THE VAGARIES OF VEGETARIANISM

We have fed and housed animals, cared for them and given them succour when they were ill. The least they can do in return is to let us eat some of them.

   Jonathan Harrison

I know vegetarians who make it an absolute rule not to eat meat. They not only refuse to eat it alive, or when cruelty or unkindness has been involved in rearing it, transporting it, or killing it. They also refuse to eat it when they are extremely hungry and no pain to any animal would be involved by their eating in secret a dead piece of it. Furthermore, though they refuse to eat meat themselves, they feed rabbit to their cats and lard to their birds, though feeding animals with other animals is as much contrary to the interest of the animals eaten as the vegetarian in question's eating them himself. (The greatest good some vegetarians could to do for animal-kind would be to eat their cats.)  I am not arguing that we may eat animal flesh, but not human flesh.  Human flesh, like animal flesh, is just a lump of decaying chemicals. The only reason for not eating it, which reason could be overridden by, say, great hunger, is the pain our eating the deceased would cause to other people, especially to their 'nearest and dearest' - in other words, their relations -and perhaps sometimes to themselves.

Vegetarianism is (at most) a virtue of affluence, since men could not afford to be vegetarian in the days of hunter-gatherers, and we would be certainly be justified in eating meat if we were to relapse into something nearer that state. For the same reason, individuals would certainly be justified in eating meat if it was all they could get, or all they could afford, and societies justified in eating meat for the same reason. It is certainly not be an ultimate duty not to rear, kill and eat animals, even if it were a duty at all, but at most a duty arising from the limited circumstances obtaining at certain places and times.

The question whether animals have (natural) rights is of exaggerated importance, and I propose to ignore it. Whether animals have natural rights or not, it can still be the case that men ought to do all the things which those who think there are animal rights say they ought to do. Indeed, the case for doing these things might be stronger if it were to rests on purely moral grounds, without a spurious backing from metaphysics. Whether there are natural rights or not, it could still be, and I think is, the case that there are ways in which animals morally) ought to be protected, though these may not be quite as extensive as those in which some defenders of animal rights believe.

It has been put to me that to say that it was permissible to eat animals because of the time we spend caring for them would be like holding that it was permissible to eat our children or aged parents because they owed us for the time, money and effort we spent on caring for them. But there is very properly a law against eating our relations, no law at the moment against eating other animals, so long as they are dead. And debts are by implication limited to certain kinds of payment. One is not usually allowed to eat one's creditors, partly because what they usually owe one is money, which animals do not have. Services should be returned by other fairly similar services, not by shooting our benefactors' enemies. I would consider it a good bargain with one of my children if I were to contract with them that he or she would look after me for a number of years in return for the privilege of killing me (humanely, of course) and eating me at the end of this period. But I do not think my children would be broad-minded enough to agree to it.

I feel that `failing in one's duty' is not a good description of the behaviour of those who do not care for animals or treat them badly. It is a manifestation of a rather unhelpful tendency, derived from Kant, to regard all immorality as a failing to do one's duty. `Cruel' `callous', `unimaginative', `thoughtless', selfish', 'inhumane' and so on seem more appropriate words for cruelty to animals than `dereliction of duty', and quite condemnatory enough to describe certain kinds of undesirable behaviour. And I would not describe a boy, who delighted in pulling the wings off flies or thrusting walking sticks up cats anuses, as failing in his duty, odious though his behaviour is. One can speak of one's duty to animals, but a philosopher who writes about these may be discussing the ethical aspects of our relations with animals, which are wider than that of doing our duty with respect to them.  There are some worse things than most lapses of duty (and better things than just doing one's duty).  I might stretch a point, and speak of my duty to care for my cat, but I would not have thought I had a duty not to eat her.

