A right to become

Jessica Loudis considers Ecuador's passage of a Rights of Nature Act [1] in the light of the thinking of Hannah Arendt, "one of the founders of modern human rights theory", but with this caveat:

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt noted that one of the greatest perils to human rights was that it could lapse into the rhetoric of animal rights...thus losing sight of the fundamental dignity of man. In light of this concern, while Arendt is a helpful tool for evaluating the RoN, I'm certain that she would have loathed the application of her thinking in this context.

Perhaps not. I wonder whether Arendt, were she alive today, would agree with Martha Nussbaum [2] on the case for recognizing rights (among them a right to flourish) for entities outside traditional categories, including non-human animals, and would not see these as incompatible with human dignity or in any way demeaning of it.

Loudis also suggests that Arendt's concept of natality, or "the capacity for beginning," is helpful when thinking about how to treat the Ecuadorian Act:

For Arendt, natality signifies not just birth, but also the possibility of radical newness, of remaking the world over and over again through "the entry of a novel creature... as something entirely new." Natality, in other words, is the thing that both enables politics and also saves it from itself through offering the possibility of renewal, and as such, the possibility of difference.

I'd like to suggest a broader conception of natality than Arendt had in mind may be helpful. We should think not only about the individual or the species, important as those are, but also about what species and assemblages of species in ecosystems have the potential to evolve into. As Tom Bailey writes:

What is worth considering is how it could be possible to conserve what biologically might exist – to adopt Gould’s coinage, the “morphospace” of an organism, its theoretical ‘adaptive landscape’ of what might evolve from it in a certain timescale. To push the boat even further: How should we go about conserving hypothetical organisms, of which we have no certain idea that they will ever exist in the future? Do we have an obligation to do so?

Pimelodus cyclopum, known today as Astroblepus cyclopus or Preñadilla, 'the little pregnant one'. "Volcanoes vomiting fish is such a common phenomenon, and so well-known among all the local inhabitants, that there can not be the slightest doubt of its authenticity" -- Alexander von Humboldt.

Footnotes

1. See Rights and persons.

2. Frontiers of Justice (2006) . See also Human being and Twisting the sinews.

Twisting the sinews

Martha Nussbaum thinks about animals in conversation with Alan Saunders (transcript).

Weighted balls that simulate struggling prey for tigers in zoos, contraception for elephants: yes, these (and much else in the discussion and her book) are worth serious thought -- not least that humans are hereby taking control of, or at least playing a key role in, not only the survival (or otherwise) of existing species but also their future evolution.

Natural selection -- including, for example, the evolution of faster and more subtle prey -- framed the tiger's fearful stealth and strength. What will a ball on a string, or a robot, do?

Plenty of what humans do has inadvertent selectionary pressures, of course. Propeller and artificial noise in the oceans, for example, has shrunk the auditory world of whales from hundreds or even thousands of miles into a 'tiny bubble' (says Christopher Clark as reported by Stephen Palumbi): in that case, we are 'selecting' for the diminishment or even the end of one of the world's greatest musical wonders.

As Stephen Palumbi has said, "it is time we started taking responsibility for our evolutionary actions. "

Seen/Unseen

What form does this επιστήμη (episteme - knowledge) take, and how far, in the various areas of human life and study, can our need for it be satisfied? What will the most satisfactory answers to our "why" questions be like? How are our various answers related? How far should we press the demand for understanding?

(The quote is from Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle's De Motu Animalium. The image is the rainbow serpent from aboriginal mythology.)