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The Philosophical Origins of Vegetarianism: Greek Philosophers and Animal World

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The Philosophical Origins of Vegetarianism: Greek Philosophers and Animal World The Philosophical Origins of Vegetarianism Greek Philosophers and Animal World Letterio Mauro Full Professor of History of Philosophy, University of Genoa DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-maur [email protected] ABSTRACT Coeval philosophical texts provide no information about the extent to which the Ancient World practiced vegetarianism or about its concrete aspects. However, they offer a rich array of the arguments used to both justify and promote it. The present paper will focus on the four main philosophical arguments in favor of vegetarianism. These arguments were proposed and revised by various authors. The four arguments that will be studied are: the ascetic-religious one, mainly used by the Orphic tradition and then taken up by various authors, especially the Pythagoreans; the one based on the biopsychological affinity of all living beings, and coher- ently promoted by Theophrastus; the one based on the dignity and value of the animal world, widely developed especially by Plutarch; and finally the one, central to Porphyry’s treatise, that relates abstinence from meat to the need of the soul to elevate itself to the divine and be purified of any element linking it to the body. Keywords: vegetarianism, animals in antiquity, philosophical anthropology, Or- phism, Pythagoreanism, Neoplatonism, Middleplatonism, philosophical lifestyle in antiquity, sacrifices of animals, dignity and value of the animal world. 1. THE FOUR MAIN ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF VEGETARIANISM IN THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Coeval philosophical texts provide no information about the extent to which the Ancient World practiced vegetarianism or about its concrete aspects. However, they offer a rich array of the arguments used to both justify and promote it (Haussleiter 1935). The present paper will focus on the four main philosophical arguments in favor of vegetarianism. These arguments were proposed and revised by various authors, sometimes Relations – 5.1 - June 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ 13 Letterio Mauro together or linked to others (e.g. the difficult preparation and digestibility of meat), especially by Porphyry in his On Abstinence from Killing Animals (De abstinentia) – probably written after 270 CE (Bouffartigue and Patillon 1977, XVIII-XIX). Thanks to its ample documentation, Porphyry’s treatise represents the most important ancient philosophical source on this topic. The four arguments that will be studied are: the ascetic-religious one, mainly used by the Orphic tradition and then taken up by various authors (Pre-Socratic and not), especially the Pythagoreans; the one based on the biopsychological affinity of all living beings, and coherently promoted by Theophrastus; the one based on the dignity and value of the animal world, widely developed especially by Plutarch; and finally the one, central to Porphyry’s treatise, that relates abstinence from meat (a food difficult to obtain, prepare and digest, and thus having a negative effect on body and mind) to the need of the soul to elevate itself to the divine and be purified of any element linking it to the body. 2. ORPHISM AND PRE-SOCRATIC THINKERS From its very origins, vegetarianism has been an option that goes beyond the mere selection of a menu, able to embrace the manifold meanings (sym- bolic and not) of food. Indeed, it has brought into question the lifestyle and behaviors promoted by the societies of which it was a part; moreover, it also seems to have been linked with the refusal of the sacrificial prac- tices of official religion and with the special position attributed to humans in the great chain of being. Its first appearance in archaic Greece seems to have been connected with Orphism (VI century BCE), a religious ref- ormation movement that had significant and well-known philosophical consequences. Without radically rejecting traditional polytheism, Orphism condemned one of its fundamental rituals, abhorring the bloodshed on the altars of the gods. In so doing, Orphism introduced a new set of beliefs and above all a new interpretation of human existence into Greek civilization (Pugliese Carratelli 2001; Bernabé and Cristobal 2007). The basis of Orphism was the affirmation of a clear anthropological dualism: the human soul, of divine origin and thus immortal and incorrupt- ible, was condemned to be united with a mortal and corruptible body in order to expiate an obscure guilt, being reincarnated in successive bodily existences (not only in human forms but also in animals). Therefore, the soul aspired to be released from its corporeal confinement and from the reincarnation cycle in order to be reunited with the divine. This could be obtained through purifications, rituals and a lifestyle based on abstinence Relations – 5.1 - June 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ 14 The