Thinking theologically across the human/non-human boundary often generates surprising results. Considering the topic of freedom in human and more-than-human contexts fits this pattern. This paper engages a number of striking complexities in what it might mean to take freedom for non-human animals seriously. It argues that a liberation theology for non-human animals does not necessarily mean the abolition of all human use of non-human animals, but that it does have radical implications for what forms of co-existence and collaboration are legitimate.
Roderick Nash suggests the word ‘wild’ may have its origins in the Teutonic and Norse roots for ‘will’. This suggests that wild entities are those who are self-willed, autonomous, and unruly. ‘Wilderness’ is then the place of wild animals, where they are able to live beyond the confines of human control. This concept of the wild is one way to understand what freedom might mean for non-human animals. In the popular imagination, this links visions of non-human liberty such as Joy Adamson’s 1960 book Born Free, the inspiration for James Hill’s 1966 film of the same name, and Simon Wincer’s 1993 film Free Willy.
Reflecting on what freedom means in a human context, however, leads to the striking thought that accounts of human freedom do not usually mean living beyond the confines of human control. Human parallels to Born Free exist in visions of living in a place without laws that restrict one’s behaviour, but most accounts of freedom recognise that in a social context freedom is inevitably subject to restrictions. John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, for example, allows for societal control of individuals when the exercise of their freedom would harm the interests of others. Anarchist philosophies also usually recognise the need to negotiate expectations of behaviour within society. If freedom for humans can include restrictions on the actions of individuals, it could be argued that it is inappropriate to judge that freedom for non-humans must necessarily exclude human control.
One counter-argument to there being permissible human restrictions on non-human animals would be to note that intra-species restrictions on freedom are different from inter-species restrictions. Wolves living apart from any human interference would be subject to significant restrictions on their behaviour in order to live in society with other wolves, analogous to the limitations most humans accept. So wolves subject to other wolves could be considered free, but to be subject to the control of another more powerful species of animal could be considered categorically different. This argument is compelling if one accepts that any significant interaction between humans and other animals is illegitimate, but this is implausible in its dependence on a human exceptionalist view in which humans are categorically different from all other creatures and a seemingly inescapable trajectory towards the project of extinction of the human species as the only means of insulating all other creatures from human contact.
Things become more complex if one is prepared to consider the possibility of mutually beneficial collaboration between humans and other animals. For example, it is possible that the domestication of dogs arose from a collaborative hunting practice from which humans and wild dogs benefitted. For the collaboration to be effective, both humans and dogs would have to accept limitations on their behaviour, but it does not seem appropriate, at least in the ideal case, to state that this practice was not free for humans or dogs because of the behavioural adaptations each were required to make. In later stages of the domestication of dogs, the relationship became more asymmetric, with humans exercising control over their reproduction in ways that affected canine behaviour and body shape. If we accept the possibility of a free human/non-human collaboration, however, it seems that we would need a complex account of what kind of restrictions on the behaviour of non-human animals living in society with humans were compatible with judgements about their freedom.
While some restrictions on human behaviour are compatible with most accounts of what human freedom means, it is obviously the case that certain forms of coercive control between humans are not. The enslavement of Africans by European colonists in order to make use of their labour in the Americas is an obvious example. More generally, the power exercised by monarchs or other political leaders over those subject to their power has often been exercised in coercive ways that failed to enable the freedom of their subjects. Political theorists seek to give accounts of how governments should function in order to make adequate provision for the freedom of their subjects. Considering freedom in a non-human case would seem to require similarly complex judgements.
The exploitation of humans on the basis of their social location, their race or ethnicity, their gender, or on the basis of other characteristics, has been challenged by a range of social movements. Christian theologies of liberation, originating in Latin American base communities, made a theological case for challenging the oppression of the poor. Parallel and successor movements such as Black Theology, feminist theology, Womanist theology, mujerista theology, disability theology, and others, highlighted the need for Christians to act to challenge discrimination and disadvantage experienced by these groups.
There are obvious parallel routes that a liberation theology for non-human animals could follow to attend to growing evidence from animal welfare science about the preferences of non-human animals what a flourishing life consists in for them, and then to challenge the ways that oppressive human systems, such as industrial animal agriculture, make use of the bodies of non-human animals without regard for their flourishing. If such theologies draw on analysis of freedom that operates across the human/non-human boundary, however, they will not advocate with certain accounts of animals rights, such as Gary Francione's, for the abolition of all forms of human co-existence with other animals, but for practices of collaboration that are just and respectful in relation to the question of what constitutes a good life for particular non-human animal fellow-creatures. While this seems a more modest proposal, its implementation would require radical change.
Thinking theologically across the human/non-human boundary often generates surprising results. Considering the topic of freedom in human and more-than-human contexts fits this pattern. This paper engages a number of striking complexities in what it might mean to take freedom for non-human animals seriously. For example, some accounts of animal liberation would require the abolition of all human control, but human accounts of freedom usually justify human control over humans in certain circumstances. Setting aside implausible demands for full separation between humans and non-human animals, a more complex account is required. This paper argues that a liberation theology for non-human animals does not necessarily mean the abolition of all human use of non-human animals, but that it does have radical implications for what forms of co-existence and collaboration are legitimate.