Ethical Vegetarianism: From Pythagoras to Peter SingerKerry S. Walters, Lisa Portmess For vegetarians seeking the historical roots of vegetarianism, for animal rights activists and the environmentally concerned, and for those questioning their consumption of meat, here's a book that provides a deep understanding of vegetarianism as more than just a dietary decision. This is the first comprehensive collection of primary source material on vegetarianism as a moral choice and includes the writings of Carol Adams, Bernard de Mandeville, Mohandas Gandhi, Oliver Goldsmith, Anna Kingsford, Frances Moore Lappé, Porphyry, Pythagoras, Tom Regan, Albert Schweitzer, Seneca, Peter Singer, Leo Tolstoy, and Richard Wagner, among others. |
Contents
Antiquity The Kinship of Humans and Animals | 11 |
The Kinship of All Life | 13 |
Abstinence and the Philosophical Life | 23 |
On the Eating of Flesh | 27 |
On Abstinence from Animal Food | 35 |
The Eighteenth Century Diet and Human Character | 47 |
The Carnivorous Custom and Human Vanity | 49 |
Carnivorous Callousness | 57 |
Diet and Morality | 139 |
The Ethic of Reverence for Life | 145 |
The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism | 153 |
All Animals Are Equal | 165 |
The Right Not to Be Eaten | 177 |
An Ecological Argument for Vegetarianism | 189 |
The Pretext of Necessary Suffering | 203 |
Like Driving a Cadillac | 209 |
They Pity and Eat the Objects of Their Compassion | 61 |
The Dubious Right to Eat Flesh | 65 |
A Vindication of Natural Diet | 69 |
The Nineteenth Century Diet and Compassion | 75 |
A Shameful Human Infirmity | 77 |
The World is a Mighty Slaughterhouse and FleshEating and Human Decimation | 81 |
Human Beasts of Prey and FellowSuffering | 89 |
The Immorality of Carnivorism | 97 |
The Essence of True Justice | 107 |
The Twentieth Century Diet Rights and the Global Perspective | 113 |
The Humanities of Diet | 115 |
Universal Kinship | 127 |
The Unpardonable Crime | 135 |
Food Animal Production and the Vegetarian Option | 221 |
Its Influence on Future Farming Patterns | 233 |
Contextual Moral Vegetarianism | 241 |
The Social Construction of Edible Bodies and Humans as Predators | 247 |
Arguments against Ethical Vegetarianism | 253 |
Animals and Slavery | 259 |
Automatism of Brutes | 261 |
We Have Only Indirect Duties to Animals | 267 |
| 271 | |
For Further Reading | 273 |
Sources and Acknowledgments | 277 |
| 283 | |
Other editions - View all
Ethical Vegetarianism: From Pythagoras to Peter Singer Kerry S. Walters,Lisa Portmess Limited preview - 1999 |
Ethical Vegetarianism: From Pythagoras to Peter Singer Kerry S. Walters,Lisa Portmess Limited preview - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
abstinence Agricultural Alcott Alphonse de Lamartine animal food animal rights animals for food Anna Kingsford argues basis beasts become beef believe blood body brutes butcher carnivorism cattle claim consumed consumption creatures crime cruelty dead death defenses of ethical diet duty eat flesh eat meat eaten ecological ecosystems equal etarianism ethical vegetarianism existence fact factory farming feed feel fellow-suffering flesh-eating food animals Frances Moore Lappé grain habit human individual inflict interests intrinsic justice kill animals kinship land lion livestock living mals meat-eating ment moral natural right never nonhuman obligation organs pain passions Peter Singer philosophical pity plant Plutarch Porphyry possess pounds practice principle production protein Pythagoras Pythagorean question race rational reason Regan sentient slaughter society soul species speciesism Stephen R. L. Clark suffering teleological teleological ethic things thought tion Tom Regan University vegetable will-to-live William Paley women Wynne-Tyson
Popular passages
Page 1 - If there are any marks at all of special design in creation, one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and devouring other animals. They have been lavishly fitted out with the instruments necessary for that purpose; their strongest instincts impel them to it, and many of them seem to have been constructed incapable of supporting themselves by any other food.