From Common Humanity to Sentient Commonality: Pragmatic Sociology and the Moral Worth of Nonhuman Animals

When considering the different issues related to the advancing environmental crisis, ranging from wanton habitat destruction to emerging pandemics, such contemporary problems challenge us to rethink the relations between humans and the nonhuman world. In particular, there have been calls that sociological theorizing should develop its perspectives on how nonhuman animals (hereafter: animals) are accounted for (Carter & Charles, 2011; Cudworth, 2014, 2016; Hobson-West, 2007; Tovey, 2003). The animal challenge to sociology, according to Bob Carter and Nickie Charles (2018, p. 93), is to go beyond the collectivity of humans alone and to recognize “what humans and other animals have in common.” Similarly, Yasmin Koop-Monteiro (2021, p. 1151) notes that dealing with the nonhuman exclusion in sociology, and including animals in analyses, “reflects a growing understanding of human society's interdependence with the nonhuman world. It also reflects a commitment to a more comprehensive sociology that acknowledges human society's significant relationships with its fellow nonhuman co-inhabitants.” These perspectives therefore emphasize the connection between the need for sociological theorizing to better account for nonhuman animals and the associated focus on the construction of commonalities between humans and animals.

In this article, I examine French pragmatic sociology and how this analytical approach can deal with the challenge posed by human–animal commonality. Pragmatic sociology is regarded as a prominent analytical framework for moral and political sociology, promoting the “reintroduction” of moral and political elements to sociological analysis (Blokker, 2011; Wagner, 1999). Pragmatic sociology is specifically focused on theorizing and analyzing plural forms of commonality (Thévenot, 2014). Furthermore, it is part of the variety of approaches that aim to account for the various nonhuman elements humans are entangled with (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006; Ricoeur, 2000). Considering the emerging environmental problems challenging contemporary societies, a specific green order of worth has been discussed as a novel justificatory convention that relies on an environmental or ecological common good (Blok, 2013; Centemeri, 2015; Lafaye & Thévenot, 2017; Lehtimäki, 2021; Lehtimäki & Virtanen, 2024; Thévenot et al., 2000). Therefore, pragmatic sociology should present particularly suitable resources for examining the moral bond(s) of human–animal relations.

However, by reading pragmatic sociology through animal rights theory, ¹ I will demonstrate how this is not perhaps the case. The critique various approaches to animal rights theory have directed toward essentialized divisions between humans and animals in Western sociopolitical and legal orders applies to pragmatic sociology as well. Building on this critique, I will discuss how it could be interpreted as an attempt to critically differentiate an alternative moral principle that pragmatic sociological theorizing has not accounted for. This form of worth is based on the capacity for sentience, something that humans are seen to share with other animals. Although presenting an alternative principle of justification, commonality based on sentience does not present another “order of worth” but instead challenges the foundations of the initial polity model identified by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006). This new form of commonality has aimed to substitute the notion of common humanity, which has been the original starting point of the justification model. After discussing this critique, I will examine how pragmatic sociological perspectives could be reoriented in order to analyze questions of human–animal relations. As a conclusion, I suggest that pragmatic sociology is a suitable approach to examine forms of commonality, but it needs to account for the critique animal rights thinkers have directed toward some of its most central starting points. I will therefore suggest possible modifications for the model so that it can operate as a useful analytical tool for human–animal studies as well.

The structure of the article is as follows. The next section discusses Boltanski and Thévenot's pragmatic sociology, examining how its starting point in the notion of common humanity frames human–animal relations. Furthermore, this section examines the attempts to extend common humanity in the form of the green order of worth. After this, the third section discusses animal sentience, and how animal ethicists, such as Peter Singer, have challenged the idea of common humanity based on it. After discussing sentience as a possible new form of commonality, the fourth section focuses on problems of how to set boundaries for the new moral community and how to distribute worth within it. The fifth section examines situated justification by taking a cue from Lori Gruen's notion of entangled empathy, and how animal sentience could be analyzed through affective relations between humans and animals.

Pragmatic Sociology: Common Humanity and Membership in the Moral Community

Who belongs to the moral community? Or what kind of beings have moral standing and on what grounds? At first, such questions would seem to be misguided in terms of pragmatic sociology, as this approach examines the making of moral qualities and therefore does not postulate any essentialized form of worth. In the original polity model examined by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006), worth should always be open for testing and, conversely, worth permanently attached to persons is considered an unjustified form of aristocracy and privilege. However, when we look more closely at the polity model that outlines the conditions for legitimate justification, this is not entirely the case. The first axiom postulates the idea of common humanity, and Boltanski and Thévenot (2006, p. 74) state that:

[the] model in fact presupposes an identification of the set of persons capable of reaching agreement, the members of the polity, and it posits a form of fundamental equivalence among these members, all of whom belong to humanity on the same basis (emphasis in original).

