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.”

Is Meat-Eating Merely a Lifestyle?

Is Meat-Eating Merely a Lifestyle?

I ask, because it seems that this is how people approach it, including, most painfully, people who consider themselves to be political activists and vegetarians or vegans for moral reasons. But before I begin, let me clarify a few points.

First, by “lifestyle” I mean a choice of how one lives one’s life such that not much morally is at stake—such that one’s choices affect mainly and directly oneself, not others. (For those who have a more expansive notion of the moral, one that includes how the choices affect the person him or herself, I say, “I hear you, but grant me the point for the sake of this blog.”) So the choice of which style of clothing one wears is a mere lifestyle, whereas the choice of working as an assassin for hire is not. Actually, examples of mere lifestyles are very hard to come by. Consider: all three of the following heavily involve moral aspects: my choice (as a man) to wear women’s attire, to wear clothes made in sweatshops, or to wear T-shirts carrying political slogans; the first and third make political statements (even if I, in a clueless manner, did not intend them to), and the second benefits from a form of labor exploitation. Indeed, for any lifestyle we can think of (except perhaps for those involving basic tastes in colors and shapes), it is easy to make a moral connection to it, especially in a time of environmental degradation and massive global inequalities.

Still, and going by the general way we often think, we do distinguish between ways of living that are primarily within the jurisdiction of the person who lives them, and ways of living that go beyond that (even if this, per the above paragraph, the distinction cannot withstand heavy scrutiny). The former is what I call a “mere lifestyle.”

Second, I assume that animals can feel pain and thus suffer when they experience the pain (this is a “duh” assumption for all but few people and those philosophers who have argued that there is a difference between feeling pain and suffering because of the pain); I assume that what goes on in factory farming—the source of most of the meat that we consume—involves much suffering for the animals and therefore gives us a strong (but possibly defeasible) reason to not partake in it (by, say, not enjoying the taste of meat produced in these “farms”); finally, I assume, not more controversially but certainly more surprisingly to many—that we also have a strong reason to not eat the meat of animals raised under good conditions and then “humanely” killed, because killing an animal causes its death and death is a harm to the animal, much like death is a harm to human beings (I mean to those who die, not just to those who lose them to death).

So why do I think that meat-eating is treated as merely a lifestyle?

There are a few reasons. The first is the sheer commonality of it. Most people seem to eat meat thoughtlessly, as if it is the most normal thing to do. It is a habit deeply ingrained in all societies. Even people who know of the wrongs involved in such practices as factory farming, eat meat and do so shamelessly. They post pictures of meat on their Facebook pages, as if no moral taint attaches to this practice. (I often say to people, “If you have to eat meat, do it with your head hung low.”) The worst are those who make it sound as if something is wrong with the vegetarian (“What??? You don’t eat meat??? What is WRONG with you?? I LOVE bacon!” and so forth).

The second is the socially imposed symmetry between the ways to view vegetarianism and meat-eating (the vegetarian options that restaurants, cafeterias, etc. are increasingly offering, attest to this social symmetry): “if vegetarianism is your thing, good for you, and that’s your choice; but mine is eating meat. So everyone is happy!”

The third reason is the little regard that people give to animals whose meat they consume. In addition to the above points, consider that in meetings for social justice activists, meat is often served. Rebellions against what is considered outdated religious practices often come at the expense of animals (e.g., protesting the taboo in Hinduism against eating beef by slaughtering cows to make the point). Many philosophers (who ought to know better) eat meat. The point is that even amidst what we would normally consider to be the height of political and moral awareness, eating meat is quite common. This indicates that animals are so far down on our moral ladder that eating them is considered to be a mere lifestyle.

This brings me to the fourth and most galling reason, which is the silence of people, including of course vegetarians and vegans themselves (myself included, so I plead guilty), who say nothing to people who order meat at restaurants or whose shopping carts are full of meat. Of course, we do not want to come across as lunatics by confronting strangers about their purchasing habits, but, really, under other circumstances we would say something. If you came across someone who has just bought a sofa made out of the skin of dead people, or worse, the skin of dead people killed in a genocide, we would protest by at least saying something. Some people might think it socially awkward to do so, but even they would bite this bullet for the sake of what is moral.

