Author: Dan Peterson
Category: Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Race, Philosophy of Sex and Gender
Wordcount: 1000
History is full of atrocities. These evils are often accompanied by language comparing victims to animals. For instance, white southerners compared lynching Black men to killing chickens, snakes, and fleas. Nazis called Jews “vermin” during the Holocaust. During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Hutus referred to Tutsis as “snakes” and “cockroaches.”[1] Perpetrators of mass violence have also called their victims diseases—like viruses and cancers—demons, and monsters.[2]
The close historical link between violent atrocities and these comparisons suggests a term, dehumanization, which means wrongly treating or viewing some person or group as less than human.[3]
But what exactly is it to treat or view some person or group as less than human? And how might these actions and beliefs be related?
This essay introduces influential answers to these questions so we might better understand dehumanization.
1. Characterizing Dehumanization
Beyond atrocities like mass rape, genocide, and lynchings, scholars often disagree about what counts as dehumanization. Some have argued that the abusive treatment of prisoners and disabled and elderly people are also examples of dehumanization.[4]
Dehumanizing actions are considered very, very wrong, even evil.[5] But not all very wrong actions count as dehumanization: scamming a poor family out of money they need to eat is very wrong, but few would call it dehumanizing.[6]
A too broad understanding of dehumanization results in the term losing its meaning. Understanding what might make beliefs and treatment dehumanizing may help us better understand what counts as genuine dehumanization.[7]
2. Dehumanizing Beliefs
Some understand dehumanization as rooted in a kind of belief that another person is a subhuman—that is, less than human—creature.[8] Dehumanizing treatment is then any seriously wrong treatment that follows.
Some might initially think that believing a person is subhuman means seeing them as like a subhuman creature, metaphorically speaking, in some negative way that is thought to justify ill-treatment. This proposal requires an explanation of how dehumanized people are allegedly similar to, say, animals and how this alleged similarity could justify treating these people badly. In what ways, for instance, did the Nazis see their victims as vermin, and how could those purported similarities justify their treatment? Without explanation, this approach won’t be helpful for understanding what dehumanizers are thinking and what motivates their behavior.
Some scholars argue that dehumanization involves viewing another person as a literal subhuman creature.[9] They propose that, for example, the Hutus called their Tutsi victims “cockroaches” because they literally saw the Tutsis as cockroaches: although the Tutsis look like human beings, this view proposes that the Hutus believed that, on the inside, the Tutsis had the essences or “souls” of cockroaches.[10]
One advantage to understanding dehumanization as rooted in a type of belief is that it explains why violent atrocities happen: dehumanizers think of the dehumanized as subhuman creatures so dehumanizers feel justified in treating them in ways they would never treat anyone they viewed as human.[11]
However, understanding dehumanization as rooted in belief could make it harder to identify dehumanization since it’s sometimes hard to tell what someone believes: people can treat others terribly even if they don’t view their victims as subhuman. If we focus on dehumanizing treatment—overt, observable actions—dehumanization might be easier to identify.[12]
3. Dehumanizing Treatment
What is it to treat people as subhuman?
Is it to treat humans exactly the same way we treat subhuman creatures? Since many instances of dehumanization, like rape and lynching, aren’t ways that nearly anyone treats, say, animals this isn’t ideal.
Is it treating humans similarly to how subhuman creatures are treated? If so, this “similarity” would need to be explained: similarly feeding one’s children and one’s pets is appropriate, but feeding a child from a dog food bowl on the floor isn’t. So we’d need more details about which ways of treating someone count as dehumanizing.
Here are three proposals for what makes dehumanizing treatment unique:
- it profoundly prevents us from realizing our uniquely human interests, such as freedom and self-determination: dehumanizers deny their victims’ human nature, which is reflected by these uniquely human interests;[13]
- it furthers the widespread oppression of a group of people;
- it’s motivated by especially bad intentions or goals, such as the goal of removing the target from the community of fellow human beings.[14]
But there are challenges facing each of these proposals. Proposal 1 suggests that all murders are dehumanizing since realizing our interests requires that we continue to live. Thinking that all murders dehumanize, even when the victim isn’t compared to a subhuman creature, risks broadening the concept of dehumanization too much.