Kant is often supposed to have held that we ought not to treat rational nature - whatever this may be - as a means.  Kant's principle has the advantage for vegetarians that since it does not specifically mention humans, it allows the possibility of treating as means rational, or at least intelligent, animals such as chimpanzees and perhaps porpoises. But animals that are not rational, presumably, could so far as Kant goes, be treated in any which way we pleased.  Kant, however, did not hold that we should not treat rational nature as a means. He held that we ought not to treat it merely as a means. But the difference between treating rational nature as a means and merely as a means is obscure. It is quite easy to think of exceptions to any specific suggestion. If it means that we should see that they as well as we benefit from any action we perform this is often impossible. And if I could stop someone from unleashing a virus that would kill hundreds of thousands of people only by shooting him, it would right to kill him, but he himself would not benefit from this action at all. It has been held that treating people as means can, in these circumstances, merely involve considering their interests, but a fat lot of good this will do them if we shoot them all the same. In any case, it could well be argued that even to consider the virus spreader's interests would be absurd in the circumstances, and would take too much time.  It is un reasonable to demand that we treat animals with respect. To throw a lady off one's knee would be to treat her with lack of respect, but to throw a cat of one's knee, though sometimes mildly inconsiderate, is not to treat it disrespectfully; its sense of dignity is not hurt by it (though the lady's is.)

It has been put to me (by Louis Pojman) that though there are aesthetic (gustatory) reasons for eating meat, there are moral reasons against it, and moral reasons trump aesthetic ones.    I do have doubts, however, about whether moral reasons always do outweigh aesthetic ones. Many have held that if a man would be a worse artist if he were a better man, it would be wrong to try morally to improve him.  You might say that his behaviour was not a case of an aesthetic reason outweighing a moral one, because it was his duty to spend his money on paint, rather than on paying his creditors, and so he was doing his duty, but I very much doubt whether duty would be the usual reason for such people's behaviour. They were so involved with their work, perhaps, that they forgot, or they did not regard debt paying as a matter of much importance in comparison with the aesthetic frenzy involved in their art.     One can agree, rightly or wrongly, both that Gaugin ought not to have left his highly dependent wife to paint in Tahiti, and at the same time think that the world benefited so much from his doing this wrong action that if one could, by pressing a button, bring about a morally better world in which he did not leave his wife for art, one ought not to press it. But that one oneself ought not to press the button does not mean that it was not Gaugin's duty to stay at home. Indeed, one has to suppose exhypothesi that it was his duty, for otherwise the question whether his leaving his wife for art was a case of aesthetic value overriding moral worth would not arise. But which button I had a duty to press and which action Gauguin had a duty to choose are two quite different questions. Gaugin was neglecting his duty to his wife, and a very good thing too.  (Feeding live mice to snakes to sustain beautiful animals who would otherwise starve to death in captivity may be a case when one is guided, perhaps rightly, by aesthetic considerations to perform actions that might be described as being cruel, though not as being cruel for cruelty's sake, if one's motive is kindness to snakes. Those who think we ought to act as nature's policeman, and eliminate animals like snakes who cause pain to other animals, ought to contemplate the practicability of killing off seagulls, on the grounds that they swallow alive vast quantities of fish.)

But the ecological case for vegetarianism is not strictly speaking in favour of not eating animals, but in favour of not wasting large areas of land which could, properly used, feed any more people than they do. Concert halls, which I am in favour of on aesthetic grounds, could be objected to for the same reason. The ecological argument might ban golf courses as well as dairy farming. The ecological argument would allow farm animals to be kept to be eaten, in chillier conditions than an animal lover might like, in fields higher than about 1,000 feet, which I believe are (in England) too high for growing crops.

Many discussions ignore the distinction between public policy and private duty. Many people think that because the policy of the government ought to be to abolish fee-paying schools, as they are bad for the country, individual people ought not to send their children to such schools. But this is like arguing that because the government ought to enforce driving on the right in order to synchronise British traffic with that on the continent, individual people other things being equal, ought themselves to drive on the right, which would be unwise. Similarly, the questions whether on ecological grounds the government ought to prohibit the use of farmland for animals, or to protect animals in any other way, and whether individual people ought to eat animals, are quite distinct. The ecological argument is a much stronger argument for the former than the latter.  The ecological argument does not outlaw eating fish, as the fish not eaten will not, until there are under-water cities, release any sea for any other useful purpose. One might hold that the pain inflicted on the fish is necessary suffering, because of humans' need for suitable food, etc. And even growing grain on already cleared land kills enormous numbers of field mice, and deprives more interesting animals, and a much larger number of insects, including butterflies, of their livelihood.

