thesis statement about veganism

Essays About Veganism: Top 5 Examples and 10 Prompts

Veganism is on the rise. See below for our great examples of essays about veganism and helpful writing prompts to get started. 

Veganism is the practice of abstaining from animal-based foods and products. The movement originated from the philosophies against using animals as commodities and for capitalist gains. Now a booming industry, veganism promises better health benefits, a more humane world for animals, and an effective solution to global warming. 

Here is our round-up of essays examples about veganism:

1. A Brief History of Veganism by Claire Suddath

2. animal testing on plant-based ingredients divides vegan community by jill ettinger, 3. as vegan activism grows, politicians aim to protect agri-business, restaurateurs by alexia renard, 4. bezos, gates back fake meat and dairy made from fungus as next big alt-protein by bob woods, 5. going vegan: can switching to a plant-based diet really save the planet by sarah marsh, 1. health pros and cons of veganism, 2. veganism vs. vegetarianism, 3. the vegan society, 4. making a vegan diet plan, 5. profitability of vegan restaurants, 6. public personalities who are vegan, 7. the rise of different vegan products, 8. is vegan better for athletes, 9. vegans in your community, 10. most popular vegan activists.

“Veganism is an extreme form of vegetarianism, and though the term was coined in 1944, the concept of flesh-avoidance can be traced back to ancient Indian and eastern Mediterranean societies.”

Suddath maps out the historical roots of veganism and the global routes of its influences. She also laid down its evolution in various countries where vegan food choices became more flexible in considering animal-derived products critical to health. 

“Along with eschewing animal products at mealtime, vegans don’t support other practices that harm animals, including animal testing. But it’s a process rampant in both the food and drug industries.”

Ettinger follows the case of two vegan-founded startups that ironically conducts animal testing to evaluate the safety of their vegan ingredients for human consumption. The essay brings to light the conflicts between the need to launch more vegan products and ensuring the safety of consumers through FDA-required animal tests. 

“Indeed, at a time when the supply of vegan products is increasing, activists sometimes fear the reduction of veganism to a depoliticized way of life that has been taken over by the food industry.”

The author reflects on a series of recent vegan and animal rights activist movements and implies disappointment over the government’s response to protect public safety rather than support the protests’ cause. The essay differentiates the many ways one promotes and fights for veganism and animal rights but emphasizes the effectiveness of collective action in shaping better societies. 

“Beyond fungus, Nature’s Fynd also is representative of the food sustainability movement, whose mission is to reduce the carbon footprint of global food systems, which generate 34% of greenhouse emissions linked to climate change.”

The essay features a company that produces alternative meat products and has the backing of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Al Gore. The essay divulges the company’s investments and plans to expand in the vegan market while providing a picture of the burgeoning alternative foods sector. 

“Experts say changing the way we eat is necessary for the future of the planet but that government policy is needed alongside this. If politicians are serious about wanting dietary changes, they also need to incentivise it, scientists and writers add.”

The article conveys the insights and recommendations of environmental and agriculture experts on how to turn more individuals into vegans. The experts emphasize the need for a whole-of-society approach in shifting more diets to vegan instead of putting the onus for change on an individual. 

10 Writing Prompts on Essays About Veganism

Here is our round-up of the best prompts to create interesting essays about veganism: 

While veganism has been a top choice for those desiring to lose weight and have a healthier lifestyle, some studies have also shown its detrimental effects on health due to deficiencies in specific vitamins. First, find out what existing research and experts say about this. Then, lay down the advantages and disadvantages of going vegan, explain each, and wrap up your essay with your insights.

Differentiate veganism from vegetarianism. Tackle the foods vegans and vegetarians consume and do not consume and cite the different effects they have on your health and the environment. You may also expand this prompt to discuss the other dietary choices that spawned from veganism. 

The Vegan Society is a UK-based non-profit organization aimed at educating the public on the ways of veganism and promoting this as a way of life to as many people. Expound on its history, key organizational pillars, and recent and future campaigns. You may also broaden this prompt by listing down vegan organizations around the world. Then discuss each one’s objectives and campaigns. 

Write down the healthiest foods you recommend your readers to include in a vegan diet plan. Contrary to myths, vegan foods can be very flavorful depending on how they are cooked and prepared. You may expand this prompt to add recommendations for the most flavorful spices and sauces to take any vegan recipe a notch higher. 

Vegan restaurants were originally a niche market. But with the rise of vegan food products and several multinational firms’ foray into the market, the momentum for vegan restaurants was launched into an upward trajectory—research on how profitable vegan restaurants are against restos offering meat on the menu. You may also recommend innovative business strategies for a starting vegan restaurant to thrive and stay competitive in the market. 

From J.Lo to Bill Gates, there is an increasing number of famous personalities who are riding the vegan trend with good reason. So first, list a few celebrities, influencers, and public figures who are known advocates of veganism. Then, research and write about stories that compelled them to change their dietary preference.

The market for vegan-based non-food products is rising, from makeup to leather bags and clothes. First, create a list of vegan brands that are growing in popularity. Then, research the materials they use and the processes they employ to preserve the vegan principles. This may prompt may also turn into a list of the best gift ideas for vegans.

Many believe that a high-protein diet is a must for athletes. However, several athletes have dispelled the myth that vegan diets lack the protein levels for rigorous training and demanding competition. First, delve deeper into the vegan foods that serve as meat alternatives regarding protein intake. Then, cite other health benefits a vegan diet can offer to athletes. You may also add research on what vegan athletes say about how a vegan diet gives them energy. 

Interview people in your community who are vegan. Write about how they made the decision and how they transitioned to this lifestyle. What were the initial challenges in their journey, and how did they overcome these? Also, ask them for tips they would recommend to those who are struggling to uphold their veganism.

Make a list of the most popular vegan activists. You may narrow your list to personalities in digital media who are speaking loud and proud about their lifestyle choice and trying to inspire others to convert. Narrate the ways they have made and are making an impact in their communities. 

To enhance your essay, read our guide explaining what is persuasive writing . 

If you’d like to learn more, check out our guide on how to write an argumentative essay .

Yna Lim is a communications specialist currently focused on policy advocacy. In her eight years of writing, she has been exposed to a variety of topics, including cryptocurrency, web hosting, agriculture, marketing, intellectual property, data privacy and international trade. A former journalist in one of the top business papers in the Philippines, Yna is currently pursuing her master's degree in economics and business.

View all posts

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Springer Nature - PMC COVID-19 Collection

Veganism, Moral Motivation and False Consciousness

Susana pickett.

School of History, Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

Despite the strength of arguments for veganism in the animal rights literature, alongside environmental and other anthropocentric concerns posed by industrialised animal agriculture, veganism remains only a minority standpoint. In this paper, I explore the moral motivational problem of veganism from the perspectives of moral psychology and political false consciousness. I argue that a novel interpretation of the post-Marxist notion of political false consciousness may help to make sense of the widespread refusal to shift towards veganism. Specifically, the notion of false consciousness fills some explanatory gaps left by the moral psychological notion of akrasia , often understood to refer to a weakness of will. Central to my approach is the idea that animal exploitation is largely systemic and the assumption that moral motivation is inseparable from moral thinking. In this light, the primary obstacle to the adoption of veganism arises not so much from a failure to put genuine beliefs into action, but rather in a shared, distorted way of thinking about animals. Thus, common unreflective objections to veganism may be said to be manifestations of false consciousness.

Introduction

Why does the case for veganism often fail to convince? Insofar as it does sway opinion, why then does it fail to motivate large-scale social change? Whilst moral disagreements are inevitable, the core case for veganism from the animal rights perspective – complemented as it is by environmental, social justice, and global health considerations – is robust. 1 Considering this jointly with commonly held moral principles, one might reasonably expect the percentage of vegans to be much higher, at least in economically developed societies. On the other hand, apathy towards veganism prevails, and common objections to veganism often rest on rationalisations (Piazza 2015 , p. 114). In this paper, I suggest that a failure to accept the moral status of animals as required by veganism may itself constitute a failure of moral motivation (hereinafter referred to as motivation). Central to this position is the premise that moral thinking and motivation are inseparable, and thus thinking does not necessarily precede motivation. If this is the case, then common excuses presented against veganism express failures of motivation rather than intent, by which I mean the motivation to think of animals as being recipients of moral consideration in a manner that conflicts with our social habits and received opinion.

To narrow the scope of my opening questions, I examine the motivational problem from two radically opposing perspectives; namely akrasia and false consciousness. Akrasia – often known as ‘weakness of the will’ – is a failure of practical reasoning whereby individuals act knowingly and willingly against their better judgement. This idea has already been developed by Aaltola ( 2016 ) to explain the widespread reluctance to adopt veganism. Marxian false consciousness, by contrast, is traditionally understood as the social consciousness of an exploited class. It leads individuals to act – not fully knowingly or willingly, and thus not akratically – under a dominant ideology. This ideology may run contrary to one’s best interests, but I argue that it can also taint one’s conception of the ‘greater’ good. I understand false as applying to groups of individuals beyond social class, and argue that it is false consciousness, rather than akrasia, that is more likely to be a persistent condition that dampens motivation. As such, false consciousness may have greater explanatory power than akrasia for the widespread refusal to shift towards veganism.

This paper is divided into three sections. First, I offer a brief overview of the motivational difficulties associated with veganism, specifically the role of willpower and typically presented rationalisations. Second, I give an overview of akrasia and the structure of akratic action. Furthermore, I consider social factors which impact upon our moral thinking, serving to highlight that moral thinking is not reducible to syllogistic-style reasoning. Shortcomings of the application of akrasia lead on to the final section on false consciousness, wherein I explore the persistency of dominant ideologies and their impact upon moral thinking and motivation.

The Vegan Motivational Problem

Moral motivation is typically conceived as the phenomenon of being motivated to do what one judges to be the right thing to do. Naturally, moral reasons can conflict with one’s self-interest and other reasons. In the animal ethics literature, care ethicists, including Luke ( 1992 ), are critical of the mainstream, rationalist approach exemplified by Singer ( 2015 ) and Regan ( 2004 ). The rationalist approach tends to put forward arguments for veganism and vegetarianism without tackling the motivational question of why some people may be convinced by their arguments but fail to put their beliefs into action. By contrast, care ethicists consider humans to have an innate sense of empathy towards animals, which is the basis of moral motivation, but such empathy needs to be cultivated. A problem with this approach is that most people carry on eating animals despite being empathetic to their suffering. Indeed, it is not unusual for carnivores to feel guilt and avoid imagining a slaughtered cow when eating a hamburger (Greenebaum 2012 , p. 316). Hence, it is pertinent to ask why veganism poses such motivational difficulties, considering that the public possesses some moral regard for animals as well as varying degrees of empathy for animals.

Bona Fide Challenges

While some aspects of veganism, such as health and environmental considerations, may be motivated by human self-interest, other dimensions conflict not only with narrow self-interest but also with prudential self-interest. As such, they constitute bona fide reasons to act or side against veganism. ‘Go vegan’ approaches present veganism as being easy, yet some challenges merit attention. These include financial sacrifice, social alienation, and conflict. However, I argue that taste (flavour) is not a bona fide reason.

First, veganism may sometimes involve financial sacrifice. This is because vegan substitutes often cost more (Mills 2019 , p. 17). However, this does not apply to a large part of the population who has access to and can afford plant-based foods. Second, veganism involves alienation. Food is communal in family and social situations, and a vegan at the table can be seen as a threat (Twine 2014 , p. 632). Worse still, vegans often experience exclusion and disapproval (Bresnahan et al. 2016 , p. 13) and such forms of discrimination as ‘vegaphobia’ can arise (Horta 2018 , p. 359). Third, veganism involves moral conflict, not only because of how vegans are perceived but also because of how they perceive others. Raimond Gaita states that vegans who provocatively shout, ‘meat is murder’ exhibit a pathological gap between what they profess and how they act, in that ‘they don’t act as though they live among murderers’ (Gaita 2016 , pp. 22–23). This insight is powerful, even when applied to less polarising claims such as ‘meat involves unnecessary suffering’. From the perspective of some vegans, it can be soul-draining to inhabit a world that celebrates animal consumption and forces ‘question upon question from non-vegan interlocutors’ (Reid 2017 , p. 39), and vegans are often asked to justify their standpoint and then subsequently criticised for being ‘preachy’ (Cole and Morgan 2011 , p. 149). Fourth, radical factions can create tension with other individuals who do not live up to the expectations of the ‘hegemonic vegan frame’, a phrase coined by Wrenn ( 2019 ) to describe highly bureaucratised veganism (often referred to as the ‘vegan police’). There are indeed many ‘veganisms’ (Jones 2016 , p. 24). Hence, vegans may face opposition, not only from non-vegans but also from other vegans.

Finally, Kazez ( 2018 ) argues that food taste is not necessarily trivial. For example, persistently unpalatable food could affect one’s wellbeing. However, I disagree that this constitutes a bona fide argument against veganism, because it is based on a hypothetical consideration that assumes too much since not all vegan food tastes disgusting to most people. As Singer notes, it is not as if animal flesh is uniformly delicious and vegetarian food is uniformly awful (Singer 1980 , p. 333). Given this logic, one can reasonably object on the basis that taste is typically trivial when compared with what Rowlands ( 2013 , p. 6) refers to as an animal’s ‘vital interests’. What is one to make, then, of those seemingly incapable of going vegan owing to their craving for meat? For instance, Eugene Mills recounts how he gave up after trying to be vegan for three days. His cravings for hamburgers became so powerful that he became distracted from the pursuit of important projects (Mills 2019 , p. 19). It is not clear, though, that he deemed veganism to be an important long-term project.

Excepting taste, the aforementioned challenges can constitute bona fide, prima facie reasons for not embracing veganism. When coupled with the realisation that one’s lifestyle choices may have little positive impact globally (this is the phenomenon of ‘causal inefficacy’ which I discuss in more detail later), and after considering the disconnect between consumption, production, and killing, these reasons can become powerful. As a result, it may require substantial willpower to become a vegan against one’s cultural traditions. There are cases, however, where veganism does not require willpower. For example, where veganism is second nature (Lumsden 2017 , p. 221); or one finds joy rather than sacrifice in veganism (Aaltola 2015 , p. 42). In general, though, the act of becoming a vegan does require some degree of willpower.

Willpower in Deliberation

One may object on the grounds that, if animals have no moral status, as Hsiao ( 2015 , p. 284) proposes, then the moral motivational question of veganism does not arise. However, I disagree that this is necessarily the case. It appears to me that moral thinking and motivation are inseparable in the same way that reason and feeling cannot be fully separated, any more than form and content can. Indeed, without motivation, moral thinking would not be possible, for what else would motivate the thinking insofar as moral thinking is not purely theoretical? Hence, when I speak about moral motivation, albeit broadly conceived, I also include the motivation to deliberate about moral matters, including those concerning animals. According to this view, which I refer to as the ‘motivational unity thesis’, motivation is not always something that takes place at the end of a practical deliberation as to whether it is right or wrong to act (this is the narrow conception of motivation). Motivation is also needed to see certain others as worthy of moral deliberation in the first place.

The idea that animals have no moral worth is not commonplace, but the notion that animals are of lesser worth is central to the orthodoxy of animal welfare, a commonly held view which justifies animal suffering according to their utility to humans. This view has been said to explain ‘some of the apparently schizophrenic attitudes to animals that occur in Britain and elsewhere’ (Garner 2013 , p. 80). Regardless of whether one believes that animals are of lesser, or indeed no moral worth (or whether one has ever considered any of this in terms of moral worth), the motivation to think things through with moral seriousness fails when we conclude that we have a right to eat or kill an animal merely because, for example, it is traditional, natural, or simply because the animal was raised on a local farm or one with higher welfare standards than some other farms.

More elaborate justifications against veganism can be provided, but we fail to do justice to animals as the objects of our deliberation if we conclude that safeguarding our lifestyle habits is generally a good enough reason to justify animal exploitation. This constitutes a broad motivational failure insofar as we fail to view animals as individuals who are ‘equally real’, to borrow Thomas Nagel’s phrase (Nagel 1970 , p. 14). Still, one might lodge at least two objections. First, there is no motivational failure if it is not deemed morally objectionable to use animals as commodities in industrialised societies. Second, one might concede that a motivational failure only exists if one holds the conviction that veganism is morally obligatory, yet otherwise fails (akratically) to act accordingly.

Since this paper is not an argument for veganism, I cannot respond to the first objection directly but can link it to the second objection. To clarify, I can invoke the motivational unity thesis to argue that motivational failures can take place at the level of thinking alone (including what kind of beings to include in these considerations), and not merely when it comes to putting beliefs into action. Based on this premise, the exclusion of animals from serious moral consideration is tantamount to moral nihilism and leads only to further rationalisations when probed. Therefore, in addition to the prudential ( bona fide ) reasons against veganism discussed earlier, I now turn my attention to some common rationalisations.

Two Rationalisations

Rationalisations against veganism readily occur when the issue is not thought through. Indeed, we are prone to motivated ignorance (Tam 2019 , p. 6). The objection that animals only exist to be eaten and various other defensive tactics, exhibit apathy in the face of superior evidence to the contrary. Poor argumentation is relevant to motivation because thinking requires effort, while social habits and contempt inhibit it. Many rationalisations against veganism are merely strawmen, yet more sophisticated objections permeate the animal ethics literature, namely the causal inefficacy objection and the principle of unnecessary harm. On the one hand, causal inefficacy is the idea that an individual’s veganism has no impact on the market, specifically that one’s veganism will not make a difference to overall meat consumption. On the other hand, unnecessary harm is the principle (in the current context) by which it is unjustifiable to harm animals when vegan alternatives are available—a principle that is subject to distortion. Both principles are nonetheless interesting as they serve as a double-edged sword, both for and against veganism.

The causal inefficacy objection to veganism has accrued a vast literature which has been recently summarised by Fischer ( 2020 ). It is related to the ‘free-rider’ problem of rational choice theory, although my concern here is with the role of motivation in our thinking about causal inefficacy serving effectively as a proverbial ‘get out of jail free card’. There is a parallel with global warming, whereby people manage feelings of hopelessness with expressions such as ‘what can one person do?’, often to avoid thinking about a challenging issue (Cole & Morgan 2011 , p. 156). In fact, from the existence of a global problem alone, nothing clearly and directly follows with regards to individual responsibility.

In this context, group identity can be powerful, since a group can be more impactful and offer moral support: ‘within the safe bubble of the vegan community, its practitioners are noticeably joyous’ (Twine 2014 , p. 637). Relatedly, hope plays an important role in moral thinking. Moody-Adams ( 2017 , p. 155–6) discusses the motivating power of hope, specifically how those social movements which deepened our understanding of justice and compassion were driven by those who were confident in acting on their moral convictions and hopeful of moral change. Similarly, Agnes Tam emphasises the power of “We-reasoning” as a distinctive form of communitarian rationality (Tam 2019 , p. 3). Naturally, this does not mean that one abandons self-critical thinking, but it is a potential pitfall of identity groups (Fukuyama 2018 , p. 115).

As Garner points out, the phrase ‘unnecessary harm’ is somewhat vague, a catch-all that can have political advantages in supporting a spectrum of speciesist positions depending on geographical and historical factors (Garner 2013 , p. 81). For example, animal harm is viewed as a necessary evil in support of traditional forms of hospitality and economic interests. Central to the manipulation of these principles is the conflation of difficult, often potentially intractable empirical and analytic problems with practical moral matters about how one should live. In this vein, Reid has pointed out that simply not having a fully worked out theory of veganism is not sufficient reason, in of itself, for not becoming a vegan, in the same way as not having a fully worked out theory of knowledge is not a justification for epistemic scepticism (Reid 2017 , p. 38). Indeed, veganism can be seen as a practical stance in response to animal exploitation, even though it can only ever be aspirational, for it is not possible to avoid causing harm altogether (Gruen and Jones 2016 , p. 157–158). In order to reach the vegan practical conclusion, one need not have to resolve intractable problems of causation, collective responsibility, or necessity.

I have argued, because moral thinking and motivation are not entirely separable, that distorted thinking can dampen motivation, while motivational failures may also result in morally distorted thinking. Take, for instance, the conflation of difficult empirical and philosophical matters with practical moral considerations. Next, I consider how philosophers have traditionally accounted for the breakdown of moral motivation in practical deliberation, and how this can be applied to the vegan motivational problem.

