Would The Ancient Stoics Have Been Against Mistreatment of Animals?

Such as in the way factory farming mistreats animals

In a Substack Note you can read here,

Massimo Pigliucci

(author of

Figs in Winter: Stoicism and beyond

here on Substack and, of course, the book “How to Be a Stoic”) and I entered into a friendly exchange about whether or not the Ancient Stoics would have much of anything to say about the eating of meat when the eating of meat necessitated preventing animals from living according to their nature (more plainly: especially when it resulted in their mistreatment).

I am firmly in the “yes they would” camp, Massimo in the “no they wouldn’t” camp saying:

For the ancient Stoics animals fulfill their nature when they are used by humans for their benefit. This is very clear from a number of texts. They did not consider animal suffering a problem, it wasn’t on their radar. So I think in order to make the argument you wish to make (and with which, again, I agree) you need to move to some version of modern Stoicism that drops the cosmos-as-living organism concept and the related argument from design. Another way to put it is this: ancient Stoics were concerned solely with rational animals. And they thought the only rational animal is Homo sapiens.

I encourage you to read the full exchange for context (again, it is linked above).

Massimo is an atheist (unless something has changed) and was, at one point, part of the Modern Stoicism camp, so it is not unexpected to see this: “…I think in order to make the argument you wish to make … you need to move to some version of modern Stoicism that drops the cosmos-as-living organism concept and the related argument from design” in his response. Also, in his own words, Massimo is a Stoic “with a significant peppering of Ciceronian Skepticism”

¹

, and so I think it’s fair to think of him as still being part of that camp — as I doubt a Ciceronian Skeptic would have much tolerance for the claims of Ancient Stoicism.

I agree that the Ancient Stoics found absolutely nothing morally wrong with the consumption of meat, per se. Some of them (such as Zeno, Seneca, and Musonius), found the eating of meat to have a “clouding” effect on mens’ minds and so suggested the ideal diet either shouldn’t include it or should include a very small amount of it. This wasn’t for animal welfare reasons, it was for you-need-a-clear-mind-to-be-an-effective-Stoic reasons.

On the subject of food he used to speak frequently and very emphatically too, as a question of no small significance, nor leading to unimportant consequences, indeed he believed that the beginning and foundation of temperance lay in self-control in eating and drinking.

On the other hand he showed that meat was a less civilized kind of food and more appropriate for wild animals. He held that it was a heavy food and an obstacle to thinking and reasoning, since the exhalations rising from it, being turbid, darkened the soul. For this reason also the people who make larger use of it seem slower in intellect.

-Musonius Rufus, “That One Should Disdain Hardships”, Fragments

I entirely agree with Massimo that the Ancient Stoics took no issue with the eating of meat; nor do I contest the idea that some Stoics (e.g. Chrysippus) viewed animals as being put on earth for the use of humanity. All of that, as far as I’ve ever read, is reasonable enough to say of the Ancient Stoics.

Where Massimo and I seem to disagree is on whether or not the Ancient Stoics would find certain kinds of commercialized farming practices (and I’ll define this in a moment) un-Stoic: It is my position that they absolutely would and, that being the case, they would urge us to be very selective in choosing the meats we eat since some choices would enable such un-Stoic behavior and others wouldn’t.

To be clear about what I mean by “modern commercialized farming practices”:

I’m speaking of those farming practices that operate at a scale that results in a “by whatever means necessary” approach to maximizing meat (or milk, etc) yields and minimizing costs. This results in a few very unreasonable things

²

:

1. Cramped quarters

2. Tail docking (to prevent aggressive behavior caused by being kept in cramped quarters)

3. Debeaking of birds (while they are alive, to prevent fighting in confined quarters)

4. Use of growth hormones to artificially increase the size of animals (for higher meat yields)

5. Keeping cows in a state of “permanent pregnancy” so they produce milk for their entire lives (until they can’t and then they are slaughtered)

6. Restricting baby calves milk intake so that the maximum amount of milk can go to product

These are a few of the well-known issues with commercialized farming, or, what I will refer to as “factory farming” from here forward as this label seems to better capture the motivation of said farms.

I feel it necessary here to restate that I am not arguing that Stoics would be against the slaughtering and consumption of animals (Musonius Rufus aside), Massimo and I agree on that front. It is not out of a living thing’s nature to die, or to be killed by a predator, or to be eaten. It’s not out of a cow’s nature, nor is it out of a human’s. Death is part of every living things’ nature. Thus dying, in Stoicism, is not morally problematic.

