On Cannibalism
Submitted by Animal Person
When we left off, the New York Times’ Roger Cohen had eaten dog while in China, and wasn’t thrilled about it emotionally. Logically, he admits it does make perfect sense to eat dogs if you eat pigs and cows. He writes:
There is a rational, and for some people a spiritual, case for being a vegetarian: Killing animals is wrong. However I cannot see a rational argument for saying eating dogs or cats is barbaric while eating pork or beef is fine. If you eat meat you cannot logically find it morally or ethically repugnant to eat a particular meat (I’m setting cannibalism aside here.).
I’m intrigued by his mention of cannibalism, even if to set it aside. Why? Because his previous paragraph is:
But do pigs have any more or less of a soul than dogs? Are they any more or less sentient? Do they suffer any more or less in death? Are they any more or less part of the mysterious unity of life? I think not.
It’s a bit difficult to take on the soul question for human or nonhuman animals, particularly for an atheist. I’m not sure what soul means or whether it can be physically located anywhere so . . . I’ll set it aside here. But the other issues–sentience, suffering, being part of the “mysterious unity of life”–Cohen’s own criteria for lumping anyone into one category, are all equally true for humans. His aside demonstrates how self-conscious he is about attributes shared by pigs and dogs, which he knows is also shared by humans.
What Cohen doesn’t say, which is the real point of his quasi-lament over dining on dog, is that we don’t eat humans because they are human. But in the nonhuman world, there’s simply no reason to make any distinctions.
If sentience and suffering and “the mysterious unity of life” are really your concerns, you aren’t going be eating anybody.
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