Omnivore’s Akrasia

Akrasia , sometimes referred to as a weakness of will or incontinence, is often understood to mean an intentional action contrary to one’s better judgement. It is, by definition, rather a failure of practical rationality in the shape of a motivational failure. The literature on akrasia dates back to ancient Greek philosophy and the contemporary literature in moral psychology is often technical. To be concise, I assume that akrasia is possible and follow Davidson’s ( 1980 ) definition of akrasia as an action that is free, intentional, and contrary to a full-blown practical judgement.

In doing x an agent acts incontinently if and only if: (a) the agent does x intentionally; (b) the agent believes there is an alternative action y open to him; and (c) the agent judges that, all things considered, it would be better to do y than to do x . (Davidson 1980 , p. 22)

Practical reasoning often starts with prima facie judgements, whereupon various reasons are weighted against each other until an evaluative conclusion is derived. When deliberating whether one ought to become a vegan, prima facie reasons might include animal welfare, health, or environmental concerns (notwithstanding myriad other reasons for and against veganism, including one’s psychological and social wellbeing, or how one’s actions will be perceived by others). An individual may accept good overall reasons for adopting veganism, yet fail to embrace it in practice. Indeed, this seems quite plausible. Elisa Aaltola ( 2015 ) coined the term ‘omnivore’s akrasia ’ to refer to the state arising in those who voluntarily consume animal products despite believing that they have been produced by immoral means. Could widespread akrasia , then, play a major role in preventing a significant proportion of the public from adopting veganism? I argue that, despite its explanatory power, the traditional approach is subject to two limitations.

The Limits of Traditional Akrasia

A limitation of akrasia is that moral decisions, such as the decision to go vegan, may not necessarily be the outcome of practical deliberation. On the flip side, one’s better judgement may be faulty. In explanation, ‘all things considered’, or prima facie judgements may not necessarily yield a correct moral answer, not least because we are limited as epistemic and moral beings. Some philosophers (Arpaly 2000 ; Audi 1990 ; McIntyre 2006 ) have even questioned whether akrasia is necessarily irrational. What if the better judgement itself is faulty, or if the desires which ground the ‘better judgement’ fail to represent the agent’s overall desires and interests?

I shall illustrate this with a powerful example from Bennett's reflections on Huckleberry Finn (Bennett 1974 ), so that I can then explore how this applies to veganism. In Mark Twain’s famous novel, Huck believes that, all things considered, the right thing to do is to turn his slave friend Jim in to the authorities, but he fails to do so. ‘Huck hasn’t the strength of will to do what he sincerely thinks he ought to do’ (Bennett 1974 , p. 126). He acts simply out of sympathy for Jim. This turns akrasia on its head, for Huck acts out of moral necessity (he cannot do otherwise), yet he acts against his better judgement.

Similarly, veganism may not necessarily be the direct outcome of practical deliberation. For some, the commitment to veganism may happen over and above any prima facie considerations. It may be the case that one already has an inner necessity. For example, one is moved by the visceral repugnance of the slaughter and ingestion of animals or a deep sense of compassion.

Thus, one could argue that the akrasia explanation of non-veganism involves an overly simplistic, syllogistic account of moral thinking, largely ignoring the social context. Individuals are not disembodied moral agents capable of making rational decisions independently of the social contex—there is much more at stake than merely prima facie reasons in terms of practical deliberations about what one morally ought to do. Could a more nuanced, socially informed notion of akrasia serve to overcome this limitation?

Sociopolitical Akrasia

Aaltola ( 2015 , 2016 ) takes a nuanced sociopolitical approach to omnivore’s akrasia . Like Amelie Rorty ( 1997 ), she views akrasia as a social problem, in that social forces prevent veganism by placing individuals within a continual state of akrasia wherein conscious deliberation and self-control are futile. These forces include ambiguity or conflict at the root of our institutions, habit, consumerism, and the culture of immediate reward or sensory hedonism. Significantly, the meat-eaters’ paradox, in which a societal love for certain animals such as dogs and cats is cultivated, while cows, pigs, and other animals, which are equally sentient, are mistreated and slaughtered, is entrenched within our institutions (Aaltola 2016 , p. 118).

Despite these conflictual beliefs, 2 most individuals believe that food choices are rational but overlook how these choices are grounded via emotive, cultural, or otherwise more ambiguous justifications (Aaltola 2016 , p. 117). Habit perpetuates the meat-eaters’ paradox for, although the original reason for eating meat was survival, it is no longer essential for a large part of the world’s population, so it is in some ways a mindless habit and one that is exacerbated by consumerism. Given this, asking individuals to exercise self-control is insufficient (Aaltola 2016 , p. 124). Indeed, ‘our akratic choices may take place beyond the possibility of conscious deliberation, and thereby beyond the possibility of conscious hedonism or egoism’ (Aaltola 2016 , p. 131). This results in a vicious circle wherein contempt may feed moral apathy and we may thus become apathetic to act altruistically. Therefore, Aaltola ( 2016 , p. 135) concludes that we are in a state of continual akrasia .

Whilst such application of akrasia is insightful, akrasia may not be the best explanation for the phenomenon of widespread omnivorism. Crucially, the possibility of perpetual akrasia seems absurd, especially given that akrasia is, by definition, free intentional action contrary to one’s better judgement. In the context of permanent akrasia , as described by Aaltola, individuals are not acting freely or intentionally, and their better judgement is not to become vegans. As such, they are not akratically failing to become vegans: they never set out to do so in the first place, so there is no motivational failure as the rational outcome of practical deliberation.

Similarly, akrasia may not be the best notion to incorporate mindlessness, self-deception or voluntary ignorance. The notion of akrasia struggles to accommodate the fact that not all our thinking is transparent, bona fide , or easily moulded into practical syllogisms. For instance, it has been said that, once we are accustomed to behaving in ways that have implicit normative content, we struggle to contemplate the possibility of change and may thus engage in self-deception to justify wrongful actions (Cooke 2017 , p. 9). John Searle exemplified one such deception: ‘I try not to think about animal rights because I fear I’d have to become a vegetarian if I worked it out consistently.’ (Cooke 2017 , p. 10).

Indeed, such deception is more likely to be widely shared, given that most people give similar excuses against veganism, commonly referred to as the 4Ns (the belief that eating meat is natural, normal, necessary, and nice; Piazza et al. 2015 ). For Luke ( 1992 , p. 106), such rationalisations consume abundant social energy. However, one can object that very little thinking power is normally used, even though the passions may be inflamed. Given these limitations, one must ask whether the notion of false consciousness would fare any better in accounting for such persistent motivational gaps and largely unreflective responses to veganism or be more cohesive with the idea that animal exploitation is largely systemic.

Omnivore’s False Consciousness

False consciousness is a post-Marxian notion. Although Marx did not use the phrase ‘fase consciousness’, the notion is embedded in much of his thinking. Thus, Miller ( 1972 , p. 433) argues that a broad interpretation of the related concept of ideology, understood as applying to theories, belief-systems and practices involving the use of ideas, has great explanatory power concerning the persistency and influence of ideologies over the actions of the groups who adopt such ideologies. Crucially, if such a group is confronted by others holding incompatible ideas, ‘it has no resources to fall back upon, it can only reaffirm its original faith’ (Miller 1972 , p. 433). Alternatively, if the ideology is seen primarily as an explanatory framework, then ‘the ideology is given repeated empirical confirmation, through the selection of what is perceived’ (Miller 1972 , p. 433). When ideologies function in these ways, they can be said to involve false consciousness. If Miller is correct, and omnivorism can be shown to depend on an ideology that necessarily involves false consciousness, then this may account for the persistency of omnivorism over reasoned arguments, thus filling the gaps left by omnivore’s akrasia .

In Marxist theory, false consciousness is essentially deemed to be political in nature and refers to the social consciousness of the proletariat as an exploited class under capitalism. It is thereby related to the concept of ideological power and forms the basis of Luke’s third dimension of power, wherein the illegitimate use of power by one group over another confers the power to mislead (Lukes 2005 , p. 149). To put it simply, it is the power to control what groups think as being right, resulting in biased acceptance without question. Marx and Engels used the concept of ideology to refer to ‘the distorted beliefs intellectuals [hold] about society and the power of their own ideas. Those who produced ideologies suffered from false consciousness: they were deluded about their own beliefs.’ (Eyerman 1981 , p. 43). Given this tenet, one may be puzzled by my use of false consciousness, as it seems to shift the construct of veganism to being about people rather than about animals. How, then, is false consciousness relevant to the problem of motivation in veganism, given that animals are the exploited group in question, even to the extent that some theorists, such as Perlo ( 2002 , p.306), have likened animals to the proletariat?

The notion of false consciousness has evolved since its origins, and my intention here is to expand its application further. Marx’s concept was further developed by Gramsci, Lukacs and the early Frankfurt School, and later expanded to apply to any social class with a ‘limited form of experience in society’ (Eyerman 1981 , p. 43–44). Thus, it is not limited to Marxian class and has been more applied broadly to groups both before and after the rise of capitalism. For example, Michael Rosen ( 2016 , p. 10) sees Marxian false consciousness as a critique and the development of rationalistic understandings of a previously unformulated notion of false consciousness, beginning with Plato, for whom irrationality of the soul led to the injustices of the state; and Aristotle, for whom false consciousness is necessarily akratic . Omnivore’s false consciousness may thus be viewed as a novel development and a particular application of false consciousness 3 to a broad majority of humans who practise omnivorism in economically developed societies.

Narrow and Broad False Consciousness

So, what then is false about false consciousness? False consciousness is often portrayed in terms of one being misled about one’s true interests. However, there is a distinction arising between being blinded by one’s interests (i.e., being impetuous) and being blind to them, where false consciousness is often associated with the latter (Runciman 1969 , p. 303). The self-interest interpretation, however, omits the altruistic and moral dimensions of human thinking, whereby one may also be blind not only to others’ interests but also to their moral dimension. Traditionally, false consciousness is about group interest and social ontology, but I shall argue that it can also distort moral thinking in much the same way as it distorts non-moral thinking. The notion that Marxism is not totally abstracted from morality is not novel (e.g., Lukes 1985 ), so I will instead set the context before I explain how it bears on veganism.

Marx avoided talk about morality, not only because he hated preaching and was distrustful of the moralist per se (Popper 1995 , p. 220), but because he saw contemporary morality as being part of the bourgeois superstructure, in which class morality added an extra layer of false consciousness. The worker believes, according to Singer, that capitalist has a moral right to the profits 4 (Singer 2018 , p. 83). Although Lenin and others claimed that Marx’s theory was purely scientific, it has since been argued that Marx held a normative position, not least because of his desire to end capitalism (Cochrane 2010 , p. 95; Singer 2018 , p. 82), his hatred of servility, and his ‘desire for a better world that it is hard not to see as moral’ (Lukes 1985 , p. 3).

Central to the Marxian notion of false consciousness is the tenet that both the capitalist and proletariat are afflicted by it and, thus, that the proletariat believed, whether implicitly or explicitly, that the capitalist had a moral or legitimate right to profit. If proletarian Jim held such a belief about himself, he would also believe that the capitalist had a right to the labour of his fellow proletarians. In this world view, the proletariat is both wronged by the capitalist and unaware that they have been wronged. Similarly, capitalists had so distorted or delimited moral ideas insofar as they too failed to acknowledge the true interests of the exploited group and were unaware of their wrongdoing. In the case of animals, the public largely carries on supporting systemic practices of animal-exploitation without acknowledging the wrongs inflicted on animals in its name.

Hence, false consciousness may be understood narrowly as relating to either self or group interest or, more broadly, as including an altruistic moral dimension in the sense of limiting such a dimension. Indeed, if I am blind to my own true interests, then I may not necessarily be receptive to those of other people or those of animals. My claim is not that there is a causal link between blindness to one’s own interests and blindness to the interests of others, but rather that it is absurd to contend that false consciousness impacts only one’s self-interested thinking. Crucially, false consciousness may so taint one’s conception of the good and limit the moral self, that it has the effect of occluding the motivational difficulties of veganism. Hence, the akratic break (motivational failure) does not actually take place, at least not explicitly.

This broad interpretation of false consciousness presupposes a close link between alienation and false consciousness. As Rosen states in his discussion of Marx’s early writings on alienation as a form of life, ‘the alienated worker’s failure to recognize himself in the product of his labour and the failure of isolated individuals to recognize each other fully as fellow human beings are expressions of false consciousness that are lived and experienced before they are theorized about or reflected upon.’ (Rosen 2016 , p. 35). In this sense, the moral self is not impervious to false consciousness. This is interesting within the context of the vegan debate, as the cumulative case for veganism (i.e., the case from a wide range of perspectives) encompasses both moral and enlightened self-interested strands. If we deem both the narrow and broad sense of false consciousness to be appropriate, then this may help to explain how a substantial proportion of the general public may be somewhat blinded by the dominant animal-exploiting ideology in contrasting, yet complementary ways, so as to render the ideology quite impenetrable.

This narrow sense of false consciousness applies to the case for veganism from either anthropocentric or enlightened self-interest perspectives. Strictly, these perspectives support plant-based living as opposed to fully blown ethical veganism but are largely consistent with it. Overall, exploitative animal practices are agreed to have a detrimental impact on the environment, sustainability, and climate change (Rosi 2017 ; Sabaté & Soret 2014 ), as well as global human health (Tuso 2013 ) and that of future generations (Deckers 2011 ). Zoonotic diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have also been traced to wet markets where animals are confined within unnatural and unsanitary conditions (Singer 2020 , pp. 82–83). Despite these, and other harms to humans, the animal agricultural complex has a vested interest in continued animal exploitation. Moreover, the advertising industry and media can exercise tremendous power in perpetuating the desire to consume animal products.

There are at least two difficulties with the attribution of narrow false consciousness in these scenarios. First, the oppressor and oppressed (or exploiter and exploited) groups are not distinct, for at least some humans count as the exploited, even though they too contribute to animal exploitation through their consumption and labour. Although this complicates matters, it does not in of itself make the premise of false consciousness impossible, for (unlike Marxian social class) an individual can belong to more than one group at any one time. In this respect, animals are posited as the oppressed, yet humans are both oppressor and oppressed. In fact, the presumption of such a stark dichotomy of classes would have very little application in terms of the animal agricultural complex which lacks any clearly defined boundaries.

Second, false consciousness is supposed to affect both the exploiter and exploited alike, but it is not altogether clear why it would not be in the interest of the exploiter to exploit, particularly in terms of material self-interest. It may well be that the exploiting group is subject to false consciousness but is not necessarily deceived about its own material self-interest. After all, many people’s livelihoods depend on animal agriculture, which does not go against their immediate, material self-interest. However, the exploiter might be in denial about the consequences of their own exploitation. In Hegel’s dialectic, which influenced Marx’s thinking, the master (to his own detriment) becomes too dependent on the slave. When translated in terms of the current exploitation of animals and nature, exploiters act in such a way as though they are blind to the ultimate consequences of their actions, yet the crucial difference here lies between enlightened self-interest in the medium term and the long run, for it is the latter that false consciousness is supposed to affect.

On the other hand, in a somewhat broader sense, false consciousness acts against the case for veganism from the point of view of ethical and political perspectives such as animal rights and care ethics. These are deemed to be ‘veganism for the animals’ perspectives that constitute the core of ethical veganism, which are not defensible from the standpoint of self-interest. In this context, false consciousness might serve as a good explanatory match for two phenomena; namely the absence of moral reflection on whether one ought to become a vegan (in light of the meat-eater's paradox), and second, the poverty of thinking exemplified by the public’s common rebuttals in response to arguments for veganism.

Although not all objections or negative responses to veganism are crude, there is a widespread social malaise in the form of a prevalent moral apathy towards the exploitation of animals. This matter is political, not only from the perspective that humans exercise illegitimate power over animals but also that animals are worthy of political justice as argued, for example, in The Political Turn in Animal Ethics (Garner and O'Sullivan 2016 ). Further, it could be construed that the public’s commonplace objections to veganism are socially determined and thus often devoid of individual self-expression. The issue is also a very personal one, in the sense that moral thinking is inextricably personal, yet such thinking may at times be thwarted by sociopolitical imperatives. When deliberating on whether one ought to become a vegan, insofar as one engages in moral discourse at all, the moral problem is, and ought to be, inescapably one’s own in the sense that one cannot pass it on to someone else to resolve on one’s behalf (on this topic see Gaita 1989 , p. 128), let alone rely on the unexamined opinions of the majority. However, this is precisely what tends to happen when people confront veganism. The next step, then, is to relate common, unreflective objections to veganism to aspects of political false consciousness.

Four Features of False Consciousness

To deconstruct how thinking can be systematically distorted, I build on Miller’s account of the four dimensions of false consciousness (Miller 1972 , p. 443–444), sketching how these features may be manifested in omnivore’s false consciousness. The four interrelated features are conceptual inadequacy, isolation of phenomena, eternalisation, and reification.

First, false consciousness involves a degree of conceptual inadequacy in that it leads to fallacious reasoning . For example, generalisations based on superficial similarity, whereupon subsequent analysis can reveal them to be disparate. Conceptual inadequacy includes such common injunctions against veganism as animals being unintelligent, carnivorism natural, and vegans self-righteous. These claims expose distortion as empirical analysis – and frequently linguistic or logical analysis alone – can prove them to be fallacious.

For instance, does it follow from the premise that animals are less intelligent that we have a moral right to eat them? Does the fact that something is natural necessarily make an action or attitude morally justifiable? Are all vegans self-righteous? Even if they all are, this latter argument is effectively ad hominem and therefore invalid. Similarly, the idea that veganism is impossible because nobody can ever avoid partaking in harming animals is to misunderstand the very concept of veganism. It exhibits fallacious reasoning by misusing the concept of vagueness. Just because there are borderline cases between a child and an adult, or shades of grey, it does not necessarily follow that nobody can ever be an adult, or that nothing can be truly black. The same holds true for veganism. While nobody would seriously deny that adulthood or true blackness are possible, many are prepared to subject veganism to a reductio ad absurdum . These common examples of conceptual inadequacy are not isolated mistakes, or merely manifestations of the ignorance of specific information, but rather are fundamental ways in which thought fails. They are manifestations of how the acceptance of the moral and political legitimacy (or neutrality) of animal exploitation is deeply rooted within the collective consciousness and embedded within our social institutions.

Second, the process involves the isolation of phenomena, notably a refusal to see an instance of individual behaviour as being part of a wider social system. For example, the belief that one exercises free will in consumer choices 5 and, therefore, that one’s decision to eat animals is autonomous when one is, in actuality, making socially conditioned decisions which are influenced by the meat industry. Hence, Nibert talks of a socially engineered public consciousness, highlighting how organisations such as the ‘Center for Consumer Freedom’ exploit both the concepts of ‘freedom’ and ‘consumer choice’ (Nibert 2013 , p. 266). Since others are doing the same, these attitudes are considered to be justificatory of the wider system.

Third, it involves eternalisation, whereby conventional relationships or characteristics are regarded as being permanently fixed within the nature of things. For example, in medieval Europe, society was ranked hierarchically from God down to inanimate objects. Similarly, the hierarchical belief in speciesism is effectively an extension of the belief that ‘might is right’, wherein biological omnivorism is extrapolated to entail a right to exploit animals. For Cooke, the view of the innate inferiority of animals is embedded within our social consciousness, and the moral imagination must be cultivated to break out of such self-deception (Cooke 2017 , p. 14–15). This feature of false consciousness serves as the key to perpetuating certain practices.

Let us consider an example of eternalisation, such as the common belief (in some countries) that a turkey must be the centrepiece of the Christmas dinner table, as tradition dictates, in such a way that a vegan alternative is deemed to be out of the question. In what way is this thinking distorted? How does it manifest as a form of false consciousness? One of the distortions revolves around the false belief that tradition is alone sufficient justification for engaging in a specific practice. Some traditions, such as forced marriages, are morally wrong and so tradition alone does not morally justify a practice. It constitutes a distorted form of thinking rather than a question of holding a false belief, as most individuals living in liberal societies do accept that tradition alone does not morally justify a practice. It manifests as a form of false consciousness insofar as the distortion is not politically neutral.

