Virtue and Meat-Eating—Part II

Virtue and Meat-Eating—Part II

In the last post, I gave a brief explanation of Aristotle’s virtue ethics and of the virtues. In this post, I discuss the virtue of temperance and the vice of intemperance, and connect both to eating meat.

The virtue of temperance, according to Aristotle, moderates our desires for the sensual pleasures of eating, drinking, and having sex. But although it is about sense pleasures, Aristotle thinks (for reasons that I won’t go into) that it concerns mostly the senses of taste and touch, especially touch—he gives an example of a glutton who wished to have a long throat so that he can feel more (or for longer) the food as it goes go down it. I think that Aristotle was right about touch when it comes to sexual desire, but I am not sure that he was right about the centrality of touch when it comes to food and drink, where taste seems to play a much more prominent role than Aristotle allows. In any case, let’s agree that temperance and intemperance are the virtue and vice that moderate our desires for the pleasures of eating, drinking, and having sex, let’s set aside the issue of which sense is most prominent, and let’s focus on eating (I will address in future posts temperance and sexual desire, a topic on which I have published a bit already.)

Who is the temperate person, and who is the intemperate one? There seem to be two crucial, relevant ideas here: the idea of right and wrong object, and the idea of too much and too little. To explain: Aristotle wishes to say that there are wrong things to eat (examples can be the flesh—or the blood—of another human being, feces, earth, wood, and so on). Right things to eat include things such as bread, vegetables, and fruits. But note that even if, say, fruits are right things to eat, this does not mean that any quantity is acceptable. Indeed, here enters the second notion, of “too much” (or “too little”). Even if fruits are the right things to eat, one can be intemperate in eating too much of them. (Keep in mind that we are discussing virtues and vices, which are traits of character. Thus, binging on mangos once or twice in your life does not make you intemperate; instead, it is the intemperate person who has the disposition or tendency to eat too much or to eat the wrong things.)

Things, however, are slightly more complicated. Let’s go back to the idea of wrong things to eat. In general, and sticking with our example of fruits, fruits are a perfectly good example of right things to eat. But this does not mean that there are no circumstances in which they are the wrong things to eat. Which circumstances? Well, imagine that you are sitting idly on the beach on a hot summer day, and your eye lustfully catches the Tupperware full of mango slices sitting atop the beach bag of the person next to you. She goes to swim and you realize that you can steal the mangos and eat them (it will have to be quick, while she is swimming). Clearly, the stolen mango is the wrong thing to eat, because it is stolen (duh!). Sometimes, Aristotle expresses this idea by saying that the temperate person would not eat the right things in the wrong way: so perhaps in this case we can say that those mango slices are the right things to eat, but to eat them through theft is to eat them in the wrong way.

Now imagine that we live in a world in which mangos are produced by the labor of enslaved human beings (this scenario is not that far from the reality of many agricultural workers). Mangoes are still right things to eat, but surely we can now claim that enjoying or eating them is wrong because they are farmed by slave laborers. Mangos are thus the wrong things to eat in such circumstances (or, alternatively, eating them given their origin is eating the right things but in the wrong way).

(A side note: eating the above mangos is wrong not only because it is intemperate, but also because it is vicious in other ways, such as because it is unjust or greedy.)

At this point, a quick aside is important, because I can easily imagine someone raising an eyebrow and objecting, “But who is to decide what are the right and wrong things to eat, or the right and wrong ways to eat things, or how much is too much?” This is a question that my students never fail to raise in moral discussions, and it is (sometimes) a good one. Aristotle defines “virtue” as a state lying in a mean “defined by reference to reason, that is to say, to the reason by reference to which the prudent [wise] person would define it.” (By “mean” Aristotle means a state between excess and deficiency, between basically two forms of vice, which, in our case, would be the intemperance of desiring the wrong things or “too much,” and the intemperance of not desiring enough, of insensibility.) Now, as I understand Aristotle, he is not advancing a relativist thesis that says that it is the wise person who creates or makes up what is the “middle state between excess and deficiency.” The wise person, instead, tracks what is right and wrong—her wisdom tells her that the “mean state” is, say, to face this danger. Wisdom is a virtue to Aristotle, and it is one found in all the other virtues; it enables the virtuous person to know what is valuable in life in general and to perceive a situation correctly, thereby enabling her to also judge, feel, and act correctly.