The model does not elaborate on this basic assumption as such and instead examines the fundamental tension that emerges as people are still differentiated and evaluated while they simultaneously share a common status as equal humans. This tension emerges in moral and political arrangements that “all include persons who share the property of being human even though they are ordered according to a principle of worth” (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006, p. 76). The tension between the fundamental equality of humans and ordering is overcome by the fact that the principles used in this ordering are forms of common good. They are seen to bind together persons attributed with the higher and lower states of worth, transcending self-interest and contributing to the good of the collective. Therefore, each principle is connected to a political philosophy that articulates a version of the overall polity. Each polity is a “metaphysics, to the extent that it defines humanities that are linked by a common good surpassing the particular happiness of each person” (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006, p. 76; emphasis added). In other words, orders of worth are seen as historically and culturally developed structures and practices, which have developed to “alleviate structural tension among human beings living together” (Thévenot, 2014, p. 9). Legitimate justifications are those that rely on these principles of common good.

In order for an arrangement to be legitimate, a further requirement in the polity model is the condition that all members have an equal possibility to access all states of worth, termed common dignity. If this assumed equality between members is not fulfilled—if members are divided into for example castes or estates—such moral arrangements are considered to be illegitimate. However, what is significant for the present discussion is that Boltanski and Thévenot (2006, p. 80) also note how a “major consequence of the absence of common dignity is the questioning of the distinction between human beings and nonhuman beings.” This can refer to, for example, humans becoming objects of eugenic policies. Eugenics operates as an example of an illegitimate order of worth, as it ascribes worth to people, but differentiation and ordering operate according to essentialized classes, and the fundamental assumption is that people do not have the same access to worthy states. ² But another instance where concerns about dehumanization has been raised is the possibility of comparing humans and animals; also in the case of comparing human oppression to the oppression of animals (e.g., Arluke, 2002, p. 370; Carter & Charles, 2018, p. 81). This breaks the fundamental assumption of common humanity, as in these cases only some humans are likened to animals, and this is used to legitimize unequal treatment and violence.

The intrinsic value of humans, that is, the fundamental worth based on common humanity, is therefore constructed precisely on the notion that humans are somehow special. In this view, common humanity requires a strict boundary between humans and everything else. The moral philosophical discussion on the topic is of course extensive and beyond the scope of this article, but in essence, it is the idea that humans can never be used as means and belong to the “kingdom of ends.” Therefore, while justification relies on the commonality and contributing to the common good, common dignity, shared by all humans equally, is somewhat paradoxically based on the conception of human uniqueness, and the perceived necessary exclusion of nonhumans. The tension between generality and uniqueness follows the same logic as justifications within the orders of worth, where generalization based on one principle denounces and particularizes others. At the same time, unease about this sacrifice (here, quite literally) of animals to achieve intrinsic worth for humans is seen to raise the need for moral alternatives.

Therefore, even though the polity model is based on the assumption that denounces value based on essentialized status—worth cannot be attached to particular persons—the notion of common humanity does attach it permanently to humans. As I will discuss below, animal rights critique has challenged this, arguing that different versions of the idea of common humanity essentialize humans as a species, not allowing other animals to achieve similar worthy positions. Using Boltanski and Thévenot's terminology, common humanity cannot be “tested.” It is an intrinsic quality that all humans are assumed to share. Indeed, it is the very basis of the idea of testing in the original model: worthy positions need to be open for everyone and worth cannot be attached permanently to persons (whereas objects inhabit different justificatory worlds). ³

This contradiction is the first initial finding of this investigation. While the model of justification is focused on a “modern” conception of worth, its starting points do not align with this. The idea of testing is “modern” in the sense that worth is not hereditary as in an aristocratic society, yet the idea that common humanity grounds worth is exactly that, as humans are born into this status. This contradiction is brought into view when reading pragmatic sociology from the perspective of animal ethics.

Before moving to the discussion on animal ethics, it should be noted that the question of extending worth to nonhuman entities has been explicitly discussed in relation to the emergence of the green order of worth (Lafaye & Thévenot, 2017; Latour, 1998; Thévenot et al., 2000). It would seem that the green worth, as a new development in this moral and political repertoire, could possibly offer a way to account for animals by attributing them with intrinsic worth. Thévenot et al. (2000, p. 257) indeed mention animal rights as one element of the new green worth. Green justifications make reference to the uniqueness of certain places or species, to untouched wilderness, and to places of heritage that humans cohabit in harmony with nature (Thévenot et al., 2000, pp. 257–260). The green worth has emerged as a response to problems related to nonhuman nature, aiming to distribute worth in a novel way. Unlike previous orders of worth, it also specifically challenges previous conceptions about common humanity and aims to go beyond it (Centemeri, 2015; Lafaye & Thévenot, 2017). Green justifications extend membership beyond all current members of the polity, including also, for example, “future generations” as legitimate members of common humanity (Thévenot et al., 2000, p. 257). It therefore appears as a possible solution to account for animals as well.