Proposals 1 and 2 suggest it is possible to dehumanize someone by accident or mistake, which some find implausible. If a child who doesn’t know the meaning of a dehumanizing slur utters it to someone, labeling the child a dehumanizer seems harsh.[15]
Proposal 3 suggests that we will never know whether someone dehumanized someone else if we don’t know their intentions. Since we often don’t definitely know what others intend, this proposal may leave us unsure of whether some instances of bad behavior are genuinely dehumanizing.
Finally, all three proposals may be unhelpful for explaining why human beings commit dehumanizing atrocities. Because such treatment can be driven by many different beliefs and motives, even a clear account of what dehumanizing actions are may still leave us unsure about why they happen.[16]
4. Further Concerns
There are many more questions about dehumanization, such as :
- can dehumanization target individuals as individuals, or does it only target people as members of, for instance, racial or ethnic groups?
- how does dehumanization resemble or involve objectification, misogyny, racism, speciesism, and other forms of oppression?[17]
- while dehumanization is often defined as wrong, is it ever morally permissible? If someone in an abusive relationship sees their abuser as subhuman and this helps them end the relationship, is this kind of dehumanization justified?
5. Conclusion
Better understanding dehumanization may help us understand how and why human beings sometimes treat each other in such horrific ways. This understanding may be among the first steps to stopping future atrocities before they begin.
Notes
[1] The examples concerning Black men are discussed in Smith (2022, p. 6). A prominent example of Nazi dehumanization is the 1940 Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew, whose ending Smith (2022, p. 203) describes as showing rats “swarming through cellars and sewers while the narrator intones, ‘Where rats turn up, they spread diseases and carry extermination into the land. They are cunning cowardly, and cruel, they travel in large packs, exactly the way the Jews infect the races of the world.’” And the Kinyarwanda (the national language of Rwanda) words used were “inzoka” and “inyenzi”: see Tirrell (2012).
[2] See Smith (2016, 2020, 2021).
[3] It is important to note here and throughout this essay that “human” in the scholarly literature on dehumanization is typically understood to be a moral, not biological, category; that is, we call things “human” when they are entitled to be treated a certain way by others, not just because they are homo sapiens. There may be biological human entities who are not considered “human” on our meaning here (human embryos, for instance), and there could be creatures who are not biologically human who are understood to be “human” in the morally relevant sense (such as sentient aliens from science fiction like Star Trek’s Mr. Spock). For an introduction to what “human” might mean in these contexts, see Theories of Moral Considerability by Jonathan Spelman and The Ethics of Abortion by Nathan Nobis.
It is also important to note that not all philosophers agree that the “human” in “dehumanization” should be understood primarily in moral terms. Kronfeldner (2024), for one, argues that, depending on the context, the “humanity” denied by dehumanizers may refer to the moral property just mentioned, group membership in the human species, exhibition of the properties typical of human beings, or some combination of these three.
This initial definition of dehumanization offered here is not one that all scholars of dehumanization accept. There are some accounts of dehumanization, such as Mills’s (2015), that include instances of treating people as lesser humans (not just less than humans) under the umbrella of the term “dehumanization.”
Finally, it should be acknowledged that understanding dehumanization in terms of treating human beings like animals does in any way suggest that the ill-treatment of animals is morally justified: indeed, there are many influential arguments that it is not: see The Moral Status of Animals by Jason Wyckoff for an introduction to these arguments.
[4] See Davis (2023) for a personal account of experienced dehumanization within a prison. Examples of elder abuse and the abuse of people with disabilities are discussed in Killmister (2023) as examples of dehumanization. Killmister uses these examples to support her own favored account of dehumanization that differs from Mikkola’s by taking dehumanization to be the exclusion of others from the category of “human”: however, Mikkola’s and Killmister’s accounts are similarly focused on dehumanization as a kind of treatment.
[5] The wrongness of dehumanization can be explained in many ways, including by appealing to ethical theories. Perhaps the most obviously relevant influential ethical theory would be Kant’s ethics, which sees disrespecting persons—seeing rational beings as mere objects—as profoundly wrong. See Kantian Deontology: Immanuel Kant’s Ethics by Andrew Chapman for an introduction.
