Humpty Dumpty

HumptyFiat justicia, ruat coeluntet.   (Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.)
Lord Mansfield

The “love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline” is one definition of philosophy. At first glance it seems like a worthwhile aspiration and yet as we shall see, this belief and others like it in that highest of human institutions and noblest of disciplines has not taken humanity very far, not very far at all.

Where should we expect our philosophers to guide us, what behaviors should they advocate? Their powerful intellects and moral example should instruct us how to create a sustainable human community of course. But only for humans? What about animals? What about a more conscious regard for the rest of Creation?

What have our most prominent Western philosophers and scientists had to say about these questions? Aristotle’s Great Chain of Being ranked animals below human beings because they lacked reason. Rene Descartes viewed animals as automatons without a soul. Immanuel Kant was against cruelty to animals, not because of his respect for them, but because he felt it had an adverse effect on human relations. Jeremy Bentham elevated the level of discourse when he raised the question regarding how humans treat animals. He said we should ask ourselves not “can they reason,” or “can they talk,” but “can they suffer.”

When compassion becomes a consideration in any debate concerning human behavior our very humanity is elevated. One of the most potent arguments against capital punishment, for example, is the dehumanizing effect it has on the community that sanctions it. True compassion is not selective, however, in that there is no other in the flora and fauna of creation. Recently, a crusade to broaden the definition of “legal persons” to embrace some of our animal cousins is the continuation of a new and more profound human compassion “aborning” and we all need to encourage this process or “labor.”

In the context of Simple Reality, philosophy is a very simple discipline. When Oneness is the fundamental worldview, the goal for wholesome human behavior would be to focus on “healing” all of the delusional “splits” that divide Creation. In the Garden of Eden, the mythological Adam and Eve had a “great fall” into unconsciousness. In a sense we could say the goal of philosophy would have to be to not only awaken the Adams and Eves of the global village but to put Humpty Dumpty (all delusional dualisms) together again; to wake up all the king’s horsemen and all the king’s men to engage in this endeavor.

Steven Wise, a scholar in the field of animal law is working on repairing one of those splits. “I knew if I was going to begin breaking down the wall that divides humans and non-humans, I first had to find a way around this issue of personhood.”  Since animals have no status as legal “persons,” they could not sue in court, or in other words, they could not get the justice that Lord Mansfield speaks of in our opening quote.

“In 1772, the chief justice of the English Court of King’s Bench, Lord Mansfield, issued a writ of habeas corpus—a court order requiring that a prisoner be brought before a judge by his or her captor in order to rule on the legality of that prisoner’s detainment—on behalf of a slave named James Somerset, a being as invisible then to the law as any non-human.”

Using slaves, treated by 18th century law as examples of “non-persons,” we generalize not only an injustice but a self-destructive madness itself? Slavery was finally outlawed in Britain and slaves were no longer the other before the law. Since then ships, corporations, partnerships, states, Hindu idols, the holy book of the Sikhs and a river sacred to the Maori tribe in New Zealand have all been found to be “legal persons.”

Of course, the aforementioned are not “legal persons,” not human; but what does being human mean? To begin to heal the split between humans and animals (although he would not understand it that way) Wise defines carefully chosen animal clients, chimpanzees, orcas, and elephants as having “human traits.” “They have their own distinct languages, complex social interactions and tool use. They grieve and empathize and pass knowledge from one generation to the next. The very same attributes, in other words, that we once believed distinguished us from other animals.”  This is what the beginning of a paradigm shift looks like.

A court of law might not look at these attributes as defining “legal personhood.” Perhaps they can be used as evidence to support a more narrowly defined compassionate animal that the court can smile upon. “Wise intends to wield this evidence in mounting the case that his clients are ‘autonomous beings,’ ones who are able, as Wise defines that term, ‘to freely choose, to self-determine, to make their own decisions without acting from reflex or innate behavior [instincts].’”

A major barrier to human awakening is excluding the source of human wisdom, intuition and its accompanying profound insights. Philosophy worships reason and logic which spring forth from the intellect. The conflict between the intellect and intuition has shown up in the courtroom in the battle to define “legal personhood.”

“In a 2001 debate with Peter Singer, Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit—who has debated Wise as well—argued that only facts will lead to according animal rights, not intuitions. ‘Much is lost,’ Posner stated at one point, ‘when intuition is made a stage in a logical argument.’”  Not as much is lost, Mr. Posner, as when intuition is excluded, including civilization itself.

Many habeas corpus cases are filed by a proxy for people like children, mentally incapacitated adults, and prisoners who cannot represent themselves. It is time that we all become proxies for animals, for nature and for Creation in general.

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References and notes are available for this essay.
Find a much more in-depth discussion in the Simple Reality Trilogy
by Roy Charles Henry:
Where Am I?  Story – The First Great Question
Who Am I?  Identity – The Second Great Question
Why Am I Here?  Behavior – The Third Great Question

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