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<p>Contemporary animal ethics often treats general priority for humans as difficult to justify. Familiar defenses appeal either to superior capacities or to bare species membership—both of which face powerful objections. This paper defends an alternative: a limited, prima facie form of human priority grounded in reasonable partiality toward members of the human community. On this view, humanity is not merely a biological category but an ethically significant community structured by shared vulnerability, solidarity, and special responsibility. This relational account avoids the problem of marginal cases without relying on capacity hierarchies, and it resists the charge of discrimination by distinguishing legitimate partiality from unjust discrimination. The framework also yields practical implications: it supports qualified human priority under genuine necessity, generates stronger and partly remedial duties toward animals made dependent within human practices, and cautions against large-scale intervention in wild animal suffering. Not all forms of human priority are discriminatory. A defensible human priority must be limited and relationally structured, and it must satisfy four constraints:&#xa0;necessity,&#xa0;proportionality,&#xa0;least harm, and&#xa0;remedial responsibility.</p>

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Human Priority and Reasonable Partiality: A Community-Based Account

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年8月4日

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  • Yuxian Zhang

摘要

Contemporary animal ethics often treats general priority for humans as difficult to justify. Familiar defenses appeal either to superior capacities or to bare species membership—both of which face powerful objections. This paper defends an alternative: a limited, prima facie form of human priority grounded in reasonable partiality toward members of the human community. On this view, humanity is not merely a biological category but an ethically significant community structured by shared vulnerability, solidarity, and special responsibility. This relational account avoids the problem of marginal cases without relying on capacity hierarchies, and it resists the charge of discrimination by distinguishing legitimate partiality from unjust discrimination. The framework also yields practical implications: it supports qualified human priority under genuine necessity, generates stronger and partly remedial duties toward animals made dependent within human practices, and cautions against large-scale intervention in wild animal suffering. Not all forms of human priority are discriminatory. A defensible human priority must be limited and relationally structured, and it must satisfy four constraints: necessity, proportionality, least harm, and remedial responsibility.