se joue.
Tu es un important acteur social dont on attend l’effort. Si la dispensatrice
de la vie reste annulée, si la femme n’a pas le pouvoir de sauver les
individus en transformant, avec les lois, le milieu social, elle sera la
vengeresse inconsciente qui poussera l’humanité dégénérée à s’abîmer
dans l’anéantissement.
 XVII
La fonction maternelle rétribuée

«Parce que la femme est mère, elle ne

peut être ni électeur, ni député, mais elle peut
être blanchisseuse, femme de peine.»

Hubertine Auclert.

Le sexe masculin est incapable de bien légiférer pour les deux sexes.
Parce que les femmes ne sont ni électeurs, ni éligibles, les lois,
mêmes faites pour elles, se tournent contre elles. Ainsi la loi sur la
recherche de la paternité fait condamner à l’amende, à la prison, à
l’interdiction de séjour, la fille mère qui n’a pas de preuves écrites de la
coopération de celui qu’elle poursuit comme cocréateur de son enfant.
Pour assurer aux hommes de n’être pas ennuyés par les femmes qu’ils
rendent mères, cette loi force les femmes à recourir à l’infanticide: la
charge d’un enfant étant au-dessus des ressources d’une fille-mère.
Pendant que des hommes graves clament que le pays se dépeuple,
pendant que des politiciens se liguent pour augmenter la natalité, ce ne
sont pas seulement celles qui n’ont pu devenir mères selon la formule
édictée par le Code, qui risquent la vie pour empêcher un bébé de naître.
Tous les jours, des épouses légitimes disent: «je ne peux pas avoir un
nouvel enfant, je serais délaissée» et elles vont trouver l’opérateur, de
chez lequel elles sortent non point toujours mortes, mais souvent
estropiées.
Pourquoi cette rage de destruction d’embryons humains existe-t-elle
dans un pays dont on prédit l’effacement pour cause de manque
d’habitants?
Parce que les Français, barbares, laissent à la femme qui ne parvient
pas à se suffire à elle-même, la charge d’élever les enfants communs.
 Femmes mariées comme femmes célibataires ont la terreur de la
maternité, parce que la maternité leur inflige, en plus de la souffrance, la
gêne, la pauvreté, la noire misère.
Les Françaises n’auraient point cette terreur de la maternité, si elles
pouvaient en participant à la législation, se donner des garanties. Les
hommes législateurs ne proposent point de procurer la sérénité au sein
maternel. On semble n’attacher aucune importance à ce que les Mères de
la nation, détériorées par les souffrances physiques et morales, ne soient
pas en état à donner le jour à des êtres assez forts pour supporter la vie.
Quand on veut fabriquer un objet, on donne au moule qui doit l’exécuter la
forme et la solidité nécessaires. Mais lorsqu’il s’agit de fabriquer des
humains, on se dispense de prendre cette précaution élémentaire. On
aime mieux créer des hôpitaux pour les malades que de donner aux
génératrices la possibilité de mettre au monde des enfants robustes, sur
lesquels n’aurait point de prise la maladie.
La nature qui ne demande pas à la femme son acquiescement à la
maternité, lui impose la charge de l’enfant. La mère n’a qu’une garantie
illusoire d’être aidée à élever l’enfant, puisque cette garantie repose sur le
seul bon plaisir de l’homme. Chacun sait en effet, que l’amant se dérobe
dès qu’apparaît la grossesse de son amie, et que de plus en plus
nombreux sont les époux légitimes qui font la fête et se dispensent de
remplir le devoir paternel. Dans l’intérêt de la nation et de l’espèce
humaine, cet état de choses doit cesser. Il est plus que temps de régler la
question relative aux rapports des sexes.
La mère qui assure la perpétuation de l’espèce doit être traitée comme
le soldat qui assure la sécurité du territoire: c’est-à-dire, être logée, nourrie
durant le temps de son service de mère.
La maternité cessera de terrifier les Françaises quand, au lieu de les
déshonorer et de les réduire au dénûment, elle les fera considérer et
indemniser comme d’indispensables fonctionnaires.
On se procurera l’argent nécessaire pour rétribuer la maternité en
établissant l’impôt paternel que les hommes auront avantage à payer pour
s’épargner des coups de revolver, des brûlures de vitriol et se garantir des
procès en recherche de paternité, suivis souvent de procès en divorce.
Il suffit de mettre dans la loi cet article: «A partir de 16 ans tout
Français paie l’impôt paternel pour indemniser les mères sans ressources
et assurer l’existence des enfants.»
 XVIII
L’enfant doit-il porter le nom de la Mère? Matriarcat

