Transcript
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Hello and welcome to In Behalf of Animals. I am Patrick Botuelo.
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You know, I have had a lifelong love of history and philosophy,
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so naturally, when I became a vegan animal rights activist,
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I was immensely interested in what the great thinkers,
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the philosophers, the scientists, the artists through the
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ages had to say on the subject. What I learned may be
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of surprise to many of you. In fact, I'd hazard
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a guess that most people, including perhaps most vegans,
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think of animal rights as a late 20th century construct,
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something that was born with Peter Singer's animal liberation in 1975,
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or maybe PETA's founding in 1980.
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But the truth is, practically all arguments for the adoption
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of an ethical vegan lifestyle, including on environmental grounds,
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have existed and been promulgated for centuries, even millennia.
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So today I'd like to share a few of my favorite passages.
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I find them fascinating, and I hope that you will too.
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Also, as an aside, it's nice to know we modern vegans are in pretty good
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company. Just a few notes before we start.
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The word vegetarian was not widely used till the 19th century,
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and the word vegan not coined till 1944. But there
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can be no mistaking what writers prior to these dates were talking about.
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Also, my first selected writer references Pythagoras,
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a Greek philosopher who lived some 2500 years ago.
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It is thought by many that Pythagoras was a vegetarian,
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and in fact, prior to coinage of that word, those who eschewed
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meat in England were called Pythagoreans. Unfortunately,
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however, there are no surviving writings from Pythagoras,
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and finally, I have stopped short of the 20th century as I plan on presenting
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those arguments in a later episode.
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So I begin with Plutarch. Plutarch was a Greek philosopher
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who lived and wrote in the first century A.D.
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so we're talking almost 2,000 years ago.
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Please contemplate that as you're listening.
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The following comes from his essay on the eating of animal flesh.
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He writes,
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can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining
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from flesh? For my part, I rather wonder
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both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind
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the first man who did so touched his mouth to gore and
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brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature?
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He who set forth tables of dead stale bodies and
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ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed
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and cried, moved and lived.
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How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit
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and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb?
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How could his Nose, endure the stench.
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Plutarch then went on to address a criticism that remains to this day,
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namely, that veganism is a luxury and that we vegans, especially in
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the west, are pampered and privileged and have our heads in the sand.
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Most people, the argument goes, have no choice but to consume animal parts
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and products. Once again, please bear in mind that these
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words were written some 2000 years ago.
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Or would everyone declare that the reason for those who first
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instituted flesh eating was the necessity of their poverty?
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But you who live now, what madness, what frenzy drives you to the pollution
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of shedding blood? You who have such a superfluity of necessities,
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why slander the earth by implying that she cannot support you?
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You call serpents and panthers and lions savage,
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but you yourselves, by your own foul slaughter, leave them no room
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to outdo you in cruelty. For their slaughter is their
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living, yours is a mere appetizer.
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Plutarch went on to say, it is certainly not
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lions and wolves that we eat out of self defense. On the
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contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures
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without stings or teeth to harm us.
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Creatures that, I swear, nature appears to have produced for the
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sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing
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abashes us, not the flower like tinting of
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the flesh, not the cleanliness of their habits or
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the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches.
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No, for the sake of a little flesh, we deprive them of sun,
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of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled
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by birth and being. Then we go on to assume
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that when they utter cries and squeaks, their speech is inarticulate,
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that they do not. Begging for mercy,
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entreating, seeking justice. Each one of them say,
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I do not ask to be spared in case of necessity.
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Only spare me your arrogance. Kill me to
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eat, but not to please your palate.
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Oh, the cruelty of it.
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Then, anticipating the modern argument that man is designed for
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eating meat, Plutarch wrote these words, and once again I remind
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2000 years ago.
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We declare then that it is absurd for them to say that the practice of
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flesh eating is based on nature. For that man
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is not naturally carnivorous is in the first place obvious
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from the structure of his body. A man's frame is in no way
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similar to those creatures who were made for flesh eating.
