Today more of one million of French (investigation of the French Committee of Health Education 1996) and 5% of the European are vegetarian.
Vegetarianism is a new life style in full development that has an impact on people of all age and of all social environment.
In the majority of the cases, the adoption of a vegetarian food is seen like a determined awareness by :
=> the research of a healthier food.
=> the refusal of the violence inflicted to farming animals.
The vegetarians exclude of their consumption the products requiring therefore the death of the animal.
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ETHIC
Among the philosophers of the antique time having elaborated a real doctrine of vegetarianism, Plutarque appears as one of the inescapable faces.
Greek author of the late antique (1st century), one especially knows of this thinker his continuous critical of the Stoics, but we forget too often to see what a militant of the vegetarianism he was.
It is in his " Three treaties for the animals" (1) that resides the essential of his thought on this philosophy, and more precisely in the first treaty, title" If it is permissible to eat flesh. "
For Plutarque, vegetarianism is not a personal choice, one different life style which is destined to a minority, but the only way of life morally.
It is well here about a question of life style, and no merely of food.
Indeed, his promotion of the vegetarianism has only for goal to reduce the number of animals killed.
If he calls on arguments about food or metaphysical order, it is to be sure to be able to touch as much world as possible, but his main goal remain to put an end to the massacre of the animals.
Plutarque wants to denounce this injustice that is the consumption of animals, and he doesn't hesitate to use strong words and pictures, as the use of terms like murder or cadaver.
He says thus, about the first eaters of meats (but this remains valid for all meat eaters) :
"How could his eyes suffer from seeing a murder ? To see a killing ? To flay, to dismember a poor beast ?
How his olfactory organ could smell and support the odor ? How was not his taste disgusted of horror, when it came to handle the trash of the injuries, to receive the blood and the retiring juice of the deadly wounds of other living beings ? "
For him, the real reason for which one eats meat is to the origins.
Therefore he questions himself about the source of such a habit of food.
But he is going to demonstrate that this custom is based on a bad interpretation of the necessities of the past.
First of all, he wants to know from where this institution comes from.
So he says :
"the first one that began to eat flesh should have thought about it, not the last who stopped making it lately."
For Plutarque, it is not the vegetarian who must justify his food, but the eater of meat.
The vegetarian knows why he is vegetarian, and attach his food to his deep convictions.
On the contrary, the "carnivore" doesn't ask questions, and eat meat because others made it before him, or because he likes that, but without no other shape of justification.
Therefore Plutarque wants to reverse this point of view, so that it is not anymore the vegetarian who appears like a curiosity, having to justify his behaviour, but on the contrary the meat eater.
For him, our ancestors began to eat meat, not by excessive appetite or pleasure, but by necessity in the periods of food shortage where the men had to practice the cannibalism to survive.
If he excuses somewhere these men who instituted this manner of food, Plutarque condemns those nevertheless that, in the periods of abundance of foods have perpetuated what became a tradition, but what remain indeed a massacre.
According to Plutarque, the man is not a carnivorous.
But he is well beyond a ferocious beast, because he doesn't kill by necessity, but by pleasure.
He says : "If the other animals bruise, it is for the necessity of their feed, but you, it is by pleasure that you make it. "
He will use physical criteria in order to demonstrate that the man was not destined to eat flesh.
Finally, the man lacks the physical features of the carnivorous, but also the instinct of killer excited by blood.
Plutarque says to the eater of meat :
"If you want to persist in sustaining that the nature made of you a meat eater, then first kill it yourself, I say yourself, without using cleaver nor knife, but as the wolves, the bears and the lions make it, that is to say they kill the beast slowly but surely when they eat it."
He then shows that the use of tool puts the death from afar, because the animal is killed with tools, but it is also cooked, and is not eaten raw and still hot.
Plutarque says" there is not anyone that would have the courage to eat some as it is, but one makes it boil, one roasts it, one transforms it..."
Therefore, the human "carnivore" is condemned morally, according to the incompatibility of his nature to this régime, and by the lack of justification of his acts.
But he is condemned also and especially by the deep injustice, and the immorality of his practices, because the victims are the animals.
Plutarque shows them biggest respect, and make them worthy to be respected and to be able to live their life.
He doesn't believe in a possible reincarnation of the man into an animal or inversely, theory that had pushed toward vegetarianism a lot of ancient Greek authors.
He considers merely that the animals, whatever is their degree of intelligence, are intelligent enough to carry through their respective existences, and that one doesn't have to consider them lower living beings.
Because for a little selfish "pleasure" one removes them life.
As Bion said - another author of the Greek antique - "the children play to throw some stones to the frogs, but the frogs, them, die for good."
For Plutarque. it is said of the following way :
"For a few quantity of flesh, we remove them life, the sun, light and the course of one life prefixed by the nature : and we think that the screams of fear that they throw are not articulated, that they don't mean anything...".
In his justification of vegetarianism, Plutarque seems to say : "don't eat the animals anymore ", this in order to put an end to the massacres that they are the victims.
With ideas appearing to us of a disconcerting modernity, Plutarque already used to try to convert people to a behaviour leading to a more pacific world.
Because, better than to go on a diet, vegetarianism is a philosophy, a way of thinking the reality, and Plutarque is the perfect illustration of the range of the vegetarian thought.
Emmanuelle Batifol
(1) PLUTARQUE, Trois traités pour les animaux, traduction Amyot. Paris, P.O.L.. 1992.
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Source : L'antivivisection n° 146
Revue de la Ligue Française contre la vivisection, 84 rue Blanche 75009 PARIS