Commentary: Ethics for a tragic world: Humanity, insects, and doing good

Birch’s ambitious paper attempts to provide a solution to one of the most difficult problems in animal ethics – the insect challenge. If insects are sentient, and if sentience is sufficient for the possession of robust rights not to be harmed, then much of our behaviour is seriously wrong since it harms insects on a vast scale. Finding available options in Western animal ethics unsatisfactory (p.4-6), Birch explores a possible solution drawn from Indian philosophy based on the idea of ahimsa or nonviolence. Traditional religious understandings of ahimsa are loaded with metaphysical commitments deeply at odds with a secular, naturalistic worldview. Birch therefore sees the need for a ‘bridge’ between ahimsa and secular western ethics, which he finds in Gandhi’s Progressive Ahimsaism (PA). For Gandhi there are two acceptable reasons for harming a sentient being: (1) to sustain one’s body and (2) to protect those under one’s care. There are also four conditions which must be met to justify harm for these purposes: the harm must be minimized, unavoidable, performed only after full and mature reflection, and having exhausted all nonviolent options.