Plutarch on the question of justice for animals

Abstract

Plutarch devotes his three texts on animals in the Moralia to a thoroughgoing critique of the Stoic prejudices of his time. In doing so, he advances two sorts of reason why we should not kill and eat animals: on the grounds that meat-eating and other forms of cruelty to animals interfere with the human pursuit of virtue, and on the grounds that animals merit direct moral concern inasmuch as they possess rationality, language, and emotions. Both of these lines of reasoning motivate Plutarch’s advocacy of vegetarianism. Late in life, however, Plutarch retreats from the robust defense of animals that he advanced in the Moralia. A refl ection on the shift in Plutarch’s thinking about animals helps us to think through a central question in contemporary animal rights debates: exactly what are the appropriate criteria for determining whether a given living being is owed duties of justice? A consideration of the specifi c experiential abilities that Plutarch attributes to animals in the Moralia, as well as on the Stoics’ main reasons for excluding animals from the sphere of right, is an excellent starting point for thinking through this question.