Tous ceux qui ont séjourné en Algérie dans les oasis, ont pu voir au
printemps des Arabes grimper au faîte de hauts palmiers femelles, pour
répandre au-dessus de leur tête du pollen de palmiers mâles. Les fruits du
dattier femelle ainsi fécondé, lui appartiennent en propre. Ne devrait-il pas
en être ainsi des fruits humains? Pourquoi la femme qui a modelé dans
ses flancs et moralement formé l’enfant, peut-elle moins bien le classer
socialement que l’homme fécondateur?
Ce ne sera plus en étalant devant les tribunaux une faiblesse, point
générale chez son sexe, en exhalant des plaintes au théâtre contre
l’homme auteur de son déshonneur, que la mère naturelle parviendra à se
faire honorer. C’est en revendiquant virilement la responsabilité de son
acte, c’est en demandant d’être, par une rétribution équitable, mise à
même d’exercer cette fonction sociale: la maternité.
L’élémentaire justice, faisant proposer de donner un père à l’enfant
naturel, qui paraît avantageux pour la femme, règle en réalité à son
détriment une situation, en augmentant l’autorité de l’homme.
La mère élevée par son enfant au rang de chef de famille, a une autre
situation morale que l’esclave qui reconnaît son indignité, en demandant
le patronage de l’homme qui se dérobe.
—Que veut le féminisme?
—Diviser l’autorité familiale et sociale.
Enlever à l’homme la moitié de son pouvoir autocratique pour en doter
sa compagne. Or la recherche de la paternité tend à un but tout opposé,
puisqu’elle concentre dans une seule main l’autorité, en conférant à
l’homme, hors du mariage, comme dans le mariage, la qualité de chef de
famille.
Emile de Girardin, qui demandait que toute distinction établie par les
lois, entre les enfants naturels, adultérins, incestueux, légitimes, fût abolie,
voulait que l’enfant porte le nom de sa mère et soit sous son autorité.
C’était le matriarcat substitué au patriarcat.
En confondant les mères entre elles, en les reconnaissant également
aptes à exercer l’autorité sur leurs enfants et à leur donner leurs noms, le
matriarcat empêcherait de distinguer les mères naturelles des autres, et il
rendrait les enfants égaux devant l’état-civil.
Bien que la couvade n’existe pas matériellement en France, les
Français matricides rendent moralement inexistantes les mères en se
substituant à elles, en s’attribuant le mérite de leurs maternités et en
retirant honneurs et profits.
La créatrice annulée et écrasée chez nous a exercé ailleurs, en une
période de l’évolution humaine, une domination bienfaisante.
Le matriarcat a existé et existe encore dans un certain nombre
d’agglomérations humaines.
Dans la Chine antique, avant l’époque de Fohi, disent les anciens
livres, les hommes connaissaient leur mère, mais ils ignoraient qui était
leur père.
En Asie, les Lyciens prenaient le nom de leur mère et attribuaient
l’héritage aux filles.
Dans l’ancienne Egypte, les enfants portaient le nom de leur mère et
étaient dirigés par elle. Les femmes d’Egypte, dit Hérodote, vont sur la
place publique, se livrent au commerce et à l’industrie pendant que les
hommes demeurent à la maison, et y font le travail intérieur. Les femmes,
aux portes de l’Egypte, considèrent comme un déshonneur de tisser et de
filer.
Les Hurons et les Iroquois prennent le nom de leur mère, et c’est par
elle qu’ils comptent leur généalogie. C’est par les femmes que se consiste
la nation, la noblesse du sang, l’arbre généalogique, l’ordre des
générations et la conservation des familles.
La noblesse utérine exista en France en la période féodale. La mère
noble donnait le jour à un fils noble: le père fut-il roturier.
Les Crétois, d’après Platon, nommaient leur patrie d’origine, matrie:
combien d’autres peuples primitifs préférant la réalité à la fiction se
servaient de ce doux terme, matrie (mère) pour désigner les lieux qu’ils
habitaient. Ne serait-il pas plus naturel de dire: la France est ma matrie,
ma mère, que: la France est ma patrie, mon père?
Les Touaregs qui habitent le centre du Sahara Africain, ainsi que
presque tous les peuples de race berbère, sont régis par le matriarcat. Ils
se dénomment en raison de cela Beni-oummia (fils de la mère).
C’est, dit une formule de leur droit traditionnel, «le ventre qui teint
l’enfant». Aussi, le fils d’une mère noble et d’un père esclave est noble, le
fils d’une mère esclave et d’un père noble, est esclave.
Chez les Beni-oummia la loi salique est renversée. Ce n’est point le fils
du chef qui succède à son père, c’est le fils de la sœur de celui-ci.
Même nomade, la femme Targuie est instruite et a partout la première
place. Elle discute dans les conseils de la Tribu. Elle a l’administration de
l’héritage. Elle seule dispose des tentes, maisons, troupeaux, sources et
jardins. Enfin, elle confère, avec la condition sociale, les droits de
commandement sur les serfs et les redevances payées par les voyageurs.
On voit que les peuples qui se désintéressent de la paternité, au point
de s’appeler «fils de la mère» accordent à la femme, avec l’autorité
morale, bien des privilèges et que les Français civilisés auraient beaucoup
à apprendre au point de vue féministe, des Touaregs qualifiés de
barbares, par ceux qui ne les connaissent pas.
Malgré que les hommes s’efforcent de se le dissimuler, la mère donne
à l’enfant son empreinte en dépit de l’école. Nos belles écoles, qui sont à
juste titre l’orgueil et l’espoir de la nation, ne cultivent que l’intelligence.
Quand on aura affranchi la dispensatrice de la vie en proclamant
l’égalité des sexes devant la loi, les humains ne piétineront plus. Ils
courront dans la voie du progrès.
 XIX
Les mères et la dépopulation

