How to Ground Animal Rights on African Values: A Constructive Approach
In this chapter I expound "African Modal Relationalism," Kai Horsthemke's label for my theory of animal rights with a sub Saharan pedigree, and I defend it from several criticisms he has recently made of it in his book Animals and African Ethics. Central to my theory, developed in the light of some values salient in indigenous African thought, is the claim that a being has a greater moral status, the more it is in principle capable of relating communally with characteristic human beings. Horsthemke maintains that this principle is anthropocentric and speciesist, is poorly motivated relative to his egalitarian individualist approach, and does not have the implications that I contend. I aim to rebut these and related objections, contending that African Modal Relationalism is in fact a promising way to philosophically ground animal rights.