[6] However, we might call it dehumanization if the scammer explicitly compared the victims to animals or monsters as justification for their actions. And there are some philosophers, such as Mikkola (2016), who might call this act dehumanizing whether such a comparison is drawn or not.
[7] Philosophers who try to better understand dehumanization are often motivated to give definitions of dehumanization that will be useful to us for other purposes: for instance, Smith (2022) explicitly calls for us to understand dehumanization in ways that will be useful for psychologists who study this phenomenon so that we can come up with useful explanations and interventions. Philosophers are, at a minimum, seeking a definition of dehumanization that agrees, in most cases, with how most people use the term and makes clear how dehumanization differs from related concepts like “bad and wrong treatment” since otherwise, it’s not clear why we’d use the word “dehumanization” instead of some alternative to describe what we’re describing.
[8] A “subhuman creature” would be one that falls below humans on a moral hierarchy like the medieval Christian “great chain of being.” Within such a hierarchy, some entities, as a group, are treated as morally superior to others. For instance, on the great chain of being, angels were placed above humans, but humans were above apes, dogs, and demons, making these all examples of subhuman creatures. So “subhuman creatures,” in this context, is a term that covers non-human animals as well as demons, devils, and other monsters. Other entities, like robots, machines, and inanimate objects, arguably fall into this category too, but their inclusion is controversial; see the “Open Questions” section towards the end of this essay.
[9] This is the preferred position of Smith (2014, 2020, 2022) and advocates of his approach.
[10] One central challenge to this understanding of dehumanization is that dehumanizers are frequently inconsistent in the way they talk about their victims. Many alternate between referring to their targets using non-human language (“cockroach,” “dog,” or “demon,” for example) and human language like “criminal.” If we’re to take dehumanizers literally, as Smith does, then dehumanizers seem to be fundamentally irrational as they view their victims as both human and non-human at the same time. Smith calls the tension between viewing the targets of dehumanization as both human and non-human the “problem of humanity.” Chapter 12 of Smith (2022) explains this problem in response to Manne’s (2016, 2017) criticism. The problem of humanity extends back farther than this debate between Smith and Manne, however, as Kronfeldner (2024) discusses.
Smith’s solution to this problem asks us to think more deeply about monsters. Smith describes monsters like horror movie vampires and zombies as “metaphysically threatening,” meaning that they challenge our sense of reality by appearing human when they aren’t really. In the minds of dehumanizers, the dehumanized are like monsters in that they appear human but lack the human essence, making them metaphysically threatening too. If the dehumanized are treated as monstrous, Smith can now explain why the dehumanizer uses both non-human and human language to describe their victim: the Jew, in the eyes of the Nazi, isn’t fully human, nor is he fully vermin. Instead, he is some third kind of entity, a monster, with apparent similarities to the human and deeper similarities to the non-human, making both human and non-human comparison apt at the same time since we lack language for the exact kind of “monster” the dehumanized is.
[11] For more on this explanation, chapters 9 and 10 of Smith (2022) cover Smith’s theory of ideology, a term Smith defines as a set of beliefs that functions to oppress others. Smith’s theory of ideology helps to explain where beliefs about the non-human essences of others come from and how and why they spread.
[12] Additional challenges not discussed in detail in this essay include worries about his claim that all dehumanization must be taken literally rather than metaphorically and his account’s inability to accommodate graded dehumanization (i.e. cases where people are viewed or seen as “lesser humans” instead of “less than human”). Some also worry about the boundaries between dehumanization and related concepts like derogation and objectification. See Phillips (2025) for more on these and other challenges.
[13] This strategy is adopted by Mikkola (2016) who defines dehumanization as “an indefensible setback to some of our legitimate human interests, where this setback constitutes a moral injury” (Mikkola, p. 164). A “moral injury,” according to Mikkola, is any setback that “damages ‘the realization and acknowledgement of the victim’s value’” (Mikkola, p. 159). Slavery is often argued to be dehumanizing for these types of reasons: see Aristotle’s Defense of Slavery by Dan Lowe.