So the right and wrong things to eat are decided by moral facts—considerations “in the world” that are independent of us—and it is the virtuous person who knows what they are (though non-virtuous people can know them, too). Thus, Aristotle insists that the temperate person enjoys the pleasures of food and drink as long as they are “conducive to health and fitness” and do not go against “the fine.” (I don’t think that Aristotle means to include things that are only conducive to health—a constant diet of broccoli, carrots, and kale—he is okay with enjoying the occasional few slices of pizza, as long as such enjoyments do not undermine one’s health.) And what is conducive to health and fitness and what is compatible with the fine are not matters up to our subjective opinions, but are objective states of the world. One cannot simply decide that stealing that piece of chocolate from that child and eating it is “fine”; it most certainly is not, because it is (1) taking something (2) that is not one’s to take, and that (3) is of no value to one, but that (4) has a lot of value to the child, and (5) that would cause a child a bit of misery, and that (6) is all done in a manner not befitting one’s status as an adult.

So then what are the wrong things to eat? Aside from the examples that I gave above (which, by the way, one can quibble with as far as their moral wrongness is concerned—I mean, what is morally wrong with eating poop?), we can confidently claim that products obtained in the wrong ways would be good examples. We have already encountered the example of the slave-harvested mangos. Animal products—most obviously meat—obtained in the wrong ways would be another obvious example. Veal and pâté de foie gras are prime examples. Given the vast industry of factory farming, however, and given the conditions under which farm animals live and are treated, from cows, to pigs, to chickens, it seems to be a no-brainer that eating such meat is vicious or intemperate. (Some people think that eating chicken is morally better than eating beef or pork, and I suppose this is correct if we assume that chickens, somehow, suffer less than pigs and cows do, or that they are dumber than cows and pigs. But, really, even if true, none of this negates the fact that chickens suffer horrible lives in order for chicken-eaters to enjoy the taste of their flesh.) That is, if we concede that eating veal and pâté de foie gras is wrong because of the way the animals are treated, we ought to concede the same about the vast majority of farm animals. (I will get to hunted animals in a bit.)

So, imagine four people are at a dinner party where fancy chicken burgers are served by roving waiters (the “fancy” part is not necessary for the example). The temperate person declines to eat them because, in addition to judging that it would be wrong to eat chicken, she does not desire to eat them. Her desires follow the lead of her reason. This is, after all, what it is to be virtuous. The continent person (remember her from the previous post?) would desire to eat them, because she really likes chicken, but judges this to be wrong and acts on her decision. The incontinent person desires the chicken, judges that eating it would be wrong, but, alas, the weak fool that she is, succumbs to her desire. The incontinent person desires the chicken, eats it, and thinks nothing of it (she might, but need not, go to the length of saying to herself something like, “Stupid chickens! What purpose do they serve other than to please to our palates?”).

But eating meat that is harvested in factory farms might not be the only wrong meat to eat. It could also be that eating any meat obtained by killing an animal is wrong. How so? Well, if killing an animal causes its death (which, by the way, it does), and if the death of the animal is a harm to the animal because, say, it cuts its life short, then to kill the animal (by us, human beings, who know about right and wrong) is to wrong it. Thus, eating the meat of a killed animal would be wrong. Thus, a virtuous person would not eat this meat. This would apply also to eating the meat of animals killed in hunting or, more generally, for sport.

Note two things before I wrap up this post. First, the argument in the above paragraph is a general one, and its conclusion does not preclude exceptions. For example, there might be instances in which killing and eating an animal is acceptable (for survival, e.g.). Moreover, the conclusion excludes meat obtained through means other than killing the animal, such as meat from roadkill or cultured meat. It might be that there is something off or dishonorable about eating meat, period, but if so the above considerations do not support it. Different considerations need to be marshalled in order to show that meat-eating in itself is wrong, regardless of the way in which it was obtained.

The second thing to note is related to the last point just made (and repeats a point made further above), namely, that we arrive at what is right and wrong not through being virtuous (and I’m not even sure what this means), but through philosophical argument about right and wrong. And then we declare that virtuous people are not disposed to engage in the kind of actions that involve moral wrongdoing. So we reason our way to the point that eating meat is wrong, and claim that, therefore a virtuous person would not be disposed to eat meat—neither to desire to do so nor to actually do it. We can ask the question, “What would a virtuous person do in such-and-such circumstances?” as a heuristic device to help us arrive at our answers, but the answer itself would need to be supported by reasons (“Why would the virtuous person not do so-and-so?” “Because he is not selfish, and such an action is selfish given that it ...”)

“Well,” a sassy (and perhaps cocky) person might ask, “if virtue ethics does not tell us what is right and what is wrong, what the hell does it tell us?” One answer: It tells us what a virtuous person would and would not do, what she would and would not feel, and what she would judge to be right. It tells us, in brief, what it is to be a good person, even a noble, honorable one at that, despite these words sounding archaic.

So the next time someone says to you, “C’mon! Eat this juicy chicken breast. The chicken is dead anyway. Besides, you are only one person, and you not eating it won’t make a difference,” you can reply, “True and (maybe) true, but I am not the kind of person who partakes in this heinous practice.”