What if you replace your meals composed of meat with plants? No, it is not a request for Marine Tondelier or Cyrielle Chatelain, president of the ecological and social group in the National Assembly. This suggestion comes from a person whose identity will surprise you, and whose existence you undoubtedly ignore.
It is the philosopher Quintus Sextius the Father, having lived in the first century BCE in ancient Rome, which is at the origin. Seneca, a statesman and Roman philosopher, admirer of his elder, took over the arguments of Quintus Sextius the Father. He exhibited them in a letter to his friend and philosopher Lucilius, around the year 62 AD.
Quintus Sextius The Father supported the idea that if humans ate meat, it was above all to satisfy their pleasure of killing animals. He also thought that this pleasure led to a desensitization of individuals. He considered that, morally, no one should develop such a habit. Eating meat only for personal pleasure was, according to him, a moral fault. And to explain that each of us could replace their meat consumption with a diet composed of plants.
In theory, this principle stated by the Roman philosopher seems valid. But one might wonder who is concerned by this cruelty to kill animals. Indeed, most meat consumers do not kill the animals themselves, so do not have to feed this potential habit. In this sense, it would be necessary to understand if those who are at the origin of the death of the animals, before they arrive on our plates, find pleasure in killing them. In this case, it would be difficult to accept to endorse this practice.
Transmigration, a reason in addition to not killing animals?
Seneca, in his exchanges with Lucilius, evokes another argument that he holds from Pythagoras (this very theorem, yes). Greek believed that after death, the soul of each human being passed from one body to another, including those of animals. Thus, the day your parents die, you could accidentally kill them by fishing salmon: this is what Pythagoras calls transmigration (meditate on it, it is still a good reason to make insomnia).
You have of course the right not to join this hypothesis. But since this is a hypothesis, it could be that it is true. This is one of the principles of metaphysics (may not dwell too much either on this question, your nights might be really long).
More seriously, Pythagoras’ principle of transmigration highlights an interesting point concerning the relations between humans and animals. It underlines a form of equality between the human species and the other animal species, in what could be defined as a form of antispecism, a concept developed in the 1970s.
Vegetarianism was not a common practice in antiquity, but these reflections show that our relationships with animals have been debated for millennia. So no, vegetarianism and veganism are not left -wing delusions. Unless you think that Seneca and Pythagoras were actually degenerate wokists … The idea can smile.