Like most animal agriculture, the mass confinement, fattening and slaughter of hundreds of millions of turkeys aged between 14 and 24 weeks for Christmas involves the illegitimate use of power of humans over animals. Yet, such traditions continue, not only because people enjoy certain flavours and family traditions, but also because a powerful industry lobby has a vested interest in perpetuating and normalising this form of animal exploitation. For example, in December 2019, the UK’s National Farmers Union (NFU) took issue with a BBC commercial in which a cartoon turkey wearing an ‘I Love Vegans’ sweater announced ‘less of us have been gobbled this year’ (The Telegraph 2019 ). The NFU feared that the BBC was promoting a political view. What was not questioned, however, was that the farming and killing of animals may not be a politically neutral standpoint.

Finally, it involves reification. It reduces individuals to the status of mere objects of fixed properties, their individuality denied, similar to the archetypal Nazi depiction of the Jew (Miller 1972 , p. 444). Animals, too, are objectified when reduced to the status of commodities such as forms of food or modes of transportation, or even being owned as pets. As expressed by Cole and Morgan ( 2011 , p. 149), ‘ethics are simply ruled out of order by the prior to objectification and invisibilisation of nonhuman animals that speciesist material and cultural practices instantiate’. This takes place on a large scale, even when people are generally aware that animals such as the Christmas turkey are (or rather were) individuals, not mere things. Still, animals are essentially commodified, an idea that also links into Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism.

Miller’s analysis provides a framework for dissecting how common objections to veganism, and the belief systems that ground them, are distorted and thereby largely unmovable. It gives weight to the idea that these objections manifest false consciousness. As a form of political false consciousness, omnivore’s false consciousness involves distorted and limited forms of thinking that are not often scrutinised. I have only touched on a small number of common objections to veganism, although there are many others, such as those exemplified in a defensive omnivore board. 6 When one of these notions is challenged, many more excuses are proffered.

What these distorted forms of thinking lack in terms of sobriety they make up for in intuitive persuasiveness by conforming to a widely accepted worldview or way of life. According to this worldview, nonhuman animals are inferior to human animals in politically significant ways that accord the latter the moral entitlement to exploit the former. As Miller recognises, one cannot easily fight instances of false consciousness by pointing out isolated errors. Thus a broader stance is needed, yet it may not be possible to avoid false consciousness altogether (Miller 1972 , p. 444). Therefore, one might ask what makes false consciousness not only possible but also so persistent and prevalent?

The Persistency of Ideologies

The link between false consciousness and ideology is key to its persistency. Gauthier ( 1997 , p.27–28) points out that the notion of an ‘ideology’ is employed inconsistently, yet is generally regarded as a pejorative aspect of our consciousness. He sees ideology as a theoretical construct, part of the ‘deep structure of self-consciousness’, that is, the capacity to conceive oneself relative to others and therefore to act in light of this conception of oneself as a member of the human species. Although it can be the subject of reflection, it is necessarily pre-reflective. This sounds puzzling, but Gauthier sees a similarity between ideology and language in that ‘both conceal a deep structure which unconsciously affects conscious activity’ (Gauthier 1997 , p. 28). Even if one cannot think outside the boundaries of a specific language or ideology, reflection and critique are still possible, thereby enabling moral progress.

Like languages, ideologies also promote social commonality. One of the main functions of social institutions is to maintain and transmit a common ideology (Gauthier 1997 , p. 28). Hence, individuals with very different ideologies, such as vegans and non-vegans, may find communication difficult. Moreover, for Marx, an ideology was not merely false but served an intentional role both in upholding the extant social order (Rawls 2008 , p. 361) and continuing the status quo in terms of the exploitation of the proletariat. For example, hiding the act of robbery within the construct of capitalism is essential. Similarly, exploiters of animals do not want to be perceived to be exploitative, whether these agents be the state or the lawmakers protecting animal-exploiting institutions. Farmers’ associations have privileged access in terms of shaping the viewpoint of the media and in influencing agricultural policy and legislation (Benton 1993 , p. 160). For example, both the US and Australia have introduced ‘ag-gag’ laws that essentially criminalise the dissemination of information about the treatment of animals (O'Sullivan 2016 , p. 53). Moreover, the institutionalised praise of exploiters and punishment of animal liberationists is not a morally neutral position with regard to conceptions of the good that liberal states purport to do. As Schmitz says, ‘the animal question debunks the appearance of neutrality’ (Schmitz 2016 , p. 42).

If we interpret ideologies as being pre-reflective, this aids in explaining their persistency and evasiveness from rational argumentation. As Miller suggests, repeated selective perception confirms the ideology (Miller 1972 , p. 433), yet it is difficult to construct a simple verification or falsification test, as ideologies are false at the level of the whole (Miller 1972 , p. 435). As such, they are not a mere set of commonly held ideas, but rather embody attitudes, common behaviours, and practices. Thus, the ideology that dominates our relationship with animals in developed societies gives rise to a level of false consciousness. It is pre-reflective in that societies embrace omnivorism without perceiving the moral need to justify it, although it is possible to reflect on it. When the dominant ideology is challenged, rationalisations can ensue. Since an ideology is not a specific set of beliefs that can be proven to be true or false in isolation, it is very difficult to ‘prove’ that omnivorism is morally wrong, or that veganism is right in such a way that any rational moral agent could be convinced.

One might object to the premise that attributing false consciousness is arrogant, for it requires a privileged perspective in terms of intellect and education. As Polsby states, ‘the presumption that the “real” interests of a class can be assigned to them by an analyst allows the analyst to charge “false consciousness” when the class in question disagrees with the analyst’ (Polsby 1963 , p. 22–3). However, is the attribution of false consciousness necessarily arrogant? Lukes ( 2005 , p. 149–150) argues that recognising the possibility of false consciousness is neither condescending, nor inherently illiberal, or even paternalistic. He considers, for example, J.S. Mill’s analysis of the subjection of Victorian women to the rule of men (in Mill 2009 [1869], p. 25) which can be interpreted as showing how most women were subject to false consciousness in the form of voluntary servitude, as opposed to coercive power. In light of such historic examples, and the fact that gender equality is now largely undisputed, the objection from arrogance is begs a question in that it denies the possibility that anyone might ever be politically deceived. It is ad hominem insofar as it attacks the character of the analyst, not the soundness of their views. Similarly, if future generations were to embrace the cause of animal rights and veganism, the attribution of an omnivore’s false consciousness to previous generations may then not seem too paternalistic.

Some Marxists could argue that the notion of false consciousness simply does not apply here. That may well be the case if indeed false consciousness is taken literally in a Marxist context. Instead, I have argued that there is a broad reading of false consciousness according to which it can narrow the moral self precisely because the interests of animals are not perceived in such a way as to trigger the moral motivation to practice veganism. In fact, I have attempted to detach the concept from Marxist theory as far as possible, so that one does not have to embrace Marxism in order to be able to accept how such a concept (and related concepts) may command useful explanatory power where the notion of akrasia falls short. 1

If there is such a thing as omnivore’s false consciousness, it would seem to follow that animal liberation (from human oppression) requires human liberation from omnivore’s false consciousness. Broad false consciousness may need to be confronted head-on through practices that promote more reflective and altruistic thinking (Cooke 2017 ). Narrow false consciousness, on the other hand, may be tackled directly by promoting some of the benefits of plant-based living (Fetissenko 2011 ), or indirectly by creating the conditions that normalise such a lifestyle (Lumsden 2017 ), for example, by making the shift from animal to plant agriculture easier and more desirable for farmers, or through the technological development of realistic alternatives to culling animals (e.g. in vitro meat; see Milburn 2016 ). A drawback of the self-interest approach, however, is that it only favours animals contingently in those instances where enlightened human self-interest happens to be convergent with those of animals. These challenges make a global shift to veganism not only fraught but also currently inaccessible to those on the opposite side of the debate. Considering how humans have habitually exploited animals, the future for most animals looks grim. On the other hand, social movements depend on hope and persist in the belief in moral progress has been said to be a regulative concept (Moody-Adams 2017 , p. 154).

Concluding Remarks

Starting from the assumption that there is a strong case for veganism in the literature, and the hypothesis that moral thinking and motivation are inseparable, I have considered how akrasia and false consciousness are ‘conceptual pathways’ through which our practical thinking about animals is distorted. Omnivore’s akrasia leaves some important gaps, for it is delimited to free and voluntary action against one’s better judgement. As such, the phenomenon of widespread omnivorism in developed societies may be better explained in terms of omnivore’s false consciousness (but I am not thereby suggesting that animal liberationists should embrace Marxism). Where omnivore’s false consciousness arises, there is no clear or explicit motivational failure to become a vegan, precisely because there is insufficient reflection for an akratic break to take occur. Further work in the field of moral psychology is evidently needed to unravel the motivational unity thesis, a theorem upon which this paper leans heavily.

Insofar as veganism expresses an ideology, it cannot be proven either to be true or morally right through arguments alone in such a way as to persuade any rational being or otherwise fully-fledged moral agent. Veganism is, as such, not an analytic truth to be derived from abstract moral principles but rather a moral way of life. Arguably, it is also a moral requirement. Principles such as causal inefficacy and unnecessary harm can be turned against veganism via analytic rationalisations which exploit scepticism and err on the side of narrow human self-interest, rather than an altruistic stance towards animals. Despite difficult technical and analytic considerations, one can experience veganism as an inescapable imperative; as a spiritual necessity; or as a powerful political identity against the oppression of animals. As such, some animal advocates may feel utter despair and therefore struggle to comprehend how others are not similarly moved. They may experience helplessness as to why common reasons against veganism are so weak. This paper is but one expression of such puzzlement, and a first attempt to make sense through the hitherto underexplored notion of false consciousness within the field of animal ethics.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the MANCEPT ‘Just Animals? The Future of the Political Turn in Animal Ethics’ workshop in September 2019. I am especially grateful to Robert Garner, Steve Cooke, Josh Milburn and Eva Meijer for their comments and support. I am also greatly indebted to the anonymous reviewers of this journal.

Self-funded.

Declaration

The authors declares that they have no conflict of interest.

1 For a concise exposition of the cumulative case for veganism see Stephens ( 1994 ). For more recent arguments see Francione ( 2008 ), Huemer ( 2019 ) and Singer ( 2020 ).

2 There is no conflict if animals are viewed and treated only according to their purpose to humans, but it can be argued that this is how things are (the animal welfare orthodoxy), not how they ought to be.

3 False consciousness is often assumed without explanation in the Critical Animal Studies (CAS) literature (e.g., Nibert 2002 , p. 247).

4 Marx may not have thought that the proletariat held such explicit beliefs given that they had no access to the superstructure, but the relevant idea is that the proletariat was blind to their interests.

5 Vegans too can be consumerist.

6 A compilation of poor excuses against veganism such as ‘we have carnivore teeth’. For an example see https://vegansaurus.com/post/254784826/defensive-omnivore-bingo .

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

• Aaltola E. Politico-moral apathy and omnivore's akrasia: Views from the rationalist tradition. Politics and Animals. 2015; 1 :35–49. [ Google Scholar ]
• Aaltola E. The problem of akrasia: moral cultivation and socio-political resistance. In: Cavalieri Paola., editor. Philosophy and the Politics of Animal Liberation. Palgrave Macmillan; 2016. [ Google Scholar ]
• Arpaly N. On acting rationally against one's best judgment. Ethics. 2000; 110 (3):488–513. doi: 10.1086/233321. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Audi R. Weakness of will and rational action. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 1990; 68 (3):270–281. doi: 10.1080/00048409012344301. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bennett J. The conscience of huckleberry finn. Philosophy. 1974; 49 (188):123–134. doi: 10.1017/S0031819100048014. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Benton T. Natural relations: Animal rights, human rights and the environment. Verso; 1993. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bresnahan M, Zhuang J, Zhu X. Why is the vegan line in the dining hall always the shortest? understanding vegan stigma. Stigma and Health. 2016; 1 (1):3–15. doi: 10.1037/sah0000011. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cochrane A. An introduction to animals and political theory. Palgrave Macmillan; 2010. [ Google Scholar ]
• Cole M, Morgan K. Veganism contra speciesism: Beyond debate. The Brock Review. 2011; 12 (1):144–163. doi: 10.26522/br.v12i1.568. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cooke S. Imagined utopias: Animals rights and the moral imagination. Journal of Political Philosophy. 2017; 25 (4):e1–e18. doi: 10.1111/jopp.12136. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Davidson D. Essays on actions and events. Clarendon Press; 1980. [ Google Scholar ]
• Deckers J. Negative “GHIs”, the right to health protection, and future generations. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry. 2011; 8 (2):165. doi: 10.1007/s11673-011-9295-1. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Eyerman R. False consciousness and ideology in marxist theory. Acta Sociologica. 1981; 24 (1–2):43–56. doi: 10.1177/000169938102400104. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fetissenko M. Beyond morality: Developing a new rhetorical strategy for the animal rights movement. Journal of Animal Ethics. 2011; 1 (2):150–175. doi: 10.5406/janimalethics.1.2.0150. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Francione G. Animals as persons: Essays on the abolition of animal exploitation. Columbia University Press; 2008. [ Google Scholar ]
• Fischer B. The ethics of eating animals: Usually bad, sometimes wrong, often permissible. Routledge; 2020. [ Google Scholar ]
• Fukuyama F. Identity: Contemporary identity politics and the struggle for recognition. Profile Books; 2018. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gaita R. The personal in ethics. In: Phillips DZ, Winch P, editors. Wittgenstein: Attention to particulars. Springer; 1989. pp. 124–150. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gaita R. The philosopher's dog. Routledge Classics; 2016. [ Google Scholar ]
• Garner R. A theory of justice for animals: Animal rights in a nonideal world. Oxford University Press; 2013. [ Google Scholar ]
• Garner R, O'Sullivan S. The Political turn in animal ethics. Rownman and Littlefield International; 2016. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gauthier D. The social contract as ideology. In: Goodin RE, Pettit P, editors. Contemporary political philosophy: An anthology. Blackwell Publishers Ltd; 1997. pp. 27–44. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gruen L, Jones RC. Veganism as an aspiration. In: Bramble Ben, Fischer Bob., editors. The moral complexities of eating meat. Oxford University Press; 2016. [ Google Scholar ]
• Greenebaum, J. B. (2012). Managing impressions: “Face-Saving” strategies of vegetarians and vegans. Humanity & Society, 36 (4), 309–325.
• Horta O. Discrimination against vegans. Res Publica. 2018; 24 (3):359–373. doi: 10.1007/s11158-017-9356-3. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hsiao T. In defense of eating meat. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. 2015; 28 (2):277–291. doi: 10.1007/s10806-015-9534-2. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Huemer M. Dialogues on ethical vegetarianism. Routledge; 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ilea R. Singer, wittgenstein, and morally motivating examples. Between the Species. 2017; 22 (1):1. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jones, R. C. (2016). Veganisms. In Critical Perspectives on Veganism , eds. J Castricano, and R Simonsen, 15–39. The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series.
• Kazez J. The taste question in animal ethics. Journal of Applied Philosophy. 2018; 35 (4):661–674. doi: 10.1111/japp.12278. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Luke B. Justice, caring, and animal liberation. Between the Species. 1992; 8 (2):13. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lukes S. Marxism and morality. Oxford University Press; 1985. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lukes S. Power: A radical view. 2. Palgrave Macmillan; 2005. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lumsden S. Veganism, normative change, and second nature. Environmental Philosophy. 2017; 14 (2):221–238. doi: 10.5840/envirophil201731045. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• McIntyre A. What is wrong with weakness of will? Journal of Philosophy. 2006; 103 (6):284–311. doi: 10.5840/jphil2006103619. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mill JS. The subjection of women. The Floating Press; 2009. [ Google Scholar ]
• Miller D. Ideology and the problem of false consciousness. Political Studies. 1972; 20 (4):432–447. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1972.tb01435.x. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mills, E. (2019). Factory Farming and Ethical Veganism. Acta Analytica , 34(4), 385–406. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12136-019-00389-x.
• Milburn J. Chewing over in vitro meat: Animal ethics, cannibalism and social progress. Res Publica. 2016; 22 (3):249–265. doi: 10.1007/s11158-016-9331-4. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Moody-Adams MM. Moral progress and human agency. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. 2017; 20 (1):153–168. doi: 10.1007/s10677-016-9748-z. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Nagel T. The possibility of altruism. Clarendon Press; 1970. [ Google Scholar ]
• Nibert D. Animal rights/human rights: Entanglements of oppression and liberation. Rowman and Littlefield; 2002. [ Google Scholar ]
• Nibert D. Animal oppression and human violence: Domesecration, capitalism, and global conflict. Columbia University Press; 2013. [ Google Scholar ]
• O'Sullivan S. Animals and the politics of equity. In: Garner R, O'Sullivan R, editors. The political turn in animal ethics. Rowman & Littlefield International; 2016. [ Google Scholar ]
• Perlo K. Marxism and the underdog. Society and Animals. 2002; 10 (3):303–318. doi: 10.1163/156853002320770092. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Piazza J, et al. Rationalizing meat consumption. The 4Ns. Appetite. 2015; 91 :114–128. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2015.04.011. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Polsby NW. Community power and political theory. Yale University Press; 1963. [ Google Scholar ]
• Popper K. The open society and its enemies. Routledge; 1995. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rawls, J. (2008). Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy . Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/leicester/detail.action?docID=3300540 .
• Regan T. The case for animal rights. University of California Press; 2004. [ Google Scholar ]
• Reid A. Veganism and the analytic question. Between the Species. 2017; 20 (1):38–58. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rorty AO. the social and political sources of akrasia. Ethics. 1997; 107 (4):644–657. doi: 10.1086/233763. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rosen M. On voluntary servitude: False consciousness and the theory of ideology. Polity Press; 2016. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rosi A, et al. Environmental impact of omnivorous, ovo-lacto- vegetarian, and vegan diet. Scientific Reports. 2017; 7 (1):6105. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-06466-8. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rowlands M. Animal rights: All that matters. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd; 2013. [ Google Scholar ]
• Runciman WG. False consciousness. Philosophy. 1969; 44 (170):303–313. doi: 10.1017/S0031819100009438. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sabaté J, Soret S. Sustainability of plant-based diets: Back to the future. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2014; 100 (1):476S–482S. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.113.071522. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schmitz F. animal ethics and human institutions: Integrating animals into political theory. In: Garner R, O'Sullivan R, editors. The political turn in animal ethics. Rowman & Littlefield International; 2016. [ Google Scholar ]
• Singer P. Marx: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press; 2018. [ Google Scholar ]
• Singer P. Utilitarianism and vegetarianism. Philosophy and Public Affairs. 1980; 9 (4):325–337. [ Google Scholar ]
• Singer P. Animal liberation. The Bodley Head; 2015. [ Google Scholar ]
• Singer P. Why vegan? Penguin; 2020. [ Google Scholar ]
• Stephens WO. Five arguments for vegetarianism. Philosophy in the Contemporary World. 1994; 1 (4):25–39. doi: 10.5840/pcw19941424. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tam A. Why moral reasoning Is insufficient for moral progress. Journal of Political Philosophy. 2019 doi: 10.1111/jopp.12187. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• The Telegraph (2019). BBC accused of being partial on poultry with Christmas advert featuring vegan turkeys. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/08/bbc-accused-partial-poultry-christmas-advert-featuring-vegan Accessed 02/02/2021
• Tuso PJ, et al. Nutritional update for physicians: Plant-based diets. The Permanente Journal. 2013; 17 (2):61–66. doi: 10.7812/tpp/12-085. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Twine R. Vegan killjoys at the table—Contesting happiness and negotiating relationships with food practices. Societies. 2014; 4 (4):623–639. doi: 10.3390/soc4040623. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wrenn, C. (2019). Why I’m Giving Beyoncé’s Vegan Campaign a Chance. http://www.coreyleewrenn.com/why-im-giving-beyonces-vegan-campaign-a-chance . Accessed 21/07/2019.

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Emotions
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Acquisition
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature

Bibliography

• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Religion
• Music and Media
• Music and Culture
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Politics
• Law and Society
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Toxicology
• Medical Oncology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Medical Ethics
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Security
• Computer Games
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Strategy
• Business Ethics
• Business History
• Business and Government
• Business and Technology
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic Systems
• Economic History
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Theory
• Politics and Law
• Public Administration
• Public Policy
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

10 The Ethical Basis for Veganism

Tristram McPherson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ohio State University.

