Species-Being and the Badness of Extinction and Death

This paper offers an account of the property Feuerbach and Marx called “species-being,” the human being’s distinctive tendency to identify herself as a member of her species, and to think of the species as a “we.” It links the notion to Kant’s theory of rights, arguing that every claim of right commits the maker of that claim to something like world government, and therefore to the conception of humanity as a collective agent. It also links species-being to the concept of practical identity, arguing that the conceptions under which we find our lives and actions valuable are ones according to which we make a positive contribution to the life of the species. It then argues that the resulting conception of humanity, together with certain considerations about the nature of the good, provides grounds for challenging the familiar claim that death is generally worse for human beings than for animals. On the other hand, because of species-being, the extinction of our species is a much worse prospect for human beings than for the other animals.