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He has no hooked beak or sharp nails or jagged
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teeth. If you declare that you
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are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself
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what you want to eat. Do it, however,
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only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver
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or Cudgel or axe,
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rather. Just as wolves and bears and lions themselves
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slay what they eat, so you are to fell an ox with your
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fangs, or a boar with your jaws,
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or tear a lamb or hare to bits,
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fall upon it and eat it, still living, as animals do.
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But if you wait for what you want to eat to be
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dead, if you have qualms about enjoying the flesh while life is
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still present, why do you continue, contrary to
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nature, to eat what possesses life,
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even when it is lifeless and dead? However, no one eats the flesh just
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as it is. Men boil and roast it, altering it by
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fire and drugs, recasting and diverting and smothering with
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countless condiments, the taste of gore, so that the palate may be
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deceived and accept what is foreign to it.
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Plutarch then closes with a reference to the Pythagorean idea
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that souls simply switch bodies after death.
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Transmigration, it is called. He writes,
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for what sort of dinner is not costly for which a living creature loses
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its life? Do we hold life cheap?
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I do not yet go so far as to say that it may well be
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the life of your mother or father, or some friend or child, as Empedocles
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declared. Yet it does at least
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possess some perception, hearing,
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seeing, imagination, intelligence,
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which every last creature receives from nature, to enable
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it to acquire what is proper for it and to evade
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what is not. In other words,
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says Plutarch, it is wholly irrelevant if the animal, or at
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least his soul, was a human in a past life.
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Their lives matter just as they are.
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They merit moral consideration simply by dint of their
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sentience. In short, the other thinking,
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feeling beings with whom we share the planet have intrinsic
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value.
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My next selection comes from Porphyry, a Greek philosopher who
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lived a mere 1700 years ago. This comes from
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his essay on abstinence from Animal Food.
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To destroy other things through luxury and for the enjoyment of pleasure
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is perfectly savage and unjust. And the abstinence
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from these neither diminishes our life nor our living.
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Happily, to deliver animals to be slaughtered
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and cooked, and thus be filled with murder, not for
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the sake of nutriment and satisfying the wants of nature,
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but making pleasure and gluttony the end of such conduct
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is transcendentally iniquitous and dire.
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Porphyry, then, speaks to the nonsense of plant sentience,
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a nonsense that, as we modern vegans well know, remains to this day.
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Plant sentience is, in my opinion, but a cynical attempt to neutralize
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the animal rights message. He writes.
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To compare plants, however, with animals is doing violence to
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the order of things. For the latter are naturally sensitive
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and adapted to feel pain, to be terrified and hurt,
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on which account also they may be injured,
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but the former are entirely destitute of sensation,
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and in consequence of this, nothing foreign or
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evil or hurtful or injurious can befall
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them.
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Both of the preceding writings come from classical antiquity,
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but then, notably, there came a centuries long drought,
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at least in the public sphere. On the subject of ethical vegetarianism,
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the most obvious explanation for this is the rise and
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subsequent dominance of Christianity with its core tenet that
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only humans have souls, and thus only humans
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are entitled to moral consideration. But around
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the 18th century, the ethical case for animal rights begins to
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return. One theory for this rebirth of sorts
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is an almost visceral backlash against the Cartesian,
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Named after the 17th century French philosopher,
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scientist, and importantly Catholic Rene Descartes
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notion that animals are mere automatons,
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machines with no soul. Descartes argued
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animals are impervious to pain and incapable
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of true suffering, and thus any kind of grisly
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thing could be done to them with complete moral impunity.
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One of the first to take up the counter to this was the Dutch English
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philosopher, Bernard Mandeville.
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This comes from the second edition of his the Fable of the
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bees, published in 1723.
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When a creature has given such convincing and
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undeniable proofs of the terrors upon him and the
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pains and agonies he feels, is there a follower of
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Descartes so inured to blood as not to
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refute by his commiseration the philosophy of
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that vain reasoner? I have
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often thought, if it was not for this tyranny which custom
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usurps over us, that men of any tolerable good nature could
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never be reconciled to the killing of so many animals for their daily food,
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as long as the bountiful earth so plentifully provides them
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with varieties of vegetable dainties.
