Going Veg: Care of the Animals or Care of the Self?

My approach will be to set out and defend that animals are conscious creatures that have the capacity to suffer, and therefore should not suffer or be killed unjustly. I set out to establish that animals have this vital characteristic, the capacity to suffer, which gives the animal the right to equal consideration of interests, as described by Peter Singer. I will also defend that the ethical question of whether one should live a vegetarian lifestyle should be decided on the context of the living circumstances of the human.

This paper discusses Peter Singer's strict ethical vegetarianism. I argue that utilitarianism does not provide sufficient grounds for vegetarianism to be presented as an ethical obligation. I argue that the boycott style of vegetarianism advocated by Singer is not an effective means of reducing the suffering experienced by animals and, finally, demonstrate that the proper application of the principle of utility to our dietary choices requires the consumption of both ethically sourced meats and roadkill.

2015

In this paper I'm going to illustrate and discuss first the Peter Singer's utilitarian approach to the defense of a vegetarian diet. Then I'm going to show some objections to the above-mentioned argument, particularly objections raised by virtue ethicists. Finally I'm trying to build a better argument based on the capabilities approach in Martha Nussbaum's version.

Archives in Biomedical Engineering & Biotechnology

Food is and always has been a serious issue for public health, agriculture, the environment, and ethics. First, a brief sketch of the history of the philosophical vegetarianism is offered. This overview will allow several contemporary concerns about agricultural systems, resultant environmental harms, threats to public health, food insecurity, and dietary choices to be historically contextualized and interrelated. The conceptual map presented more or less chronologically here does not pretend to be comprehensive. But despite its necessary incompleteness and unavoidable selectivity the hope is that it may prove of modest use to inform food-secure consumers who enjoy a range of healthy food options, desire to safeguard public health, support sustainable agriculture, maintain ecological integrity, and work for climate stability. In the Western hemisphere, the idea of philosophical vegetarianism has a history of nearly 1,000 years in ancient Greece. The belief that it is wrong to eat animals was propounded by many of the most eminent ancient philosophers: Pythagoras, Empedocles, Theophrastus, who succeeded Aristotle as head of the Lyceum, Plutarch, Plotinus, and Porphyry. Porphyry, a prolific polymath, compiled a wide range of arguments against vegetarianism, critiqued them in detail, and defended at length his own Plotinian arguments for vegetarianism, in his work De Abstinentia ab Esu Animalium [1]. In ancient Rome, Pythagoras' arguments for philosophical vegetarianism won over the Stoic philosopher, statesman, orator, and dramatist Seneca, who reported improved health and vigor as benefits of abstaining from meat. Seneca believed that Stoic philosophy, which grounds the virtues of wisdom, justice, and temperance in pursuit of living in agreement with nature, dictates simple, simply prepared, frugal meals of foods that are close at hand. Thus, Seneca advocated moderate, unfussy eating and condemned foods requiring great labor, expense, or trouble. Seafood, imported foods, meat from hunted animals, and exotic mushrooms he criticized as decadent luxuries. The respected Roman Stoic teacher Musonius Rufus also emphasized the virtues of simplicity and frugality in eating. He argued that the proper diet consists of the least expensive and most readily available foods: raw fruits in season, raw and cooked vegetables, milk, cheese, honeycombs, and cooked grains. Like Seneca, Musonius rejected meat as too crude for human beings and more suitable for wild animals. Musonius concluded that responsible people favor what is easy to obtain over what is difficult, what involves no trouble over what does, and what is available over what isn't, because doing so promotes self-control and virtue of character. For him, these values called for a lacto-vegetarian diet

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2016

The paper would attempt to dwell into the wider philosophical and ontological implications of vegetarianism and in the process offer a deconstructive critique of the more physicalist currency of vegetarianism advocated by many animal rights activists, philosophers and writers like J.M. Coetzee. Taking up Jacques Derrida's notion of Anthropocentric "Carno-Phallogocentrism" , the paper would argue how any parochial notion of vegetarianism (including those by J.M. Coetzee in Elizabeth Costello) actually reserves the kernel of a certain anthropomorphic Enlightenment humanism and thus partakes in a kind of epistemic violence upon the animal "other" even while it poses to speak on behalf of them. The trajectory of this paper would take up post-humanist thinkers like Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas to trace the kernel of anthropocentric humanism even in the positing of the post-cartesian subject and attempt to locate an etymological anthropocentric inheritance of the same in the differential humanism of animal philosophers like J.M. Coetzee.

Philosophy in the Contemporary World, 2025

In this paper, I shall argue for Moral Cannibalism, namely the view that cannibalism is morally mandatory, at least for some meat-eaters animals, given some acceptable assumptions about justice and moral duty. Such an incredible claim will be preceded by a short exposition of the rationale for Moral Vegetarianism and for its adversary position Moral Omnivorism (§1), then I will briefly present Moral Cannibalism (§2), and finally I will discuss two arguments for it, a positive one (§3) and a negative one (§4): on the one hand, justice between animal species might imply that it is morally better for some carnivorous species to eat the members of their own species rather than members of other species; on the other hand, the moral wrongness of cannibalism lacks a satisfactory ground.

Vegetarianism is becoming increasingly common in the Western world, yet little has been written on how the practice is discursively constructed. This represents a gap in the systematic understanding of the motivations, ideas and issues of the vegetarian community, especially because vegetarian discourse both seeks to explain the deviant practice to meat-eaters and simultaneously rationalize the practice to vegetarians. By focusing on how the three main motivations behind vegetarianism - animal welfare, health and the environment - are presented, this essay explores the discursive construction of vegetarianism from a social problems perspective. It reveals that although vegetarians have succeeded in making meat eating a social problem, the majority of the vegetarian arguments do not in fact support or necessitate an all-out ban on animal products. Instead, they provide a useful explanation for the now growing flexitarian movement, and the rise in ethical, health-oriented and ecologically conscious consumers.

The Law & Ethics of Human Rights, 2017

This Article contemplates the environmental argument in favor of vegetarianism or veganism, while reviewing its historical development and relevance to the current environmental debate. Today there is an apparent synergy between ecological ethics and animal rights discourse; nevertheless, this presents an inherent paradox. Whereas the moral, environmental and health arguments advocating for vegetarianism and veganism seem to reinforce one another, conflicts may also arise between them. Under certain conditions, the environmental stance may lead to different and perhaps even contradictory attitudes about the raising of livestock and the permissibility of animal-based food. Therefore, this Article first addresses the affinities and conflicts between both versions of non-anthropocentric ethics: biocentrism (individual animals’ rights and welfare) and ecocentrism (intrinsic value of nature and ecosystems). It then examines the historical development and creeds of environmental vegetaria...