En entendant répéter que les femmes ont pour unique rôle de mettre
des enfants au monde, on pouvait penser que le sexe féminin restait dans
la mission qui lui est assignée, en demandant de faire partie de la
commission extra-parlementaire chargée de combattre la dépopulation.
Il nous semblait que les deux sexes réunis, étaient seuls compétents
pour décider d’une affaire où le couple est indispensable. Eh bien, nous
étions dans l’erreur. Les hommes seuls suffisent pour repeupler la France,
puisque pas une femme n’a été nommée membre de la commission de
repeuplement.
Les Français présomptueux croient qu’ils pourront, sans les
Françaises, augmenter la natalité, comme sans elles, ils pensent
continuer à administrer et à gouverner.
Les messieurs réunis pour remédier à la dépopulation, s’imagineront
résoudre la question en récompensant l’homme qui n’a que du plaisir en
devenant père, tandis que la femme ruine sa santé, risque sa vie en
enfantant.
N’étant point traitée comme la cheville ouvrière du repeuplement, la
génératrice continuera, suivant la coutume, à se préserver de la
fécondation, à recourir à l’avortement, de sorte que l’homme déçu de ses
rêves de paternité, ne pourra percevoir le dédommagement du travail
puerpéral qui lui aura été attribué.
Bien que notre orgueil national prenne plaisir à constater que les
peuples les plus civilisés sont les moins prolifiques, la disette d’enfants
met la France en si mauvaise posture dans le monde, que les législateurs
ont songé à proposer de surtaxer les célibataires, les veufs, les divorcés.
Si cet impôt vexatoire ne frappait que les femmes, qui ne votant point,
ne sont point à ménager, il serait sûrement adopté par la commission.
Mais les célibataires mâles étant électeurs, on ne rééditera pas la loi de
1798 qui, durant quelques années, surimposera les célibataires.
 D’ailleurs, un impôt ne contraindrait pas au mariage les célibataires.
L’unique moyen d’augmenter la natalité consiste à intéresser les
génératrices à cette augmentation. Pendant que les femmes n’auront
aucun avantage à procréer beaucoup d’enfants, elles se soustrairont aux
nombreuses maternités qui les accablent de souffrances, les surchargent
de travail et les enlaidissent!
Certes, les hommes sont en France bien puissants. Pourtant, quoique
souverains, ils ne peuvent ni changer les lois naturelles, ni augmenter,
sans le concours des femmes, la natalité. Il devient donc, dès lors,
indispensable que les femmes fassent connaître à quelles conditions elles
consentiront à être plus souvent mères. La solution de la question du
dépeuplement est seulement là.
Si les législateurs ne trouvent pas que les procréatrices sont, plus que
quiconque, aptes à donner sur cela leur avis, les efforts en vue du
repeuplement échoueront: les seules personnes capables de les faire
aboutir étant laissées de côté.
On propose de spolier les génératrices, de récompenser les hommes
du travail de gestation et de parturition des femmes. La prime donnée au
père n’allégerait point le fardeau maternel. Ce ne serait pas, parce que les
hommes civilisés empocheraient la récompense de l’enfantement, qu’ils
parviendraient plus que les primitifs—simulant les douleurs quand leur
femme accouche—à faire croire que ce sont eux qui mettent au monde
les enfants.
Pour obtenir de la femme qu’elle dépense ses forces, passe ses nuits
en veilles, ruine sa santé et risque sa vie afin d’augmenter la population,
c’est employer un singulier moyen que de gratifier le père, parce qu’il vote,
du travail accompli par la mère, qui ne vote pas. Est-ce le moyen de
déterminer les femmes à appeler à la vie beaucoup d’enfants? Les
ouvriers seraient-ils excités à travailler en un chantier où le contre-maître
s’attribuerait leur salaire?
Les nombreuses maternités déforment, fatiguent, affaiblissent,
enlaidissent, non le père, mais la mère. Si, au lieu de lui attacher par un
petit intérêt son mari, on spolie la femme souffreteuse de la rente qui lui
est due pour la donner à l’homme gaillard, est-ce que ce ne sera pas
inciter celui-ci à la dépenser, cette rente, avec une accorte voisine, point
productrice d’enfants?
 On tourne autour de la question de l’indemnisation maternelle, qu’on
ne veut pas proposer parce que la femme qui est en droit de la toucher,
est une hors la loi.
Il est facile de comprendre que quiconque a la peine doit toucher un
salaire et que les femmes ne se déprimeront ni ne s’useront plus, dans le
seul but de procurer des rentes à leur mari qui, après la douzaine
d’enfants pourrait les planter là.
La femme est la propriété de l’homme (une propriété de rapport)
comme l’arbre à fruit est celle du jardinier, puisqu’on reconnaît seulement
à celui-ci le droit de tirer profit des fruits humains.
Que l’on tourne et retourne, en tous sens, la question du
repeuplement, on ne parviendra à la résoudre que par l’indemnisation
maternelle, qui allégera les charges du père et permettra à la mère de
conserver en se soignant, des forces de réserve pour de nouvelles
maternités.
A la femme aisée ou riche, qui ne serait, ni par une indemnité, ni par
une retraite, encouragée à de successives maternités, on pourrait offrir
l’appât des récompenses honorifiques.
Nous trouvons puériles les décorations, mais puisque les hommes en
raffolent, les femmes peuvent bien, à leur exemple, les convoiter.
Il ne faudrait pas bien entendu, que la décoration attribuée à la
maternité, lui soit spéciale: une croix de la maternité serait de suite
appelée Croix de Gigogne.
Mais admettre la femme, six fois mère, à la Légion d’honneur,
honorerait la croix en lui faisant récompenser ce qui est utile au pays.
 XX
La femme en état de légitime défense