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But in such perfect animals as sheep and oxen,
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in whom the heart, the brain and nerves differ so little from
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ours, and in whom the separation of the spirits from the
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blood, the organs of sense, and consequently feeling itself,
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are the same as they are in human creatures,
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I cannot imagine how a man not hardened in blood and massacre
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is able to see a violent death and the pangs of it without
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concern, some people
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are not to be persuaded to taste of any creatures they have daily
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seen and been acquainted with while they were alive.
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Others extend their scruple no further than to their own poultry,
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and refuse to eat what they fed and took care of themselves.
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Yet all of them will feed heartily and without remorse
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on beef, mutton, and fowls when they are bought in
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the market. In this behavior,
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methinks, there appears something like a consciousness of guilt.
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It looks as if they endeavored to save themselves from the invitation of a
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crime by removing the cause of it as far as they can from themselves.
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And I can discover in it some strong remains of primitive pity
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and innocence, which all the arbitrary power of
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custom and the violence of luxury have not yet
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been able to conquer. We are born
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with a repugnancy to the killing and consequently
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the eating of animals.
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Here Mandeville turns to an inconvenient logic. On animal suffering.
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He writes, everybody knows that surgeons
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in the cure of dangerous wounds and fractures, the extirpation
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of limbs and other dreadful operations, are often compelled to
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put their patients to extraordinary torments and
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that the more desperate and calamitous cases occur to them, the more
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the outcries and bodily sufferings of others must become familiar
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to them. For this reason our English law
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allows them not to be of any jury upon life and death,
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as supposing that their practice itself is sufficient to harden
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and extinguish in them that tenderness without which
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no man is capable of setting a true value upon the lives of
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his fellow creatures. Now,
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if we ought to have no concern for what we do to brood beasts,
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and there was not imagined to be any cruelty in killing them,
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why should of all callings butchers,
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and only they jointly with surgeons,
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be excluded from being jurymen by the
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same law?
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Next comes Percy Shelley, the famous English
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poet who lived a brief 30 years from 1792
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to 1822. This comes from a vindication of
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natural diet. Shelley writes.
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Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles frugivorous
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animals in everything and carnivorous in nothing.
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He has neither claws wherewith to seize his prey,
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nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fiber.
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A mandarin of the first class with nails 2
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inches long, would probably find them alone inefficient to hold
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even a hair.
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It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation
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that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion,
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and that the sights of its bloody juices and raw horror does
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not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.
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Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a decisive
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experiment on its fitness. And, as Plutarch
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recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth,
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and, plunging his head into its vitals,
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slake his thirst with the steaming blood. When,
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fresh from the deed of horror, let him revert to the irresistible
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instincts of nature that would rise in judgment against it and say
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nature formed me for such work as this,
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then and then only would he be consistent.
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Next comes Richard Wagner, one of the
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great composers who lived from 1813 to 1883.
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This comes from an essay he wrote called Fellow Suffering.
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Recently, while I was in the street, my eye was caught by a poulterer's shop.
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I stared unthinkingly at his piled up wares,
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neatly and appetizingly laid out, when I became
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aware of a man at the side busily plucking a hen while
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another man was just putting his hand into a cage,
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where he seized a live hen and tore its head off.
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The hideous scream of the animal and the pitiful,
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weaker sounds of complaint that it made while being overpowered
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transfixed my soul with horror.
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Ever since then I have been unable to rid myself of
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this impression. It is dreadful to see how
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our lives, which on the whole remain addicted to pleasure,
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rest upon such a bottomless pit of the cruelest misery.
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This has been so self evident to me from the very beginning
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and has become even more central to my thinking as my sensibility
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has increased.
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I'll close today with some words from Anna Kingsford.
