Philosophical Cud: A thought on vegetarianism

I’ve put this off as long as I could, but in the last week of the semester I can’t help but to address an issue that has been near to my heart for some time now – the treatment of non-human animals. Lots of time has been spent arguing about what type of consideration animals should merit ethically, socially and even politically. Descartes argues that animals are nothing more than biological machines, devoid of a soul; Bentham asserts that all which matters is the ability to suffer, which animals possess; Heidegger denies the animal “Dasein,” claiming that the animal does not exist in the same way as humans. I don’t claim to know what it is to be non-human, but I do know that I am, in the most general sense, uncomfortable with the destruction of responsive life forms for food. I would like to take this space to offer what I believe to be a somewhat novel argument for vegetarianism. It’s not perfect, but it is a start.

I am going to start with the understanding that people make value judgments based on a phenomenon’s effects. We dislike car accidents because they cause suffering and damage property. If car crashes did not at the very least inconvenience us, we would not think negatively of them. Squirrels in trees do not affect us much in one way or the other, so we do not assign much value to them. We prescribe value based on the effects of the thing in question. It just so happens that I do not know the purpose of life, or the effect life has on the universe. I understand the effects of throwing trash on the ground and can say with some conviction that littering has a negative value associated with it. I do not know what value life has. It goes without saying that if life did not exist, the Earth would be much different than it is now. There would be oceans, clouds, rivers, snow covered mountains and sand, but the planet would be devoid of soil and all things green or moving.

But does life make the universe better or worse? Who can say? What I do know is that I place a negative value judgment on undertaking an action with unknown consequences. If a large red button existed that, when pushed, would either cause the greatest or worst thing possible to happen to the universe, I would stay clear of that button. Knowledge informs our decisions, and I do not have knowledge of life any more than of the effects of the hypothetical button. For this reason, I think it best to let life be as it is. Killing (and cloning for the sake of this argument) affects something that we have no real knowledge of and cannot, therefore, know the consequences of changing. I am not afraid of eternal damnation or punishment for destroying lives; I am afraid that killing animals may be equivalent to a child drawing on some classic work of art. I am afraid that by constructing factories made to kill, people will destroy something beautiful, but also incomprehensible, before growing up enough to appreciate what it is they are doing.

One trend in the philosophical debate regarding the treatment of animals focuses on the animal’s ability to suffer, asserting that the ability to be hurt constitutes moral consideration. I do not mind animal suffering so much, because suffering is something we as humans understand. Suffering is a necessary part of our existence, and it facilitates growth. Suffering is productive, and to try to shield ourselves or others (animals) from it may not be wise (though, to be sure, the suffering produced by farming living beings is completely unnecessary and entirely unpurposive. This suffering is nonconstructive and even malicious.)

Without doubt, there are countless hours which could be devoted to the subject of animal treatment, and a newspaper article won’t convince anybody to change their habits. Regardless of what you think about the place of animals in relation to humans, it is important to recognize that there is something worth thinking about.