Ethical Vegetarianism: From Pythagoras to Peter Singer

by Walters, Kerry S.

• ISBN13: 9780791440445
• ISBN10: 0791440443
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-01-01
• Publisher: STATE UNIV OF NEW YORK PRESS

Author Biography

Kerry S. Walters is Professor of Philosophy at Gettysburg College. Lisa Portmess is Chair of the Philosophy Department at Gettysburg College.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Cruel Fatalities	1	(11)
PART I. Antiquity: The Kinship of Humans and Animals	11	(36)
Pythagoras (c. 570--490): The Kinship of All Life	13	(10)
Seneca (c. 4 BCE--65 CE): Abstinence and the Philosophical Life	23	(4)
Plutarch (c. 56--120): On the Eating of Flesh	27	(8)
Porphyry (c. 233--306): On Abstinence from Animal Food	35	(12)
PART II. The Eighteenth Century: Diet and Human Character	47	(28)
Bernard Mandeville (1670--1733): The Carnivorous Custom and Human Vanity	49	(8)
David Hartley (1705--1757): Carnivorous Callousness	57	(4)
Oliver Goldsmith (1728--1774): They Pity, and Eat the Objects of Their Compassion	61	(4)
William Paley (1743--1805): The Dubious Right to Eat Flesh	65	(4)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792--1822): A Vindication of Natural Diet	69	(6)
PART III. The Nineteenth Century: Diet and Compassion	75	(38)
Alphonse de Lamartine (1790--1869): A Shameful Human Infirmity	77	(4)
William A. Alcott (1798--1859): The World is a Mighty Slaughterhouse and Flesh-Eating and Human Decimation	81	(8)
Richard Wagner (1813--1883): Human Beasts of Prey and Fellow-Suffering	89	(8)
Leo Tolstoy (1828--1910): The Immorality of Carnivorism	97	(10)
Anna Kingsford (1846--1888): The Essence of True Justice	107	(6)
PART IV. The Twentieth Century: Diet, Rights, and the Global Perspective	113	(140)
Henry S. Salt (1851--1939): The Humanities of Diet	115	(12)
J. Howard Moore (1862--1916): Universal Kinship	127	(8)
Romain Rolland (1866--1944): The Unpardonable Crime	135	(4)
Mohandas Gandhi (1869--1948): Diet and Morality	139	(6)
Albert Schweitzer (1875--1965): The Ethic of Reverence for Life	145	(8)
Tom Regan (1938- ): The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism	153	(12)
Peter Singer (1946- ): All Animals Are Equal	165	(12)
Thomas Auxter (1945- ): The Right Not to Be Eaten	177	(12)
Peter S. Wentz (1942- ): An Ecological Argument for Vegetarianism	189	(14)
Stephen R. L. Clark (1945- ): The Pretext of ``Necessary Suffering''	203	(6)
Frances Moore Lappe (1944- ): Like Driving a Cadillac	209	(12)
Harriet Schleifer (1952- ): Images of Death and Life: Food Animal Production and the Vegetarian Option	221	(12)
Jon Wynne-Tyson (1924- ): Dietethics: Its Influence on Future Farming Patterns	233	(8)
Deane Curtin (1951- ): Contextual Moral Vegetarianism	241	(6)
Carol J. Adams (1951- ): The Social Construction of Edible Bodies and Humans as Predators	247	(6)
Appendix I: Arguments against Ethical Vegetarianism	253	(6)
Appendix II: Animals and Slavery	259	(2)
Appendix III: Automatism of Brutes	261	(6)
Appendix IV: We Have Only Indirect Duties to Animals	267	(4)
Appendix V: Bibliography of Antivegetarian Sources	271	(2)
For Further Reading	273	(4)
Sources and Acknowledgments	277	(6)
Index	283