Friendship in Captivity? Plato’s Lysis as a Guide to Interspecies Justice

ABSTRACT

How should a just society treat the many non-human animals that live entirely within human societies? If securing the capabilities of non-human animals is a basic commitment of justice, how can we know which capabilities to secure, and at what level, to enable them to live lives worthy of their dignity? Friendship, as understood through Plato’s Lysis, suggests a posture toward animals that can enable humans to better apprehend what their flourishing requires and to embrace changes in human-animal relationships that are necessary to animals’ flourishing. This conception of friendship deepens the role of the species norm in evaluating humans’ relationships with animals and enables us to see the flourishing of other animals as intimately linked to human flourishing.

KEYWORDS:

• Capability approach
• other species capabilities
• human animal relations
• friendship
• species norm
• interspecies justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Elephants may not be completely weaned until they are ten years old. They are dependent on their mothers for physical and emotional development until the age of five, and like human babies their brains continue to develop in response to stimuli and relationships with their mothers and their herds. See Meyer (2015).

2 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/elephant-leaves-edmonton-zoo-for-breeding-program-1.681372.

3 https://www.edmonton.ca/attractions_events/edmonton_valley_zoo/lucy-news.aspx.

4 See McMillan (2018).

5 Donaldson and Kymlicka (2017) are critical of models of cross species relationships based on mutual feeling and ideas of world sharing. They challenge applications of care ethics and the capabilities approach in particular as providing highly circumscribed views of animals’ interests and/or idealising human/animal bonds that contribute to a view of animals as a caste to be used for human interest. A philosophically informed conception of friendship addresses these concerns by establishing recognition of the other as a being with its own good and unique ways of flourishing as a fundamental condition of friendship.

6 All references to the Lysis are from Reeve (2006).

7 This concept also appears in Plato’s Symposium when Diotima says,

I don’t think an individual takes joy in what belongs to him personally unless by ‘belonging to me’ (oikeion) he means ‘good’ The idea is later developed in the Stoic theory of oikeôsis, which explains virtue as an extension of what is suitable (oikeion) to human nature. The locus classicus for this is Diogenes Laertius. (Lives 7.85-89)

In Stoic theory the stages of human development each have an oikeiosis, a proper relationship to one’s self and surroundings. Maturity involves learning to extend the feelings of care and commitment developed in the small sphere of the family to increasingly different others and complex communities. See Hierocles quoted in Stobaeus 4.671-673. For a wider discussion of the concept, see Joosse (2010, 279–302).

8 See Ludwig (2010, 134–150).

9 Temple Grandin’s work reducing fear in slaughterhouse animals so that they go more willingly to their deaths is one well recognised example of this type of persuasion. Stephen Cooke describes the use of trust building practices between humans and laboratory animals to foster the animals’ compliance with procedures that cause them serious harm. Cooke discusses the ways that humans use communicative practices that relax the animals’ self-protective mechanisms, which he argues is a moral wrong that is not visible in rights language (Cooke 2019).

10 When Socrates does not recognise Lysis’s name the men respond, “I’m sure you know what the boy looks like; his looks are enough by which to know him” (204e3-6).

11 See Nichols (2006).

12 He tells the boys, “It is what belongs to one’s self, it seems, that passionate love and friendship and desire are directed toward … and if you two are friends with each other, then in some way you naturally belong to each other” (221e).

13 Socrates says, “If there is a difference between belonging and being like, then we might have something to say about what a friend is … why don’t we agree to say that what belongs is something different from what is like?” (222b).

14 The close connection between humans and dogs is evident cross culturally. Dogs co-exist with humans as companions, hunters, scavengers and something akin to livestock. Different attitudes toward dogs, and the various practices of inclusion or relegation from human communities share an intensity that Serpell argues is tied to their closeness to us as a species:

With the possible exception of some non-human primates (see Dawkins 1993; DiamondBelyaev, 1993) no other species comes as close to us as the dog in affective or symbolic terms, and by the same token, no other species makes a stronger claim to be treated as a human. Yet, far from making the dog the object of universal affection and respect, this unusual ‘closeness’ or affinity seems to provoke a puzzling degree of psychological tension and ambivalence. (2017, 302)

15 Nagasawa et al. (2015) show the primary role of facial cues in regulating the human-dog bond through oxytocin secretion. The “baby schema,” which includes anthropomorphic features, large size and juvenile (neotenous) traits is consistently shown to affect human preferences and attitudes toward animals (Serpell 2004; Borgi and Cirulli 2016). Experiments on silver foxes (Belyaev 1979; Trut 1999) suggest that genetic selection for friendliness in animals can neotenize adult temperament and physical features by altering the genes controlling systems that modulate fear and aggression, such as the HPA axis (Borgi and Cirulli 2016). Other constructions of this process extend more agency to the dogs, regarding the tendency to be less wary and more open to humans to be a factor that led dogs to join human societies in the first place. See, for example, Fuentes and Porter (2018).

16 This type of relationship to dogs (and pets in general) is a growing phenomenon beyond the United States. In China, where Pomeranians and other small fluffy dogs are popular, pet services for the over 73 million pet owners, including hotels, daycare, and grooming centres are a $25 billion a year industry. This is larger than the tea industry. Pet owners on average spend more per year than the average college graduate earns in a month. Notably, this is occurring in the context of human capability deprivation due to bad air quality and loss of community. See “Once Denounced as Bourgeois Vanity” (2019).

17 See Horse Welfare Issues (2017).

18 Among modes of performance riding, dressage is generally regarded as the least stressful on the horse.

19 See Monks of New Skete (2002).

20 For example, humans are advised,

You have resources—food, treats, toys, and attention. Your dog wants those resources. Make him earn them. That’s the basis of ‘Nothing in Life is Free’. When your dog does what you want, he gets rewarded with the thing he wants.

And, “Stop giving away resources. Do you mindlessly pet your dog for no reason? Stop. Your attention is a valuable resource to your dog. Don’t give it away. Make him earn it.” Humane Society of the United States (2010) cited in Pręgowski (2015).

21 For a broader discussion of this problem in scientific observation see Smuts (2001, 293–309).

22 Sandel argues that attachment to friends is necessary to human self-recognition in the sense that we come into self-awareness through friendship and thus friendship is the ground for liberal choices. See Sandel (1998).

23 “Starting” a horse is a kinder way to describe the process of bringing a horse into a cooperative relationship with humans, also known as “breaking” the horse.

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Amy Linch

Amy Linch is Associate Teaching Professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University. He is Associate Teaching Professor and co-Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at Penn State University where she teaches political theory. She has authored and edited several works on democratisation in postcommunist societies and social and political transformation in early modern England. Her recent work focuses on the intersection between human capabilities and the capabilities of other species.