To Eat Flesh They Are Willing, Are
Their Spirits Weak? Vegetarians Who Return to Meat. By Kristin Aronson.
Several books[1] have
been written on philosophical vegetarianism in the last couple of years. There have also been a few new arguments for
it[2]
including, most recently, one philosopher who has even argued that Kant’s
categorical imperative can be interpreted to support the ethical case for
vegetarianism.[3] Yet to my knowledge Aronson’s is the first
book devoted to lapsed vegetarians, which she dubs “lapsos”. Aronson declares “...I have no intention of
answering the question posed in the book's title, although I shall ask what it
means” (3). Yet, evidently despite her
intention, by the end of the book she writes “...many struggle with the
implications of eating or not eating meat.
In the struggle itself, the spirit is strengthened; to the extent that
lapsos struggle, their spirits are not weak” (291). So in a way this interesting book is an
apology for lapsed vegetarians. “The
opposite of a polemic is what I intended in this book: enough diatribes have
been written already” (285). In this
intention, the author succeeds. At the
same time, however, Aronson extols the virtues of veganism throughout the
book. While this apparent ambivalence
may leave some readers confused or frustrated, the author is quite comfortable
with it. “I wrote this book as a peace
offering, to soften the debate, to erase lines of demarcation, to trace
ambiguity and nuance, and to suggest that being a vegetarian should not be so
easy. Reality is much too slippery for
either consistency or consensus” (288).
But while some aspects of reality are slippery in this sense,
surely other aspects admit of much better traction, as I will discuss
below.
The
raw material for Aronson’s study is gleaned from interviews of two dozen lapsed
vegetarians. She claims that the stories
of these lapsos are “parables for our age” (3).
The book divides into a preface, an introduction, twenty chapters, a
postface, the questionnaire she used to select her twenty-four lapsos in an
appendix, endnotes, a select bibliography, brief biographies of the lapsos, an
index of their names, and a paragraph about the author. Though there are interesting points in many
of the twenty chapters, I will limit my comments to only a few.
In
the introduction, Aronson describes the nature of her book and its
rationale. “Because philosophy and story
are themselves opposed, in their coming together a new synthesis emerges, a
philosophical anthropology in which ideas come alive” (4). She explains that “[b]ecause this is more
than a book of arguments, it is less than a philosophy book; but because it is
written by a philosopher, there is philosophy in it” (5). The latter inference, however, does not
follow. Philosophers write poems, memos,
and even love letters, none of which necessarily have “philosophy in them”. Aronson’s book, as it turns out, does have
some philosophy in it, but it is never presented in the form of straightforward
normative arguments, but rather as free-wheeling, often poetic reflections.
In
Chapter One Aronson states the central finding—not contention, since
that would betoken a polemic, nor thesis, since that would be defended by argument—of
her book: “Vegetarianism is neither a
diet nor a philosophy; it is a philosophy of life” (7). Aronson is both successful and artful at
elucidating this view throughout the book.
But her apparent misology is immediately evident in how she glosses this
finding. “Philosophies of life are not
rooted in propositions, but in people.
To be a vegetarian is to live in a certain way, not to argue in a
certain way. Vegetarianism is not
constructed logically, but lived expansively” (7).
Aronson
seems to see arguments about vegetarianism as games with which some
philosophers amuse themselves. This
emerges most explicitly in Chapter Fifteen (Reasons and Rationalizations). Here she describes reason as “the mind's
yoga”, and logic as “a good arbiter and a fair judge” (216), but she evidently
does not consider philosophical argument a means of discovering
truth. Aronson doubts that vegetarianism
can be proved “right”, but thinks vegetarians want to share vegetarianism
because they want company. “We would feel
less alone and more at home in the world if others shared our view of it”
(217). But couldn’t our desire to share
our vegetarianism be motivated not merely by a yen for companionship but from
recognition of it as a step in moral progress? Throughout the book Aronson refuses to
explicitly judge vegetarianism to be a superior way of life, though it is hard
to see how a way of life merely different from omnivorism could possibly
inspire—as Aronson often claims—unless it were somehow better, i.e.
higher or healthier or wiser or spiritually purer.
Aronson
claims that “[d]eductive arguments do not take us anywhere.... Facts... not formal arguments, guide us”
(217). She insists that “[t]here is no
philosophical argument which mandates... vegetarianism. We cannot argue anyone into it; we can only
argue about it” (224). But here
she over-generalizes. Aronson asserts
that “only in lived experience can we find a living truth” (5), and thus I
constitute a living counterexample as, I suspect, do many others. After learning about ancient Greek
philosophical vegetarianism from Dombrowski[4], I
happened upon, and was persuaded by, Singer’s preference utilitarian arguments
for vegetarianism[5];
both books are cited in Aronson’s Select Bibliography. Argument—even philosophical argument—need not
be combative, as Aronson fears. Many
philosophy teachers may agree with Aronson that “most people do not follow
arguments at all” (225), but if so, then this can be a motivation for educating
those who at least may want to follow arguments rather than an excuse
for abandoning philosophical argument and resorting to more suspect techniques
of persuasion. Aronson writes that “if
we try to argue others into peacefulness, we contribute to a violent world”
(248), but here she should distinguish between arguing against someone
in the sense of aggressive quarreling (eristic), and cooperating with
someone by using arguments to search for the truth (dialectic).
The
discussion in Chapter Seventeen (Morals and Moralizing) is more persuasive.