Les infanticides sont si fréquents, que chacun est forcé de se

demander s’ils ne sont pas une nécessité sociale, et s’il ne serait pas
temps de mettre, relativement à la génération, les conventions et les lois
en harmonie avec la nature.
Le public qui traque la coupable d’infanticide et dispute à la police le
soin de l’amener devant ses juges, n’est rien moins que disposé à
atténuer son crime.
Cependant, cette meurtrière était en état de légitime défense. C’est
pour se sauver qu’elle a tué. La société tout entière fonçait sur elle,
menaçait de la vomir de son sein, de l’écharper moralement. Affolée par
l’horreur de sa situation, elle est devenue horrible. Elle a mis son enfant
hors la vie, pour ne pas être mise hors de l’humanité.
Il faudrait voir comment se comporteraient ceux qui déclament contre
la fille-mère exterminatrice, s’ils étaient aux prises avec les difficultés
inénarrables de son présent et l’épouvantement de l’avenir qui lui est
réservé. Sa faute va tendre autour d’elle un cordon sanitaire. On
s’éloignera d’elle comme d’une pestiférée, ses amis ne la connaîtront
plus. Toutes les portes, tous les cœurs lui seront fermés. Enfin, alors que
ses besoins s’augmenteront de ceux d’une autre existence, elle ne
trouvera plus d’ouvrage.
La fille-mère a à choisir entre le mépris public, un dénûment sans nom
et... le crime! L’instinct de la conservation, le sentiment faux mais très
violent de l’honneur, en font une criminelle.
Quel est l’individu, homme ou femme, qui sachant qu’il va être à tout
jamais flétri et flétri injustement, est bien certain de ne pas perdre un
instant la raison, et de ne pas commettre un crime pour échapper à
l’opprobre qui l’attend?
A ceux qui soutiennent que la mère infanticide a été impitoyable, on
peut demander si elle a été aussi impitoyable et féroce que la société qui
contraint toutes les pauvres filles, sous peine de déchéance, à se