Even more interesting is the silence of friends: many vegetarian and vegan people say nothing to their meat-eating friends, passing over the latter’s choices to eat meat as if it were their choice of what color clothes to wear for work. (I pass over the interesting philosophical question about the possibility of close friendships between people whose moral values do not align with each other’s.) But this is surely not right. This is especially true if part of what friends do is to take moral care of their friends. I wouldn’t want my friends to be in the habit of robbing people blind, of pinching their asses on the streets, or of pimping out their younger siblings, so why would I remain silent when they order or buy meat? If their moral well-being is my concern, as it should be, I ought to say something about their meat-eating, though how and when to say it is a matter left to the specific context. The same applies to any relationship between people a crucial aspect of which is moral care-taking, be it mutual or one-directional.

Really, the practice of eating meat is morally indefensible; there is absolutely no (general) plausible moral reason for eating meat (and some of the defenses are downright ridiculous: “Animals kill and eat each other!” or “Animals are dumb”; or “But they taste so good!”; or “The animal is dead already!”; or “I have enough to worry about, so fuck off”; or, my favorite, “I was a vegetarian for ten years, so I feel like I’ve done my time, if you know what I mean”).

No. Meat-eating is not a mere lifestyle. It is a terrible moral practice that contributes to the misery of animals and corrodes our moral souls. We should speak up whenever we see others partaking in it. Those “obnoxious” vegetarians and vegans who reprimand us for eating meat, it turns out, are doing the right thing.

Or am I missing something?

How and Why I Became a Vegetarian

I became a vegetarian in November 2012. Although I don’t remember the exact day, I know the year and month because I remember that I was on my way to watch the newly released Life of Pi, directed by Ang Lee (it wasn’t that good, even though I think that Lee has directed excellent movies, including one of the best movies ever, Brokeback Mountain). I was walking on Michigan Avenue in Chicago to the theater, when I encountered an anti-fur march. Because I was early, I joined the march. One of the marchers started talking to me and gave me a pamphlet (nowadays easily obtained) containing descriptions and pictures of the appalling conditions that animals constantly endure in factory farms.

Since I was a child, I had a natural repugnance to red meat. In Beirut, where I am from and where I was raised, my Mom used to call the butcher early in the morning to request the meat that she needed to cook for that day’s lunch. Sometimes, because the butcher could not deliver the meat at the time that my mother wanted it, she would send me to pick it up. I remember very well how I could never step inside the butcher’s shop. I stood outside and shouted to him to please hand me the “Halwani order.” (Indeed, after a while my meat phobia became a running joke in the butcher’s shop: “Raja is here. Send the delivery boy to deliver the meat to him!” which sounds much funnier in Arabic.) And if there were any traces of (ground) meat on the paper bag that was handed to me (because the butcher’s hands often had meat particles on them) I would pick and carry the bag using only my thumb and forefinger. I would hurry back home, deposit the bag on the closest counter in our kitchen with a loud “Ugh!” and wash my hands at least twice with a thick foam of soap.

Irrationally enough, I ate red meat in Beirut, especially in Arabic dishes (e.g., stuffed eggplant and stuffed zucchini). I also ate hamburgers in (now non-existent) restaurants in Beirut like the Wimpy and Modca. However, if the meat looked red—if it had not been thoroughly cooked or brown—I would not touch it. I simply could not bring myself to eat it.

After I moved to the United States, I stopped eating red meat altogether. For some bizarre reason, I thought of red meat in the United States to be more disgusting than that in Lebanon, and I simply stopped eating it, brown or not brown. I did eat voracious amounts of chicken, however. Chicken was one of my favorite meals of all time, and I almost always ordered a chicken dish in a restaurant. I cooked and ate chicken at home at least twice a week. (I also liked hot dogs, but I ate the vegan variety, Smart Dogs.)