The problem, however, seems to lie again the status of animals in the overall scheme, whether they appear as objects or somehow legitimate members of the overall polity. First, animals are considered worthy only in one order of worth, or world. But a second, and more important, point is the fact that individual parts of ecosystems or “nature” can be sacrificed for the greater ecological good. In many cases, such as the eradication of invasive species, this is even considered desirable. Even if some animals or species are granted protected status, this does not concern sentient individuals in general (and is limited to certain species that are considered to have ecological value). Animal rights advocates have specifically aimed to differentiate the worth of animals from such ecological framings (Regan, 1983, p. 362). Therefore, in the green order of worth, animals do not achieve a status where their individual welfare or even lives would be considered worthy as such. Such challenges to the notion of common humanity were recognized by Lafaye and Thévenot (2017, pp. 292–293), who pointed toward Singer's utilitarianism and “the equivalence it assumes in the sum of the pleasures and pains experienced within a community of agents” (although also referring to animal rights as a “crusade,” p. 293). But despite these notions, later analyses using pragmatic sociology have not really paid attention to animals as such. Hilary Tovey's (2003, p. 196) characterization of environmental sociology therefore appears to apply to pragmatic sociology as well, as it too tends to “recognise animals only in the form of populations or generic types, without individual character, knowledge, subjectivity or experience.”

Therefore, as the second initial finding, I argue that pragmatic sociology should recognize the more complex setting related to the moral worth of animals. The aim here is not to say that the green worth would somehow be an illegitimate order as such, even when considering the worth of animals. Instead, my point is that animal rights advocacy has specifically aimed to differentiate the moral worth of animals from the ecological framing. Pragmatic sociology, on the other hand, accounts only for half of this picture, focusing on the more mainstream ecological order of worth. This alternative approach, promoted by animal ethics and animal rights advocacy, has been grounded on sentience as the fundamental quality that grants moral worth. In the next section, I will turn to this alternative approach and what implications it could have for pragmatic sociological analyses.

Animal Sentience and the Critique Against Common Humanity

Sentience can be defined as the capacity to have feelings, or to experience positive and negative affective states (Duncan, 2006). While this includes positive feelings as well, discussions on animal rights have been primarily concerned with the pain and suffering caused to animals by humans. The centrality of sentience in discussions on animal rights traces back at least to the foundational work by Peter Singer (1974; 2015), the “‘champion’ of sentience as a moral criterion” (Zuolo, 2019, p. 6). Singer argues that sentience, which operates as a shorthand for both the capacity to suffer and to experience enjoyment, should be the basis of equal consideration, according to which the interests of all animals (human and nonhuman) are accounted for. This is because qualities used to justify the demarcation between humans and nonhumans—such as rationality, intelligence or the capacity for moral action—do not apply to all humans and might at the same time apply to some animals. Many animals are more intelligent than infant humans, yet infants are legitimate members of common humanity and animals are not. Therefore, according to Singer (1974, 2015), setting the boundary based on species membership becomes essentially arbitrary, whereas the capacity for sentience is the only justifiable way to define whose interests should be accounted for:

If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like suffering – in so far as rough comparisons can be made – of any other being. (Singer, 1974, pp. 107–108; 2015, p. 38)

While previous approaches to animal ethics have focused primarily on preventing suffering, more recent discussions in animal ethics have taken a “political turn” (Milligan, 2015), where one of the aims has been to move to positive rights, instead of focusing solely on the harm caused to animals. This includes directing attention toward questions of how animals could be accounted for in democratic systems (Garner, 2016) and how their interests could be included in considerations of the common good of the community (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011). A prominent example in this discussion is Alasdair Cochrane's (2018) Sentientist Politics, where he takes as his starting point the notion “that certain non-human animals possess sentience, that this grants those animals a moral value of their own, and that this value matters politically” (p. 3). Cochrane (2018, p. 6) argues that the moral position and worth of animals should not be connected to human needs, and this intrinsic value of animals is also based on sentience: “an animal's relational position with humans is morally arbitrary in the same way sex, race, nationality, and species are morally arbitrary. After all, a wild animal is sentient just like a domesticated animal” (emphasis in original). The moral status and worth of animals are both differentiated from the use value they have for humans and sentience is established as a general principle according to which all members of the moral community are accounted for. Following this, “sentient equality” is then offered as a replacement for human equality (Cochrane, 2018, p. 14).

Turning to pragmatic sociology, the axiom of common humanity, which was seen to ground legitimate justification, is here turned into a form of oppression and exclusion. From the point of view of this “sentientist critique,” common humanity appears as a form of speciesism. Furthermore, the critique based on sentience defines speciesism as promoting particular interests or self-interests: humans are only interested in themselves, favoring humans over other animals, and neglecting other animals that are part of the collective of all sentient beings (e.g., Blattner, 2021, pp. 70–71; also Lafaye & Thévenot, 2017, p. 293). Nevertheless, commonality based on sentience is posed as an alternative to the species membership of common humanity and operates as a new way to demarcate the moral community. This new form of commonality is presented as grounds for legitimate forms of worth, as well as justifications and critiques based on them. This does not mean treating humans and animals exactly alike, but instead focusing on the equal consideration of interests (Cochrane, 2018, p. 3; Singer, 1985, pp. 6–9). Sentience therefore resembles the basic foundation through which beings become morally relevant, similar to the notion of common humanity in Boltanski and Thévenot's polity model.

