Harvard teacher writes book asking humans to rethink their relationships with animals

Christine Korsgaard, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, released a book that is a dream come true for every animal rights' advocate: in “Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals", she argues that humans are not inherently more important than animals and therefore we should treat them much better than we do.

According to Korsgaard, who is an expert on moral philosophy, it's our duty, as humans, to value our fellow creatures not as tools, but as sentient beings capable of having consciousness and who are able to have lives that are good or bad for them. This includes, to her, not eating them! Korsgaard has been a vegetarian for 40 years and more recently went vegan.

"Animals are sentient beings and some are capable of interacting with us, but on the other hand there they are, on our dinner plates, pulling our wagons, hunted by us, and made to fight with one another for our amusement", she explained during an interview to the Harvard Gazette.

She also questions what seems to be a pre-established idea that humans are naturally more important than the other animals. According to her, anything that is good is good for someone; anything that is important is important to someone. Therefore, the question is: humans are more important to whom exactly?

"We may be more important to ourselves, but that doesn’t justify our treating animals as if they’re less important to us, any more than the fact that your family is more important to you justifies you treating other people’s families as if they are less important than yours", she defends.

Despite being an incipient debate and causing several disagreements, animal's rights are starting to get under the spotlight — and Korsgaard thinks there's room for hope that people will think more about the way we treat animals as a moral issue.

If you too don't agree with the cruelty animals are submitted to in the food industry, please stop consuming animal products.