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    Stephen Clark, Vegetarianism and The Ethics of Virtue

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    Virtue ethics argument against eating meat

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    Stephen Clark, Vegetarianism and The Ethics of Virtue

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    Virtue ethics argument against eating meat

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    Stephen Clark, Vegetarianism and the Ethics of Virtue

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    Virtue ethics argument against eating meat

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    Download as pdf
    144 views7 pages

    Stephen Clark, Vegetarianism and The Ethics of Virtue

    Uploaded by

    davidmkaplan
    Virtue ethics argument against eating meat

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    VEGETARIANISM 7] | AND THE ETHICS OF VIRTUE Stephen R. L. Clark PREFACE 1 India “nonvegetatian films” are full of sex and violence, since.“ Jew s the nearest that the English language gets tothe ideal of pony that Hindu thought reveres. That ideal, of course. has never been pre. Posed for everyone: not eating meat, like not having se, is something that nly the few can manage. The same was true in the Western vegetarian tra. tion: Porphyrys plea to his friend, that he not backslide, was partly founded on the importan: il Fomor ne importance to philosophers ofa careful disengagement sea aac mine nis poral Garanipoomame ithaca nev a Porphyry also argued that nonhuman animals at lan Is themselves dese Dever thant be tated meri as means ta human ene berth aa ks 138 Clark: Vegetarianism and the Ethics of Virtue 139 most objected to were ones that he thought comupt. By not eating flesh the philosopher could keep his mind alert and hope for a better afterlife— though Porphyry himself did not employ the Pythagorean doctrine that we might find ourselves reincarnated in nonhuman form if we did not seize the chance of rising above the human. The term “vegetarian itself was coined in the 1840s from the Latin veg- tus to mean “one who lives a healthy life” and to replace the older term “Pythagorean.” The Vegetarian Society founded in the United Kingdom in 1847 at first prohibited alcohol and tobacco as well as meat? Most modem. ‘Western vegetarians would probably prefer to emphasize some more altru- istic motive: they refrain from flesh because they disapprove of the treat- ‘ment of farm animals, or because they think that the meat industry wastes resources that should be better used for human benefit. Many would still argue—with good reason—that a vegetarian diet is usually healthier than the conventional Western diet, but this is rarely the central motivation for committed vegetarians. ‘Modem moralists have usually equated moral virtue with altruism: being good is a matter of doing others good (and what itis to do someone good is reckoned unproblematic). On these terms, the only moral argument. for vegetarianism must be that the practice would be one that made for @ better (pleasanter, healthier, more harmonious) world than the alterna- tives. And the arguments for choosing oneself to be vegetarian would be either that such a choice might bring that better world a litte loser or that ‘we ought to act as we would will everyone to act even if in fact they don't. Bernard Shaw was mistaken if he seriously thought that any particular animal had a pleasanter or more fulfilled or longer life because he forswore flesh; at best, some animal that might have been bred to feed him never ‘was (but more likely, just as many animals were bred and slaughtered). His dietary choices did no good to any actual animal, The altruistic argument may rest instead on the very long-term effects of individual choices: maybe ‘we shall eventually achieve an agricultural economy that makes less use of animals, less intensively and less invasively. The problem with such long- term altruism is that the result is very uncertain, It is easy to imagine worlds and futures that appear to be better than this actual one—including worlds in which flesh foods ate produced by biotechnological manipulations. It is very difficult to construct a strategy that leads to any of those worlds from here, and difficult to deny that we might actually increase the local sum of suffering by trying to alleviate the global sum. ‘The standard alternative to consequentialist analysis of moral action (as above) is to act upon those maxims that we can setiously will as uni- versal law. Kant, notoriously, denied that we could have any duties toward nonhuman animals, following in this a long tradition of neglect. Because (itis said) nonhumans are not rational, we owe them no respect; because 140 SECTION THREE: THE RECENT PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATE they can make no bargains, they deserve no credit. Porphyry followed Plutarch in denying both premises: nonhumans had a share in teason, even if itis less than ours, and demonstrably have made bargains with us that we ought to keep.