Vegetarianism
is a philosophy of life. As such, it is
not so much the right thing to do as it is the living of ideals. It is neither a religion nor an ethic, but a
species of idealism. If vegetarianism is
the right thing to do, it becomes a demand rather than an inspiration. (Imagine a world where love were [sic] the
law.) Most of us resist demands, but are
hungry for inspiration. Sufficiently
inspired, we may hunger for vegetarianism. ... We could argue people into
meatlessness, perhaps, but not into vegetarianism. (247)
This is a valuable
distinction to draw, and Aronson’s remarks here are on the mark.
Parts of Chapter Eighteen (The
Correctly Politic Vegetarian) were less persuasive. Here she follows Brian Luke’s position that
it is political action against the meat industry that really matters, and not
whether anti-meat activists are vegetarians or meat-eaters. This appears to be one of those issues in
which Aronson sees reality as “too slippery” to admit of a simple
consistency. But for political activists
to persist in their habit of buying and eating factory farmed meat while
protesting against the meat industry and “blocking a lorry carrying factory
farmed animals” (257) strikes this reviewer as hypocrisy. Hypocrisy conflicts with moral
integrity. As a philosopher sympathetic
to virtue ethics, it is disappointing that Aronson does not see this.
In Chapter Twenty (An Appetite for
Accommodation), Aronson arrives at an interesting, and rather Heraclitean view.
Vegetarianism
is a way of life; meatlessness is not; vegetarianism is a way of being of which
avoiding meat is only part. More
important than what we eat is how we eat.
In a world which is dynamic, not static, we cannot know any “thing”
until we know the “how” of it: the
adverb is more important than the noun.
All being is becoming; all is-ness, process; every “what” is a way. Vegetarianism is not a state or a thing, but
an evolution; when it is not finished, it can flourish. (286)
She adds “[i]f we
understand vegetarianism as a political movement or as ‘the right thing to do’,
it loses its particularity; the wind gets knocked out of it; it becomes a stale
subject for dry debate instead of a living option. ... When we understand
vegetarianism as an individual commitment, we understand it for what it
is” (288). Again, however, Aronson
refuses to criticize the option of omnivorism per se. Instead, she remains conciliatory: “...the
difference between vegetarianism and a philosophically articulated omnivorism
may be almost negligible” (281).
A few comments on the style in which
this unusual book is written are in order.
Aronson indulges in plays on words on almost every page, and often
several times per paragraph. While this
playfulness is sometimes appealing, it is frequently distracting. First, two examples of cute wordplay: “Thus my decision not to eat meat is based on
altruism; what I don’t want to suffer, I don’t want for my supper” (127). “Mind, too, is as natural as matter;
vegetarians merely make up their minds that animals matter” (101). Contrast these with two examples of clever
wordplay: “Perhaps if we saw the animal
as a whole thing, we would also see it as a holy thing; but we are as alienated
from animal life as we are from animal death” (126). “Even when they are among us, animals are
outsiders; that is why they end up inside us” (222). Unfortunately, the author’s inexhaustible
desire to pun whenever possible becomes tiresome. Consider this pair of quotations: “Would he have liked the deer? If he had met her, she might have become
en-deering” (120–121). “The vegan
zealot’s life can be a meat-a-phor for violence, and hence incoherent at its
deepest level” (240). While passages such
as these come off lame, there are still others that are just plain silly. “We could have listened instead to Aristotle
who although making mind most valuable, sees it and the body as
indis-soul-uable” (144). “There is no
philosophical argument which mandates (or womandates) vegetarianism”
(224). “We might have discussed whether
turning cats into vegans was a form of animal experimentation (a practice he
would not defend) or whether boycotting (or girlcotting) by-products would
negatively affect the industry as much as it would the cats” (238). A final wordplay that goes completely
overboard occurs, ironically enough, in Chapter Six (Fish out of Water):
ginseng
instead of chicken wings; caffeine instead of calves, lean; goldenseal instead
of golden fried eel; basil instead of braised veal; horseradish instead of
horse with radish; marjoram instead of marinated ham. “I am, I am” going to get to fish—uppers
instead of groupers. (85)
One might expect more
restraint from a vegan.
Despite the relentless onslaught of
attempts at clever wordplay, there is much that will delight in this book. The references tend to be somewhat
idiosyncratic, yet I found this one—to Olaf Stapledon’s Last Men in London
published in 1920—to be particularly wonderful.
Eating
became at once a sin and an epitome of the divine power; for in eating does not
the living body gather into itself lifeless matter to organize it, vitalize
it? The mouth was, of course, never
exposed to view. The awful member was
concealed behind a little modesty apron, which was worn below the nose. (313)
This book is an enjoyable read. I recommend it to those who wish to explore the ambiguities of vegetarianism and the motivations of thoughtful lapsos.
William O. Stephens
[1]. John L. Hill, The Case for Vegetarianism: Philosophy
for a Small Planet (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996) is only one
example. For my review, see Environmental
Ethics 19, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 221–224.
[2]. See Jordan Curnutt, "A New Argument for
Vegetarianism," Journal of Social Philosophy 28, no. 3 (Winter
1997): 153–172. See also Jeff Jordan and
Jacqueline Brandner, "Friendship, Animals, and Vegetarianism"
(unpublished paper); the authors argue that since human beings can befriend
dogs, and there is no morally relevant difference between dogs and pigs, cows,
sheep, and other such animals, it is wrong to eat the latter since, by parity,
dogs, as friends to humans, are not morally appropriate food for us.
[3]. Dan Egonsson, "Kant's vegetarianism," The
Journal of Value Inquiry 31 (1997): 473–483.
[4]. Daniel A. Dombrowski, The Philosophy of
Vegetarianism (Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1984).
[5]. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed. 1993).