This book was published in 2009 and became a little extra famous because of Natalie Portman who was quoted as saying about it, "Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist." My Creative Writing MFA friends will recognize it as an example of Creative Non-Fiction, or perhaps even more accurately New Journalism. Foer uses the birth of his son as a jumping off point for an investigation of what we might eat ethically. He uses a range of devices including letters, interviews, and narrative to explore the world of factory farming and cruelty toward animals. The book is a good read and I can understand how Natalie Portman might have found it a call to action.
The question in my mind is one that Foer fails to solve, I think. He advocates for eating with care. This involves, among other things, using more local and humane meat producers and creating a personal ethic of use and waste. But can we step back a little farther? Fundamentally, can we eat animals ethically at all? And if we can, on what basis?
Those of a biblical disposition usually cite Genesis and the passage the gives man "dominion" over animals. You will have to forgive me if I find that pretty flimsy authority. I don't accept the Pentateuch's prohibition against homosexuality or its endorsement of polygamy so I don't see why I should take this bit of poetry to be governing law on the slaughter of creatures.
Others note that all throughout nature, animals kill other animals and eat them. I love the line from Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: "The history of the world, my sweet, is who gets eaten and who gets to eat!"
OK, but there is a lot of stuff that animals do that we find morally repulsive. If to be human is, in some sense, to aspire to be moral then than aspiration ought to include animals as well.
Catholic theologians might tell you that humans have a soul and animals do not? Why is that? How do we know that? Is a soul part of loving and being loved? If so, I am pretty sure that Saul and Alice (the two resident Chihuahuas at my house) have souls. This anthropocentrism just is not selling well, at least to me.
I actually find Bentham somewhat persuasive in this case. You will recall that Bentham locates morality in the two forces of pleasure and pain. More pleasure for more people is right and more pain is wrong--utilitarianism. Bentham reasons that, since it is observable that animals do experience pain (Darwin says the same,) then the principle of pleasure and pain holds and inflicting pain on an animal is wrong. Bentham was true to his principles. He was a vegetarian.
Discussing this in class, most of the students felt that Foer advanced both sides of this argument and left it to the reader to choose (undergrads and high school students applaud anything that is left to their own opinions.) I don't think this holds. If one may assert either that killing of animals is wrong or that it might be permissible, the one has claimed that it is not absolutely wrong--only wrong under some circumstances. In that case, vegetarianism has no moral claim per se. It can only make derivative claims, for instance, that animal slaughter is unnecessarily cruel, or that feeding raising animals for food is ecologically irresponsible, or that some animals (pigs for example) have a high enough level of consciousness to warrant their inclusion with dogs and such. Foer would, I think, endorse this as eating with care.
But that raises another ethical problem. As Foer admits, all of the humane farms in the United States would not feed Staten Island. What humane and local food is available is almost always more costly and less easily obtained. Does this make ethical animal eating the privilege of the affluent? Can there be an ethical stance that is only available to the advantaged? Doesn't that fall of its own inconsistency?
As you might guess, the Thursday session of Love and Evil was a brisk discussion. I am thinking very seriously about whether it is time for me to make some dietary changes (I mean besides cutting carbs and sugar and such.) Would love to hear your comments.
John- great topic and thoughtful and thought-provoking comments. Let me take it to another level, if you will. I think that in the 21st century we all now AFFIRM that slavery is WRONG and indefensible, morally, even though there is probably more human trafficking in todays world, as a percentage of population AND as raw numbers, than at any other time in human history. Still, morally and ethically we do not endorse it, biblically or otherwise. To me, the domestication of animals is the origin of slavery. What right do we have to enslave other SPECIES of animals, just because we can? Genesis? Again, that 'dominion' statement is troubling, and one verse in an old document taken out of context, what did it mean exactly? I think 'dominion' meant more in the lines of 'stewardship' than as 'exploitation' as a resource. (It's always been curious to me, but never considered or discussed, that the model of Christianity is an Imperial Monarchy. Why 'Lord God'? At least redundant, but also how limiting a concept for a supreme being. But I digress.) Once we have made that step, to enslave horses, cows, pigs, sheep, goats, etc (even dogs and cats: if the argument is correct than it should not be situational), the next step, enslaving humans, is merely deciding that some humans are less human than others, in practice the least powerful and/or the least brutal. (Ironic, isn't it? Africans, for example, or Irish at one time, or any barbarian to the Roman or the Greek. Historically, there has been more 'humane' or more 'brutal' treatment of slaves, but that is not the issue, to me. To me, slavery is wrong, end of story. No one has the right to force someone else to do their will. I argue that we don't have the right to force other species to do our will. "The animals benefit!" some will shout, especially dog and cat owners, but also horse people. "What about my bacon!" some will shout. That gets to the other question, whether it is ever ethically or morally acceptable to kill. I must have been a Jain in another life, well, I'm not sure actually that there is another life, maybe there are just some influences or others that inform one. Ahimsa, Non-violence, is fundamental to all spiritual practice, IMHO, therefore the question is why kill? Do we really NEED to hunt animals for food? no. Much more important to this discussion, do we really need to breed and raise animals in slavery for food? again, no, and economically, as far as it being a class issue, it costs so much more to raise livestock for food than plants. Logically, we raise plants to feed animals that we then eat. Inefficient. Unnecessary. We enslave thinking, feeling creatures, breed them at OUR whim, on OUR timetable, take their babies away at birth to be eaten as veal, and milk them until they are dry, then do it all over again. Male babies we castrate and fatten for slaughter. Veganism, to me, is the only moral, ethical, sensible, sustainable, AND healthy lifestyle. The argument then is always "Why then do we have these teeth?" Well, certainly they are useful in eating some tougher skinned fruits and nuts, etc. But, also, do we not think that we have evolved beyond the animal stage? If so, should we still behave as animals just because we still have teeth like other primates? Are we driven to behavior based on our anatomy or on our brains? That's an entirely different kettle of fish or can of worms that I care not to digest right now!
ReplyDeleteOne of my small groups is doing their final multimedia presentation on Animal Rights. I mentioned Foer's text to them & told them that you were the one that mentioned it to me. They asked me to say, "Thanks, Mr. Paulett."
ReplyDeleteSo, "Thanks, Mr. Paulett."