• Published: 11 January 2018
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

This chapter aims to clearly explain the current state of the ethical case for veganism, to orient readers to (some of) the relevant philosophical literature, and to focus attention on important outstanding questions on this topic. The chapter examines different variants of ethical veganism, and different types of reasons that can be used to support it. It then spells out the core argument for the wrongness of making animals suffer and die. The chapter then considers three ways of arguing from this conclusion to an ethical defense of the vegan lifestyle, which appeal respectively to the ethical significance of the effects of individual use of animal products, of group efficacy, and of complicity with wrongdoing. The chapter concludes by examining several neglected complications facing the ethical case for veganism.

Introduction

On one natural gloss, veganism is a pattern of living: roughly, to be vegan is to avoid eating or otherwise using products made from or by animals. At least in our cultural context, few people are likely to just find themselves becoming vegans, in the way that one might find oneself eating too much saturated fat, or possessing an alarming quantity of paisley clothing. Rather, people are likely to become vegan as a result of (more or less explicit) ethical reflection. This chapter examines the ethical case that can be mounted for veganism. While I take the ethical case for veganism to be very promising, my aim in this chapter is not polemical. Because there has been comparatively little discussion in ethics focused directly on veganism, my central hope in this chapter is instead to help foster substantive progress in that discussion. I aim to do this by: (1) orienting readers to (some of) the most important literature relevant to the topic, (2) providing a clear explanation of the current state of the ethical case for veganism, and (3) focusing attention on the most important outstanding or underexplored questions in this domain.

I begin by examining and organizing the range of positions that deserve to be called ethical veganism. I then discuss (some of) the range of types of reasons that philosophers can potentially appeal to in making a case for veganism. In my view, the most promising case for veganism begins by arguing directly for the wrongness of making animals suffer and die. There are several important and different potential strategies for connecting this conclusion to the defense of a vegan lifestyle. Here I consider three such strategies, which appeal respectively to the ethical significance of the effects of individual use of animal products, of group efficacy, and of complicity with wrongdoing. I conclude by examining several relatively neglected complications facing the ethical case for veganism.

What Is Ethical Veganism?

I began by glossing veganism as a kind of lifestyle: one that rejects the use of products made from or by animals (hereinafter animal products ). It is worth noting that one might also think of veganism as a commitment to this sort of lifestyle: this would permit us to understand someone with such a commitment, who occasionally succumbed to omnivorous temptation, as a weak-willed vegan .

Ethical veganism is the class of ethical views that ascribe some positive ethical evaluation to that lifestyle. In what follows, I will understand ethical evaluation quite broadly, for example, I will take self-interest to be an ethical consideration. In order to focus on what is distinctive of ethical veganism, it is useful to contrast it with two paradigmatically contrasting views. Ethical vegetarianism makes a strong distinction between using products made from animals (e.g., meat), and products made by animals (e.g., milk), characteristically objecting to use of the former but not the latter. Ethical omnivorism permits the use of some animal products, but restricts the acceptable sources of such products, to those that satisfy some ethical criterion.

There are many possible versions of ethical veganism. To begin, it will be useful to consider a very strong version:

Broad Absolutist Veganism: It is always wrong to use any product made from or by any member of the animal kingdom.

Broad Absolutist Veganism contrasts with vegetarianism and omnivorism, but it is also implausible, for several reasons. One reason is its absolutism : the claim that it is always wrong to use animal products. This entails that it would be wrong to press a leather button, even if doing so were necessary in order to avert global nuclear war. A second reason is the broad scope of this principle across the animal kingdom, which entails that it is wrong to use sponges (members of the animal kingdom which wholly lack a nervous system). The thesis can be modified to avoid each of these problems.

The scope problem is especially potent because many arguments for veganism appeal to properties—such as the ability to suffer—that are not shared by all animals. It is not clear whether there are any ethically significant properties that are shared by all members of the animal kingdom but not by plants. 1 It is thus natural to restrict ethical veganism to focus on those animals that have the proposed ethically relevant property or properties. Ethical veganism could also be restricted in other ways, for example, one can imagine a thesis that prohibits dietary consumption of animal products, as opposed to their use more broadly. In what follows, I will in general neglect this latter sort of restriction.

The implausibility that arises from absolutism can be avoided by a defeasible form of ethical veganism, which allows that there are circumstances in which using animal products is permissible. A defeasible veganism might suggest that the ethical objection to using animal products can be outweighed by competing ethical considerations. Several philosophers have argued that ethical principles can also be defeasible in another way: by having exceptions in which they do not count at all against a relevant action. 2 For example, one might think that if there is an ethical requirement not to use animal products, it simply does not apply to consuming human breastmilk with the consent of the producer.

Elsewhere 3 I defend a form of restricted and defeasible veganism that I call:

Modest Ethical Veganism : It is typically wrong to use products made from or by a range of animals that includes: cats, dogs, cows, pigs, deer, and chickens.

This is a defeasible form of veganism because it explicitly signals that using animal products is only typically wrong. It is also restricted, governing our use of only some animals. In virtue of these features, Modest Ethical Veganism will be much easier to defend than Broad Absolutist Veganism. However, it is also strong enough to be a recognizably vegan thesis. For example, in typical circumstances, it rules out the use of products made from or by the most commonly farmed animals. Weakening the thesis further (e.g., by prohibiting only the use of great apes, or claiming that using animal products was only occasionally wrong) would arguably result in a thesis too weak to deserve the name veganism.

One could weaken the vegan’s thesis in a different way, by replacing the core idea that failure to be vegan is wrong. For example, it could be argued that practicing veganism is ordinarily virtuous but supererogatory: above and beyond the call of ethical duty. 4 Notice, however, that if combined with the view that vegetarianism or ethical omnivorism is obligatory, it might seem odd to call this view a version of ethical veganism. Alternatively, one could argue that veganism is a required aspiration, as opposed to a required practice. 5

Another dimension along which ethical theses concerning veganism can vary might be glossed as their modal fragility . For example, one can imagine an argument for veganism which claimed that using animal products is essentially wrong. This sort of argument would entail that using animal products could not have easily been typically permissible. By contrast, imagine a case for ethical veganism that grounded the requirement to be vegan crucially in putatively unjust FDA policies. The requirement to be vegan would be modally fragile on the second view: using animal products could easily be permissible, on this view, if the FDA were to change its policies. This dimension of the issue is rarely discussed, and I will largely ignore it in what follows.

The principles discussed so far focus on the use of animal products. While we have some grip on this notion, a rigorous characterization of veganism would need to make precise which relationships to animals counted as use in the ethically significant sense. However, one might think that however use is understood, characterizing ethical veganism solely in terms of use is objectionably limited: one might claim that the core ethical concerns that mitigate against using animal products should also orient our lives as social and political beings.

One way into the social dimension of this issue begins by noting that when someone knowingly and freely performs an action that we judge to be wrong—especially as a consistent pattern—we typically take it to be appropriate to blame that agent, and to feel various negative emotions toward them. We also typically take it to be appropriate to curtail our interactions with such agents in various ways. If eating meat is typically wrong, we might also expect it to be blameworthy. And this raises the question of whether vegans should refuse to be friends with omnivores, or otherwise share their lives with them. 6

Veganism also raises important questions in political philosophy. Generally, we can ask: Should the status of nonhuman animals be a central dimension by which we evaluate polities? 7 In the context of ideal theory, we can ask: Would the use of nonhuman animals be absent from, outlawed, or punished in an ideal polity? 8 Or are certain uses of nonhuman animals examples of ethically objectionable behavior that should nonetheless be tolerated in a well-functioning society characterized by reasonable ethical disagreement? In our nonideal circumstances, we can ask whether various forms of conventional or radical political action on behalf of animals are required or supererogatory on the basis of the considerations that support veganism. 9

This section has surveyed a range of dimensions on which variants of ethical veganism might be organized. No one of these views is the obvious candidate to be the privileged characterization of ethical veganism. Because of this, keeping the range of possible variants of the view in mind is important: some of the issues raised by differences between these views are badly in need of careful exploration. Further, these views vary widely in plausibility, and very different sorts of arguments would be required to support or rebut them.

Arguing for Veganism: Resources

One might argue for veganism in a wide variety of ways. In order to orient the reader, I begin by sketching a rough taxonomy of the sorts of reasons that a vegan might appeal to.

Self-Interested Reasons

Adopting a vegan lifestyle can potentially impose significant burdens on an individual, ranging from inconvenience, to being cut off from valuable traditions, to the risk of ostracism or malnutrition. Nonetheless, it is possible to mount a prudential case that many of us should adopt a vegan diet. The core reason is this: the overwhelming majority of North Americans have diets that are unhealthy in large part because they involve eating too many calories and too much saturated fat, and too few vegetables and whole grains. 10 One reason to choose a vegan diet is that it will tend to be a much healthier alternative to this status quo. Of course, one can be an unhealthy vegan. However, many of the most problematic foods in the North American diet are ruled out by veganism.

This way of supporting veganism appears to face three limitations. First, it at best supports adopting a vegan diet. It does nothing to rule out non-dietary uses of animal products (wearing a leather jacket is not going to clog anyone’s arteries). Second, it is most clearly a case for preferring a vegan diet to currently typical diets. It is not obviously a case for preferring a vegan diet over (for example) a largely plant-based diet that includes modest amounts of lean meat. This issue is controversial. For example, T. Colin Campbell and Thomas Campbell claim that the nutritional evidence provides some support for completely eliminating animal products from one’s diet. 11 However, even Campbell and Campbell grant that they have a very modest case for the superiority of eliminating consumption of animal products entirely, as opposed to substantially limiting it.

The significance of this issue likely depends in part on one’s capacity for self-control. For some people, the case for going vegan on health grounds, rather than attempting a healthy omnivorous diet, may be analogous to the alcoholic’s reasons to quit “cold turkey” rather than attempting to drink moderately. For others, however, a healthy omnivorous diet, like moderate drinking, may be easily implemented. And others may even find that making infrequent exceptions is crucial to maintaining their motivation to remain vegan the rest of the time. 12

Third, it is likely that even if these sorts of prudential considerations can provide reasons to become a vegan, they cannot support the deontic claim that eating animal products is wrong. Compare: most of us have good reasons to get more exercise, but it is implausible that we act wrongly when we fail to do so. 13

Environmental Reasons

Another important way of arguing for veganism appeals to the environmental consequences of animal agriculture. This sort of argument could be developed anthropocentrically, focusing on environmental consequences that affect human beings generally. Or it could appeal to the intrinsic ethical significance of, for example, species or ecosystems. The starting point for such arguments is the idea that the vegan lifestyle and diet makes fewer demands upon our shared environmental resources than the typical North American diet. Consider three points. First, it typically takes far more arable land and water to produce grain to feed to nonhuman animals to produce a calorie of meat than it does to produce a calorie of plant-based food. Animal agriculture thus puts pressure on increasingly scarce and vulnerable cropland and water resources. Second, economic pressures on animal agriculture have led to increasingly industrialized farming practices. This has increased the amount of environmentally toxic byproducts generated by farming, which in turn further damages land and water systems. 14 Of course, these dynamics apply to the production of vegan foods as well. This consideration thus supports a vegan diet only in conjunction with the first point. Third, animal agriculture is a significant contributor to global warming, which is arguably the most dramatic environmental threat we now face. 15

These environmental considerations support a slightly broader conclusion than the self-interested reasons. 16 For example, if the environmental cost of animal agriculture gives us reasons to stop eating animal products, it also gives us reasons to avoid using animal products in other ways.

A central complication facing such environmentally based arguments, however, is that it is implausible that all animal agriculture is environmentally damaging. For example, farm animal manure can increase the agricultural productivity of farmland without the use of industrially produced fertilizers, and animals can forage on land that is not otherwise agriculturally productive. Considerations like these could be used to argue that there is a nonzero level of animal agriculture that is optimal (at least from the point of view of overall human well-being). 17 This suggests several complications for an environmental case for veganism. This is especially true if the relevant foil is a lifestyle that significantly reduces, but does not eliminate, the use of animal products, or one which focuses on supporting farms that use animal products in environmentally friendlier ways.

Religious Reasons

Religious traditions provide ethical guidance for many people. It is possible to develop arguments for veganism that appeal to the distinctive ethical resources of certain religious traditions. The most straightforward way of making such arguments would appeal directly to religious prescriptions. For example, Jainism and some variants of Buddhism enjoin some version of vegetarianism. In most cases, however, religiously based arguments for veganism will have to address significant arguments against ethical veganism from within their religious tradition and will not have such direct doctrinal support. Here, the metaphysical principles of a religion can be relevant, for example, the Buddhist doctrine of transmigration entails that humans and animals all have souls and, indeed, that many animals were humans in past lives. 18 This metaphysical thesis makes the case for ethical similarity between humans and animals easier to argue for, compared to views on which humans are distinctive among animals in having souls. 19 The Christian tradition is similar in this respect. Would-be ethical vegans have an uphill battle against explicit biblical discussion of food. But they can also appeal to the ethical significance of certain ethical precepts that are widely accepted within the Christian tradition. For example, one might seek to make a case for ethical veganism that appealed centrally to the ethical importance of reverence, mercy, or stewardship. 20 This, of course, only scratches the surface of potential avenues for religiously based arguments in food ethics. 21

Animal-Focused Arguments

Each of the classes of considerations just briefly sketched is potentially important, and each might be developed to make a case that we have reasons to move in the direction of a vegan lifestyle. However, they leave out what I take to be the most significant reasons to become vegan: reasons that focus on nonhuman animals themselves, rather than focusing on human interests, considered either individually or collectively. The range of relevant animal-focused arguments in the literature is vast, 22 and I will not do it justice.

Theoretical Commitment and Naïveté

One central division among arguments in animal ethics is whether the author presupposes a systematic normative ethical theory or hopes to proceed without one. Approaches that begin from commitment to a systematic normative ethics are legion. For example, there are discussions of animal ethics that are embedded within utilitarian, Kantian, virtue theoretic, and various contractarian and contractualist theoretical structures. 23

One influential and powerful example of the theoretically committed approach is Tom Regan’s case for animal rights. 24 Regan argues that individuals possess various moral rights, which directly reflect the inherent moral worth of those individuals. By proposing to ground rights directly in moral worth, Regan raises a pressing question. On any plausible view of rights, some things (e.g., you and I) possess moral rights (and hence inherent moral worth), while others (e.g., a shard of broken plastic) do not. What explains the difference? Regan argues that many initially plausible answers to this question are indefensible. For example, consider the idea that inherent moral worth requires capacities for ethical agency or sophisticated rational thought. This would entail that nonhuman animals lack rights. However, it would also entail that many humans (e.g., young children and severely mentally handicapped adults) lack rights. And this is implausible. Or consider the idea that having moral worth requires being a member of the species Homo sapiens . This avoids the problems facing the rational capacity idea, but it looks like an attempt to explain a fundamental ethical property by appeal to something ethically irrelevant. To see this, imagine that we discovered an alien species with capacities to think, feel, love, and act that are very like our own. Mere difference in their genetic code surely cannot deprive them of rights. According to Regan, the only defensible alternative is that a sufficient criterion for having intrinsic worth is being the experiencing subject of a life. 25 Since many of the animals that humans eat and otherwise use are experiencing subjects of lives, Regan concludes that these animals have moral rights that are just as strong as ours. 26 Just as farming humans would violate our rights, so, on this view, animal agriculture violates the rights of nonhuman animals.

Arguments like Regan’s make an important contribution to the ethical evaluation of veganism. At the very least, such arguments can help us to better understand some of the implications of promising systematic views in ethics. However, the strategy of appealing to a systematic ethical theory faces at least two significant limitations. The first is that there is an ongoing fierce and reasonable dispute between proponents of various systematic options to normative ethics. The second limitation—obscured by my breezy exposition of Regan’s view—is that each of the central organizing ideas in systematic normative ethics can be implemented in many ways. The forest of structural options is perhaps most familiar from discussions of consequentialism, but the issue generalizes. 27 Together, these points may limit how confident we can reasonably be in any systematic ethical theory determinate enough to guide our thinking about veganism.

The alternative to such approaches is to offer a theoretically naïve argument for veganism. On this approach, one appeals to intuitively compelling judgments about clear cases and seeks to construct local ethical principles capable of explaining the truth of those judgments, without appeal to systematic normative theory. 28 Even for philosophers committed to a systematic normative theory, exploring the issue from a theoretically naïve perspective may be illuminating, as it may help to reveal issues that will make a given theoretically committed approach more or less plausible or dialectically compelling.

The Naïve Argument from Suffering

Jeremy Bentham famously said of animals that “the question is not, Can they reason ? nor, Can they talk ? but, Can they suffer ?” 29 The line of argument for ethical veganism that I find most plausible begins from this question, answering that—at least for a wide range of animals—the answer is: Yes, they can suffer . 30

The first virtue of this approach is that it seems evident to almost everyone that many nonhuman animals can suffer. There are many phenomena that might be grouped together under the heading “suffering.” Two examples of what I have in mind are intense pain, such as a piglet experiences when castrated without anesthetic, and intense distress, such as a cow or a sow experiences when separated from her young.

The second virtue of the approach is that the following ethical principle appears hard to reasonably resist:

Suffering : Other things being equal, it is wrong to cause suffering.

The plausibility of Suffering can be brought out in several ways. 31 First, it seems true when restricted to humans. So to claim that it is not wrong to cause suffering to animals may seem like a case of ethically objectionable speciesism. Second, many cases of causing suffering to nonhuman animals seem obviously wrong. For example, it would be wrong to catch a stray rabbit, take it home, and torture it with electric shocks. Third, in many cases like this one, the wrongness of the action seems directly explained by the fact that it is a case of causing suffering to an animal. Fourth, Suffering is modest, in at least two respects. First, Suffering is a defeasible principle, so it does not imply that causing suffering to nonhuman animals is always wrong. Second, Suffering does not imply parity between the moral significance of human and nonhuman suffering. It is compatible with there being many reasons why it is typically wrong to cause suffering to an adult human being that do not apply to nonhuman animals. (For example, causing an adult human to suffer may express disrespect for their autonomy.)

Most arguments for veganism (especially those which seek less modally fragile conclusions) will defend a further principle prohibiting the killing of animals, such as:

Killing : Other things being equal, it is wrong to kill an animal.

This principle, however, is not as immediately intuitive as Suffering. The intuitive contrast is well-expressed by Michael Tooley:

It seems plausible to say it is worse to kill an adult human being than it is to torture him for an hour. In contrast, it seems to me that while it is not seriously wrong to kill a newborn kitten, it is seriously wrong to torture one for an hour. 32

Tooley’s wording is careful here: his claim is cast in terms of what “seems plausible” about “serious wrongness.” We can helpfully distinguish two ways of making the suggested ethical claim more precise. Weak Asymmetry is the view that, other things being equal, causing substantial suffering to an animal is more seriously wrong than killing that animal. Strong Asymmetry is the view that other things being equal it is wrong to cause animals to suffer and not wrong to kill them.

Strong Asymmetry has sometimes been endorsed. 33 However, I suspect that its appeal does not survive reflection. In evaluating Strong Asymmetry, it is crucial to screen off cases in which other relevant things may not be equal. For example, there are many ordinary cases of killing animals for (at least arguably) ethically legitimate reasons. Think, for example, of overburdened animal shelters euthanizing some of their wards, or of culling a deer population to a level that its food sources can support. By contrast, there are very few ordinary cases in which there are good ethical reasons to torture an animal. These facts can potentially mislead us when we consider principles like this one; we may unconsciously “fill in” extraneous assumptions about the motives or character of the agents involved, and these assumptions may then guide our judgments about the cases. 34 In light of this point, consider a case in which, simply for the sake of doing so, someone catches a healthy stray kitten, takes it home, and then kills it by adding a fast-acting and painless poison to its meal. This seems clearly wrong, which casts substantial doubt on Strong Asymmetry.

