In "Against the Inevitability of Human Chauvinism," R. Routley and V. Routley define class chauvinism as "substantially differential, discriminatory, and inferior treatment of items outside the class, for which there is not sufficient justification." They then define as soft human chauvinism the claim that morality requires an "invariable allocation of greater value or preference, on the basis of species, to humans, while not however entirely excluding nonhumans from moral consideration and claims. ''1
Contrary to the Routley's views, it is my position that most human beings have moral priority over all animals and, in those cases where a human being does not have moral priority over some animal there is still no moral obligation to give moral preference to that animal over that human being. It is morally justifiable to substantially differentiate between humans and animals, to treat animals in an "inferior" manner, and in some cases to do so merely on the grounds of species membership. Such differential treatment is not chauvinistic. Rather, it is justifiable because (1) most human beings possess morally relevant properties which give them priority over any animals and (2) no animals possess properties which require that they be given priority over any humans.
Routley and Roufley anticipate the claim that human moral priority might be based on the possession of certain characteristics. They attempt to refute this claim by presenting three criteria which they believe such characteristics must meet and by showing that no plausible characteristics meet the required criteria. The criteria that the Routleys present are also presupposed in many of the arguments offered by adherents of animal rights. Important examples of such arguments are those which presuppose that inherent worth cannot be a matter of degree and arguments which presuppose that the rights of "marginal" humans must be based on the same criteria as the rights of normal humans. 2 Despite their wide use in such