Dominique Lestel
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231172974
- eISBN:
- 9780231541152
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172974.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
If we want to improve the treatment of animals, Dominique Lestel argues, we must acknowledge our evolutionary impulse to eat them and we must expand our worldview to see how others consume meat ...
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If we want to improve the treatment of animals, Dominique Lestel argues, we must acknowledge our evolutionary impulse to eat them and we must expand our worldview to see how others consume meat ethically and sustainably. The position of vegans and vegetarians is unrealistic and exclusionary. Eat This Book calls at once for a renewed and vigorous defense of animal rights and a more open approach to meat eating that turns us into responsible carnivores. Lestel skillfully synthesizes Western philosophical views on the moral status of animals and holistic cosmologies that recognize human-animal reciprocity. He shows that the carnivore’s position is more coherently ethical than vegetarianism, which isolates humans from the world by treating cruelty, violence, and conflicting interests as phenomena outside of life. Describing how meat eaters assume completely—which is to say, metabolically—their animal status, Lestel opens our eyes to the vital relation between carnivores and animals and carnivores’ genuine appreciation of animals’ life-sustaining flesh. He vehemently condemns factory farming and the terrible footprint of industrial meat eating. His goal is to recreate a kinship between humans and animals that reminds us of what it means to be tied to the world.Less
If we want to improve the treatment of animals, Dominique Lestel argues, we must acknowledge our evolutionary impulse to eat them and we must expand our worldview to see how others consume meat ethically and sustainably. The position of vegans and vegetarians is unrealistic and exclusionary. Eat This Book calls at once for a renewed and vigorous defense of animal rights and a more open approach to meat eating that turns us into responsible carnivores. Lestel skillfully synthesizes Western philosophical views on the moral status of animals and holistic cosmologies that recognize human-animal reciprocity. He shows that the carnivore’s position is more coherently ethical than vegetarianism, which isolates humans from the world by treating cruelty, violence, and conflicting interests as phenomena outside of life. Describing how meat eaters assume completely—which is to say, metabolically—their animal status, Lestel opens our eyes to the vital relation between carnivores and animals and carnivores’ genuine appreciation of animals’ life-sustaining flesh. He vehemently condemns factory farming and the terrible footprint of industrial meat eating. His goal is to recreate a kinship between humans and animals that reminds us of what it means to be tied to the world.
Dominique Lestel
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231172974
- eISBN:
- 9780231541152
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172974.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Lestel explains why his book, paradoxically, is written more for vegetarians than for carnivores.
Lestel explains why his book, paradoxically, is written more for vegetarians than for carnivores.
Dominique Lestel
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231172974
- eISBN:
- 9780231541152
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172974.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Lestel offers a positive case for the ethicalness of eating meat.
Lestel offers a positive case for the ethicalness of eating meat.
Jennifer Jensen Wallach
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469645216
- eISBN:
- 9781469645230
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469645216.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter discusses radical black critiques of the soul food tradition that emerged beginning in the late 1960s. Some began to associate the diet with bad health and criticized its linkages to the ...
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This chapter discusses radical black critiques of the soul food tradition that emerged beginning in the late 1960s. Some began to associate the diet with bad health and criticized its linkages to the cuisine of slavery. These food reformers advocated for the rejection of both traditional American foods and the soul food menu. Their largely vegetarian diet was designed to dissociate themselves from the foodways of slavery as well as from the ethos of domination associated with carnivorism. They hoped that their healthful eating practices would strengthen their bodies to prepare themselves for a concerted program of black nation building.Less
This chapter discusses radical black critiques of the soul food tradition that emerged beginning in the late 1960s. Some began to associate the diet with bad health and criticized its linkages to the cuisine of slavery. These food reformers advocated for the rejection of both traditional American foods and the soul food menu. Their largely vegetarian diet was designed to dissociate themselves from the foodways of slavery as well as from the ethos of domination associated with carnivorism. They hoped that their healthful eating practices would strengthen their bodies to prepare themselves for a concerted program of black nation building.
