Humans’ Best Friend? The Ethical Dilemma of Pets

The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate the need for a reassessment of the moral status of pets. I argue that pets rest on an undefined ethical borderline, which brings several puzzling problems to both human-centered ethics and animal ethics and that neither of these fields adequately handles these issues. I focus specifically on human relationships with companion animals as one of the most significant interspecific relationship involving humans and pets. I also show that a deeper questioning of the moral status of pets is a required step toward the moral rethinking of human-animal relationships.