1.5.8.3 The Expanding Circle

Version 1.0 October 2022                             (Previous Version)

We must accept that we are human and naturally preference those who are closest to us over those who are more distant.  The philosopher Peter Singer refers to this as the Expanding Circle.  We love our closest friends and family more than distant friends and family, and these more than strangers.

Our love for unknown strangers is more like the love those rulers expressed for some of their peers: we respect the human dignity of strangers, and wish to do them no harm, through our negligence or ignorance, and we are willing to at least sacrifice some of our discretionary consumption to contribute towards efforts to enhance the welfare of the needy.

In earlier times, to provide for human welfare, we exploited animals, hunting and breeding them, using them for meat, dairy products, beasts of burden, clothing and so on.  In the earliest times hunter gatherers engaged in rituals to propitiate the animal spirits for the harm we did to them.  Some societies (such as the theistic ‘West’) rationalized the use and abuse of animals, declaring in sacred texts that they were made for ‘man’ to exploit.  Other people invented totally false pseudo-scientific theories that explained why animals didn’t really feel pain: because they were cold-blooded, or their seeming cries of pain and so forth were only instinctive reactions because animals had no souls and could not think or feel like humans do.  Contemporary hunters and fishers as well as livestock farmers say that exploiting animals is the natural order of things, which humans have always done.  Some, not all, livestock farmers add that they take great care to minimize the suffering of their animals, and some indeed do.    

Other societies (especially in the ‘East’ of Eurasia, where belief in reincarnation flourished) treated animals with more respect, accepting that they may embody souls low on the path to enlightenment, but nevertheless they felt suffering, and were sentient beings.  In modern times we cannot escape the truth that animals, especially so called ‘higher’ species, are sentient and experience emotions, suffering and pleasure. 

Though the Ancient Greeks may not have had a unique word for it, we should include in our definition of love compassion for all sentient beings, which involves empathy and a desire to minimize suffering and maximize their welfare.  This is all the more possible in modern times when we can use machines rather than beasts of burden, obtain protein and other essential nutrients without killing animals, and produce materials without fleecing or skinning animals.