What about Weak Asymmetry? Here again, it is important to screen off distracting assumptions about the agent’s motivations. So consider a case where we screen off these distractions. Suppose that you are given a terrible choice at gunpoint: Kill this kitten with a painless drug or torture it for an hour. Suppose further that you somehow know that if you torture the kitten, it will go on to live a long and happy cat life. It would certainly be easier for a decent person to kill the kitten than to make herself torture the kitten. But it is hard to see why torturing is not the ethically better of two awful options. After all, it seems plausible that torturing the kitten in this case would be better overall for the kitten. Focusing only on the kitten’s welfare, this case is not much different from that of someone administering a painful lifesaving medical treatment to an animal, which seems obviously okay, if doing so is the only way to allow the animal to have a long and flourishing life. In light of points like these, it is not surprising that several philosophers have argued against Tooley-style asymmetry claims. 35

It is worth emphasizing that rejecting Weak Asymmetry is compatible with granting that killing humans is ordinarily much more seriously wrong than killing nonhuman animals. The best explanation of why torturing the kitten is ethically preferable to killing it adverts to something like the ethical significance of well-being or of the value of an entity’s future. 36 Such considerations are surely important in thinking about killing humans. 37 If human lives are typically far richer than nonhuman animal lives, an account of the wrongness of killing that appealed to the value of futures would partially explain why it is ordinarily worse to kill humans. Further, in many cases of killing humans other considerations—especially considerations grounded in the agent’s autonomy—may also be significant, or even paramount. For example, consider a version of the gunpoint dilemma with a human victim. Here—as Tooley’s quote suggests—torturing would ordinarily seem like the lesser evil. But now suppose that the victim requests—on the basis of substantively reasonable and reflectively stable values—that you kill him rather than torture him. In this case, respecting his autonomous preference may be ethically more important than maximizing his net expected welfare.

One might object to the line of argument proposed in this section by arguing that the ethical asymmetry between humans and nonhuman animals runs deeper than I have granted thus far. The most familiar way to develop this objection would appeal to the explanatory role of moral status . For example, it might be claimed that the core explanation of why it is wrong to make a human suffer needs to appeal to humans’ distinctive moral status as well as what human suffering is like. Animals, it might be insisted, lack moral status (or have some sort of second-class moral status), and so the badness of their suffering cannot render wrongful an action that makes them suffer.

This objection should be rejected. 38 To begin, notice that the objection threatens to deprive us of the most natural explanation of the wrongness of torturing nonhuman animals. A theoretical argument would need to be extremely powerful to warrant this. But the idea that animals lack moral status is most plausible if we understand moral status as the bundle of ethical powers and protections characteristically possessed by adult humans (in a helpful introduction to moral status, Agnieszka Jaworska and Julie Tannenbaum call this “full moral status”). 39 A two-year-old child lacks full moral status: she has no right to self-government, for example, or political participation. But I still owe it directly to such a child that I not torture her. It is natural to assume that the wrongness of making the child suffer is grounded in her individual capacities. But if so, then the objection collapses, because many nonhuman animals have similar capacities. One could repair the objection, for example, by insisting that the child has moral status simply in virtue of being human. 40 But it is deeply puzzling why bare genetic facts like this one should have such striking ethical significance.

Supposing that it is sound, the case for the wrongness of killing animals and making them suffer has profound ethical consequences. Consider the institutions most directly involved in raising and slaughtering animals for use in making animal products: the farms, animal factories, feedlots and slaughterhouses. These institutions inflict extraordinary amounts of suffering, and then very early death, on the billions of animals they raise and kill. 41 If killing animals and making them suffer is wrong, then these institutions (or the people who compose them) act wrongly on a truly horrifying scale. Stuart Rachels gives us a sense of the scope of the issue, estimating the amount of suffering inflicted by these institutions as orders of magnitude greater than that inflicted by the holocaust. 42 Further, our governments arguably act wrongly as well, in virtue of creating a legal and regulatory framework within which these institutions are permitted to treat animals wrongfully, and in virtue of providing economic incentives—and in many cases direct subsidies 43 —for these institutions to harm animals. However, the case for the wrongness of killing animals and causing them to suffer does not yet constitute an argument for veganism. The next section explains the gap remaining in the argument, and explores how it might be filled.

Completing the Naïve Argument for Veganism: Some Options

One could grant that it is wrong to kill animals or to make them suffer, but deny that this gives one reasons to be vegan. After all—as is vividly obvious in the contemporary world—eating animal products does not require that one kill animals or cause them to suffer. As a defense of omnivorism, this may initially smack of rationalization. However, facing it squarely helps to illuminate several of the most difficult challenges for constructing a rigorous ethical argument for veganism.

We can begin by schematically representing the gap left by the argument of the preceding section, as follows:

1. The institutions that produce our animal products act wrongly in a massive and systematic way. 2. Veganism bears relation R to those institutions. 3. It is typically wrong (or . . .) to fail to bear R to those institutions. C. It is typically wrong (or . . .) to fail to be vegan.

The parenthetical possibilities in premise 3 and the conclusion are intended to remind readers of the range of possible forms ethical veganism might take (discussed in the first section). Different arguments will, of course, be required to support weaker or stronger vegan theses. The central question is whether there is some relation that we can substitute for variable R to produce a sound version of the schematic argument just given. This section discusses some important possibilities.

One might claim that the gap suggested by this argument is easily filled. For example, Rosalind Hursthouse suggests that a truly compassionate person could not be aware of the cruelty of contemporary animal agriculture and continue to be “party” to such cruelty by eating meat. 44 Such self-aware omnivorism may indeed feel uncomfortable: witness Michael Pollan’s description of reading Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation in a steakhouse. 45 At best, however, this reply appears to support a very weak form of ethical veganism, according to which omnivorism is some sort of ethical imperfection. But even this is not so clear. Absent further argument of the sort to be considered, it is not clear that one must lack compassion to any degree if, for example, one followed the Buddhist teaching that permits a monk to eat meat, provided that he does not suspect the relevant animal has been killed specifically to feed him. 46

This section focuses on three candidate proposals for explaining how ethical requirements on individuals can be generated indirectly, in virtue of relations between their actions and some other bad or wrongful act or state of affairs. These proposals appeal, respectively, to individual value-promotion, group efficacy , and complicity . The aim is to assess whether these proposals can provide intrinsically plausible principles that—when combined with the naïve argument of the preceding section—support some form of ethical veganism. The proposals that I discuss are far from exhaustive, but they strike me as the most promising. 47

For simplicity, I treat these proposals as ways of completing the preceding naïve argument. However, these proposals have broader theoretical significance for the ethics of veganism. For example, many broadly environmental arguments for veganism (briefly discussed in the second section) will face the same sort of gap as the argument just sketched: they are most directly arguments from the wrongness of status quo animal agriculture, not for the wrongness of individual acts of using animals. In light of this, most attempts to defend ethical veganism will need to appeal to some theory like the ones to be considered here, that propose ethical links between individuals’ use of animal products and the objectionable practices that create those products.

Individual Efficacy

I begin by considering the attempt to cross the gap by appeal to the idea that the individual vegan can promote something ethically important: expected animal welfare. The canonical presentation of this idea by Peter Singer begins by granting that it is highly unlikely that one’s own food choices will ever make a difference to actual animal welfare. 48 However, Singer suggests this is not the end of the story. He suggests there must be some (unknown) threshold, at which, for example, increased numbers of vegetarians or vegans will reduce demand for chicken sufficiently to reduce the number of chickens made to suffer in factory farms. For example, “Perhaps for every 10,000 vegetarians there is one fewer 20,000 bird chicken unit than there would otherwise be.” 49 However, we are ignorant of where the relevant threshold is. Perhaps we are away from the threshold, in which case the individual vegan makes no difference to the chicken suffering. But given our ignorance of where the threshold is, we should take there to be a 1/10,000 chance that we are at the threshold. And if we are at the threshold, an individual vegan’s refraining from consuming chicken will save 20,000 chickens from a short life of suffering. 50 The expected utility of this chance for each vegan is the same as the expected utility of certainty that one will save two chickens from suffering. In a slogan: it is vanishingly unlikely that one will make a difference by being vegan, but if one does, it will be a correspondingly massive difference. One might then argue that this is enough to entail that one is required to be vegan. 51

This sort of argument faces several types of objection. Some of these are empirical in nature. 52 For example, some have argued that we have empirical reasons for believing that we are more than proportionally likely to be stably between thresholds of the imagined sort. Others have argued that we should be skeptical of the ability of individual buying decisions to produce any economic signals whatsoever in a large market.

Another type of objection begins by querying the trajectory of aggregate demand for animal products. Assume for simplicity that aggregate demand trends are stable, without a lot of random variation. Suppose first that demand is stably increasing. Other things being equal, this will lead to rising prices and (eventually) to new animal factories being built, as increased supply becomes profitable. My veganism cannot prevent a broiler factory from being built, under such assumptions. At best, it might conceivably delay its construction. But for how long? Seconds? Minutes? 53 Or suppose that aggregate demand is stably decreasing. Then prices will typically fall, and with it production. Again, at very unlikely best, lack of my demand could hurry closure of a broiler factory by a few minutes. The only (artificially stable) scenario in which my becoming a vegan could make a more marked difference is if aggregate demand is, independent of my choice, stably exactly at a threshold. Only here could my buying behavior possibly make a more than a momentary difference to the welfare of animals. But our credence that we are stably at such a threshold should be much smaller than Singer’s heuristic estimate. It might thus be expected that the expected benefit to animal welfare of my becoming vegan is likely to be extremely small.

The Singer-style argument also makes at least three important assumptions about ethical theory. One (highly plausible) assumption is that welfare outcomes are ethically significant. The second assumption is more controversial: this is that the expected value of consequences plays a role in determining right and wrong. This assumption is controversial because many philosophers think that the actual—as opposed to expected—value of consequences is what contributes to determining right and wrong. 54

The expected value assumption is crucial to Singer’s reasoning. For example, in Singer’s stylized example, it is extremely likely that no one actually makes an objective difference to animal welfare by being vegan. For on Singer’s account, it is very likely that aggregate demand is in fact stably away from a threshold. And this means that for each consumer C , the counterfactual: if C were to be vegan, animal welfare would be improved is very likely false.

The third crucial assumption of Singer’s argument is that the negative expected value of an option can explain why that action is wrong. Notice that this is a stronger claim than the idea that facts about expected value matter ethically. This issue can be illustrated by a familiar style of case: I can choose to either spend $1,000 on a vacation, or to donate this money to the Against Malaria Foundation. The expected value of the donation is saving at least one person from miserable sickness and early death due to malaria, which obviously outweighs the direct and indirect expected benefits of my vacation. It is plausible that this makes donating the money morally better than going on vacation, but it is controversial whether it entails that I would act wrongly by going on vacation. 55

Even if this sort of objection is sound, evaluating the empirical challenges to the Singer-style reasoning might be quite broadly important to the ethics of veganism. On the one hand, it might provide a direct way to argue that veganism is at least ordinarily supererogatory. On the other, some sort of efficacy might be argued to be a necessary—even if not a sufficient—condition for veganism to be required. The worry is that absent a plausible case for efficacy, one’s concern not to eat wrongfully produced meat amounts to an ethically dubious desire to avoid a kind of “moral taint.” 56

Group Efficacy

As we have seen, it is not trivial to establish that an individual omnivore has any effect on animal welfare. By contrast, it is obvious that all of the consumers of animal products together make a difference: their aggregate demand is the raison d’être of the animal agriculture industry. If demand for animal products declined to zero, wrongful farming of animals would likewise decline precipitously. In light of this, one might suggest that the argument for veganism should appeal to the ethical significance of the relationship that an individual vegan bears to this group. For example, one might complete the schematic argument imagined at the beginning of this section in the following way:

1. The institutions that produce our animal products act wrongly in a massive and systematic way. 2. The group consumers of animal products together act wrongly by making the wrongful treatment of animals mentioned in (1) persist. 3. It is typically wrong (or . . .) to be a part of a group that together acts wrongly. C. It is typically wrong (or . . .) to consume animal products (i.e., to fail to be vegan).

As in the schematic argument, the “(or . . .)” marks the fact that one might argue for a variety of ethical statuses for veganism. Premises 2 and 3 of this argument introduce important and controversial ethical ideas. Premise 3 is a general claim about the individual ethical significance of group wrongdoing. Premise 2 is an instance of a principle that tells us that groups can acts wrongly in virtue of making bad things happen. Consider a case that might help to motivate the relevant general claims.

Suppose there are two communities along a river: Upstream and Downstream. The river is the only source of water for both communities. Members of Upstream also dispose of their sewage in the river. (This is not a town policy; it is just the prevailing and accepted practice in Upstream.) As a result, members of Downstream are very often painfully and dangerously ill from drinking the polluted water. Suppose, however, that no individual’s sewage from Upstream makes a difference: the river is so uniformly polluted by Upstream sewage that removing one person’s sewage from the river will make no difference to the number or severity of the painful illnesses suffered in Downstream. Suppose finally that the members of Upstream know about their effects on Downstream and could (either individually or collectively) safely dispose of their sewage elsewhere, at modest cost. It is plausible that the members of Upstream are, collectively, responsible for wrongfully harming the members of Downstream. It may seem plausible that, in virtue of this, an individual member of Upstream acts wrongly by disposing of her sewage in the river, despite the fact that this action produces no marginal harm.

This argumentative strategy takes on several burdens. 57 First, some philosophers think that only individuals can act wrongly. This view must be defeated if the group-mediated account is to work. Second, we can usefully adopt Margaret Gilbert’s useful distinction between “collectives”—like families or sports teams—from looser “aggregates.” 58 It is arguably more plausible that collectives can act wrongfully than mere aggregates. This is relevant because the group consumers of animal products does not coordinate in the systematic ways characteristic of collectives. Third, even if an account of responsibility that applies to aggregates is developed, 59 a clear mapping from group to individual wrongdoing still needs to be provided.

Even if these theoretical questions can be adequately addressed in a way friendly to the argument, 60 one might wonder whether the group-mediated approach supports veganism over certain alternative responses to the evils of animal agriculture. To see the challenge, focus on an individual in Upstream. Suppose she knows that for a modest cost she could install a safe and effective septic system, and thus cease to contribute to polluting Downstream’s drinking water. However, she knows that if she instead donated the same amount of money to help provide water filters in Downstream, this would actually help to prevent some Downstream residents from getting sick. It seems plausible that she has much stronger reasons to donate than to eliminate her own pollution. 61 By analogy, if we suppose that an individual’s being vegan involves some cost to that individual and negligible benefit to animals, it might seem that this cost would be more constructively borne to support direct assistance to animals (human or non-) rather than one’s veganism.

Benefit and Complicity

The group-mediated approach focuses on the relationship between the individual and the consumers of animal products. But this may seem like an implausibly indirect relationship to focus on. After all, as I noted at the end of the previous section, the individuals and institutions most directly responsible for the massive pattern of wrongful treatment of animals are the farms, animal factories, feedlots, and slaughterhouses. So we might want to focus on the relationship of the individual vegan or omnivore to these institutions or wrongful patterns.

Besides making a difference to the extent of the wrongful pattern (the issue we discussed under “Individual Efficacy”), there are at least two ethically relevant relationships that we might want to focus on. First, the omnivore benefits from this wrongdoing: the food she chooses to consume is a product of this wrongdoing and would not be available—or at least, it would be available only in much smaller quantities at much higher prices—absent such wrongdoing. 62 Second, the omnivore is complicit with the wrongdoing, in the sense of cooperating with the wrongful plans of the more immediate wrongdoers. I will briefly explore the prospects of appealing to the ethical significance of one or both of these relationships in defending ethical veganism.

Consider first benefiting. Several philosophers have argued that one can acquire ethical obligations in virtue of benefiting from injustice. 63 One might think that some of these arguments generalize to benefiting from significant wrongdoing of other types. The knowing omnivore chooses to consume products that result from the wrongdoing of the animal industry. This is relevant because it is much easier to motivate the idea of obligations in virtue of voluntarily received benefits. 64 Our central topic here, however, is not the obligations that omnivores might take on in virtue of their behavior (itself an interesting question). Rather, our question is whether omnivorism is itself wrong in virtue of being an instance of voluntary benefit from wrongdoing. One might take such voluntary benefiting to constitute the ethical analogue of the legal status of being an accessory after the fact. 65 However, the ethical significance of such pure benefiting—when shorn of other ethical features—is not clear. For example, suppose that it is wrong to kill deer in your context. And suppose that you witness a reckless driver hit and kill a deer, then leave the scene. If you then take, dress, and ultimately eat what can be salvaged from the abandoned deer carcass, you are benefiting from the driver’s wrongful killing of the deer. But it is far from clear that what you do in this case is wrong. 66 Even this case involves a kind of active receipt of goods. By contrast, suppose that the wrongful killing kept the deer from grazing on your garden. Surely you do not act wrongly by merely receiving this benefit with a wrongful genesis.

Recalling the variety of forms of ethical veganism, one might argue within a virtue-theoretic framework that the willingness to voluntarily benefit from wrongdoing is a significant vice. However, if we again consider the case of the deer salvager, it is again not clear that this willingness is any kind of vice, if limited to the sort of case described. One might insist that virtue in part consists in a way of seeing animals that takes them to be not to be eaten. 67 But one might suspect that this sort of perception is (relatively) virtuous only assuming the inability to make relevantly fine-grained distinctions between more and less ethically problematic cases, and that the perfectly virtuous person could regret the death but salvage and enjoy the resulting food.

It is useful to contrast the case just considered with one where someone intentionally kills a deer in order to sell it, and then sells you some of the resulting venison. In this sort of case, there is not merely wrongful action (as in the recklessness version of the case), but (we will assume) a wrongful plan of action. Further, you are not merely benefiting from that plan (as in the case where killing the deer saves your garden). Rather, you are playing a key role in the execution of the plan: the hunter’s plan requires someone to play the role of venison buyer, and you are voluntarily playing that role. This case seems strikingly ethically different from the case of salvaging venison.

Call knowingly and voluntarily fulfilling a role that needs to be fulfilled in order for a wrongful plan to work being complicit with the plan. One might suggest the following principle:

Complicity : Other things being equal, it is wrong to be complicit with others’ wrongful plans.

This principle could be used to complete the schematic argument in the following way:

1. The institutions that produce our animal products have a wrongful plan. 2. Individual consumers of animal products (non-vegans) are typically complicit with that plan. 3. Other things being equal, it is wrong (or . . .) to be complicit with others’ wrongful plans (Complicity). C. It is typically wrong (or . . .) to fail to be vegan.

As in the schematic argument, the “(or . . .)” marks the fact that one might argue for a variety of ethical statuses for veganism. The controversial core of this argument is Complicity. In order for Complicity to help complete a case for ethical veganism, it would need to be refined in several nontrivial ways. Consider two examples. First, the set of roles relevant to counting as complicit would need to be somehow restricted. For example, it is presumably essential to the success of the hunter’s plan that he not be caught in a Heffalump trap or otherwise prevented from hunting. But failing to take such steps to foil a plan seems different from the sort of active complicity described. As this case brings out, there seems to be a crucial contrast between cooperating with a plan and merely not interfering with it. 68 Second, the contemporary production of animal products is largely implemented by a highly complex system of corporations. The initial model of an individual and his or her plan will need to be extended, to apply to the complex way that plans (or something like them) can be ascribed to corporations, or even loose collections thereof. 69 Third, relatively few consumers purchase meat directly from the corporations that produce the meat. So the argument will need to support some sort of iterability: it will have to be claimed that the consumer is wrongfully complicit with the retailer who is wrongfully complicit with the wholesaler, and so on.

It is also important to clarify how Complicity interacts with questions of individual efficacy. On the one hand, individual efficacy arguably makes the ethical significance of complicity clearer. My complicity with your evil plan may seem especially objectionable where it promotes the success of that plan. 70 However, it seems objectionable even absent this: suppose you know that the hunter in our example always has buyers for his venison; if you don’t buy the venison, someone else will. I find it plausible that complicity with the hunter via buying his venison is wrong even here. 71

Compare a parallel case: the more familiar duty of fair play : this requires that I not benefit from successful cooperative institutions without making a fair contribution to them (i.e., that I not free ride ). 72 In many cases, free riding will not harm anyone, and yet it appears wrong (other things being equal) in these cases. Of course, duties of fair play are controversial, and some of the controversy surrounds just this question of efficacy. 73

As the discussion of this section makes clear, it is far from trivial to explain how to complete the schematic “naïve” argument for veganism sketched at the end of the previous section. Clarifying these issues is thus an important task as we seek to make progress on understanding the ethical status of veganism.

Complications Facing Arguments for Veganism

In this section, I discuss a series of important complications facing arguments for veganism that have not been addressed in this chapter so far. Satisfactory resolution of these issues is crucial to developing a full-fledged case for veganism. This section briefly considers complications arising from considerations of aggregation, the demandingness of the principles needed to argue for the claim that veganism is obligatory, the defeasibility of the ethical principles that support veganism, the specificity of the response required of vegans, and methodological objections to typical “intuitive” arguments for veganism. I begin by considering challenges to the ethical significance of animal suffering and death.