However, unjust killing is absolutely problematic in Stoicism

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.

Modern Stoics, many of them being atheists or self-described agnostics, seem to be predisposed to seeing the worst in Ancient Stoic reasoning (when any aspect of its theology or physics come into play). I would say the entire basis of the Modern Stoicism movement is belief in the need to distance contemporary Stoic practice from the (understandable) errors-due-to-ignorance present in Ancient Stoicism. One such example is the influence of Humorism in assessing people’s natural dispositions.

There’s no argument, the Ancient Stoics had some whacky ideas that absolutely don’t hold up to modern Scientific discovery and advancement.

However this, in some cases, zealous need of some Modern Stoics to quarantine what they view to be the ridiculous, antiquated, wrong, and just plain useless aspects of Ancient Stoicism, finds Modern Stoics throwing the baby out with the bathwater or, in this case, selling the Ancient Stoics short far too frequently.

Returning to the idea of just or unjust killing: it is context, approach, and reasoning that makes killing either just or unjust. Killing the person who has a knife to your child’s throat, when it is the only way to save your child from death, is an example of just killing. Killing the barista who spells your name incorrectly on the paper cup containing your skinny vanilla latte, because you find such a frequent mistake vexing, is an example of unjust killing — also known more commonly as murder.

When rearing an animal, using it for your own ends, or killing it for its meat, my position is that the Ancient Stoics absolutely would have had some thoughts on the minimum quality of care and attention given to the treatment of animals because to fail to have thoughts (of any sort) on this would be to suggest that our treatment of animals had no bearing on our character — which seems impossibly wrong.

Additionally, if they didn’t, it could be Sage-like behavior to beat animals to death for no reason, to torture them, and to be careless with them in general.

Does that make sense to you?

Does it make sense, for example, that a Sage would go fishing for a shark, cut off its fins to make a tasty soup, and then throw that still-living shark back into the ocean to drown? Discarding it like some unimportant thing?

Does it make sense that a Sage would create technology to keep a cow perpetually pregnant to produce an excessive amount of milk over its lifetime so that humans would never have to deal with limited access to milk (at the cost of that cow’s ability to live according to its nature)? Does it sound Stoic to make decisions based strictly on the desire to avoid limitations that would require us to be tempered in our diets?

The Ancient Stoics revered Nature, and all that was/is part of it; they were practitioners of a logos-centric philosophy, and so their consideration of Nature (and all that was/is within Nature) could not have been anthropocentric (human-centric) as Massimo seems to be suggesting with his opposing of my position.

The Ancient Stoics had to be reason-forward, logic-forward, consideration-forward, and I do not believe they could have reasoned themselves to this seemingly “ends justifies the means” position on animal welfare and treatment where the only thing that mattered was whether humans were never in want of anything.

From where I stand, the Ancient Stoics would have:

1. Believed it was just to kill animals and eat them

2. Been disposed, through reason, to having a certain reverence for all of Nature (including its beasts)

3. Found the mistreatment of animals to be out of alignment with what was reasonable, necessary, logical, reverential-to-nature, appropriate, or, in a word Virtuous

But even if the Ancient Stoics were anthropocentric, I don’t think that changes anything in regards to their imagined position on the treatment of animals.

Here’s why:

If the Ancient Stoics believed both that animals were provided by Nature for human use, and that Nature itself was god, then to mistreat the gifts of nature would have been to be less than reverential to god. To be less than reverential to god would have been to move away from Virtue rather than towards it.

Following this line of reasoning, I feel that the Ancient Stoics would have been strongly against (had it been around at the time) factory farming. That being the case, I feel it would have been the responsibility of any serious Stoic to choose, whenever it was possible for them to choose, to source meat only from more ethical farming operations.

I just don’t see how it could be any other way.

If you’d like to explore this more fully, consider attending our talk this Sunday on Stoicism and Diet. You can register here for a minimum donation of $1:

https://actualstoicism.com

1. Exchange during Massimo’s January AMA on Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/Stoicism/comments/10lc7ns/comment/j600hga/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

2. How Are Factory Farms Cruel to Animals? https://thehumaneleague.org/article/factory-farming-animal-cruelty

3. Just War Theory with Leonidas Konstantakos, listen on Spotify here