[14] This is similar to the position advocated by Killmister (2023).
[15] Here we might think that the child has engaged in a type of action that would be dehumanizing, if done by someone with different, dehumanizing, beliefs or intentions.
[16] What sorts of beliefs might these be? Again, perhaps the belief that the target literally is a subhuman creature, but also perhaps the belief that that the target is relevantly like some subhuman creature. Dehumanizers may also treat their victims like subhuman creatures because they believe that failing to do so may result in bad personal, professional, or other social consequences for the dehumanizer. All of these may need to be considered if we want a good explanation for dehumanization and embrace one of the three proposals for dehumanizing treatment above.
[17] See Phillips (2025) for a detailed breakdown of how different philosophers have understood the relationship between dehumanization and objectification, as well as how they could. See also What is Misogyny? by Odelia Zuckerman and Clair Morrissey, Philosophy and Race: An Introduction to Philosophy of Race by Thomas Metcalf, and Speciesism: Discrimination on the Basis of Species by Dan Lowe.
A further related question is whether any non-human animals can be dehumanized and, if so, what the best concept (or concepts) to describe that might be since animals clearly are not biologically human: for related discussion, see Haslam and Loughnan (2014, p. 411). Further, if intelligent, friendly space aliens exist (or existed), could they be dehumanized? If such aliens ever treat each other badly, in ways comparable to dehumanization, what do or would they call it? They are not biologically human, so they would not call it dehumanization, so, again, what would the best concept for this be? (For a dramatization of these issues, see the scene from the 1991 film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, where one of the Klingon characters states, “Human rights. Why, the very name is racist”). Finally, we can wonder if AI—which clearly isn’t human—could ever be dehumanized: see Artificial Intelligence: Ethics, Society, and the Environment by Thomas Metcalf. In sum, the range of these cases suggest that “dehumanization” might not be the ideal terminology here: perhaps de-personalization is better, since it applies to beings that aren’t human but can wrongly be treated or viewed in ways comparable to dehumanization.
References
Davis, Antoine. (2023) “Dehumanization: The Incarcerated Experience.” Seattle Journal for Social Justice 21(3), 689-692.
Haslam, Nick. (2006) “Dehumanization: An Integrative Review.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 10(3).
Killmister, Suzy. (2023). “A Metaphysics of Dehumanisation.” Philosophers’ Imprint, 23(22).
Kronfeldner, Maria. (2024) “The mirage of a ‘paradox’ of dehumanization: How to affirm the reality of dehumanization.” Journal of Social Philosophy.
Manne, Kate. (2016) “Humanism: A Critique.” Social Theory and Practice, 42(2): 389–415.
Manne, Kate. (2017) Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny. New York: Oxford University Press.
McDonald, Lucy. (2024). Dehumanizing Speech. In Harmful Speech and Contestation (pp. 57-81). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Mikkola, Mari. (2016) The Wrong of Injustice: Dehumanization and Its Role in Feminist Philosophy (Studies in Feminist Philosophy), New York: Oxford University Press.
Mills, Charles. (2015) “Bestial Inferiority: Locating Simianization within Racism” in Wulf D. Hund, Charles W. Mills, Silvia Sebastiani (eds), Simianization: Apes Gender, Class and Race. LIT Verlag.
Phillips, Ben. (2025) “Dehumanization.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Smith, David Livingstone. (2011) Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Smith, David Livingstone. (2020) On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It. New York: Oxford University Press.
Smith, David Livingstone. (2022) Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Smith, David Livingstone. (2023) “Some conceptual deficits of psychological models of dehumanization.” Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology 4.
Tirrell, Lynne. (2012). “Genocidal Language Games” In Ishani Maitra & Mary Kate McGowan, Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 174-221.
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About the Author
Dan Peterson is a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at Morehouse College. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and specializes in the philosophy of physics, philosophy of science, and formal epistemology. He has research and teaching interests in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of education, and ethics. He is also the co-founder of Mind Bubble, an educational nonprofit in Atlanta that provides local students with free tutoring and educational workshops. DanielJamesPeterson.com
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