How Bad Is Animal Suffering and Death?

The naïve argument assumed that animals can suffer. However, this assumption has been challenged. In order to properly assess this challenge, we would need to examine several complex questions about the nature and ethical significance of pain and suffering.

One way to develop the challenge begins by noting that it is the qualitative nature of suffering—what it is like for the sufferer—that seems most clearly ethically significant. 74 For example, if we built a robot that was behaviorally very similar to a cat, but which had no phenomenal experiences, it is very unclear whether there would be anything intrinsically wrong with treating the robot in ways that elicited very strong aversive behavioral responses. (Of course, that someone would choose to do this to the robot would be disturbing, but it would be disturbing in roughly the way it would be disturbing for someone to choose to play a video game in which their avatar graphically tortured cats.)

The thesis that ethically significant suffering is a phenomenal state entails significant epistemic difficulties for supporting the claim that nonhuman animals can suffer. First, there is no agreement about what phenomenal experience consists in (is it irreducible, or can it be given a functional characterization, for example?). An empirically informed methodology here will seek to identify functional, evolutionary, and neurological correlates for phenomenal states. But there are many interesting functional and neurological similarities and differences between humans and nonhuman animals. This makes the “problem of nonhuman animals’ minds” an empirically and philosophically complex issue.

Some philosophers have argued on this basis that it is a mistake to think that animals can suffer. 75 However, it is worth noting that this sort of argument can only be as plausible as the underlying philosophical theory of phenomenal consciousness, which at very least counsels caution. If we set aside these challenges, we confront a less radical challenge: the strongest case for the possibility of animal suffering is presumably in those animals that are biologically and evolutionarily closest to humans (i.e., mammals). The question of whether other animals—most saliently birds and fish—can suffer is deeply complicated. 76 This may leave a version of veganism restricted to mammals in a significantly stronger position that those which range more broadly across the animal kingdom.

If we suppose that (certain) animals can suffer, this does not settle how bad that suffering is. Imagine your shoulder is aching. How bad this is for you is in large part a function of its meaning for you: experienced as a reminder of a vigorous workout, it will seem much less unpleasant and significant than if it is understood as a symptom of your developing arthritis. It is difficult to know whether animals can experience their suffering as meaningful in anything like these ways. This might tend to reduce the significance of animal suffering. 77 If animal suffering were systematically not that bad, this might attenuate the badness of contemporary animal agriculture. However, this is not very plausible, for at least two reasons. First, some nonhuman animals do appear to attribute significance to their experiences: witness the extended distress of cows or sows separated early from their young. Second, the idea that perceived meaning affects the badness of pain is perhaps most plausible for relatively mild pains: it is characteristic of agony that it crowds out all such reflective perspective on one’s state.

The naïve argument for the wrongness of killing animals appealed in part to the value of an animal’s future if it were not killed. One might challenge this argument by appealing to philosophical theories about personal identity, or (more broadly) the conditions for ethically significant survival. On a leading cluster of accounts, certain relations of psychological continuity are required for ethically significant survival. 78 On this view, we need to ask: Do many nonhuman animals have rich enough psychological connections to underwrite the intuitive thought that a given cow, for example, is the same moral patient over (much of) its biological lifetime? If not, this view might entail that for ethical purposes, a cow should be treated as constituted by a succession of distinct ethically significant beings. This would in turn mean that painlessly killing the cow would not be depriving it of a significant valuable future, but rather preventing the existence of its many successors. Because many philosophers are skeptical that we have any weighty duties to bring valuable lives into existence, this conclusion would undercut what is otherwise the most plausible argument for the wrongness of killing nonhuman animals.

As with the preceding challenge, I am cautiously optimistic that this challenge can be met, at least in many cases. For example, many animals appear capable of various forms of memory. 79 However, as with questions about animal pain and suffering, answers here are likely to vary substantially across species in ways that require careful empirical work to tease out. Further, as with the case of suffering, this argument takes controversial philosophical theory as an essential premise. For example, on accounts which make continuity of brain or organism essential to ethically significant survival, this objection fails immediately.

Aggregation?

It is often insisted that persons are ethically separate. 80 While it usually seems reasonable for me to impose a cost on myself now in order to attain a greater benefit later, it can seem objectionable to impose a cost on one person in order to benefit others more. The force of this idea is perhaps best dramatized in Judith Thomson’s transplant case, where we are asked to imagine that a doctor could carve up a healthy patient and distribute his organs to five others needing transplants, thereby saving five lives but killing the initial patient. 81

The view that carving up the patient would be very wrong is widely shared. But similar cases involving nonhuman animals are much less clear. Imagine the relevant case: your roving high-tech veterinary clinic finds five young deer in need of organs. The deer population around here is stable, and you know these deer would live a long and happy life if saved from imminent organ failure. As it turns out, you find a sixth, healthy deer with the requisite biological compatibilities to be the “donor.” Would it be wrong to carve this deer up to save the other five? It is at least unclear whether it is. If this point generalizes, it might suggest that there is no “separateness of nonhuman animals”: that there is no moral objection to harming or killing one animal as a means to bringing about an outcome that is best overall. 82

The idea that animal ethics should focus on aggregate effects would have significant implications. For example, consider culling populations of animals that would otherwise—in the absence of nonhuman predators—predictably go through cycles of population explosion and starvation. The most obvious objection to this policy is that it harms the animals culled, but if the culling is best for the population in aggregate, the anti-separateness thesis would undercut the objection. Returning to veganism, if the culling is legitimate, objections to then eating or otherwise using the culled animals will be harder to develop. 83

Demandingness?

Several philosophers have reported to me that they accept the soundness of arguments for veganism but have not become vegan. 84 One explanation for this phenomenon is that—at least for many people—it is very difficult to become vegan: doing so would require abandoning cherished foods, coping with new inconveniences, developing new tastes and learning new skills, not to mention potentially creating conflict in our relationships. While the thesis that veganism is obligatory is thus arguably quite demanding, it may also be that the arguments needed to defend a requirement to be vegan have implications that are far more demanding. Consider two examples that may help to illustrate this idea. First, the appeal to individual causal efficacy is most straightforwardly developed into a case for veganism when combined with a principle that prohibits selecting options that will promote something very bad happening. But—as we saw in the example of choosing between a vacation and a charitable donation—such principles might be otherwise quite demanding, requiring us to sacrifice many pleasures in order to help others avert terrible fates.

Or consider the appeal to a complicity principle, also discussed in the previous section. Thomas Pogge has argued that the causal interconnections in the world are so dense and complex that an ordinary affluent person has likely been involved both in transactions that caused deaths and ones that saved lives. 85 Because it is plausible that many of the nodes in this web of transactions involve unjust rules and wrongful actions, one might worry that one cannot help but be complicit with wrongdoing.

If these sketchy examples reflect a general pattern, then an obligation to be vegan may only be defensible as part of a highly demanding overall ethic. If such demandingness renders an ethical theory implausible, this would in turn pose a clear and relatively neglected challenge to any claim that veganism is more than supererogatory. 86

Defeasibility?

As I noted in the first section, plausible forms of ethical veganism will be defeasible: that is, they will allow that there are a range of possible circumstances in which it is permissible to use animal products. One might argue that demandingness itself can constitute a relevant defeating condition. For example, in many cases, animal products are an essential element of the only available nutritionally adequate human diets. This is true for many hunter-gatherer cultures as well as for many subsistence farmers, for whom having a cow—or even a handful of chickens—can offer crucial protection against certain forms of malnutrition.

Ideally, the proponent of an obligation to be vegan would seek a principled account of defeasibility conditions that (a) granted permissibility in these sorts of cases, and (b) applied more generally, in a way that reduced the force of the demandingness challenge, but (c) did not permit the difficulties involved in becoming vegan to defeat the obligation more generally. It is an open question whether such an account can be developed. If it cannot, the proponent of an obligation to be vegan may be further committed to implausible demandingness in light of too-limited defeating conditions.

Specificity?

The core of veganism involves eschewing use of animal products. As we saw in the first section, one might think that our relationships to nonhuman animals have other ethical implications: implications for how our political lives should be organized, for what our political priorities should be, and for how we interact with other humans. One possibility is that the best case for veganism entails obligations of all of these types. This conclusion would suggest a further way in which arguments for ethical veganism might be highly demanding.

One natural way of mitigating the demandingness of an ethical desideratum is to permit agents options as to how they respond to it. On this sort of view, it might be argued that while the massive wrongdoing in animal agriculture demands some response from each of us, a range of such responses might be permissible. For example, consider someone who reasonably believes that transitioning to veganism would involve significant sacrifices to her well-being. Suppose that this person instead practiced ethical omnivorism, while simultaneously dedicating a significant portion of her political and financial resources to supporting organizations that she reasonably believed would best help to promote animal welfare. Absent a highly demanding ethical theory, it might be argued that such a person would count as meeting her ethical obligations. 87

The Methodological Burdens of Revisionism

An important question about demandingness objections concerns whether they should centrally be understood as targeting the demandingness of a candidate theory, or the fact that the particular demands in question fly in the face of common sense. To see the contrast, consider the claim that one might be required to endure great sacrifices to save one’s child or that a soldier can be required to sacrifice his life for his country. These are theses that make ethics very demanding, at least in certain contexts. But it is not clear that having such implications counts significantly against an ethical theory: intuitively, they simply show that sometimes it is hard to do the right thing. This might suggest that demandingness per se is not a problem. Rather, being demanding in certain respects might simply be one way in which an ethical theory can fly in the face of common sense. Any argument for an obligation to be vegan will arguably be a philosophical argument against common sense. Influential Moorean views in epistemology claim that such arguments are quite generally dubious. 88

One might think that such skepticism is especially powerful against the sorts of arguments for veganism discussed in this chapter, for two reasons. First, as that discussion illustrates, any fully developed ethical argument for an obligation to be vegan will be quite complex. Second, the central arguments discussed were methodologically naïve: they appeal centrally to clear intuitive judgments. But if the permissibility of eating a cheeseburger is also commonsensical, then one might think that the best such arguments can hope to show is that a certain complicated set of our intuitive judgments is inconsistent. One might wonder why, in this case, one should be confident that the permissibility of eating a cheeseburger is the judgment that should be abandoned. 89

One task for the ethical vegan is to rebut such arguments. If this is not possible, one possible way to reply involves being epistemically—but not practically—concessive. For example, one might grant that it is unclear whether the best arguments for veganism put us in a position to know that veganism is obligatory. The epistemically concessive vegan might argue that nonetheless, the arguments are at least strong enough to entail that we ought to suspend judgment concerning the thesis that veganism is obligatory. And here they might advocate an ethical precautionary principle: if we cannot tell whether doing A is wrong, then we ought, other things being equal to refrain from doing A . This is a quite different way of thinking about ethical veganism: on this gloss, we can know that the lifestyle is required, not in virtue of the first-order ethical facts, but as an ethical response to reasonable ethical uncertainty. 90

Another way of replying is to grant that naïve theorizing might not be enough to establish ethical veganism. Perhaps naïve arguments need to be supplemented by methodological arguments that can rebut the Moorean strategy here and provide a principled means of explaining why the permissibility of eating a cheeseburger does not survive the putative conflict imagined. 91

Conclusions

Ethical veganism can be initially motivated by compelling insights: that animals matter ethically, that our collective treatment of nonhuman animals is one of the great contemporary horrors, and that these facts make an ethical demand on each of us. This chapter has sought to illuminate the dialectic that arises when one attempts to develop these and other motivations into a philosophically careful argument. As I have sought to make clear, there are many possible species of ethical veganism worth investigating, there are many philosophical resources that can be levied into arguments for one or another vegan thesis, and there are many deep challenges facing these arguments. I have argued that there is a powerful core case for veganism, but that this case is in several important respects incomplete or poorly developed. I hope that this chapter will enable and encourage others to rigorously address these topics, thereby allowing us all to better understand the ethics of veganism, and—more broadly—the ethics of our relationships to nonhuman animals and to what we consume. 92

Akhtar, Sahar. “Animal Pain and Welfare: Can Pain Sometimes Be Worse for Them Than for Us?” In The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics , edited by Tom Beauchamp and R. G. Frey , 495‒518. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011 .

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Allen, Colin , and Trestman, Michael. “Animal Consciousness.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta . http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/consciousness-animal/ .

Appiah, Anthony. “ Racism and Moral Pollution. ” Philosophical Forum 18, no. 2/3 (Winter 1986 /Spring 1987): 185‒202.

Baxter, William F.   People or Penguins: The Case for Optimal Pollution . New York: Columbia University Press, 1974 .

Bentham, Jeremy , and John Bowring . The Works of Jeremy Bentham . Edinburgh: William Tait, 1823. Reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1962 .

Björnsson, Gunnar. “Joint Responsibility without Individual Control: Applying the Explanation Hypothesis.” In Moral Responsibility: Beyond Free Will and Determinism , edited by Nicole Vincent , Ibo van de Poel , and Jeroen van den Hoven , 181‒200. New York: Springer, 2011 .

Bruckner, Donald. “Strict Vegetarianism Is Immoral.” In The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat , edited by Ben Bramble and Bob Fischer , 30‒47. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015 .

Budolfson, Mark. “ The Inefficacy Objection to Consequentialism and the Problem with the Expected Consequences Response. ” Philosophical Studies , forthcoming .

______. “The Inefficacy Objection to Deontology: From Complicity to Degree of Essentiality in the Ethics of the Marketplace.” Unpublished manuscript.

Butt, Daniel. “ On Benefiting from Injustice. ” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37, no. 1 ( 2007 ): 129‒152.

Calhoun, Cheshire. “But What about the Animals?” In Reason, Value and Respect: Kantian Themes from the Philosophy of Thomas E. Hill, Jr. , edited by Mark Timmons and Robert M. Johnson , 194‒214. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015 .

Campbell, T. Colin , and Thomas M. Campbell . The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health . Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2005 .

Carruthers, Peter. “ Suffering without Subjectivity. ” Philosophical Studies 121, no. 2 ( 2004 ): 99‒125.

Chartier, Gary. “ On the Threshold Argument against Consumer Meat Purchases. ” Journal of Social Philosophy 37, no. 2 ( 2006 ): 233‒249.

Coetzee, J. M.   The Lives of Animals . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001 .

Cohen, Carl. “A Critique of the Alleged Moral Basis of Vegetarianism.” In Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat , edited by Steve F. Sapontzis , 152‒167. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004 .

Cullity, Garrett.   The Moral Demands of Affluence . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004 .

Dagger, Richard.   Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism . New York: Oxford University Press, 1997 .

DeGrazia, David. “ Moral Vegetarianism from a Very Broad Basis. ” Journal of Moral Philosophy 6 ( 2009 ): 143‒165.

Dennett, D. C.   Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998 .

Diamond, Cora. “ Eating Meat and Eating People. ” Philosophy 53, no. 206 ( 1978 ): 465‒479.

Doggett, Tyler , and Matthew Halteman . “Food Ethics and Religion.” In The Ethics of Food , edited by Anne Barnhill , Mark Budolfson , and Tyler Doggett . New York: Oxford University Press, 2016 .

Donaldson, Sue , and Will Kymlicka . Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011 .

Fairlie, Simon.   Meat: A Benign Extravagance . White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2010 .

Feldman, Fred. “ Actual Utility, the Objection from Impracticality, and the Move to Expected Utility. ” Philosophical Studies 129, no. 1 ( 2006 ): 49‒79.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. “The Role of Livestock in Climate Change.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2014. http://www.fao.org/agriculture/lead/themes0/climate/en/ .

Fox, Michael Allen. “ Vegetarianism and Planetary Health. ” Ethics and the Environment 5, no. 2 ( 2000 ): 163‒174.

Frey, R. G.   Rights, Killing, and Suffering: Moral Vegetarianism and Applied Ethics . Oxford: Blackwell, 1983 .

______. “Utilitarianism and Moral Vegetarianism Again: Protest or Effectiveness?” Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat , 118‒123. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004 .

Garrett, Jeremy R. “ Utilitarianism, Vegetarianism, and Human Health: A Response to the Causal Impotence Objection. ” Journal of Applied Philosophy 24, no. 3 ( 2007 ): 223‒237.

Gilbert, Margaret. “ Who’s to Blame? Collective Moral Responsibility and Its Implications for Group Members. ” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 30 ( 2006 ): 94–114.

Goodin, Robert E. , and Christian Barry . “ Benefiting from the Wrongdoing of Others. ” Journal of Applied Philosophy 31, no. 4 ( 2014 ): 363‒376.

Goodland, Robert , and Jeff Anhang . “ Livestock and Climate Change. ” Worldwatch 22, no. 6 (November/December 2009): 10‒19.

Goodman, Charles. “Ethics in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta . http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/ethics-indian-buddhism/ .

Gruen, Lori , and Robert C. Jones . “Veganism as an Aspiration.” In Moral Complexities of Eating Meat , edited by Ben Bramble and Robert Fischer , 153‒171. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015 .

Guerrero, Alex. “ Don’t Know, Don’t Kill: Moral Ignorance, Culpability, and Caution. ” Philosophical Studies 136 ( 2007 ): 59‒97.

Halteman, Matthew C.   2008 . Compassionate Eating as Care of Creation . Washington, DC: Humane Society of the United States Faith Outreach, 2008.

Harman, Elizabeth. “Eating Meat as a Morally Permissible Moral Mistake.” In Philosophy Comes to Dinner , edited by Andrew Chignell , Terence Cuneo , and Matthew Halteman , 215‒231. New York: Routledge, 2016 .

______. “The Moral Significance of Animal Pain and Animal Death.” In The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics , edited by Tom Beauchamp and R. G. Frey , 726‒737. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011 .

Harvey, Peter.   An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values, and Issues . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000 .

Held, Virginia. “ Can a Random Collection of Individuals be Responsible? ” Journal of Philosophy 67 ( 1970 ): 471–481.

Hursthouse, Rosalind. “Applying Virtue Ethics to Our Treatment of Other Animals.” In The Practice of Virtue , edited by Jennifer Welchman , 135‒154. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2006 .

Jaworska, Agnieszka , and Julie Tannenbaum . “The Grounds of Moral Status.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta . http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/grounds-moral-status/ .

Kagan, Shelly. “ Do I Make a Difference? ” Philosophy and Public Affairs 39, no. 2 ( 2011 ): 105‒141.

______. Normative Ethics . Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998 .

Klosko, George.   The Principle of Fairness and Political Obligation . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004 .

Korsgaard, Christine. “Fellow Creatures: Kantian Ethics and Our Duties to Animals.” Tanner Lectures on Human Values , edited by G. B. Peterson , 25:77‒110. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005 .

Lance, Mark , and Margaret Little . “Where the Laws Are.” In Oxford Studies in Metaethics , edited by Russ Shafer-Landau , 2:149‒171. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007 .

Lepora, Chiara , and Robert E. Goodin . On Complicity and Compromise . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 .

Linzey, Andrew.   Animal Theology . Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994 .

Lippert-Rasmussen, Kaspar. “ Two Puzzles for Deontologists. ” Journal of Ethics 5, no. 4 ( 2001 ): 385‒410.

Marquis, Don. “ Why Abortion Is Immoral. ” Journal of Philosophy 86, no. 4 (April 1989): 183‒202.

Mason, Jim , and Peter Singer . Animal Factories . 2d ed. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1990 .

Matheny, Gaverick. “ Expected Utility, Contributory Causation, and Vegetarianism. ” Journal of Applied Philosophy 19, no. 3 ( 2002 ): 293‒297.

McGary, Howard. “ Morality and Collective Liability. ” Journal of Value Inquiry 20 ( 1986 ): 157–165.

McKeever, Sean D. , and Michael Ridge . Principled Ethics: Generalism as a Regulative Ideal . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006 .

McMahan, Jeff. “ Eating Animals the Nice Way. ” Daedalus 137, no. 1 (Winter 2008 ): 66‒76.

McPherson, Tristram. “ A Case for Ethical Veganism. ” Journal of Moral Philosophy 11, no. 6 ( 2014 ): 677‒703.

______. “How to Argue for (and against) Ethical Veganism.” In The Ethics of Food , edited by Anne Barnhill , Tyler Doggett , and Mark Budolfson , 190‒206. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016 .

______. “ Moorean Arguments and Moral Revisionism. ” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1, no. 24 ( 2009 ): 1‒24.

