On Abstinence from Eating Animals

On Abstinence from Eating Animals[a] (Koinē Greek: Περὶ ἀποχῆς ἐμψύχων, romanized: Peri apochēs empsychōn, Latin: De abstinentia ab esu animalium) is a 3rd-century treatise by Porphyry on the ethics of vegetarianism.

The four-book treatise was composed by the philosopher as an open letter to Castricius Firmus, a fellow pupil of Plotinus who had renounced a vegetarian diet.

[2] Porphyry composed De abstinentia[b] as an extended open letter to Castricius Firmus, a fellow pupil of Plotinus who had renounced vegetarianism and began eating meat after converting to a Peripatetic philosophy, possibly around 270.

[3] Castricius Firmus did not find a vegetarian diet to be justifiable in theory and found that it was irreconcilable with the demands of public life and established religion.

[4][3] As a treatise that collects various arguments for and against vegetarianism, De abstinentia is evidence of the existence of a wider debate on the subject during Porphyry's times.

In addition to Plutarch, several of Porphyry's philosophical predecessors were known to be or thought to have been vegetarian, including Pythagoras, Seneca the Younger, Empedocles, Theophrastus, and Ovid.

He reasons that abstention from eating meat is a crucial element of the Platonist philosophy and points to the traditional vegetarianism of Greek philosophers such as Empedocles and Pythagoras.

[9] He draws on Plutarch's criticism of the Stoics' cruelty towards animals to counter arguments, including that of Clodius of Naples from his lost work Against the Vegetarians.

[6] Some of Porphyry's arguments extend to the use of animal products, and bear a similarity to the modern tenets of ethical veganism:[12] If, however, some one should, nevertheless, think it is unjust to destroy brutes, such a one should neither use milk, nor wool, nor sheep, nor honey.

The bee also collects honey as food for itself; which you, by taking away, administer to your own pleasure.In Book I, Porphyry specifically advocates for a vegetarian diet for philosophers, being clear that his discourse is not directed towards manual laborers, athletes, soldiers, or sailors.

Stitching together lengthy passages from Theophrastus's lost work On Piety,[14] he argues that animals and humans have souls and a natural kinship, and that the sacrifice of a kindred creature is an unjust act.

"[6] Porphyry points to the interdependence of human beings and animals, owing to the "providential teleological design of a cosmic Demiurge" that has conferred a natural sense of justice.

[15][17] In Book IV of De abstinentia, Porphyry describes the origination of vegetarian diets, beginning with a discussion of the mythical Golden Age.

[20] While Porphyry did not advocate for changing existing customs and laws, his opposition to traditional animal sacrifices was a stance that "must have seemed alarmingly revolutionary" to his contemporaries.

[5] Dombrowski's supposition draws in part on the following passage from De abstinentia: To compare plants, however, with animals, is doing violence to the order of things.

For sensation is the principle of all alliance... And is it not absurd, since we see that many of our own species live from sense alone, but do not possess intellect and reason... but that no justice is shown from us to the ox that ploughs, the dog that is fed with us, and the animals that nourish us with their milk, and adorn our bodies with their wool?

Portions of the work were quoted extensively in Eusebius's Praeparatio evangelica (early 4th century), Cyril of Alexandria's Contra Julianum (c. 420s), and Theodoret's Graecarum Affectionum Curatio (c. late 430s).

[c][2] German scholar August Nauck commented in an 1886 edition of De Absentia that the existing manuscripts of the treatise all derive "from an exemplar which was uniquely and gravely corrupt".

Catherine Rowett calls De abstinentia a "treasure store of evidence for philosophical thinking on the status of animals from the Presocratics to Porphyry's own school, Neoplatonism".

[24] William Metcalfe, a minister for the vegetarian Bible Christian Church, published a sermon that was inspired by Porphyry's De abstinentia in 1821.

[25] The ecological ethic of community proposed by J. Baird Callicott bears a resemblance to Porphyry's description of natural justice owing to the interdependence of human beings and animals.