* Other humanists might also argue that we cannot take the vegetarian option as our maxim because we cannot will that everyone be vegetarian (since this would be to will the destruction of such creatures as cannot survive on such a diet). It might on the other hand be argued that the vegetarian maxim can be universalized for some class (that is, all those ‘who could survive on a less destructive diet should do so), whereas the standard monvegetarian diet could not be willed as_universal even for « ‘human beings without appalling environmental damage. Such arguments can be revised continually. The practical moral for both consequentialists and deontologists must be to offer some ideal of character and action: to act consistently with some vision ofa better world, whether or not the final calculation of expectable outcome, or the defini. tive judgment on what maxim can or cannot be universalized, has been achieved. Recent ethical theorists have preferred an Aristotelian account of Fight action: instead of thinking only of the possible ou:comes of an act or strategy, oF supposing that there is only one rational (and informative) rule of action, we are to think instead of what an admirable agent would find it natural to do. The right action under any circumstances is the one the vit- {uous agent would perform in seeking to do right—not as a means to some imagined outcome, but as the finest or most beautiful available option. It is sometimes easier to recognize an admirable agent than to work out what would serve any global aim: not knowing what will follow from what we do, nor how our successors will feel about the outcome, better (perhaps) to live in beauty here and now, without worrying too much about what is to come. Similarly, rules may be useful rules of thumb, but we cannot expect to have a definite and unambiguous rule to cover every circumstance. In either case, what matters is that the agent's character and sense be virtuous. And the agent is not less virtuous if she fails to achieve the global outcome she desires, nor even if the maxim of her action is not the only possibly ‘universal one. By reemphasizing virtue modern moralists provide an entry to the older vegetarian tradition, Purity, VIRTUE, AND THE NATURAL LiFe, ‘Whatever the theoretical background, it is not unreasonable to acknowl- edge, admire, and seek to cultivate such virtues as courage, temperance, fair- hess, honesty, fidelity, and so on. Those virtues, or many of them, might also be invoked in condemnation of our current agricultural and other Practices. Whatever “bargain of domestication” was once struck with Clark: Vegetarianism and the Ethics of Virtue 141 -n, To kill beyond necessity, ~ ultry, sheep, and cattle has long been broken. To kill bey y forthe sake of killing ot for some marginal pleasure, is cruel or greedy. or any man who i just and good loves the brute creatures which serve him and he takes car of them so that they have food snl et andthe tier things they ned. He doesnot do this only forhis wn good bu out af prinale of ave justice and if hei 4 cel toward them that he fegues wrk om them and nevertheless doesnt provide the nceshry food. then he has surely broken the av which God inscribed in his heart ‘Andi els sy of his beaten to satis is vm please then he des unjustly and te same measure il be measured out im But even those modems who prefer some version of virtue ethics over attempts to calculate the greater good (consequentialist ethics) or identify ‘a maxim that can be universalized without contradiction (deontological ‘thics), may not much care for “purity.” It is now a commonplace to argue ‘that those who shrink from flesh foods or from the flesh are squeamishly ‘or sanctimoniously contemptuous of corporeal existence and of those who have to dirty their hands with it. Brahminical culture may impose strict ‘duties of purity on Brahmins—but at the expense of rendering untouchable all those who have to deal with excrement and dead bodies. To speak for purity is to seek to separate oneself from the common human condition, and so to establish some favored class of person. Porphyty drew on Hindu experience to answer the universalizing query, “If everyone imitates [the Brahmin or Samanaean] what will become of us?” ‘Human affaies are notin chaos because of them, because not everyone has imitated them, and those that do so have brought order rather than chaos for their peoples, Nor did law compel them: dhe law allowed others to eat ‘meat, but left these autonomous, respecting them as greater than itself it ‘made not them, but the others, subject ois justice a originators of wrong- doing... There are many things that the law concedes to the common ‘man but not to the philosopher, or even to the citizens of a well-run city “The law has not forbidden people wo spend their time in wine-bars, but nevertheless that is reprehensible in a decent man, Something similar, then, is evident in relation to diec that which is conceded to ordinary people would not be conceded to the best. A man who engages in philos- ‘ophy should prescribe for himself as far as possible, the holy laws which ‘have been determined by gods and by people who follow the gods. Its ev- dent that the holy laws of peoples and cities impose purity on holy people and forbid them to eat animate food, and indeed prevent the masses from eating some kinds, whether from piety or because the food causes some haem... The filly law-abiding and pious man should abstain from all [animate foods}, for fin pacar eases some people abstain in pier fiom some foods, the person who is pious in all cases will abstain from all. 142 SECTION THREE: THE RECENT PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATE Fgalitarians, it seems, can have no room for special