Victims and responsibility. Restorative justice: a new path for justice towards non-human animals?

• Main Author: Lorenzo Bertolesi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: LED Edizioni Universitarie 2017-11-01
• Series: Relations
• Subjects: Non-human animals; Animal Ethics; Political Theory; Justice; Martha Nussbaum; Responsibility; Restorative Justice; Domestication; Contractarianism; Utilitarianism.
• Online Access: http://www.ledonline.it/index.php/Relations/article/view/1253

In this paper I argue that restorative justice is a prolific and innovative way for reformulating the problem of justice towards non-human animals. First of all, I show that the most influential theories of political philosophy (Utilitarianism and Contractarianism) are inadequate for this purpose, as all the speculative perspectives on justice that try to define a normative concept of justice. Changing perspective and focusing on the actual victim’s experience of injustice can redefine the discussion about justice. For animals injustice is the result of the denial of their agency and a violation of their vulnerability. To think of animals as victims allows us to define humans’ responsibility for animals’ condition. This responsibility started with domestication and continues until the present domination of animals in our society. Therefore restorative justice, start from this responsibility: it is, first of all, a form of humans’ admission of guilt, but not only. I argue that restorative justice provides us with he chance to repay the victims of our wrongdoing. In this way, this compensation should be thought of not as punishment to those who have done wrong but as a way to re-establish the bond with a world of alterities commanded, submitted and dominated.