Discussions within animal ethics are in no way uniform, with authors disagreeing on how to account for the interests and moral worth of animals. Animal ethics has located the test of sentience primarily to the capacity to suffer, but discussions have also focused on positive approaches, such as promoting the fulfillment of species-typical needs (Rault et al., 2025). However, the aim here is to illustrate how the basic starting point of animal rights theory, accounting for animals as sentient beings (e.g., Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011, p. 19), is directed toward what Boltanski and Thévenot set as the first axioms of the polity model. What is noteworthy is that this kind of critique cannot simply be grasped by conceptualizing it as critical relations between orders of worth. Paul Ricoeur (2000, p. 86) argues that the civic order of worth, valuing equality, is something of a meta-order of worth, which characterizes the whole polity model. In the case of the sentientist critique, equality indeed also appears to ground this form of “meta-critique,” thus relying partly on one order of worth, while at the same time being directed against the foundations of the whole polity model. Singer, for example, refers to the “principle of equality” in his critique against speciesism, and Cochrane promotes sentient equality.

This critique, however, is not grounded solely on the polity model outlined by Boltanski and Thévenot and, instead, takes sentience as its basic form of commonality. Previously, the moral sphere of Western sociopolitical and legal orders has been expanded to include all humans, which has relied on the principle of common humanity (the fundamental equality of all humans). Here, expansion goes beyond humans and the principle on which entities are made equivalent needs to transform accordingly. Similarly, critique aims to transform common humanity, the unquestionable starting point of the polity model, into another form of oppression, redefined now as speciesism. But even though equality is central, sentientist critique is not completely reducible to it. That is, while animal rights advocates demand equality between humans and animals, this can always be rejected by referring to the fundamental difference between humans and animals. As the first axiom of the polity model, common humanity and human exceptionality guard against such critiques and demands for equality. Interpreted in the light of animal rights, or sentientist critique, Ricoeur (2000) appears to be only half right: while equality and the civic worth indeed do form an ambiguous meta-order of worth, it is preceded by the prepolitical axiom of humanity. Sentient commonality also takes equality as its reference point but aims to substitute humanity with the common capacity of sentience.

This is therefore what I term here as sentient commonality. However, although sentience offers a new way to organize the moral and political community, it also raises new problems on how to demarcate this community and distribute worth within it. I will turn to these questions in the next section.

Possessing Sentience: Problems of Demarcation and Distribution in the Sentient Community

Even though animal sentience is recognized rather widely in contemporary societies, the implications of this recognition are much more contested. Here, I will discuss two interrelated problems concerning the foundations of the novel moral community. I term these as the problem of demarcation and the problem of distribution. The first of these refers to the problem of knowing where the boundaries of the new moral community should be set. The second concerns the issue of whether worth should be distributed equally within these boundaries or whether there are degrees. Both problems also provide issues where pragmatic sociology could make contribution

First, establishing sentience as a new form of commonality is dependent on the possibilities for defining where the boundaries of this new community lie. In many instances, science in its various forms is considered the most reliable source of knowledge when it comes to determining which animals or species are sentient. The capacity for sentience is considered to be determined by the physiological structure of a being and understanding such capacities depends on scientific research. Indeed, although animal testing has been one of the main battlegrounds in animal rights advocacy, our understanding of animal sentience is entangled with such practices (Asdal & Druglitrø 2017; Hobson-West & Davies, 2018). When considering the boundaries of the capacity for sentience, one of the most discussed cases has been the debate on whether fish are sentient (e.g., Sneddon et al., 2018). Although some might accept that most animals are sentient and we should therefore account for their sentience, in this case the line is drawn between fish and other animals. This status, connected to the contestation over sentience, is illustrated by how fish are accounted for differently in comparison to other animals. Even though production animals such as broilers are commonly counted as individual beings, fish are commonly counted only as mass. Scientific research points to fish being sentient, but the issue has not been established in public perception or institutional recognition

However, science is not the only source for demarcation and relying solely on science would imply a reduction of moral and political questions to the production of “facts” (cf. Lehtimäki & Taipale, 2026). As Singer (1974, p. 106) already noted: “Equality is a moral ideal, not a simple assertion of fact.” Furthermore, science is itself a heterogenous practice, where sentience is enmeshed with various societal questions (Asdal & Druglitrø, 2017; Hobson-West & Davies, 2018; Roe, 2010). There is also variance between humans according to different capacities and principles, such as equal human rights (or common humanity), which set rules for how we are to treat others. The recognition of sentience can be achieved in different ways that do not rely on science alone. For example, Article 13 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union recognizes animal sentience and has become a central reference point for those promoting animal rights (Sowery, 2018; also Cochrane, 2018). Scientific knowledge is also communicated through declarations, such as the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (Low, 2012), which acknowledged that numerous animals have the same basic capacities to experience affective states as humans.

