Objectification

A concept proposed by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, referring to an attitude or act of using an individual solely as a means to some other end. Kant’s definition was later developed into discussions of the sexual objectification of women by feminist theorists opposed to pornography, including Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin.

Objectification of animals

Kant originally discussed objectification only in relation to humans, but there is room to extend it to animal rights.

Kant believed that moral rights and duties go together, so those incapable of fulfilling duties have no rights. But Tom Regan, who extended Kant’s philosophy to establish the rights view, argued that animals who are subjects of a life have rights even if they cannot fulfill moral duties. If we accept Regan’s position, an “attitude or act of using an animal who is a subject of a life solely as a means to some other end” can also be called objectification.

For example, objectification of animals can include the following acts and attitudes:

• Killing animals and eating their corpses.
• Confining animals and watching them for human amusement.
• Seeing animals merely as “cute creatures” instead of respecting them as subjects of a life.
• Idealizing or deifying animals: “Unlike humans, animals aren’t greedy,” “Animals don’t kill unnecessarily,” and so on.
• Speciesist language that reinforces human prejudices about animals and uses them as metaphors: “betraying someone like a rat,” “dirty as a pig,” and so on.

Related materials

• Animal objectification: An article reviewing existing discussions of objectification, similarities and differences between human and animal objectification, and connections to animal rights.
• Objectification (paper): A paper on objectification by Martha C. Nussbaum.