Cosmic Justice | 149 total liberation Accessed from: http://www drstevebest.org/Essays/TheKillingFields htm Bradshaw, G A., & Finlay, B L 2005 Natural symmetry Nature 435: 149 Bradshaw, G A., & Sapolsky, R M 2006 Mirror, mirror American Scientist November/ December 487–489 Bradshaw, G A., & Schore, A N 2007 How elephants are opening doors: developmental neuroethology, attachment, and social context Ethology, 113: 426–436 Bradshaw, G A., Schore, A N., Brown, J., Poole, J., & Moss, C J 2005 Elephant breakdown Nature 433: 807 Bradshaw, G A., & Watkins, M 2006 “Transspecies psychology; theory and praxis.” Spring, 75, 69–94 Horton, Myles, Freire, Paolo, Bell, Brenda, and Gaventa, John 1991 We make the road by walking Philadelphia: Temple University Press Mandela, Nelson, Asmal, Kader, Chidester, David, and James, Wilmot Godfrey 2003 Nelson Mandela: From freedom to the future: Tributes and speeches Johannesburg, South Africa: Jonathan Ball Sheldrick, Daphne, personal communication, quoted in G A Bradshaw, Elephants on the edge New Haven, CT: Yale University Press (in press) G A Bradshaw COSMIC JUSTICE According to the principle of cosmic justice, humans are not the only beings in the world whose fortunes matter in considerations of fairness Proponents of cosmic justice argue that human beings have obligations to treat other living beings such as animals, and perhaps plants and ecosystems, justly According to critics of the idea of cosmic justice, even if human beings have some moral obligations toward animals and perhaps toward some nonsentient living beings such as plants, the notion of justice applies only to human beings and it makes no sense to say that human beings can anything unfair to nonhuman beings The controversy surrounding the principle of cosmic justice is a controversy over whether nonhuman animals and perhaps some other living beings are the kinds of beings that can be said to merit inclusion in our considerations of fairness Traditionally, justice has been conceived as a sphere of relations among rational beings who have rights and obligations in relation to other rational beings To be rational is to be able to reflect on one’s own interests, the interests of other beings, the potential conflicts that can arise between these interests, and the appropriate means of resolving these conflicts Beings that are capable of reflecting on these sorts of matters are considered to be agents, in the sense that they take an active role not only in thinking about the various rights and responsibilities that they and other agents possess, but also in resolving the inevitable conflicts that arise between the interests of different agents in the community In the traditional view, the community is conceived as consisting primarily of rational agents, those beings who can take an active part in the process of reflection and in the making of choices that have implications for justice, where justice is understood in terms of fairness In the traditional view, only human beings are rational; hence only human beings are genuinely agents, and all other living beings are excluded from the sphere of justice The only exceptions to the traditional view are so-called marginal cases, human beings such as infants, comatose individuals, and the severely mentally impaired, who lack the necessary rational capacities but who by virtue of being human are nonetheless included in the sphere