Contempt begets contempt
Guest entry by Björn Freter, Lecturer for World Philosophy, SOAS, University of London
Speciesism seems to continue to be perceived as a rather marginal problem. Perhaps it is strange, with everything that plagues us in our everyday life, to also have to be concerned with the plight of chickens, pigs or salmon. This generosity is dangerous. At first it is dangerous, or more precisely: life threatening, for all those non-human animals who are exploited, tortured and murdered. However, this contempt is also dangerous for ourselves, for us human animals. Contempt, when it is accepted by society in one form, like it is widely accepted in speciesism, it is very likely that it will come to the fore in other forms as well. The line separating that which can legitimately be held in contempt and that which cannot is arbitrary. And if it is arbitrary, then it can also be arbitrarily moved, other lines can be arbitrarily drawn. The drawing of such lines thereby becomes nothing but the prerogative of the strongest power – whatever this strength may consist of. A strange regress to the principle of auctoritas, non veritas, facit legem (“Power, not truth, makes law.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1668).
It is simply not justifiable as to why non-human animals should be of less value than ahuman animal. That is not to deny that differences can certainly be found. But why would these differences have normative consequences? Even if these differences enable the oppression of the respective other? The oppression of non-human animals by human animals or the oppression of female human beings by male human beings has proven possible. However, the existence of this possibility in no way legitimizes its realization. If possibility were to legitimize realization, then non-oppression could be justified using the same argumentation, as this is indeed also possible. Here we find a most important clue as to the interest of those who hold others in contempt. Contempt is motivated by selfishness, by the interest to be superior, to have that which someone else has, to not be troubled by the pain of the allegedly inferior other.
Contempt is not always easy to recognize, and it is not always indisputable as to whether a certain practice is contemptuous or not. But mustn’t we begin here? To avoid one practice of contempt will not advance us in the long term if contempt itself continues to be sanctioned socially and/or politically: for if a society accepts contempt,then it accepts arbitrary normative inferiorization, i. e. contempt. And this can then be directed against any people or any idea or any entity. If it is indeed an accepted social practice to normatively inferiorize and to hold others in contempt, then there isactually no compelling reason, apart from tired references to conventions, traditions, the (contingent) course of history and similarly toothless arguments, why one should not be allowed to display contempt for a Buddhist person, a female human being, a person with a disability, a cow, a herring, the idea of social justice or whatever else one chooses. Arbitrariness knows no argument against further arbitrariness.
Suddenly, we can understand that speciesist contempt is a problem that we cannot afford to continue to marginalize. In a society in which one contempt thrives, another contempt will sooner or later also thrive. There is a connection between all the different forms of superiorism – be it a sexist or a speciesist or a racist or any other one. If we allow ourselves to tolerate certain practices of normative arbitrariness, like speciesism with its irrationality, nihilism, arbitrariness, its excessive self-centeredness, we will leave ourselves unarmed against other forms of contempt.
Björn Freter, Lecturer for World Philosophy, SOAS, University of London, UK, bf22@soas.ac.uk
