Plutarch's second essay against meat-eating, arguing on grounds of habit, cruelty, and the uncertain possibility of reincarnation that killing animals for pleasure corrupts human character.
This is the second of Plutarch's two short essays "On the Eating of Flesh" (De Esu Carnium), collected in the Moralia. Where the first essay argued that animals are rational and capable of suffering, this second piece shifts strategy: even setting that question aside, Plutarch argues, meat-eating is indefensible because it habituates people to cruelty and because we cannot be certain what a slaughtered creature's soul contains.
Plutarch opens by admitting habit is powerful and hard to break, then catalogues contemporary butchering practices he finds monstrous -- driving hot spits into living pigs to tenderize the meat, trampling pregnant sows, blinding cranes and swans to fatten them in darkness -- as evidence that meat-eating has moved from necessity into pure indulgence. He traces a slippery slope from small excesses in food to excess in every sense (music, spectacle, sex) and argues that societies which begin by killing animals for pleasure end up desensitized to human bloodshed too, citing the Athenians who grew inured to political executions after their first informer-killings. He invokes Pythagoras and Empedocles as models of a more civilized, bloodless diet, contrasting them with philosophers who he says effectively "eat their dead relatives" by treating funeral feasts and animal slaughter as morally equivalent gestures.
The essay's centerpiece is Plutarch's argument from uncertainty about metempsychosis (transmigration of souls): even if we are not sure that souls are reborn into animal bodies, the mere possibility that a slaughtered creature might house a kinsman's soul, he argues, should make us cautious -- like a soldier in a night battle who hesitates to kill a fallen figure he cannot identify. He closes by challenging the Stoics directly, asking why they renounce luxuries like perfume and pastry as needless, yet keep meat, and proposes to examine on its own terms the claim that humans owe animals no justice.
“Reason calls upon us to become, as it were, fresh recruits against our stale habit of eating flesh, both in our thoughts and in our zeal.”
— De Esu Carnium 2 · read this chapter →
“let us eat flesh, but because we are hungry, not out of luxury; let us kill an animal, but with pity and grief, not with insolence or torture”
— De Esu Carnium 2 · read this chapter →
“What dinner, then, is not extravagant, into which nothing living is put to death?”
— De Esu Carnium 2 · read this chapter →
“would it not be better, giving weight to an unfounded suspicion, to let an enemy go as though he were a friend, than, disregarding the uncertainty, to kill a kinsman as though he were an enemy?”
— De Esu Carnium 2 · read this chapter →
“for we have no obligation of justice toward irrational creatures.”
— De Esu Carnium 2 · read this chapter →
It is a two-part essay arguing against eating meat. The second part, translated here, argues that meat-eating habituates people to cruelty and that the mere unproven possibility of reincarnation should make us cautious about killing animals, since a slaughtered creature might house a kinsman's soul.
No. He explicitly says the doctrine of transmigration of souls 'is not worthy of belief as demonstrated,' but argues that even the uncertainty itself is reason enough for caution, comparing it to a soldier who hesitates to kill an unidentified fallen body that might be his own son.
He criticizes them for inconsistency: the Stoics renounce perfumes and pastries as needless luxuries, yet permit killing animals for food, and he asks why bloodshed should escape the same scrutiny applied to trivial pleasures.
He describes cooks driving red-hot spits into live pigs to tenderize their flesh, people trampling the udders of pregnant sows, and cranes and swans being blinded and kept in darkness to be fattened -- all cited as evidence that meat-eating had become pure indulgence rather than necessity.
He argues that cruelty is habit-forming across domains: just as Athenians grew desensitized to killing citizens after executing a series of informers, people who grow accustomed to killing animals for pleasure gradually become capable of greater violence, including war and murder.
Plutarch presents them as founders of an older, bloodless Greek diet and as models of extending justice beyond humans to animals, contrasting their teaching favorably against philosophers he mocks for treating funeral flesh-eating as morally unremarkable.
Moralia: Ad Principem Ineruditum · Moralia: Adversus Colotem · Moralia: Amatoriae Narrationes · Moralia: Amatorius · Moralia: An Recte Dictum Sit Latenter Esse Vivendum · Moralia: An Seni Respublica Gerenda Sit · Moralia: An Virtus Doceri Possit · Moralia: An Vitiositas Ad Infelicitatem Sufficia · Moralia: Animine An Corporis Affectiones Sint Piores · Moralia: Apophthegmata Laconica · Moralia: Aquane An Ignis Sit Utilior · Moralia: Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti