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The Philosophy of Vegetarianism Part 1 (#6)

     As you may have realized from the title of my post, I am a vegetarian. I’m a recent vegetarian, the last day I ate meat was just almost five months ago (July 2017). Going vegetarian was not a spur of the moment decision for me, I had thought about it and wanted to do it for a long time before I actually did thanks to some documentaries I watched (here, here, here, and here) and some other research I did. Every vegetarian has a different reason for choosing this lifestyle, mine is mainly a moral reason- I don’t want to contribute to the killing of the millions of animals that die every day for human consumption (for what it's worth, here is the Humane Society's statistics on how many farm animals are killed for meat each year) Just saying, over four billion chickens were slaughtered in 2017 alone. Anyways, as a vegetarian, I don’t eat any kinds of meat (not even fish), and in addition I also don’t eat eggs or drink cow milk. I will one day go full-on vegan, but I’m just taking my time to transition to that. For anyone wondering I also no longer buy any animal-sourced leather, fur, etc., but I still use the things of that nature that I had before I switched. And, for any who may be wondering, becoming a vegetarian was so much easier than I thought it would be, and if you’re considering it, you should definitely go for it. Vegetarianism and the humane treatment of animals is something I’m passionate about learning more about and also informing others about, so here goes…

     The first topic I am going to talk about is speciesism. The term ‘speciesism’ was first used in the 1970’s and described it as discrimination against nonhuman animals (I used this website article for the information about speciesism). Moral philosopher Oscar Horta eventually expanded the definition to be a bit broader, saying “Speciesism is discrimination against those who are not classified as belonging to one or more particular species”. My cited website says: “According to this definition, trying to justify unequal consideration of other animals because they are not smart in the way humans are or because they don’t have relationships with humans is speciesism, even if an appeal to species membership is never made.” Basically speciesism says that humans use animals for meat, luxurious clothing, entertainment, cosmetics, etc., because they aren’t human on an intellectual level. This is just something to keep in mind as I discuss philosophy and vegetarianism more. I first learned about speciesism from this movie called Earthlings, which I highly recommend everyone watch (be warned, it's graphic, but everyone should see what really happens to animals). 

     Next up I will be discussing utilitarianism, deontology, and existentialism as they each pertain to vegetarianism. 

     Utilitarianism is defined as an ethical doctrine that virtue is based on utility, and that conduct should be directed towards promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number of persons, which could also be seen as something that seeks the most minimal suffering for the greatest number. This is how utilitarianism relates to vegetarianism- animals are sentient beings, they can feel and suffer just as we can. One of the most notable philosophers I've found is Peter Singer (influenced by the 'patron saint of animal right' Jeremy Bentham), an Australian moral philosopher who seems to be the man who spear-headed the movement of utilitarianism and vegetarianism. Here is an article from Singer where he explains his disappointment that animal slaughter/slavery is still prominent but that he has hope for that to continue to change. 

     

     Deontology is defined as an ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences of the action. This means that, vegetarian or not, we all (should) know that killing animals is wrong, whether you really care and plan to ever go vegetarian/vegan or not. Modern deontology was brought about my Immanuel Kant, a philosopher we have learned about over the course of this class. Most sources say that utilitarianism and deontology tend to be opposing view points. This is mainly because deontology says that some things are wrong regardless of consequences. Basically, deontology says that some things are just inherently wrong. Utilitarianism more so says that something is right if it leads to a good consequence. 

     Existentialism is defined as a philosophical attitude that stresses the individual's unique position as a self-determining agent responsible for the authenticity of his or her choices. This means that your choices are you. It doesn't necessarily say "don't eat meat" or anything like that, it more so means that if you are eating and buying meat, you are contributing to the pain and suffering of animals and you can't deny that. Your choice to eat and buy meat means your choice makes you partly responsible for that. Many people credit J.P. Sartre's existentialism to their choice to become vegetarian, for his reaffirmed that our actions are our own responsibility and it is our responsibility to choose to do the right thing and keep evil to a minimum. 

     In the second installment of my Philosophy of Vegetarianism report, I will be covering the 'moral high ground' of vegetarians and vegans, more vegetarian philosophers and their reasons, and debunking some myths on why people think humans should eat meat.


Posts I commented on:

https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2017/11/sigmund-freud-installment-1.html?showComment=1513094645464#c4982102506138793447 

https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2017/11/why-rick-isnt-nihilist-final-report-1st.html?showComment=1513095098224#c2110578663526152614