Together with such declarations are also numerous common-sense arguments, illustrated for example by Marc Bekoff (2012), who writes that he initially thought that the Cambridge declaration was satire, continuing that: “It's difficult to believe that those who have shared their homes with companion animals didn’t already know this.” Such common-sense arguments can be seen to reverse the setting, as animal sentience becomes the obvious assumption. Cochrane (2018) also notes that, while he is open to extending worth to nonhumans more generally, he still believes “that there is something different and something special about the capacity for sentience” (p. 8; emphases in original). Although ethicists have offered numerous rationalized arguments for why animals should be granted moral consideration and worth, part of the conviction that sentience is something special resembles a “first axiom” that is beyond justification and critique.

However, this still leaves sentience somewhat open to forms of “testing” in the pragmatic sociological sense, which could be considered a character of an illegitimate order of worth (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006). Principles such as the one articulated by Singer (1974, pp. 107–108)—whether something suffers or not—could be seen to offer a way of qualifying different entities. The reality test in this case would be to determine whether a being suffers or not (which is used as a shorthand for whether a being is sentient). As animals are not recognized as legitimate members of contemporary political communities, the boundaries of the sentient community are still subject to tests. This also shows how issues of human–animal relations challenge established conceptions about politics. Furthermore, concerning the present article, it also brings into view how the pragmatic sociological model does not offer tools for such boundary extension, as analyses operate within the established boundaries of the polity model (cf. Blok, 2013). One central focus for pragmatic sociological analyses would then be to investigate how such extension takes place.

The second problem concerns the question of how worth should be distributed within the sentient collective. An example of this can be gained from discussions in and around Cochrane's (2018) Sentientist Politics. In his theory, interests are seen to be derived from being sentient. Cochrane's argument is that such interests are binary, as a being either has them or does not:

[U]nlike the capacities for personhood or other characteristics based on cognitive complexity, the possession of interests is “binary”. That is to say, an individual either possesses interests or does not, making it straightforward to explain why the moral worth of humans does not come in degrees. (Cochrane, 2018, p. 24)

While other animal ethicists agree on the need to recognize animals at some level as members of political communities, what they contest is the unquestionable binary nature of sentience-derived interests. Valadez (2023) argues that, contrary to what Cochrane states, the capacity for sentience varies considerably among animals, which should then lead to the acknowledgment of levels of moral worth. According to Zuolo (2019, p. 4), the claim that interest possession based on sentience is unquestionably binary is “blatantly false,” and deriving a similar binary moral status from this is therefore also misguided. Actors, human or nonhuman, can be more or less interested in something. There is therefore no unquestionable way for deducing that levels or degrees would not be significant when distributing worth. The disagreement concerns the claim that sentience provides a moral criterion that would be naturally binary.

Sentience offers a common reference point, but at the same time it is the battleground where contestations operate (Asdal & Druglitrø, 2017, p. 68). For some, such as Cochrane (2018), it operates as a founding principle according to which morally worthy beings are accounted for equally. But for others, it operates as a principle of differentiation, to use Boltanski and Thévenot's (2006) terms, according to which beings can be legitimately set into hierarchical positions. The issue is therefore similar to that of the first axiom of common humanity, where the moral community is demarcated through a prepolitical principle. Nevertheless, the category of “animal” hides within it a huge amount of variation. Even if one accepts the notion that worth is distributed equally within the sentient moral community, different animals have very different needs. In the case of avoiding pain, this issue might seem more straightforward, but when one moves to the question of how to account for the varying needs of different species—let alone individuals—the issue becomes more complex. One example of this is the question of how the varying species-typical needs of different animals are accounted for. Identifying such needs is central to the possibilities of promoting positive welfare and in determining whether an animal has lived a “good life” (Rault et al., 2025). But aside from being a topic of animal welfare science, defining what is essential or good for a particular species or an individual animal is also a question of moral, political, and legal categorization.

The two themes discussed in this section—demarcation and distribution—provide topics that are at the core of pragmatic sociology and which can be investigated in empirical analyses. In addition to the animal ethical debates discussed in this section, they concern processes of moral and political categorization that actors need to achieve also in practice. And, as Pru Hobson-West (2007, p. 25) has emphasized in the context of human–animal studies, “boundary drawing is not just an intellectual exercise but has ‘real world’ and sometimes dramatic consequences.” Focusing on the practices through which boundaries are drawn as well as how and on what grounds actors distribute worth, a pragmatic sociology sensitized to issues in human–animal relations can contribute to current debates on animal politics. In the next section, I will discuss further how such discussions on animal ethics could be examined through situated justifications.

Situated Justifications, Generalization, and Affective Relations

Animal ethics provides systematized principles for pragmatic sociology to build on, similar to the moral and political philosophies used by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006). However, among others, Lori Gruen (2015) has criticized “traditional” animal ethics for approaching ethical questions from an abstract and rationalist perspective, detached from actual problems (see also Cudworth, 2014, 2016). According to Gruen, approaches such as Singer's also present an individualist conception of animal ethics, which do not help to solve actual problems. In order to explore how such principles could be put into practice, I will examine the approach developed by Gruen that she terms entangled empathy. This entails a move from abstract philosophical principles to situated forms of justification and critique, as well as to the affective relations between humans and animals.