______. “A Moorean Defense of the Omnivore?” In The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat , edited by Ben Bramble and Bob Fischer , 118‒134. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015 .

______. “Why I Am a Vegan (and You Should be One Too).” In Philosophy Comes to Dinner , edited by Andrew Chignell , Terence Cuneo , and Matthew Halteman , 73‒91. New York: Routledge, 2016 .

Michaelson, Eliot. “The Accommodator’s Dilemma.” The Discerning Brute (blog). Posted May 29, 2013. http://www.thediscerningbrute.com/2013/05/29/the-accommodators-dilemma/ .

Moller, D. “ Abortion and Moral Risk. ” Philosophy 86, no. 3 ( 2011 ): 425‒443.

Nagel, Thomas. “Death.” In Mortal Questions , by Thomas Nagel , 1‒10. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979 .

Norcross, Alasdair. “ Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases. ” Philosophical Perspectives 18, no. 1 ( 2004 ): 229‒245.

______. “The Significance of Death for Animals.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death , 465‒474. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002 .

Nozick, Robert.   Anarchy, State, and Utopia . Oxford: Blackwell, 1974 .

Nussbaum, Martha.   Frontiers of Justice . Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2006 .

Olson, Eric T. “Personal Identity.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta . http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/identity-personal/ .

Parfit, Derek.   Reasons and Persons . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984 .

Pasternak, Avia.   2014 . “ Voluntary Benefits from Wrongdoing. ” Journal of Applied Philosophy 31, no. 4 (2014): 377‒391.

Pinkert, Felix. “ What We Together Can (Be Required to) Do. ” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 38, no. 1 ( 2014 ): 187‒202.

Pluhar, Evelyn. “ Who Can Be Morally Obligated to Be a Vegetarian? ” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 5, no. 2 ( 1992 ): 189‒215.

Plunkett, David. “ Justice, Non-Human Animals, and the Methodology of Political Philosophy. ” Jurisprudence , 7, no. 1 ( 2016 ): 1–29.

Pogge, Thomas W. “Severe Poverty as a Human Rights Violation.” In Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? , edited by Thomas Pogge , 11‒53. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007 .

Pollan, Michael.   The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals . New York: Penguin, 2006 .

Rachels, James. “ Active and Passive Euthanasia. ” New England Journal of Medicine 292, no. 2 ( 1975 ): 78‒80.

______. “The Moral Argument for Vegetarianism.” In Can Ethics Provide Answers? And Other Essays in Moral Philosophy , 99‒107. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997 .

Rachels, Stuart. “Vegetarianism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics , edited by Tom Beauchamp and R. G. Frey , 877‒905. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011 .

Rawls, John.   A Theory of Justice . Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1999 .

Regan, Tom.   The Case for Animal Rights. 2d ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004 .

Robinson, Luke. “ Moral Holism, Moral Generalism, and Moral Dispositionalism. ” Mind 115, no. 458 ( 2006 ): 331‒360.

Rowlands, Mark.   Animals Like Us . New York: Verso, 2002 .

Schweikard, David P. , and Hans Bernhard Schmid . “Collective Intentionality.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta . http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/collective-intentionality/ .

Schwitzgebel, Eric , and Joshua Rust . “ The Moral Behavior of Ethics Professors: Relationships among Self-Reported Behavior, Expressed Normative Attitude, and Directly Observed Behavior. ” Philosophical Psychology 27, no. 3 ( 2014 ): 293‒327.

Singer, Peter.   Animal Liberation . New York: Avon, 1977 .

______. “ Famine, Affluence, and Morality. ” Philosophy & Public Affairs 1, no. 3 ( 1972 ): 229‒243.

______. “ Utilitarianism and Vegetarianism. ” Philosophy and Public Affairs 9, no. 4 ( 1980 ): 325‒337.

Singer, Peter , and Jim Mason . 2006 . The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter . Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2006.

Smiley, Marion. “Collective Responsibility.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta . http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/collective-responsibility/ .

Smith, M. B. E. “ Is There a Prima Facie Obligation to Obey the Law? ” Yale Law Journal 82, no. 5 (April 1973): 950–976. Reprinted in The Duty to Obey the Law , edited by W. A. Edmundson. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999.

Talbert, Matthew. “ Contractualism and Our Duties to Nonhuman Animals. ” Environmental Ethics 28 (Summer 2006 ): 202‒215.

Thomson, Judith Jarvis. “ Preferential Hiring. ” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2, no. 4 ( 1973 ): 364‒384.

______. “ The Trolley Problem. ” Yale Law Journal 94, no. 6 ( 1985 ): 1395‒1415.

Tooley, Michael. “ Abortion and Infanticide. ” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2, no. 1 ( 1972 ): 37‒65.

Väyrynen, Pekka. “A Theory of Hedged Moral Principles.” In Oxford Studies in Metaethics , edited by Russ Shafer-Landau , 4:91‒132 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009 ).

Walker, Polly , Pamela Rubart-Berg , Shawn McKenzie , Kristin Kelling , and Robert S. Lawrence . “ Public Health Implications of Meat Production and Consumption. ” Public Health Nutrition 8, no. 4 ( 2005 ): 348‒356.

Weatherson, Brian. “ Running Risks Morally. ” Philosophical Studies 167, no. 1 ( 2014 ): 141‒163.

Wenz, Peter S. “ An Ecological Argument for Vegetarianism. ” Ethics and Animals 5 (March 1984): 2‒9.

Wood, Allen. “ Kant on Duties Regarding Non-Rational Nature. ” Supplementary Volume, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 72 ( 1998 ): 189–210.

Zamir, Tzachi.   Ethics and the Beast . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007 .

______. “ Veganism. ” Journal of Social Philosophy 35, no. 3 (Fall 2004 ): 367–379.

Zimmerman, Michael J.   The Concept of Moral Obligation . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 .

For a useful discussion of this issue, see Pluhar, “Who Can Be Obligated,” 191–193.

See, e.g., Lance and Little, “Where the Laws Are” ; McKeever and Ridge, Principled Ethics ; Robinson, “Moral Holism” ; and Väyrynen, “Hedged Moral Principles.”

McPherson, “Case for Ethical Veganism” ; McPherson, “Why I Am a Vegan”; McPherson, “How to Argue.”

For a related idea, compare Harman, “Eating Meat.”

See Gruen and Jones, “Veganism as an Aspiration.”

For a vivid depiction of someone struggling with this question, see Coetzee, Lives of Animals .

Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice , 325–407; Plunkett, “Methodology of Political Philosophy.”

Zamir, “Veganism,” 368–369.

For discussion of some of these social and political questions, see Donaldson and Kymlicka, Zoopolis ; Michaelson, “Accommodator’s Dilemma” ; Rowlands, Animals Like Us , ch. 10.

E.g., Walker et al., “Public Health Implications.”

Campbell and Campbell, China Study , 242.

Singer and Mason, The Way We Eat , 282–283.

However, for an argument that human health-based considerations can play an important role in utilitarian arguments for vegetarianism, see Garrett, “Utilitarianism, Vegetarianism, and Human Health.”

Walker et al., “Public Health Implications.”

Estimates of the climate impact of animal agriculture range wildly, from between a twentieth and a half of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. See Goodland and Anhang, “Livestock and Climate Change” ; Fairlie, Benign Extravagance , ch. 13; and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Role of Livestock,” for competing estimates of the climate effects of animal agriculture. Assessing which of these competing estimates is relevant for ethical purposes requires complex empirical and ethical argument.

For a case for vegetarianism that appeals centrally to such considerations, see Fox, “Vegetarianism and Planetary Health.”

See Fairlie, Benign Extravagance , ch. 4, for defense of this idea; Wenz’s “Ecological Argument” is an environmentally based argument for vegetarianism that is concessive on this front.

Goodman, “Indian and Tibetan Buddhism,” sec. 5.

Harvey, Buddhist Ethics , 156, 163.

Cf. Linzey, Animal Theology ; Halteman, Compassionate Eating .

For a useful discussion, see Doggett and Halteman, “Food Ethics and Religion.”

For a useful but incomplete bibliography, see “Vegetarianism and Animals,” The Philosophy of Food Project,

http://www.food.unt.edu/bibliography/#16 .

For an explicit discussion of utilitarianism and vegetarianism, see Singer, “Utilitarianism and Vegetarianism.” Many other important discussions make the most sense if we presuppose the utilitarian framework that their authors accept, although they do not explicitly presuppose utilitarianism; see Singer, Animal Liberation ; Norcross, “Puppies, Pigs, and People”; and S. Rachels, “Vegetarianism.” For Kantianism, see, e.g., Wood, “Kant on Duties” ; Korsgaard, “Fellow Creatures” ; and Calhoun, “But What about the Animals?” For virtue theory, see Hursthouse, “Applying Virtue Ethics.” For various contract approaches, see Baxter, People or Penguins ; Rowlands, Animals Like Us , ch. 3; and Talbert, “Contractualism and Our Duties.”

Regan, Case for Animal Rights . The exegesis in this paragraph largely follows that in McPherson, “Moorean Defense?”

Regan, Case for Animal Rights , sec. 7.5.

Certain elements of Regan’s total view complicate this conclusion. See Pluhar, “Who Can Be Obligated,” 193–197.

For a superb introduction to many of the choice points facing some of the major approaches to systematic normative ethics, see Kagan, Normative Ethics .

This approach to animal ethics is widespread; two exemplary instances are J. Rachels, “Moral Argument,” and DeGrazia, “Moral Vegetarianism.” I take this approach in McPherson, “Why I Am a Vegan.”

Bentham, Works , XVII.IV n. 1, emphasis in original.

For an argument against beginning the case for ethical vegetarianism by appeal to this sort of idea, see Diamond, “Eating Meat.” Diamond suggests that such arguments are too abstract and disconnected from the texture of our lived relationships with animals to form apt bases for ethical arguments.

For one way of developing these points, see McPherson, “Why I Am a Vegan.”

Tooley, “Abortion and Infanticide,” 40.

E.g., by Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma , ch. 17.

This is inspired by the analogous point about our judgments about killing and letting die in J. Rachels, “Active and Passive Euthanasia.”

Compare McMahan, “Eating Animals” ; DeGrazia, “Moral Vegetarianism,” 160–164; Harman, “Moral Significance of Animal Pain” ; Norcross, “Significance of Death” ; and McPherson, “Why I Am a Vegan.”

In the sense discussed in Nagel, “Death,” and Marquis, “Why Abortion Is Immoral.”

Compare Lippert-Rasmussen, “Two Puzzles.”

For related skepticism about the usefulness of “moral status” talk, see Zamir, Ethics and the Beast , ch. 2.

Jaworska and Tannenbaum, “Grounds of Moral Status.”

Compare Cohen, “Critique,” 162.

For some of the literally gory details, see Mason and Singer, Animal Factories .

S. Rachels, “Vegetarianism.”

For example, according to the Environmental Working Group, direct US subsidies to dairy and livestock totaled nearly $10 billion in 1995–2012. Other, much larger subsidies—such as on grain used for feed—serve to indirectly subsidize US animal agriculture. “Farm Subsidy Database,” Environmental Working Group, http://farm.ewg.org/ .

Hursthouse, “Applying Virtue Ethics,” 141–142.

Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma , 650.

Harvey, Buddhist Ethics , 159.

For criticism of some of the other options, see Budolfson, “Inefficacy Objection to Deontology,” sec. 3–4.

Singer, “Utilitarianism and Vegetarianism.”

Singer, “Utilitarianism and Vegetarianism,” 335.

Broilers spend around six weeks in the chicken unit before being transported for slaughter. Mason and Singer, Animal Factories , 7.

For very similar arguments, see Matheny, “Expected Utility” ; Norcross, “Puppies, Pigs, and People”; and Kagan, “Do I Make a Difference?”

See Frey, Rights, Killing, and Suffering ; Frey, “Utilitarianism and Vegetarianism Again” ; Chartier, “Threshold Argument” ; and Budolfson, “Inefficacy Objection to Consequentialism.”

Compare Chartier, “Threshold Argument,” 240ff.

For discussion, see, e.g., Feldman, “Actual Utility.”

For relevant discussion, see, e.g., Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” ; and Cullity, Moral Demands .

For relevant discussion, see Appiah, “Racism and Moral Pollution.”

For a helpful introduction to relevant debates, see Smiley, “Collective Responsibility.”

Gilbert, “Who’s to Blame?”

E.g., Held, “Random Collection” ; Bjornsson, “Joint Responsibility” ; and Pinkert, “What We Together.”

E.g., McGary, “Morality and Collective Liability.”

For a parallel case, see Björnsson, “Joint Responsibility,” 108. For relevant discussion, see also Zimmerman, Concept of Moral Obligation , ch. 9.

One complication is that—as mentioned in the discussion of self-interested reasons to be vegan—the omnivore’s dietary choices might in fact be overall bad for her, suggesting a straightforward sense in which they do not benefit her. However, the omnivore—at least immediately—gets what she wants in eating animal products. And I suspect that the argument will be similarly plausible if we simply stipulate that this counts as a benefit.

Thomson, “Preferential Hiring,” 383; Butt, “On Benefitting.”

Pasternak, “Voluntary Benefits.”

Goodin and Barry, “Benefitting from Wrongdoing,” 2.

For further discussion of cases like this one, compare Bruckner, “Strict Vegetarianism.”

E.g., Diamond, “Eating Meat,” sec. 3.

Making this distinction well is far from trivial. For example, if one had a standing obligation to prevent hunting (e.g., one was the local game warden, etc.), then merely turning a blind eye to the hunting would seem objectionable. Or suppose the hunter held you in such esteem that you could prevent the hunt with a single gentle word, perhaps here again you have a duty. Perhaps failing to prevent the hunt in these cases does not count as complicity, but is objectionable on other grounds.

For an introduction to collective intentionality, see Schweikard and Schmid, “Collective Intentionality.”

For an intermediate position, see Lepora and Goodin, Complicity and Compromise , sec. 4.1.1, which appeals to a notion of “potential essentiality,” according to which a relatively weak possibility of difference-making is necessary for complicity.

Mark Budolfson, “The Inefficacy Objection to Deontology,” has argued for a further important variant of a complicity view. He proposes that how essential the wrongness of the production of a product is can affect how wrong it is to consume it. For example, it is worse to purchase the archetypal Nazi-made soap than it is to purchase a watch made in a concentration camp because the fact that the soap is made from human fat makes the wrongful character of its production more essential than the wrongful character of the production of the watch was. This sort of idea might be used to defend the idea that it is wrong to eat beef, where wrongful treatment of animals is relatively essential, but not wrong to drink milk, because while the wrongful treatment of dairy cows is ubiquitous, it is inessential to the production of milk.

Klosko, Principle of Fairness .

E.g., Smith, “Prima Facie Obligation.” For a reply, see Dagger, Civic Virtues , 71.

For a case for potentially ethically significant animal mental states that do not involve phenomenal consciousness, see Carruthers, “Suffering without Subjectivity.”

E.g., Dennett, Brainchildren , 161–168.

For an introduction to the study of animal consciousness, see Allen and Trestman, “Animal Consciousness.”

For an argument that it can also make it worse, see Akhtar, “Animal Pain and Welfare.”

For discussion, see Olson, “Personal Identity,” esp. sec. 4.

Allen and Trestman, “Animal Consciousness,” sec. 7.4.

E.g., Rawls, Theory of Justice , sec. 5–6.

Thomson, “Trolley Problem,” 1396.

For relevant discussion of this hypothesis, see Nozick Anarchy, State and Utopia , 35–42.

The ethical legitimacy of aggregation might also seem to support a controversial objection to veganism: that widespread veganism would tend to lead to the existence of far fewer cows, pigs, chickens, etc. If we assume (controversially) that these animals currently tend to have lives that are worth living, this would entail that veganism was worse overall for animals. And aggregation might seem to bolster this argument. This argument faces severe further difficulties, however. Here are two: first, reduced numbers of farm animals will likely be accompanied by increased numbers of wild animals; second, this argument likely require controversial views about the ethical significance of bringing entities with valuable lives into existence (for the classic discussion of this issue, see Parfit, Reasons and Persons , Part Four).

For non-anecdotal evidence that philosophers’ failing to act on their belief that they should be vegetarian is widespread, see Schwitzgebel and Rust, “Moral Behavior.”

Pogge, “Severe Poverty,” 17.

For a related worry, see Gruen and Jones, “Veganism as an Aspiration.”

For relevant discussion taking Peter Singer as its foil, see Frey, Rights, Killing and Suffering , ch. 16. It is illuminating here that the Animal Liberation Front—a radical group that advocates direct and often illegal action in defense of animals—requires only vegetarianism, and not veganism, as a minimal requirement for association. “Credo and Guidelines,” Animal Liberation Front, http://www.animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/alf_credo.htm .

For discussion, see McPherson, “Moorean Arguments” and “Moorean Defense?”

McPherson, “Case for Ethical Veganism,” sec. 3.

For contrasting assessments of the underlying precautionary idea, see, on the one hand, Guererro, “Don’t Know, Don’t Kill”; and Moller, “Abortion and Moral Risk” ; and, on the other, Weatherson, “Running Risks Morally.”

McPherson, “Moorean Defense?” and “Case for Ethical Veganism.”

I am indebted to the editors of this volume for wonderful feedback on a draft of this chapter. Portions of this chapter draw significantly on my previous work on this topic, including “A Case for Ethical Veganism”; “How to Argue”; “A Moorean Defense”; and “Why I Am a Vegan.”

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

More Than Just A Diet: An Inquiry Into Veganism

Degree type

Graduate group, grant number, copyright date, distributor, related resources, contributor.

BACKGROUND: The vegan diet has gained momentum in recent years, with more people transitioning to the diet, whether for health or more ethically based reasons. The vegan diet, often characterized as very restrictive, is associated with health benefits but raises concerns. Controversy regarding the diet exists within the public sphere, with those actively supporting and advocating for it, and others questioning its purpose and proposed benefits, even disparaging its existence, perhaps because of a lack of knowledge about the diet. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to provide a fuller picture of the vegan diet, encompassing both the nutrition and health of the vegan diet as well as related ethical beliefs by studying scientific and popular literature in tandem. Furthermore, the study aimed to provide an insider’s perspective of the vegan diet as a means of combating stereotypes and making the diet more relatable/understandable to those who are not vegan. By combining all three sources, the project aims to educate the public regarding a diet and lifestyle that is often perceived, at least partially, in a negative manner. METHODS: The research was conducted in two parts – literature review and interview study. A literature review of both the scientific and the popular literature was conducted and reviewed from August to November. Pubmed database was used to research the scientific findings while food blogs, vegan websites, and newspaper articles comprised the popular literature. The interview study involved semi-structured, one-time, in-person private interviews conducted during February and March. Twenty vegans (10 students from the University of Pennsylvania and 10 Philadelphia residents) were interviewed and questions targeted personal history of veganism, related health beliefs, factors influencing the decision to become vegan, and diet composition. Once all data was obtained, it was analyzed in tandem. RESULTS: Findings suggest that a well-rounded vegan diet is healthy and such is evidenced by the variety of whole foods and increased vegetable and fruit intake. Health benefits include a decrease in cholesterol, lipid levels, blood pressure, weight, and a reduced risk for a variety of diseases including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Despite the benefits, health concerns do exist, especially in regard nutrient deficiencies, without a well-planned and varied diet. Nutrient concerns include calcium, vitamin D, iron, and particularly vitamin B-12 for which supplements should be taken. The nature of the interviews conducted for this paper was such that a comprehensive but diverse collection of information was obtained, precisely because the interviewees have chosen the vegan diet for a multitude of reasons, and approach their diet and lifestyle in varied ways. However, there are some commonalities that were revealed. Results of the interview studies demonstrate that about half of the vegans are potentially at risk for vitamin D deficiency because most are taking neither vitamin D supplements nor a multivitamin. Comparing the scientific literature with the interview results reveal that most of the vegans include working out within their daily routines, such that they place emphasis upon physical fitness, suggesting that the vegan lifestyle has benefits beyond merely nutritional. Finally, comparing popular literature to the information gleaned through the interviews conducted establishes that many of the stereotypes regarding the vegan diet are unfounded. CONCLUSIONS: The vegan diet is one that is chosen by individuals for various reasons, including health and/or ethical reasons. While many health benefits exist, it is essential for those who are vegan or are planning to become vegan to be educated about potential nutrient deficiencies to prevent adverse outcomes. In addition, it is evident that the vegan diet is much more than a diet itself, but has developed into a lifestyle, often associated with animal rights and environmental advocacy as well as a greater concern for physical activity and mindfulness. Further research begs the question of whether the health benefits associated with the diet are solely attributable to the diet or in conjunction with a greater physical activity level and mindful living. With regard to providing an accurate picture of veganism in the popular literature, it is essential to combat negative unsubstantiated stereotypes and myths by providing vegans with unbiased voice with which to share their own stories and beliefs. Lastly, the popularity of the vegan diet and the question of whether it is nutritionally sound, raise issues of anthropologic significance. Specifically, it prompts consideration of whether our ancestral diet was vegetarian in nature, or depended upon meat for evolutionary progress. Moreover, this study demonstrates that the human diet has changed over time, such that our dietary needs, choices and preferences are inherently reflective of cultural and nutritional anthropology.

