Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) argued in Discourse on Inequality (1754) for the inclusion of animals in natural law on the grounds of sentience alone: "... it is clear that, being destitute of intelligence and liberty, cannot recognize that law; as they partake, however, in some measure of our nature, in consequence of the sensibility wherewith they are endowed, they ought to partake of natural right; so that mankind is subjected to a kind of obligation even toward the brutes." In his treatise on education, Emile, or On Education (1762), he encouraged parents to raise their children on a vegetarian diet.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), following Aquinas, opposed the idea that humans have direct duties toward nonhumans. For Kant, cruelty to animals was wrong only because it was bad for humankind. He argued in 1785 that "cruelty to animals is contrary to man's duty to himself, because it deadens in him the feeling of sympathy for their sufferings, and thus a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation to other human beings is weakened."
Read more about this topic: Animal Rights Activists, Historical Development in The West, 18th Century: Centrality of Sentience
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