Sacrifice
The word “sacrifice,” which etymologically derives from “to make holy,” has a peculiarly Janus-faced usage in the language. The word now means to give up something, but sometimes what one gives up is … somebody else! This is the case in the paradigmatic sacrifice of an animal (historically sometimes a human one) on the altar to appease a god or God. This is still a giving up if the animal happens to be one’s own – a sheep from one’s flock, or even one’s own daughter (Iphigenia) or son (Isaac). But, in the scientific arena of animal experimentation, the notion has transmogrified into the sacrifice being made by the animal. Lab researchers commonly speak of their appreciation for the sacrifice being made by the animals they experiment on and then, in almost all cases, kill. Now it is not to appease the gods or God but to advance medical science and, usually, human welfare, or sometimes sheer biological knowledge, which speculatively might prove useful in future for some practical benefit.
While there is nothing at all unusual about the meaning of a word changing over time, or even one word having two or more meanings, it is sometimes of the utmost importance to be clear about which meaning is intended on a given occasion or in a given context. Otherwise what is intended may be mistaken for something else, possibly even due to deliberate equivocation or obfuscation, with disastrous consequences. Or people may fail to appreciate the real significance of something. Both lapses, I contend, have befallen “sacrifice.”
My linguistic sense is that the base or fundamental meaning of sacrifice (word or concept) is to voluntarily give up something that one values and cannot be replaced, for something else that one values. This can be a purely self-centered transaction, as when one gives up eating fatty foods so as not to suffer another heart attack. But a more paradigmatic case of what I have in mind would be giving up eating animals and animal products -- to become a vegan in modern parlance – so as not to contribute directly or indirectly to animal cruelty and slaughter. In other words, one values or cares about the welfare and rights of other animals more than one values or cares about the delicious taste of foods one has always loved to eat but does not need for a healthy and even tasty diet.
What never ceases to amaze me, in the decades since becoming a student of philosophy and then a professional ethicist and therefore having the opportunity to ponder these things, is that most people – including even some of my colleagues! – seem not to be able to grok the idea that sacrifice of the kind I have just characterized is part and parcel of being moral. The common conception seems to be that there has to be something“in it” for oneself in order for something to be moral. But, as I conceive morality, this is not morality but, at best, egoism (rational selfishness). Morality’s raison-d’être is to resist egoism, the pull of self-interest, for the common good, or for someone (or something) else’s sake.
This does not mean that to be moral one must become a martyr … although on some occasions it could mean that. It just means that one’s strictly moral aim may call for giving up – voluntarily and maybe permanently -- something one desires just for one's own benefit or enjoyment. There might still be some other compensation. Indeed, if the sacrifice is “successful” and one does achieve one’s unselfish goal because of one’s personal sacrifice, one will at least derive pleasure or satisfaction from that. This follows from the logic of desire: if one truly desires something – whatever it is, whether to win the lottery or relieve the suffering of the masses – one will be happy or pleased if one believes that the desire has been fulfilled. Deriving happiness or pleasure from the satisfaction of a desire, therefore, does not imply that one desired to be happy or pleased. That, again, would be sheer egoism or hedonism. Thus, the kind of moral or selfless happiness I am talking about arises only if one genuinely cares about something other than one's own happiness or pleasure (though one could care about that too).
Meanwhile, the
use of “sacrifice” in biomedical research is a conflation of the primary
meaning sketched above and the “primitive” meaning of offering up an animal to
the gods. No way do the animals voluntarily give up their lives or well-being
for this purpose (even if it is to help other nonhuman animals in veterinary
research)! So it is not they who are sacrificing their lives in what I have
deemed the basic sense, but the researchers who are sacrificing them in the
“religious” sense. Only a deliberate public relations effort to mislead the
public, or a confused effort to assuage their own conscience, could be leading
these scientists to conflate the two meanings, it seems to me. A genuine
sacrifice would be humanity’s forgoing certain medical benefits by refusing to
allow animal experimentation to continue.[1]
[1]
Some antivivisectionists argue that humanity would not have to make such
sacrifices if sufficient resources were devoted to finding alternatives to animal
experimentation. I am sure there is some truth to that, but I suspect that it
carries the case too far by being taken in by the same peculiar
(mis)understanding of morality I noted above as something that always works out
for the best for everyone. This is the cart leading the horse. Morality, for all
its faults, does at least, if properly understood, I claim, recognize that the lunch
is not always free.