Immanuel Kant's Duties Towards Marine Animals

Duties towards Marine Animals Marine animals such as dolphins and belugas are used for entertainment and experimental studies. This remains a major problem because keeping marine animals in confinement for human purposes is a violation of animal rights to live freely from human use, regardless the type of treatment that the marine animals are receiving. In this paper, I will argue that we ought to reject Immanuel Kant’s notion of treating marine animals such as whales or belugas as a means to human ends due to their lack of rational capacity because Kant fails to properly account for marginal cases including infants who also lack the rational capacity, but they are treated as an ‘end’ in themselves. Immanuel Kant would support the

This conveys that we as humans will discriminate against animals by excluding them from the moral community since they aren’t humans, which is also defined as speciesism that claims species membership, such as homo sapiens “justifies greater or different moral status” (Warriner, 20). Nonetheless, even if humans like infants and the mentally disabled are excluded from the moral community because they lack rational autonomy, then humans can treat those particular individuals however they want, similar to animals. Kant argues that humans shouldn’t be used as a means in any circumstances, despite their lack of rational autonomy so we cannot treat humans, however, we want, but all humans should be treated as ends (Warriner, 25). Hence, marine animals like whales and belugas ought to be included in the moral community in order to address the problem of marginal cases so we do have specific duties towards marine animals as rational beings and cannot use them as a means to our