Philosophical Origins of Vegetarianism from any material reality, above all from the consumption of meat, consid- ered able to bind the soul to the body. Meat-eating was also prohibited for another reason: the idea of the transmigration of souls into animals sug- gested that it was possible to kill and eat the body of a being into which the soul of a friend or relative had entered. Therefore, abstinence from meat was a characteristic feature of the Orphic lifestyle, as Plato stated several centuries later: Some say it [body] is the tomb (soma) of the soul, their notion being that the soul is buried in the present life […]. But I think it most likely that the Orphic poets gave this name, with the idea that the soul is undergoing pun- ishment for something; they think it has the body as an enclosure to keep it safe, like a prison, and this is, as the name itself denotes, the safe (soma) for the soul, until the penalty is paid. (Plato, Cratylus, 400b-c) 1 Later, several Pre-Socratic thinkers shared the ban on killing and eating animals with Orphism. According to Porphyry (233/234-305 CE) and Iamblichus (ca. 250 - ca. 325 CE), this ban was adopted by Pythagoras of Samos (ca. 570 - ca. 490 BCE) and the community he founded (Porphyry, Vie de Pythagore, Lettre à Marcella, 34-9, and Iamblichus, On the Pythago- rean Life, XXI, 98-100) 2. From its beginning, this community was char- acterized by an interest in the mathematical sciences and by the triumph of the collective spirit over the individual element. This last point makes it difficult to distinguish Pythagoras’ contribution from that of his follow- ers and affiliates, “the so-called Pythagoreans” (Aristotle, The Metaphys- ics, I, 5, 985b 23-4) 3. According to Porphyry (Vie de Pythagore, Lettre à Marcella, 19), Pythagoras was the first to introduce to Greece the doctrine that the human soul is immortal and transmigrates into other species of living beings, as well as the doctrine of the affinity of all living creatures. These teachings gave rise to rules of purification and abstinence (including abstinence from meat-eating) aimed at purifying the body and rendering it submissive to the soul. However, although it shared the idea of vegetarian- 1 Cf. also Plato, Laws, VI, 782c-d: “The custom of men sacrificing one another is, in fact, one that survives even now among many peoples; whereas amongst others we hear of how the opposite custom existed, when they were forbidden so much as to eat an ox, and their offerings to the gods consisted, not of animals, but of cakes of meal and grain steeped in honey, and other such bloodless sacrifices, and from flesh they abstained as though it were unholy to eat it or to stain with blood the altars of the gods; instead of that, those of us men who then existed lived what is called an Orphic life, keeping wholly to inanimate food and, contrariwise, abstaining wholly from things animate”. 2 In Republic, X, 600b 2-5 Plato explicitly praises Pythagoras’ contribution to the formulation of the “pythagorean way of life”. 3 On the question of the creation, development, nature and downfall of the Pythago- rean community see Boudouris 1992, 49-69. Relations – 5.1 - June 2017 http://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ 15 Letterio Mauro ism with Orphism, we cannot characterize Pythagoreanism as a mystery religion or as a movement rivaling the traditional religious beliefs of the Greeks. In contrast with Orphism (some of whose theses it reformed, merging them with philosophy), Pythagoreanism related the liberation of man from the reincarnation cycle not to celebrations or religious rites but to the practice of mathematical sciences, considered the most effective instrument of purification and thus cultivated as a means and not an end. The ban on the killing and eating of animals was also proposed by another Pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles (ca. 485 - ca. 432 BCE) in his Purifications (Katharmoi), a work close to the magical-sacred tradition of Pythagoreanism and devoted to the purification of the soul. Here again, his position was based on the belief that the soul, understood as a fallen spirit, experiences successive reincarnations (DK 31 B 117) and after a long and difficult itinerary of purification can be freed of all evils caused by its connection with the body. This itinerary includes a number of dietary prescriptions as well as condemnation of the killing of any living being, especially when related to religious sacrifices (DK 31 B 128 and 136). According to Sextus Empiricus (ca. 160 - ca. 210 CE), both Pythagoras and Empedocles believed that a single spirit, widespread throughout the universe, establishes some sort of fellowship not only among humans and between humans and gods, but also between humans and animals. There- fore, if animals are man’s fellows, to kill them and eat their flesh is an unjust and impious act. As he clearly affirmed: Pythagoras and Empedocles and the rest of the Italian company declare that we have some fellowship (koinonian) not only with one another and with the Gods but also with the irrational animals.
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