Thursday, March 02, 2006
Carnivory: between sentiment and reason
Another installment of our occasional series on eating animals...
In the middle of reading Coetzee's Elizabeth Castello, in particular having just finished the two chapters: "The Lives of Animals"; these were originally given by Coetzee as a Tanner Lecture on Human Values at Princeton University in 1997.
When push comes to shove, sentiment beats reason every time, as any economist can tell you. This is why I find it impossible to rationally argue against Elizabeth Costello (vis-à-vis Coetzee?). Veal repels my sentiments, but not beef — not rational but my sentiment is what it is, I cannot justify it via reason but then I am as sure of it as I am sure of Socrates' mortality. Does there exist any consistent argument against veal that does not exclude beef at the same time? While we are at it, how rational is any argument against eating cats and dogs that do not at the same be against eating pigs? What is so fundamentally different between a cat or a dog, which I won't think of eating, and the pig which provided some of my dinner tonight, except on the level of sentiment?
There are the rational arguments for meat-eating, i.e. culture & evolutionary history, dentition, digestive tract, nutrition &c, and rational arguments against it, i.e. cultural & evolutionary history, health, ecology &c. These all seemed rather bloodless to me, in that I can't see how they can ever persuade a skeptic. Sentimental arguments, like Costello's, do not persuade either but they are the ones almost anyone can understand, and when well-put as is Costello's it is almost impossible not to sympathize. That is the power of literature and of art, which is fundamentally a sentimental power.
Back to meat eating: while a rational counter to Costello cannot be posed, I think I can pose a sentimental one. There is something so utterly pleasurable in a good bowl of beef noodles — indeed one of the chief pleasures of this life — how can there possibly be anything wrong with it?
In the middle of reading Coetzee's Elizabeth Castello, in particular having just finished the two chapters: "The Lives of Animals"; these were originally given by Coetzee as a Tanner Lecture on Human Values at Princeton University in 1997.
When push comes to shove, sentiment beats reason every time, as any economist can tell you. This is why I find it impossible to rationally argue against Elizabeth Costello (vis-à-vis Coetzee?). Veal repels my sentiments, but not beef — not rational but my sentiment is what it is, I cannot justify it via reason but then I am as sure of it as I am sure of Socrates' mortality. Does there exist any consistent argument against veal that does not exclude beef at the same time? While we are at it, how rational is any argument against eating cats and dogs that do not at the same be against eating pigs? What is so fundamentally different between a cat or a dog, which I won't think of eating, and the pig which provided some of my dinner tonight, except on the level of sentiment?
There are the rational arguments for meat-eating, i.e. culture & evolutionary history, dentition, digestive tract, nutrition &c, and rational arguments against it, i.e. cultural & evolutionary history, health, ecology &c. These all seemed rather bloodless to me, in that I can't see how they can ever persuade a skeptic. Sentimental arguments, like Costello's, do not persuade either but they are the ones almost anyone can understand, and when well-put as is Costello's it is almost impossible not to sympathize. That is the power of literature and of art, which is fundamentally a sentimental power.
Back to meat eating: while a rational counter to Costello cannot be posed, I think I can pose a sentimental one. There is something so utterly pleasurable in a good bowl of beef noodles — indeed one of the chief pleasures of this life — how can there possibly be anything wrong with it?
Labels: eating animals
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
To continue on theme of killing & eating animals: what is the bloody point here? Why kill an animal if you don't plan to eat it or put it to use somehow? My friend Ben, now in Iraq as an National Guard specialist, used to say this of trophy hunters: "It is like going to the Louvre and shoot a painting for fun; why would you do something asinine like that?"
On a related note, John McPhee has a sharp word or two about the supposedly more "humane" activity of catch-and-release fishing in The Founding Fish. It turns out that in Germany, catch-and-release fishing is outlawed as senseless and cruel, which it is.
On a related note, John McPhee has a sharp word or two about the supposedly more "humane" activity of catch-and-release fishing in The Founding Fish. It turns out that in Germany, catch-and-release fishing is outlawed as senseless and cruel, which it is.
Labels: eating animals
Sunday, April 18, 2004
It is become something of an idée fixe here: another essay (actually a book extract) on eating animals.
Labels: eating animals
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
A moment of shattering simultaneity between birth-pangs and death-throes, from the essay "Do fish feel pain?", by James Hamilton-Paterson:
Years ago, in California, I once went fishing for surfperch; it was in March or April, when they breed. The struggling fish, dragged through the surf onto the beach, would often give birth (surfperch give birth to live young) as it lay gasping on the sand. Often the young were still-born, born before they were quite ready to emerge. I remembering picking up as many of the fingerling fish as I could, and throwing them back into the surf, only to have them swept back by the next wave.
Did I feel pity for the fish and its ill-fated offspring? Yes. I was eleven or twelve then, my sentiments not reasoned thoughts, but a naïve sympathy for animals and for their perceived (undoubtedly anthropomorphised) suffering. It is not something I am embarrassed about as being childish, but then it is not a sentiment I can now defend via reasoned argument. I do not hunt and fish, because I am uncomfortable about killing animals through my own agency; I do, however, eat meat and fish without a bad conscience. This is perhaps inconistent, but how is it any more possible, or desirable, to rationalise sentiment than to sentimentalise reason?
The Siki shark, though, seemed more resistant to the shock of being wrenched up from a kilometre below, and several were still thrashing or twitching among the heaps of corpses. One lay on its back almost languidly among the bodies, lolling with the ship's roll. Suddenly, with a convulsive shudder, it gave birth. The baby was about sixteen centimetres long, black, its eyes little luminous beads of the same shade and fluorescent intensity as its dying mother's. Over the next three minutes it was joined by a further five siblings, blindly burrowing among the dead heaps of fish in a hopeless search for the sustaining sea.
Years ago, in California, I once went fishing for surfperch; it was in March or April, when they breed. The struggling fish, dragged through the surf onto the beach, would often give birth (surfperch give birth to live young) as it lay gasping on the sand. Often the young were still-born, born before they were quite ready to emerge. I remembering picking up as many of the fingerling fish as I could, and throwing them back into the surf, only to have them swept back by the next wave.
Did I feel pity for the fish and its ill-fated offspring? Yes. I was eleven or twelve then, my sentiments not reasoned thoughts, but a naïve sympathy for animals and for their perceived (undoubtedly anthropomorphised) suffering. It is not something I am embarrassed about as being childish, but then it is not a sentiment I can now defend via reasoned argument. I do not hunt and fish, because I am uncomfortable about killing animals through my own agency; I do, however, eat meat and fish without a bad conscience. This is perhaps inconistent, but how is it any more possible, or desirable, to rationalise sentiment than to sentimentalise reason?
Labels: eating animals, fish