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Anna was an extraordinary woman who, alas, most people have
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never heard of. She became a medical doctor at a time
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1880, when such a thing was practically unheard of.
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She was also an author and women's rights activist,
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and, of course, an ethical vegetarian.
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This first passage comes from a letter she wrote a year before
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graduating medical school. In it, she describes the
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effects the dog experiments then being conducted there had
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on her. It should be noted that while a med student,
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Anna was the only one in her school who refused to participate in these
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experiments. This passage also helps explain
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her unrelenting animal rights activism.
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Anna writes, I have found
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my hell here in the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, a hell
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more real and awful than any I have yet met with elsewhere,
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and one that fulfills all the dreams of the medieval monks.
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The idea that it was so came strongly upon me one day when I
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was sitting in the Musee of the school with my head in my hands,
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trying vainly to shut out of my ears the piteous shrieks
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and cries which floated incessantly towards me up the
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private staircase. Every now and then,
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as a scream more heart rending than the rest reached me,
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the moisture burst out on my forehead and on the palms of my
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hands, and I prayed, oh God,
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take me out of this hell. Do not suffer me to remain
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in this awful place.
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But then Anna explains why it's not enough to be against just
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one particular form of animal cruelty, in this case animal
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experimentation or just one particular form of injustice.
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These passages come from addresses animate to the British Vegetarian
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Society.
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I always speak with the greatest delight and satisfaction in the presence
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of my friends, the members of the Vegetarian Society.
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With them I am quite at my ease. I have no reservation,
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I have no dissatisfaction.
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This is not the case when I speak for my friends, the anti
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vivisectionists or the advocates of freedom for
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women. I always feel that such of these
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as are not abstainers from flesh food have unstable ground
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under their feet. And it is my great regret that
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when helping them in their good works, I cannot openly
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and publicly maintain what I so ardently believe,
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that the vegetarian movement is the bottom and basis
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of all other movements toward purity,
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freedom, justice and happiness.
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In our own era of so called intersectionality,
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Anna, words ring loud and true.
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What I hear is that if you are against any form of oppression and discrimination,
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you should be against all of them. Reason and
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compassion demand it. And as Anna suggests,
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veganism should be the baseline.
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Anna went on, people talk to
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me sometimes about peace conventions and ask me to join societies
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for putting down war. I always say you are beginning
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at the wrong end and putting the cart before the horse.
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If you want people to leave off fighting like beasts of prey,
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predators, that is, you must first get them to leave
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off living like beasts of prey.
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And finally Anna said this.
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Mr. Ruskin has said that the criterion of a beautiful action or
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of a noble thought is to be found in song. And that
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an action about which we cannot make a poem is not fit for humanity.
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Did he ever apply this test to flesh eating?
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Many a lovely poem, many a beautiful picture
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may be made about gardens and fruit gathering and the
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bringing home of the golden produce of harvest, or the burden
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of the vineyards with groups of happy boys and girls.
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But I defy anyone to make beautiful verse or to
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paint beautiful pictures about slaughterhouses running with streams of
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steaming blood and terrified struggling animals fell
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to the ground with poleaxes, or of
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a butcher's stall hung round with rows of gory corpses and
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folks in the midst of them, bargaining with the ogre who keeps the place
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for legs and shoulders and thighs and heads
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of the murdered creatures.
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As I mentioned at the beginning, in a future episode we'll get into the
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20th century and perhaps cover a few of the older writers
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not presented today. Thank you for listening.
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I truly hope you found this as interesting and provocative as
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I do,
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for on Behalf of Animals, this has been Patrick Bottuel.
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Hey Nicole here from In Behalf of Animals.
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We hope you love our show as much as you love
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animals. And if you do, can you take a quick action to
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help amplify their voices? Simply follow our podcast and
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write us a five star review on Apple Podcasts,
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Spotify and wherever you are listening right now.
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It helps new listeners discover the show to learn more about
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how they can join our community and help animals
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too. Thank you for listening and remember to be their voice
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every chance you get.
