S_Lollai-17th HVM-Porphyry_The_broken_alliance.pdf

Relations, 2017

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 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 to the need of the soul to elevate itself to the divine and be purified of any element linking it to the body.

Like many philosophers before them, Plutarch and Porphyry refused to eat animals, but unlike their predecessors, each sets out numerous arguments in favour of vegetarianism in their writings. Their arguments are many and varied. Some tell us that we should not eat animals because killing and eating them makes us more likely to kill and eat human beings, some tell us that it is because human beings may reincarnate as animals, others tell us that it is because animals are rational creatures that are owed moral consideration from humans, and yet others say that it is because meat-eating has negative effects on the bodies and souls of human meat-eaters. Notably, while in some cases, meat-eating is presented as wrong because of what it does to animals, in others, it is so only because of what it does to human beings. In the following paper, I argue that Plutarch and Porphyry are, in fact, more concerned about the effect that meat-eating has on human beings than they are about the effect that it has on non-human animals. In particular, they consider meat-eating an act of human intemperance, which distracts one's higher soul from contemplation of the Platonic forms. Thus, while their reasoning results in a number of practical recommendations regarding the treatment of animals, the Platonists are not particularly concerned about the fate of the animals themselves.

2016

Wheras Walters and Portmess state that Firmus left for Christianity, Dombrowski notes that is "unclear why he defected "(107). 91 Ibid. 35-6. Walters and Portmess describe the four books of De abstinentia as each having their own focus, they argue that "(1) carnivorism is intemperate and hence unsuitable for the philosophical life (2) that animal sacrifices are impious, (3) that animals deserve just treatment, (4) and that a distinguished host of past sages condemned flesh eating." 92 Ibid. 93 Porphyry. op. cit. 37.

Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 1990

Greek archaic thought calls into question the treatment of living and sentient beings as food. Bloody sacrifice and vegetarianism are two extreme aspects of the culturally significant, and philosophically disquieting togetherness of human and nonhuman animals. Anthropological and intertextual arguments converge toward a reading of Hesiod's Theogony as an idiosyncratic, pessimistic, and retrospective version of how humans and gods learned to interact ritually, through the immolation of animal flesh. Whereas the Homeric poems insist on a felicitous compromise, thanks to a fair distribution of edible portions, the Theogony implies that, in their ordinary sacrifices, human beings repeat an offensive, deceptive, and macabre trick: Prometheus' offering of white bones, instead of red meat, to Zeus. Such a gesture mimics the burial of human corpses. This paper discusses this textual resonance. It also shows the relevance of potential cannibalism, in the first critical meditation on meat-eating. Sacrificial slaughter inspired Pythagoras' vegetarianism.

Archives in Biomedical Engineering & Biotechnology

Food is and always has been a serious issue for public health, agriculture, the environment, and ethics. First, a brief sketch of the history of the philosophical vegetarianism is offered. This overview will allow several contemporary concerns about agricultural systems, resultant environmental harms, threats to public health, food insecurity, and dietary choices to be historically contextualized and interrelated. The conceptual map presented more or less chronologically here does not pretend to be comprehensive. But despite its necessary incompleteness and unavoidable selectivity the hope is that it may prove of modest use to inform food-secure consumers who enjoy a range of healthy food options, desire to safeguard public health, support sustainable agriculture, maintain ecological integrity, and work for climate stability. In the Western hemisphere, the idea of philosophical vegetarianism has a history of nearly 1,000 years in ancient Greece. The belief that it is wrong to eat animals was propounded by many of the most eminent ancient philosophers: Pythagoras, Empedocles, Theophrastus, who succeeded Aristotle as head of the Lyceum, Plutarch, Plotinus, and Porphyry. Porphyry, a prolific polymath, compiled a wide range of arguments against vegetarianism, critiqued them in detail, and defended at length his own Plotinian arguments for vegetarianism, in his work De Abstinentia ab Esu Animalium [1]. In ancient Rome, Pythagoras' arguments for philosophical vegetarianism won over the Stoic philosopher, statesman, orator, and dramatist Seneca, who reported improved health and vigor as benefits of abstaining from meat. Seneca believed that Stoic philosophy, which grounds the virtues of wisdom, justice, and temperance in pursuit of living in agreement with nature, dictates simple, simply prepared, frugal meals of foods that are close at hand. Thus, Seneca advocated moderate, unfussy eating and condemned foods requiring great labor, expense, or trouble. Seafood, imported foods, meat from hunted animals, and exotic mushrooms he criticized as decadent luxuries. The respected Roman Stoic teacher Musonius Rufus also emphasized the virtues of simplicity and frugality in eating. He argued that the proper diet consists of the least expensive and most readily available foods: raw fruits in season, raw and cooked vegetables, milk, cheese, honeycombs, and cooked grains. Like Seneca, Musonius rejected meat as too crude for human beings and more suitable for wild animals. Musonius concluded that responsible people favor what is easy to obtain over what is difficult, what involves no trouble over what does, and what is available over what isn't, because doing so promotes self-control and virtue of character. For him, these values called for a lacto-vegetarian diet

Porphyry is taken by most scholars to be committed to the belief that (i) all animals are rational, and that (ii) this makes it unjust to kill them for food. This argument appears in book 3 of his treatise 'On Abstinence from Animal Food.' In this paper, however, I argue that most scholars are wrong to understand Porphyry in this way. As I understand him, Porphyry believes neither that (ii) it is unjust to eat animals because they are rational, nor even that (i) all animals are rational. Instead, I suggest, Porphyry's book 3 argument is a dialectical attack on the Stoic position, which argues that, given the Stoic theory of rationality, the Stoics ought to admit that (i) all animals are rational, and, given the Stoic theory of justice, the Stoics ought also to admit that (ii) eating animals is unjust. If I am right about this, then everything we thought we knew about Porphyry's approach to animals is wrong.

Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, eds. D. Jalobeanu and C.T. Wolfe (Springer), 2022

What is a non-human animal? During the early modern period, definitions ranged from an ensouled creature that exists between humans and plants on the scale of nature to a soulless but finely constructed automaton. Particularly fierce disputes erupted over whether animals are rational, sensitive, or language-using, and the ascribed attributes were widely thought to have a bearing on ethical questions. Is it acceptable to hunt animals? To eat them? Kick them? Experiment on them for the amelioration of human health and knowledge? This entry delves into these issues. It begins with a brief overview of Renaissance perspectives on the status of animals and René Descartes’ attempt to upend them, then turns to Pierre Gassendi’s and Henry More’s head-on refutations of Descartes, and proceeds to the less direct responses of other major early modern philosophers including Kenelm Digby, Margaret Cavendish, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Finally, I look at debates about animal anatomy and their implications for attitudes towards consuming animals, with a focus on Gassendi and the responses to him from John Wallis and Edward Tyson, concluding with a broader overview of perspectives on animal ethics, with reference to Nicolas Malebranche, John Locke, and David Hume.

Epictetus: His Continuing Influence and Contemporary Relevance, 2014