I had known for a long time at a gut level—back then I had not yet fully reasoned my way through it—that eating meat was morally wrong. My reasons, half-baked as they were, were unclear, but they had to do with at least four thoughts: that eating meat was a close relative to cannibalism, that tearing flesh in our mouths (chewing meat) was unappetizing, to put it mildly (I used to form the image of red meat mixed with saliva as a person ate it), that when we raise and kill animals for our own consumption they suffer, and that animals were not ours to do with them as we pleased. I had known that I needed to stop eating all meat. I was lucky with red meat: not eating it came naturally to me, given that I had been increasingly finding it disgusting. Fish was easy too, as I had never been much of a fan. Chicken was my stumbling block. I loved it, and its taste and the anticipation of its taste constantly weakened my will. It was the only barrier between vegetarianism and me. (It’s funny: in some parts of the world, when I tell people that I don’t eat meat, they reply, “But you do eat chicken, right?” to which I reply, with smugness laced with attempted humor, “Have chickens been re-classified as plants?”)

I should mention that before I converted to vegetarianism, I had met a colleague of mine who became one of my closest friends. She was (and still is) a moral exemplar by any standard (and certainly not one of these boring moral saints about which some philosophers have, somewhat shallowly, complained). Of course, she was (and still is) a vegetarian (almost vegan). So her influence added to my conviction that I needed to become a vegetarian and get it over with.

So on that day on my way to the movie, when that wonderful man gave me that pamphlet, I decided then and there to become a vegetarian. I have not relapsed since (though I’m sure I ate food that contained meat or meat stock in it—meat and meat derivatives are omnipresent these days, so they are hard to avoid all the time). At first, I missed chicken, but now I do not. Far from it. The idea of eating chicken leaves me cold. Oddly enough, I miss fish quite a bit—I miss its taste and its thickness and its feel in my mouth (tuna is my weakness). This is odd because, like I said, I never was much of a fan of fish when I was a meat-eater. But I resist eating it, and it is not hard.

So I am a vegetarian not because of health reasons but because of the animals, because they should not have to suffer at our hands. We have killed them for sport, we have relied on them for agriculture, we have used them for our entertainment, we have plundered their bodies for products, we have tested on them for our health, we have depended on them for companionship, and we have eaten them for our gustatory pleasure. Yet animals occupy this planet in the same way as we do, and it does not seem to me that our intelligence, which I grant at least for the sake of the argument is superior to theirs, is a morally relevant factor in deciding how to treat them. After all, intelligence is a morally neutral category (intelligent people can run the gamut from the saintly to the evil). So much as we should be able to make the best of our lives, so should animals.

Some people say that it’s okay to eat meat if the animals are killed humanely. I know people who buy their meat from special farmers who treat the animals well and who kill them (supposedly) painlessly. I am not going to argue that there is no such thing as humane killing. Let’s grant that there is. Still, killing animals brings them harm because it brings them death. That is, because death is a harm to the creature that dies, killing animals is a form of harming them, even if done painlessly. Think about it: when someone dies, even at an old age, we mourn their death, and we mourn it not just because we will miss them, or because the world is poorer without them, but also because we think that their life has ended, that they suffered a loss. The same applies to animals. And when we grieve for someone’s death while also feeling relief because death has ended their suffering, the same can be true of animals—think of how many of them we have to euthanize to end their suffering.

Of course, people will argue that sometimes we have to kill animals or that inflicting harm on them is justified (in the name of, say, medical research). Maybe there are such cases. But this is mostly irrelevant. We do not need to decide on every actual and possible case of conflict between human and animal to recognize that as a matter of principle killing animals for our own benefit, especially for our pleasure (assuming, somewhat plausibly, that pleasure is a benefit), whether gustatory or otherwise, is wrong.

Today, I do not see animals as a source of food. Indeed, I do not see them as a source of anything. I see them for who they are: as creatures driven by their own life-forms to survive and, if they are lucky, to live a pleasant life (for animals living in the wild, life is never easy: watching a single episode of a nature show can easily show you that their lives are actually Hobbesian—"poor, nasty, brutish, and short"). The least we can do is not make it worse for millions of animals by creating animals destined to live miserable lives, only to be killed for food.