Here's a way to modify the Nietzchean perfectionist theory so as to avoid discounting nonhuman animal suffering: let's say that it's not just human excellence that matters, but excellence simpliciter, where excellence is defined roughly as fulfilling the constitutive capacities of a being of one's kind. For a human being those are ratio…
Here's a way to modify the Nietzchean perfectionist theory so as to avoid discounting nonhuman animal suffering: let's say that it's not just human excellence that matters, but excellence simpliciter, where excellence is defined roughly as fulfilling the constitutive capacities of a being of one's kind. For a human being those are rational, creative, and moral capacities. For (at least wild) dogs those are social and hunting capacities (which has the tragic upshot that excellence for a dog necessarily comes at a cost to other animals). For trees (if we want to include nonsentient lifeforms) those are growth capacities. So a world where cows, chickens, and the rest are suffering miserable lives is worse than otherwise because the animals in question are barred from fulfilling their constitutive capacities; such a world misses out on the distinctive excellence of certain of our fellow creatures.
This view has an attractive upshot for opponents of intervention in the wild: the suffering of wild animals may be a tolerable cost of them achieving their kind-specific excellence (which we would frustrate with intervention). One open question would be how to quantify excellences of different kinds (if that's at all possible). How many thriving whale pods are worth one Hamlet (or perhaps vice versa)?
I've always been skeptical of the genuine normativity of such "constitutive" norms, since there's no guarantee that existing beings' constitutions will be oriented towards genuine goodness. Effective mosquitos--or viruses!--are not a kind of "excellence" worth having in the world. So I think we always need to ask the prior question of whether one's "constitutive capacities" are oriented towards something good, or not. (But it may be that this constrained version of the view could help count at least *many* animal interests appropriately, even if *some* must be rejected as simply bad.)
You have reinvented Aristotle, but don't worry, you are in good company. Ruth Millikan wrote that once something is selected and copied for, whatever it was selected and copied for becomes a proper function, a final cause, a telos.
This circles back to classic Stoicism, where the essence of the good is to fulfill one's nature to the ultimate capacity. For humans, this was seen as rationality and virtue (or arete, "excellence"), and included acting for the good of all; for animals, it would have been as you described.
Here's a way to modify the Nietzchean perfectionist theory so as to avoid discounting nonhuman animal suffering: let's say that it's not just human excellence that matters, but excellence simpliciter, where excellence is defined roughly as fulfilling the constitutive capacities of a being of one's kind. For a human being those are rational, creative, and moral capacities. For (at least wild) dogs those are social and hunting capacities (which has the tragic upshot that excellence for a dog necessarily comes at a cost to other animals). For trees (if we want to include nonsentient lifeforms) those are growth capacities. So a world where cows, chickens, and the rest are suffering miserable lives is worse than otherwise because the animals in question are barred from fulfilling their constitutive capacities; such a world misses out on the distinctive excellence of certain of our fellow creatures.
This view has an attractive upshot for opponents of intervention in the wild: the suffering of wild animals may be a tolerable cost of them achieving their kind-specific excellence (which we would frustrate with intervention). One open question would be how to quantify excellences of different kinds (if that's at all possible). How many thriving whale pods are worth one Hamlet (or perhaps vice versa)?
I developed a similar view in a paper I had published in a student journal during my undergrad (starts on pg. 53): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OokVdHBYoirShlgXGgbIrk6rHG3sRPy9/view
I've always been skeptical of the genuine normativity of such "constitutive" norms, since there's no guarantee that existing beings' constitutions will be oriented towards genuine goodness. Effective mosquitos--or viruses!--are not a kind of "excellence" worth having in the world. So I think we always need to ask the prior question of whether one's "constitutive capacities" are oriented towards something good, or not. (But it may be that this constrained version of the view could help count at least *many* animal interests appropriately, even if *some* must be rejected as simply bad.)
You have reinvented Aristotle, but don't worry, you are in good company. Ruth Millikan wrote that once something is selected and copied for, whatever it was selected and copied for becomes a proper function, a final cause, a telos.
This circles back to classic Stoicism, where the essence of the good is to fulfill one's nature to the ultimate capacity. For humans, this was seen as rationality and virtue (or arete, "excellence"), and included acting for the good of all; for animals, it would have been as you described.