Entangled empathy emphasizes the relationality of the self and interdependence, emphasizing “a type of caring perception focused on attending to another's experience of wellbeing” (Gruen, 2015, p. 3). This approach aims to conceptualize a situated moral agent, grounded on “an embedded and embodied process of moral perception” (Gruen, 2017, p. 455). Gruen (2015) argues that, instead of approaching ethical questions as detached, isolated individuals, characterized by abstract moral dilemmas, we should start from acknowledgment that we are fundamentally related to others and dependent on them. Actors are not seen as merging, but their moral perception and judgment are situated in these entanglements. Entangled empathy therefore refers to sociomaterial processes that blend affect and cognition, and where actors move between first- and third-person points of views in attempts to understand others (Gruen, 2015, p. 66).

Turning to situated moral relations between humans and animals provides avenues for developing pragmatic sociology, which has been focused on situated justification and the coordination of action (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1999, 2000). This move helps to situate questions of sentience into practical situations, where actors manage sociomaterial relations. Even though Gruen (2015) criticizes traditional approaches to animal ethics, such as Singer's, she also notes that entangled empathy “seems to be limited to sentient beings who have experiences” (p. 67) or that “entangled empathy stops at the boundaries of sentience” (p. 74). But instead of understanding sentience solely as an abstract principle, it can be analyzed as conventionalized practices that actors use to coordinate situations. Gruen (2015, pp. 75–79) illustrates her approach with her own encounter with a chimpanzee called Emma, which led to an empathic entanglement that, in Gruen's own account, changed her view of the world drastically. An immediate encounter with Emma raised a sense of a mutual bond and that very different beings could form close affective bonds. Similar bonds can be formed between humans and companion animals (Cudworth, 2024). Even in animal production, humans form emotional attachments to animals and these attachments then go against the treatment of animals as commodities (Bruckner et al., 2019; Wilkie, 2005). From the perspective of pragmatic sociology, such encounters between particular animals can be characterized as what Thévenot (2014, 2020) in his later work has termed as familiar engagements, which value a feeling of being at ease in personal arrangements.

Entangled empathy, as well as the notion of sentience in general, point to affective relations and emotions. Indeed, Blok (2013, p. 504) also argues that analyses should pay attention to the “affective charging of public space” that emerges in, for example, disputes about whaling. In the case of legal rights, for example, sentience remains a rather abstract concept, and perspectives such as entangled empathy help to situate it into a wider discussion of affects and affecting. Building on these perspectives, pragmatic sociology can therefore also benefit from further exploring this connection between affects and valuation (Heinich, 2021). This offers a perspective on how emotion and affect operate as grounds for critical engagement as well. Silber (2011), for example, examines “civic anger” as a political emotion and how it facilitates engagement with forms of common good. Although studies on emotion and affect commonly focus on bodily experience, these approaches direct attention to how emotions are communicated to others and how actors are able to affect others (Thévenot, 2020). In the case of human–animal relations and animal rights, pragmatic sociological analyses can examine how injustices are communicated to others with reference to both civic anger and the need for more empathetic affective relations to animals (Bruckner et al., 2019). This would mean a focus on practices that attempt to make sentience meaningful and to format it into a collective concern (see Leth-Espensen, 2024).

The primary concern of the present article is to demonstrate the humanistic starting points of Boltanski and Thévenot's pragmatic sociology and its disconnection from animal ethics that have specifically criticized such conceptualizations of moral worth. By doing this, I have aimed to open up new topics that pragmatic sociology could engage with, becoming a viable theoretical resource for analyzing how the boundaries of moral and political commonalities are being (re)drawn. However, with the focus on such basic starting points of theorizing, the perspective can be seen to still remain human-centered. In many instances, humans operate as the spokespersons for animals, who cannot voice their concerns themselves. However, this view is also based on what Blok (2013, p. 504) criticizes as the “overly cognitive conception of human engagement with things” in the pragmatic sociological model, and which should be accompanied by other forms of attachment with the world. Critique and justification should not be limited solely to speech acts made by humans, and pragmatic sociological analyses should explore other ways societal legitimacy is constructed. One such option is to adopt a more processual approach and examine how animals take part in and influence sociomaterial processes where legitimacy is constructed (Lehtimäki, 2021, pp. 28–31).