Causing unnecessary suffering, much of which is produced by activities other than food-producing, is usually supposed to be wrong. But I recently shared my study-bedroom for a few days withal colony of flying ants, and eventually lost patience and swallowed up the lot in my vacuum cleaner for no better reason than to make my room a little cleaner and more comfortable. (I tried to persuade them to go, and left the window open for them, but they refused to take advantage of my kindness. What may have made my behaviour, if it was bad, worse was that I had myself recently, and without the consent of the ants, stopped a hole on the outside of the house, so forcing them to migrate by an internal route.) Tying cans to dogs' tails, which is usually condemned, may inflict less pain on the dogs than the large-scale operation of vacuum cleaning flying ants inflicts on the ants, though my motives in cleaning up the ants were housewifely, not sadistic.     Considering flying ants makes me wonder what is so special about vertebrates - particularly mammals, the usual object of animal lover's concern - as opposed to insects, reptiles, and other similar members of the animal kingdom. I killed, not for the first time, hundreds of quite harmless sentient beings to avoid the minor inconvenience of living with them probably, since they were migrating, for quite a short time. If my house was being undermined by a species of ant whose members did, intelligently and from duty to their ant community, what my ants did only from instinct, and it was impossible to communicate with them - perhaps because they were not biologically adapted to notice animals much bigger than themselves - I would probably have killed them just the same, especially if their behaviour had been (human) life threatening. Martians would probably feel much the same about us.    I do not doubt that it is not wrong simply to eat animals. And I do not doubt that it is also usually wrong to cause animals unnecessary pain. But it is far from obvious when pain is necessary and when it is not. To make unnecessary suffering by definition wrong would make the rule against it useless, since to apply this rule one would have to decide whether the suffering in question was wrong first, and whether it was necessary afterwards; one could not determine whether the suffering was wrong by appealing to the rule prohibiting unnecessary suffering. But even if the principle forbidding causing unnecessary suffering were not tautological, it would still not be helpful. For 'necessary' in this context seems to mean 'necessary to the interests of human beings', and a large amount of suffering that is not necessary to the interest of humans is nevertheless impermissible. and suffering that is necessary impermissible. If one is not a vegetarian, one might even hold that some unnecessary suffering is permissible, simply because it satisfies men's craving for taste, variety and nourishment, though I myself would not go as far as this.

Vegetarianism is likely to be applied fully mostly to mammals, especially primates. These resemble ourselves sufficiently closely to make us feel sympathy with their suffering, and makes extend to them the sentiments that are part causes of there being a rule against killing humans. But I am sure we will go on inflicting in our daily pursuits enormous amounts of suffering and hardship on other living things, including reptiles, insects, bugs and arachnids. Even dusting away cobwebs deprives spiders of their livelihood, and the view that they do not suffer pain is no better than wishful thinking. And what rules could one suggest to decide whether I should add a kitchen, which I need, or a conservatory, which I do not really need, to my house, knowing that there will be less room for birds, field mice and perhaps even hedgehogs as a result, let alone woodlice and spiders, most of whom will die as a result of my selfishness?  I used to once be - mostly to please other people - an almost complete non-meat-eater (and to please myself a non-shellfish-eater) though I did eat fish, including squid and certain rather insensitive mollusc, with a heady mixture of enjoyment and guilt. I knew that oysters would been scalded to death in my digestive juices, but would still have eaten them if I could have afforded to. I wonder why I then applied my (recently acquired, partial and ephemeral) vegetarianism with more rigour than I have argued to be necessary.  I suspect that my behaviour displayed a biologically useful piece of irrationality. Much vegetarianism, including what used to be my own, is a manifestation of what I think is a usually biologically useful tendency to apply some rules more stringently than is required by their usefulness. For example, so long as adults do not normally kill other adults, society would suffer but little, or positively gain, if men killed off the very old and sick, the hopelessly deformed or excessively frail. But rules are necessary to society, and the rule against killing adults is so important that the disapproval of infringing it often spills over to similar actions which are not equally harmful, or even beneficial. I suspect this is because this tendency to irrationality is biologically successful, a remark which might also be true of all our moral sentiments and beliefs. It inessential for societies to have a morality, but academically enormously difficult to justify the moral judgements enjoining the morality they  need. (It is my view, which I cannot here try to justify, that a society of rational men would not have survived.)

 

Continued