Date Published:

Abstract:

The article discusses the social philosophy of vegans. Vegans charge moral vegetarians with inconsistency: if eating animals is a participation in a wrong practice, consuming eggs and dairy products is likewise wrong because it is a cooperation with systematic exploitation. Vegans say that even the more humane parts of the contemporary dairy and egg industry rely on immoral practices, and that therefore moral vegetarianism is too small a step in the right direction. According to vegans, moral vegetarians have conceded that animals are not means; that human pleasure cannot override animal suffering and death; that some industries ought to be banned; and that all this carries practical implications as to their own actions. Yet they stop short of a full realization of what speciesist culture involves and what living a moral life in such an environment requires. Moral vegans distinguish themselves from moral vegetarians in accepting the practical prescriptions of altogether avoiding benefiting from animal exploitation, not just of avoiding benefiting from the killing. Vegans take the killing to be merely one aspect of the systematic exploitation of animals. The moral logic of veganism appears sound. The viability of moral vegetarianism depends on the ability to establish a meaningful difference between animal-derived products which they boycott, and those that they consume. Moral vegetarians agree that the egg and dairy industry has to be radically reformed.

Notes:

Zamir, Tzachi; Source Info: Fall2004, Vol. 35 Issue 3, p367; Subject Term: VEGANISM; Subject Term: SOCIAL theory; Subject Term: VEGANS; Subject Term: VEGETARIANS; Subject Term: ETHICS; Number of Pages: 13p; Document Type: Article