In addition, focusing on situated action, for example through the notion of entangled empathy, can bring in animal agency and the engagement of animals in processes of justification (Blattner, 2021; Carter & Charles, 2011, p. 2018). Donaldson (2020) suggests that animals can engage in embodied justification, but that this requires both material arrangements and conceptual changes that are attuned to the different forms of agency animals are capable of. This approach also emphasizes sentience as a key difference that sets animal agency apart from other nonhuman actants (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2023). An example of animals taking part in defining the legitimacy of a situation or arrangement is when they engage in resistance (Carter & Charles, 2013). Animals commonly attempt to resist things humans force them into, but these are not acknowledged as legitimate acts. Even though animals cannot engage in moral and political argumentation, most of them can express basic wants and preferences. However, such acts of resistance are dependent on humans recognizing them as legitimate. This again directs attention to how essentialized differences between humans and animals become questioned, and how animal interests are made relevant to others. That is, whether one considers humans or animals, the capacities to act depend on how one is positioned in social and material relations of power (Carter & Charles, 2013, p. 328). Pragmatic sociological analyses should then pay attention to conventionalized forms that are developed to account for and to generalize the interests of animals. Sensitizing pragmatic sociology to these issues can then open paths for analyzing situated justifications that account for animals as active participants, together with humans.

In addition to learning from the various strands of animal rights theorizing, pragmatic sociology can also contribute to these discussions. Returning to the account of Gruen and her empathetic entanglement with Emma the chimpanzee, we can identify one such approach. Close personal relations with, for example, companion animals can help us develop an appreciation for those animals. People living with their dogs learn to acknowledge that their dog is an individual and perhaps develop a general appreciation for dogs. However, this appreciation is not extended to, for example, production animals whose suffering remains distant and invisible to the daily lives of most people (cf. Boltanski, 1999). In other words, personal attachments to certain animals are a different matter than the justifiability of human–animal relations in general. Gruen (2015) continues her account by noting how she had been occupied with the problem of how to bridge moral distance between different beings, and “how the relationships we had with immediate other who were very different could help us expand our perception to even more different others” (p. 77). She also notes how deep connections with companion animals could help us with such shifts in our ethical orientations. After the entanglement with one particular chimpanzee, she herself eventually became an advocate for chimpanzees in general. Entangled empathy therefore refers also to a “reflective and caring process,” through which “one can use one's capacities to feel and judge over spatial and contextual differences, to empathize with distant others” (Gruen, 2017, p. 454).

Attempts to extend such entanglements and engagements beyond particular, situated relations to more distant animals demonstrate an act of generalization, which is at the heart of the justification model. Familiar engagements are hard to extend beyond their spatial and cultural localities, as their capacity to engage derives from this closeness and personal attachment (Thévenot, 2020). Yet, this extension is exactly what is needed in cases where actors want to critique current modes of animal use and to change existing human–animal relations (Leth-Espensen, 2024). When looking at the discussions on animal rights, it is clear that they have challenged different modes of animal use by referring primarily to the individual rights of animals (see Ahlhaus & Niesen, 2015). This is understandable when considering that animals have mostly been treated as faceless mass, parts of either production units or ecosystems (Tovey, 2003). In the pragmatic sociological scheme, this type of individuality is most clearly situated in what Thévenot (2012, 2019) defines as the liberal grammar, where concerns are formatted into personal preferences, choices, and rights. Generalization beyond the local context and particular human–animal relations has operated through this liberal framework that aims to establish basic rights for individual animals. In other words, sentience as the individual's capacity to feel has been formatted into individual rights (Braverman, 2015).

In practice, at least in Western societies, animal sentience is primarily accounted for in the form of animal welfare. This is exemplified by animal welfare legislation that is grounded on the individual animal's capacity for sentience (Blattner, 2019), and without which welfare laws would not be necessary (if animals were not sentient, there would be no need to consider their well-being). However, although animal sentience has been presented as a fundamental critique toward the foundations of Western political and legal orders, it has been institutionalized—at best—as a quasi-form of worth among other principles. As such, it is quite understandably not a generalized form of worth as it is applied to animals only. It nevertheless resembles developments where critique is internalized as part of the system, as a form of worth among others (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005). Pragmatic sociology can therefore contribute to these discussions by examining how animal sentience is formatted into conventionalized forms and what kinds of forms are used to extend concerns beyond particular situations and relations.

Entangled empathy offers a useful perspective for directing attention to the situated justifications and critiques. By starting from such entangled relations between humans and animals, pragmatic sociological analyses can examine how the moral worth of animals is constructed in action. Pragmatic sociology could especially contribute to the analysis of situations where actors aim to generalize affective relations beyond the particular situation. However, regardless of the various forms of recognizing animal sentience, discussed in the previous section, accounting for animals as members of the moral community remains marginal. The question of how particular entanglements can be extended beyond personal relations is unavoidably connected to how actors can convince others that animals matter morally. It is therefore a matter of developing legitimate forms of critique and justification that are able to reshape human–animal relations.

Conclusion

This article started from the notion that sociological models should also focus on developing new theoretical perspectives that are able to account for issues concerning commonalities between humans and other animals (Carter & Charles, 2011; Cudworth, 2014, 2016; Koop-Monteiro, 2021; Tovey, 2003). Here, I have examined pragmatic sociology as an analytical approach for the analysis of human–animal relations. The main observation is that even though pragmatic sociology aims to account for nonhumans in its analysis of moral and political commonality, it is nevertheless constructed on deeply human-centered foundations. Furthermore, the green worth extension does not account for the fact that animal sentience has specifically been differentiated from such ecological forms of worth, despite Lafaye and Thévenot's (2017) early suggestion. Following these observations, the article then aims to sketch directions for how pragmatic sociology can account for this blind spot, and to better contribute to the “animal challenge” for sociology (Carter & Charles, 2018).

