When it comes to the morality of eating, no group feels more convinced of their moral superiority than vegans. I don’t say that in order to criticise, to be clear. I think vegans have, certainly, the most developed formal moral theory around the ethics of consumption. Certainly when compared to any of the other groups of advocative food morals. So, I’m not teasing.

At the same time, and in concerns to the same focus of morality, no group is more convinced that they ought to be left alone than the one whose members eat animals and all the rest indiscriminately. We tend to find it exhausting to be on trial every time we encounter a Vegan.

Personally I don’t think we’re wrong for feeling that way, but at the same time I don’t think vegans are wrong for advocating for veganism. I think we each reason toward what we believe is just.

But we “everything eaters” do certainly tend to have a disposition, in concerns to the eating of meat, best summed up with: “It’s fine to eat meat, leave us alone, we don’t want to hear it.” And I think that’s lazy.

If we’re Stoics, there is absolutely a way to be vegan, or vegetarian, or anything else, or not, and ethically speaking it can all bend toward Virtue. However, it requires more nuanced thinking than most people (regardless of how they think about the morality of consumption) are usually wanting to engage in (again, at least on this topic).

Everyone reading Stoic Brekkie wants to think critically, about Stoicism. But it wouldn’t be very Stoic, of any reader, were any reader of Stoic Brekkie (or any readers of anything) to say, “that’s where the need for critical thinking stops, at my hobbyist-level engagement with philosophy in a weekly newsletter” or “that’s where my appetite for critical thinking is sated completely.”

That’s what I meant by “lazy.”

Stoic theory says nothing that suggests we all ought to be vegans or vegetarians, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t say anything about how we ought to eat, nor does it imply that there’s nothing important to be extrapolated from what it does say.

Stoicism is pretty clear on intemperance being vicious. It’s also clear that craving and pursuing things when those things are out of natural season, is indicative of an intemperate mind and thus vicious-choosing mind. So to think that Stoicism wouldn’t have something pretty meaningful (and damning) to say about the unmitigated commercial availability of meat and the industry which enables it, would be a very silly thing to think indeed.

To milk a cow, to eat a cow, in season — the Stoics took no issue with this.

To raise chickens, harvest their eggs, and, in season, kill them for food — the Stoics took no issue with this.

To chemically keep a cow in a state of ongoing pregnancy so that it can be milked 24/7/365, is a perversion of Nature. The Stoics would have had a big problem with this practice.

To cram 6000 chickens into a 1000 sqft holding pen, causing them to fight and maim one another, injecting them with chemicals to make them so heavy with meat that their legs become incapable of supporting their weight, is a perversion of Nature. The Stoics would have had a big problem with it.

The reason they would have felt this way is that the Stoics feel, on the topic of Virtue, the same way about non-human animals as they do about the rational animal (humans): that Virtue is found in living according to one’s nature.

So, in true Stoic fashion, it wouldn’t have been the external indifferent (indifferent to the acquisition of Virtue, I mean, not of mattering ethically) of physical suffering that made the aforementioned kinds of treatment objectively vicious. No. Instead, it would have been that such suffering could only be made possible through actively preventing an animal from living in accord with its nature.

All animals die, all animals can be eaten (including us, if you ask the right bear or lion), and all animals can suffer. Living forever, not becoming food, and a life free of suffering, these things are not what determine a thing’s ability to pursue, express, or possess Virtue, and so they aren’t, for the Stoics, the foremost concern (though, certainly, they are appropriate to be concerned with, which is why I don’t vault Vegans in the least) when it comes to any ethical position on eating that a Stoic might take.

But is it in a cow’s nature to be perpetually pregnant?

Is it in a calf’s nature to be separated from its mother to be slaughtered for a particular kind of meat preference?

Is it in any animal’s nature to be kept in confinement, away from field, stream, sky, and earth, in order to sate an insatiable appetite of an intemperate man or woman?

The Stoics would certainly say no.

It’s important that we carry our desire to reason well with us throughout all the hours of our day, and through all our various dealings and actions, and not quarter if off to a particular hour of the day or when we have time to engage it as some sort of self-indulgent hobby.

We must ask what we are complicit in, if anything. And, if we find ourselves complicit in something vicious, we must ask what we can do about that? Not what we can force the rest of the world to do, but what we can choose ourselves to do.

Eat whatever you like, but don’t refuse to think about it.

You’re a Stoic, not some kind of foolish madman who cares not the moral impact of his or her choosing. Right?

Of course.