rules of purity that only a few can live by. Correspondingly, virtues that only a few are likely to acquire cannot be virtues, Virginity, from being one of the highest terms of praise, is usually now regarded as a flaw to be remedied as soon as itis legally possible (though the dangers involved in the transition are partly recognized). Once a sexual practice is perceived to be one that many people will indulge or wish to indulge, it ceases-—in the eyes of modern moral- ists—to be a vice. The only argument generally accepted against a common practice is that it is unhealthy: the same term might have been used a cen- tury ago to condemn impurity, but whereas our predecessors meant that only the spiritually sick would do such-and-such things, the modem ‘moralist means only that the practices might lead to obvious disease. Sim. ilarly, nicotine and alcohol are no longer as desirable as once they were— but the reasons offered for forswearing them are usually related to the risks to health and safety that they pose, not that their use is symptomatic of a deeper sickness. Itis not only the modern egalitarian moralist that may distrust all talk of purity, cleanness, and spiritual health. Purity rules place limits on how ‘we may live. If it would be wrong to eat pig flesh even to save one's life or the life of one’s family, then the rule means more than life itself. To will that we should live purely even at the cost of dying may seem a paradig. ‘matic contradiction: a maxim that cannot be willed at all. The apocryphal commander who declared that his forces had had to destroy the village in order to save it was hardly less coherent. Willing to abstain from sex, and from eating anything produced by sexual intercourse—as the Cathars did— can easily be represented as will to destroy humanity. Obviously tis not in fact impossible for humankind to survive a vegetarian diet (as it might not easily survive a total ban on intercourse), but the issue cannot so easily be laughed away. Is humankind or human life the natural, single, or supe- rior end of moral action? And have we not been taught that laws are made for humankind, not human beings for law? Whatever interferes with a proper solidarity with human beings everywhere, it can be felt, is wrong, Purity rules—which might prevent someone eating forbidden foods or having improper relations even to save a life—are bound to be considered antilife. Once again, there is no real present difficulty, for most of us, in absti- nence from eating animals or even animal products, Nor are modern moralists entirely immune to feelings about purity or cleanliness: if itis an argument against abstinence from animal flesh that there might be occa- sions when we must eat this or die, it would equally be an argument against abstinence from eating people. Yet even those who argue that such a diet might sometimes be permissible or even obligatory will acknowledge that it would be right to feel polluted. Vegetarians may be similarly placed, Clark: Vegetarianism and the Ethics of Virtue 143, acknowledging that there might be times when they would feed on flesh, (or pardon those who did, and still insist that this would be unclean, Simi Jatly, even those moralists who have rationalized many sexual practices that cour predecessors thought defiling will have limits to. their tolerance. Necrophiliacs, it could reasonably be argued, do no harm to their victims {iho are dead), and any offense to living relatives could be ignored or mit- igated. Are we to suppose that the only good reason for condemning necrophilia is the possibility of infection? Or shall we more honestly admit that the practice would be “unclean” even if it were antiseptic: an offense to an unarticulated image of what itis to be decently (which is, cleanly") human? So vegetarian purity rules are no more antilife than ordinarily liberal rules, On the one hand, very few of us will ever have to choose between our personal deaths and eating animals. On the other, itis part of the human condition that we must sometimes choose to die clean deaths or live pol- luted lives. The fact that even honest moralists may sometimes choose the latier—and pethaps seek justice, purification, absolution when they do— does not demonstrate that purity nules are void, According to Porphyry, “It would be terrible if, when the Syrians would not eat fish or the Hebrews pigs, and most of the Phoenicians and the Egyptians would not eat cows, and when many kings tried hard to make them change they would endure death rather than break the lav, we should choose to break the laws of nature and the precepts of the gods for fear of people and what they might ” what is purity? Porphyry believed (drawing again on the Brahminical tradition): ‘holy men posited that purity is being unmixed with the oppo- site, whereas mixing is contamination. ... Purity... i singling out and taking that which is natural and appropriate.” This was why, so Porphyry said, sex pollutes as well as eating meat, in that it involves a mixture of natures—or else, pethaps more plausibly, that it distracts the intellect. ‘Why should we make the passions wither and ourselves die to them, why should we practice this every day, iFit were possible (as some have argued) for us to be active in accordance with intellect while we are involved in. ‘moral concerns that are unsupervised by intellect... Ifyou can be con-

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