When pragmatic sociological analyses consider how to approach the various nonhuman elements that inhabit contemporary politics, they should be attuned to the meaningful differences between nonhumans (Hobson-West, 2007, p. 36; Roe, 2010, p. 276). Although pragmatic sociology differs from, for example, actor-network theory (Blok, 2013), here the two approaches share a rather similar conception that categorizes all nonhumans together. Nevertheless, in my view, pragmatic sociology provides better tools for analysis, as it is geared toward identifying how moral and political bonds are articulated, instead of accounting for them with the generalized notion of “more-than-human” that leaves them unspecified (Blok, 2013; Latour, 1998; Thévenot, 2002). By conceptualizing critique and justification through a common framework, where both rely on conventionalized principles of equivalence, pragmatic sociological analyses can examine how human–animal relations are constructed.

While the green order of worth has extended the approach to account for new nonhuman elements, it has also directed analyses specifically toward environmental sustainability. Although highly important on its own, it nevertheless differs significantly from the moral project of sentient commonality. Empirically, the major omission resulting from the focus on “green” issues is animal production and the suffering it causes, which is not reducible solely to sustainability. Although industrial-scale animal agriculture presents significant ecological problems, questions of sustainability account for the worth of production animals only indirectly. Here, the question is whether animals should be considered subjects instead of objects (owned and used by humans), and how the moral worth of animals could be conventionalized in the former case. The fundamental nature of this distinction is indicated by the strict differentiation between human subjects and objects in the original common humanity model, where worth is constructed by human uniqueness. Sentient commonality does not point to a new order of worth, which would be added to the collection of previously established conventions, but challenges the conception of common humanity more fundamentally. While it is an empirical question whether or how the worth of animals will be accounted for in various societies, pragmatic sociology should nevertheless recognize how its conceptual starting points are intertwined with these developments. As Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) originally noted, orders of worth are considered as historical constructs that emerged in certain societal settings (Lehtimäki & Virtanen, 2024). Sentient commonality is one such development that deals with how (Western) societies relate to the nonhuman world. But at the same time, it illuminates the starting points of sociological theories more generally, and how even environmentally oriented frameworks tend to neglect animal sentience (Tovey, 2003).

In this article, I have examined sentience as one central convention that has been used both to challenge essentialized differences and to construct commonality. Despite the centrality of sentience for animal rights, its implications and how to account for it nevertheless remain contested. In addition to the debates on animal ethics (e.g., Valadez, 2023; Zuolo, 2019), pragmatic sociological analyses can examine how such moral and political categorization operates in action. A central aspect in this is the question of how affective relations between humans and animals are generalized in order to construct commonality on the level of common good(s). Emotions and affects are not confined to the deeply personal and familiar but extend to different forms of public valuation and critique (Heinich, 2021; Silber, 2011). This demonstrates how the capacity for sentience can be transformed into more generalized affective relations between humans and nonhuman animals. Gruen's (2015, 2017) work offers one useful starting point, as it directs attention to situated action and to the concrete problems of how affective relations are generalized beyond the particular context. With its focus on the connection between generalized principles and situated justification, pragmatic sociology has the potential to contribute to the making and unmaking of speciesist differences.

Issues concerning human–animal relations and animal rights therefore offer other possibilities for pragmatic sociological contributions as well. For example, discussion on animal ethics and rights has focused on the connection between sentience and interests (Cochrane, 2018; Singer, 1985). The authors have emphasized that sentience implies the existence of interests, which should be considered and weighed equally in comparison to others. Although sentience has been used to challenge the essentialized difference between humans and animals and to argue for commonality, interests and rights have been approached primarily as individual interests. Pragmatic sociology, on the other hand, is specifically attuned to the construction of interests, examining a plurality of shared conventions through which interests are communicated to others and made common (Blokker & Brighenti, 2011; Thévenot, 2014, 2020). Interests are not considered to be properties of individuals as such but operate in relations and are constructed through conventionalized moral and political forms (Lehtimäki et al., 2025). By first accounting for sentience as a form of commonality, pragmatic sociology can be used as a framework for analyzing how issues are generalized beyond the particular situation (Gruen, 2015, 2017). After moving beyond common humanity, pragmatic sociological analyses could examine the emerging polities in which animal interests are accounted for as part of the common good (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011; Koivulehto & Lehtimäki, 2024; Milligan, 2015).

Social theory can maintain essentialized differences between humans and other animals, if it does not scrutinize its humanistic starting points. Pragmatic sociology is no exception here. Together with other analytical approaches, it can nevertheless reorient its analytical framework if it wishes to grasp ongoing developments in contemporary societies and contribute to the understanding of how various nonhuman challenges are dealt with.