IMMANUEL KANT saw about as little value in human kindness as US vice-president Dick Cheney does in energy conservation. Cheney mocks conservation as “a sign of personal virtue” that will fail to do the world much good; Kant, while not denying that compassion is “beautiful”, declared it irrelevant to a virtuous life. Who needs tender feelings? Duty is all that matters.
We live in an age that celebrates the cerebral. Strangely enough, this also applies to my field of study, animal behaviour, where just a couple of decades ago, the words “animal” and “cognition” couldn’t be mentioned in the same…