Date of degree

Date range for data collection (start date), date range for data collection (end date), digital object identifier, series name and number, volume number, issue number, publisher doi, journal issue, recommended citation, usage statistics.

• Frequently downloaded items
• Most read researchers
• Popular subjects
• International readership

DSpace software copyright © 2002-2024 LYRASIS

• Cookie settings
• Privacy policy
• End User Agreement
• Send Feedback

85 Vegetarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

For a vegetarianism essay, research paper, or speech, check out the titles our team has provided for you below.

📍 Great Research Questions about Vegetarianism

🏆 best vegetarianism essay topics & examples, 📌 interesting topics for essays on vegetarianism, 👍 good vegetarian essay topics.

• What are the key types of vegetarians?
• How do you get animal proteins as a vegetarian?
• Why do some people hate vegetarians?
• What are the ecological benefits of vegetarianism?
• Is a vegan diet affordable for the middle class?
• What are the health benefits of eating meat?
• Are there any unsolvable issues regarding a vegan diet?
• What is the best vegetarian food?
• How do you deal with the risk factors of a vegetarian diet?
• What are some myths about veganism?
• Vegetarian vs. Meat-Eating While meat is a rich source of essential minerals and vitamins, it also results in many adverse effects to the human body.
• Vegetarianism Health Benefits It is going to be argued that; Being a vegetarian is good for health since it leads to the prevention of obesity and overweight, developing strong bones, prevention of heart disease, having cancer protection, having […]
• Why You Should Not Be a Vegetarian To conclude the above, it is important to note that vegetarianism refers to a form of food culture in which the individual eschews animal products.
• Vegan vs. Vegetarian Diets: Impacts on Health However, vegetarians have the option of consuming animal products like eggs and milk, but this option is not available to vegans; vegetarians tend to avoid the intake of all the animal proteins.
• Benefits of Vegetarianism Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide and in spite of enormous research efforts and many treatment options, there is still no guaranteed cure for the disease.anou and Svenson assert that in […]
• Moral Status of Animals: Vegetarianism and Veganism The significance of acknowledging the concept of sentience in this context is the fact that vegetarians and vegans accept the idea that animals are like humans when they feel something.
• Vegetarianism Relation with Health and Religion These are the vegans, the lacto vegetarians, and the Lacto-ovo vegetarians. Apart from the explained contributions to health, vegetarian diets are also instrumental in checking blood pressure, aiding digestion, removal of body toxins and betterment […]
• Consumer Behavior Theory: Vegetarianism If this philosophy is extrapolated to the vegetarianism trend analysis, the theory of reasoned action suggests that the rise in the number of vegetarians stems from people’s tendency to associate vegetarianism with good health.
• Vegetarian or carnivorous diet However, a diet rich in meat and animal products has been found to have severe detrimental effects to people’s health. A well balanced diet that incorporates both meat and vegetables is essential.
• Worldwide Vegan Dairies: Digital Marketing Of particular importance is the promotion of vegan cheese in Australia, where information technology is also developed and the culture of a vegetarian lifestyle is flourishing.
• The Impact of Vegan and Vegetarian Diets on Diabetes Vegetarian diets are popular for a variety of reasons; according to the National Health Interview Survey in the United States, about 2% of the population reported following a vegetarian dietary pattern for health reasons in […]
• Harmfulness of Vegetarianism: The False Health Claim According to the article “How vegetarianism is bad for you and the environment”, “Plant-based sources tend to be low in saturated fat, a component of the brain and a macronutrient vital for human health”..
• Health 2 Go: Vegan Waffles for Everyone All fruits and berries are purchased daily from local suppliers and stored in a contaminant-free unit of the Health 2 Go.
• City’s Finest as a Vegan Ethical Shoe Brand The brand is focused on authenticity and transparency, producing the shoes locally and sourcing recycled and reclaimed materials that combine the principles of veganism and sustainability.
• Vegetarian Consumer Behaviour Raphaely states that the advances in agriculture created a threat to the environment, and it is important to study this situation in an in-depth manner.
• Vegetarian and Non Vegetarian Healthier Diet The first and foremost is that a vegetarian diet is one of the best weapons that can be used against overweight and obesity.
• Vegetarian Women and Prevention of Iron Depletion and Anemia Most of the body’s iron exists in hemoglobin, a quarter of the rest exists as metabolized iron-ferritin in the liver and the rest is found in the muscle tissue and selected enzymes.
• Vegetarianism and Its Causes The first cause to discuss is connected with economic reasons or the inability to include meat in everyday diet. Many vegetarians share the opinion that a meat-based diet is a sign of inhumanity.
• Soul Food: The Origin and Reasons of Vegetarianism This paper explores the origin, the performance of this practice, the solutions this practice offers to the challenges the Indian culture faces, and how vegetarianism reflects the values of the people.
• Ecological Benefits of a Vegetarian Diet The final level of the food sequence is carried out by organisms that help in the decomposition of the primary; secondary; and tertiary organisms back to the food flow by acting as nutrients and manure […]
• Vegetarian or Meat Eaters Contrary to the belief that meat is a great source of proteins, the quality of the protein in meat products is considered to be very poor since there is lack of proper combination of amino […]
• The Vegetarian Burger – A Product Review The burger also comes with significant nutrient components of Sodium and potassium.The total carbohydrate of the burger amounts to 6g which is 2% of the whole production unit.
• Vegetarian Diet and Proper Amount of Vitamins Issue This difference was accounted for by 14% lower zinc levels in the vegetarian diet and 21% less efficient absorption of zinc while eating it.
• Vegan Hot Dogs: Product Marketing The market for vegan hot dogs is a constantly growing market because the younger layer of the population is becoming more adherent to non-meat or vegan food sources.
• The Vegan Dog Kit Company’s Business Plan According to statistics, the number of vegetarianism in the United States is on the rise: as of 2018, five percent of the population adheres to a meatless diet, with half of them practicing veganism. Evidently, […]
• Pro-Vegetarianism to Save the Earth While most people agree that population growth is closely connected to the emission of greenhouse gases, which are harmful to the environment, as they lead to global warming, a rare individual believes that he or […]
• Can Vegetarian Diets Be Healthy? The analysis of the effectiveness of such a nutritional principle for the body can confirm, or, on the contrary, refute the theory about the advantages of vegetarianism and its beneficial effect on body functions.
• Vegetarianism Among Chinese Customers This paper explores the reasons for the rise of vegetarianism among the Chinese. A cross-section of Chinese consumers is also motivated to abstain from meat products because of concerns about the infringement of animal rights.
• “Quit Meat” Vegetarian Diet: Pros and Cons Although many dieticians think that meat is an essential nutrient, the reality is that it is inappropriate to eat animals because it is unhealthy and unethical.
• Vegan Parents’ Influence on Their Children’s Diet The first reason why a vegan diet should not be imposed on children is that every parent should pay close attention to the needs of their toddlers.
• Vegetarian Diet: Pros and Cons On the contrary, the study A Comparison of Some of the Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Vegetarian and Omnivorous Turkish Females by Karabudak, Kiziltan, and Cigerim portrayed that vegetarians had higher risks of hyperhomocysteinaemia and lower […]
• Positive Reasons and Outcomes of Becoming Vegan Being vegan signifies a philosophy and manner of living that aims at excluding, as much as achievable, any kind of exploitation of, and cruelty against, animals for meat, clothing and other uses while promoting and […]
• Herb’aVors Vegan Drive-Thru Product Business Model As a result, the wide public will be able to receive the brand-new service with the excellent health promotion characteristics and traditional cultural implications of fast-food. The breakthrough of the offered concept is the vegan-based […]
• Vegetarian Groups by Motivation To understand the reasons underpinning the popularity of this movement, it is important to distinguish the triggers that make people turn into vegetarians.
• Vegetarianism and Health The doctors claim that vegetarian diets pose a threat to the health of women since they inflict menstrual disruption as well as infertility.
• Vegetarian Diet as a Health-Conscious Lifestyle Making a transition from omnivore to vegetarian lifestyle, besides the impact on the person’s health, people consider the public opinion and the community’s reaction on their decision.
• Target Market for the “Be Fine Vegan Skin Care” To be competitive in the market and realize profits from the sale of the product “Be Fine Vegan Skin Care” in a competitive market, marketing executives analyze and design a market plan that is strategically […]
• Today’s Society Should Move toward Adopting Vegetarian Diet: Arguments For While it is hard for many people to reduce the necessity of eat meat-based products and to increase the use of vegetables and other vegetarian products, however, there is a necessity “to reconsider the increasing […]
• Vegetarianism Is Good For Many Reasons For Health, Ethics, And Religious
• Understanding What Vegetarianism Is and Its Dietary Limitations
• A History of Vegetarianism: Moral and Philosophy
• Vegetarianism and the Other Weight Problem
• The Environmental Necessity of Vegetarianism
• The Misusage Of The Vegetarianism In Teenage Females With Eating Disorders
• Determinants of Vegetarianism and Meat Consumption Frequency in Ireland
• The Dietary Concept of Vegetarianism and the Nutritional Intake
• Vegetarianism Is The Human Conception For Man ‘s Own Advantage
• Why Vegetarianism Is Good For You And The Planet
• Vegetarianism: The Key to a Health-Conscious, Ecological America
• The Significance of Cow Protection and Vegetarianism in Hinduism
• Relative Moral Superiority And Proselytizing Vegetarianism
• Determinants of Vegetarianism and Partial Vegetarianism in the United Kingdom
• An Analysis of the Three Important Aspects of Vegetarianism
• Negative Stereotypes of Vegetarianism
• Vegetarianism Versus Eating Meat
• The Effects Of Vegetarianism On Health And Environment
• A Description of Vegetarianism as a Way of Life For Many People For Centuries
• History And Philosophy Of Vegetarianism
• Vegetarianism – To Meat Or Not To Meat
• Arguments in Favor and Against Vegetarianism
• American Vegetarianism How It Became a Subculture
• The Benefits of Vegetarianism and Its Main Features
• The Health and Economic Benefits of Vegetarianism
• The Main Benefits of Vegetarianism and Its Importance
• Some Economic Benefits and Costs of Vegetarianism
• Why Vegetarianism Is Good For Many Reasons For Life
• The Hidden Politics of Vegetarianism Caste and the Hindu Canteen
• An Analysis of Vegetarianism as the Best Way To Save Animals Lives and Help the Environment
• Vegetarianism: Fighting the Addiction to Meat
• The Earliest Record of Vegetarianism in Ancient History
• Vegetarianism Is The Modern Diet Plan
• An Analysis of the Moral and Religious Reasons of Vegetarianism and Its Health Benefits
• Benefits Of Veganism And Vegetarianism
• Animal Rights Is A Cause For Vegetarianism
• Vegetarianism vs Veganism
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, September 27). 85 Vegetarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/vegetarianism-essay-topics/

"85 Vegetarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 27 Sept. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/vegetarianism-essay-topics/.

IvyPanda . (2023) '85 Vegetarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 27 September.

IvyPanda . 2023. "85 Vegetarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." September 27, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/vegetarianism-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "85 Vegetarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." September 27, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/vegetarianism-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "85 Vegetarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." September 27, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/vegetarianism-essay-topics/.

• Cruelty to Animals Titles
• Humanism Research Ideas
• Animal Testing Topics
• Veganism Essay Ideas
• Meat Research Ideas
• Diet Essay Topics
• Hinduism Topics
• Dietary Supplements Questions
• Fast Food Essay Titles
• Anorexia Essay Ideas
• Food Essay Ideas
• Malnutrition Titles
• Obesity Ideas
• Metabolic Disorders Questions
• Vitamins Research Topics

Veganism, Moral Motivation and False Consciousness

• Open access
• Published: 19 April 2021
• Volume 34 , article number  15 , ( 2021 )

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

• Susana Pickett   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4291-3620 1  

12k Accesses

4 Citations

14 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Despite the strength of arguments for veganism in the animal rights literature, alongside environmental and other anthropocentric concerns posed by industrialised animal agriculture, veganism remains only a minority standpoint. In this paper, I explore the moral motivational problem of veganism from the perspectives of moral psychology and political false consciousness. I argue that a novel interpretation of the post-Marxist notion of political false consciousness may help to make sense of the widespread refusal to shift towards veganism. Specifically, the notion of false consciousness fills some explanatory gaps left by the moral psychological notion of akrasia , often understood to refer to a weakness of will. Central to my approach is the idea that animal exploitation is largely systemic and the assumption that moral motivation is inseparable from moral thinking. In this light, the primary obstacle to the adoption of veganism arises not so much from a failure to put genuine beliefs into action, but rather in a shared, distorted way of thinking about animals. Thus, common unreflective objections to veganism may be said to be manifestations of false consciousness.

Similar content being viewed by others

C. Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination and the Construction of Talcott Parsons as a Conservative Grand Theorist

Helmut Staubmann

Metaethics as Dead Politics? On Political Normativity and Justification

Social justice and sociological theory.

Bradley Campbell

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Why does the case for veganism often fail to convince? Insofar as it does sway opinion, why then does it fail to motivate large-scale social change? Whilst moral disagreements are inevitable, the core case for veganism from the animal rights perspective – complemented as it is by environmental, social justice, and global health considerations – is robust. Footnote 1 Considering this jointly with commonly held moral principles, one might reasonably expect the percentage of vegans to be much higher, at least in economically developed societies. On the other hand, apathy towards veganism prevails, and common objections to veganism often rest on rationalisations (Piazza 2015 , p. 114). In this paper, I suggest that a failure to accept the moral status of animals as required by veganism may itself constitute a failure of moral motivation (hereinafter referred to as motivation). Central to this position is the premise that moral thinking and motivation are inseparable, and thus thinking does not necessarily precede motivation. If this is the case, then common excuses presented against veganism express failures of motivation rather than intent, by which I mean the motivation to think of animals as being recipients of moral consideration in a manner that conflicts with our social habits and received opinion.

To narrow the scope of my opening questions, I examine the motivational problem from two radically opposing perspectives; namely akrasia and false consciousness. Akrasia – often known as ‘weakness of the will’ – is a failure of practical reasoning whereby individuals act knowingly and willingly against their better judgement. This idea has already been developed by Aaltola ( 2016 ) to explain the widespread reluctance to adopt veganism. Marxian false consciousness, by contrast, is traditionally understood as the social consciousness of an exploited class. It leads individuals to act – not fully knowingly or willingly, and thus not akratically – under a dominant ideology. This ideology may run contrary to one’s best interests, but I argue that it can also taint one’s conception of the ‘greater’ good. I understand false as applying to groups of individuals beyond social class, and argue that it is false consciousness, rather than akrasia, that is more likely to be a persistent condition that dampens motivation. As such, false consciousness may have greater explanatory power than akrasia for the widespread refusal to shift towards veganism.

This paper is divided into three sections. First, I offer a brief overview of the motivational difficulties associated with veganism, specifically the role of willpower and typically presented rationalisations. Second, I give an overview of akrasia and the structure of akratic action. Furthermore, I consider social factors which impact upon our moral thinking, serving to highlight that moral thinking is not reducible to syllogistic-style reasoning. Shortcomings of the application of akrasia lead on to the final section on false consciousness, wherein I explore the persistency of dominant ideologies and their impact upon moral thinking and motivation.

The Vegan Motivational Problem

Moral motivation is typically conceived as the phenomenon of being motivated to do what one judges to be the right thing to do. Naturally, moral reasons can conflict with one’s self-interest and other reasons. In the animal ethics literature, care ethicists, including Luke ( 1992 ), are critical of the mainstream, rationalist approach exemplified by Singer ( 2015 ) and Regan ( 2004 ). The rationalist approach tends to put forward arguments for veganism and vegetarianism without tackling the motivational question of why some people may be convinced by their arguments but fail to put their beliefs into action. By contrast, care ethicists consider humans to have an innate sense of empathy towards animals, which is the basis of moral motivation, but such empathy needs to be cultivated. A problem with this approach is that most people carry on eating animals despite being empathetic to their suffering. Indeed, it is not unusual for carnivores to feel guilt and avoid imagining a slaughtered cow when eating a hamburger (Greenebaum 2012 , p. 316). Hence, it is pertinent to ask why veganism poses such motivational difficulties, considering that the public possesses some moral regard for animals as well as varying degrees of empathy for animals.

Bona Fide Challenges

While some aspects of veganism, such as health and environmental considerations, may be motivated by human self-interest, other dimensions conflict not only with narrow self-interest but also with prudential self-interest. As such, they constitute bona fide reasons to act or side against veganism. ‘Go vegan’ approaches present veganism as being easy, yet some challenges merit attention. These include financial sacrifice, social alienation, and conflict. However, I argue that taste (flavour) is not a bona fide reason.

First, veganism may sometimes involve financial sacrifice. This is because vegan substitutes often cost more (Mills 2019 , p. 17). However, this does not apply to a large part of the population who has access to and can afford plant-based foods. Second, veganism involves alienation. Food is communal in family and social situations, and a vegan at the table can be seen as a threat (Twine 2014 , p. 632). Worse still, vegans often experience exclusion and disapproval (Bresnahan et al. 2016 , p. 13) and such forms of discrimination as ‘vegaphobia’ can arise (Horta 2018 , p. 359). Third, veganism involves moral conflict, not only because of how vegans are perceived but also because of how they perceive others. Raimond Gaita states that vegans who provocatively shout, ‘meat is murder’ exhibit a pathological gap between what they profess and how they act, in that ‘they don’t act as though they live among murderers’ (Gaita 2016 , pp. 22–23). This insight is powerful, even when applied to less polarising claims such as ‘meat involves unnecessary suffering’. From the perspective of some vegans, it can be soul-draining to inhabit a world that celebrates animal consumption and forces ‘question upon question from non-vegan interlocutors’ (Reid 2017 , p. 39), and vegans are often asked to justify their standpoint and then subsequently criticised for being ‘preachy’ (Cole and Morgan 2011 , p. 149). Fourth, radical factions can create tension with other individuals who do not live up to the expectations of the ‘hegemonic vegan frame’, a phrase coined by Wrenn ( 2019 ) to describe highly bureaucratised veganism (often referred to as the ‘vegan police’). There are indeed many ‘veganisms’ (Jones 2016 , p. 24). Hence, vegans may face opposition, not only from non-vegans but also from other vegans.

Finally, Kazez ( 2018 ) argues that food taste is not necessarily trivial. For example, persistently unpalatable food could affect one’s wellbeing. However, I disagree that this constitutes a bona fide argument against veganism, because it is based on a hypothetical consideration that assumes too much since not all vegan food tastes disgusting to most people. As Singer notes, it is not as if animal flesh is uniformly delicious and vegetarian food is uniformly awful (Singer 1980 , p. 333). Given this logic, one can reasonably object on the basis that taste is typically trivial when compared with what Rowlands ( 2013 , p. 6) refers to as an animal’s ‘vital interests’. What is one to make, then, of those seemingly incapable of going vegan owing to their craving for meat? For instance, Eugene Mills recounts how he gave up after trying to be vegan for three days. His cravings for hamburgers became so powerful that he became distracted from the pursuit of important projects (Mills 2019 , p. 19). It is not clear, though, that he deemed veganism to be an important long-term project.

Excepting taste, the aforementioned challenges can constitute bona fide, prima facie reasons for not embracing veganism. When coupled with the realisation that one’s lifestyle choices may have little positive impact globally (this is the phenomenon of ‘causal inefficacy’ which I discuss in more detail later), and after considering the disconnect between consumption, production, and killing, these reasons can become powerful. As a result, it may require substantial willpower to become a vegan against one’s cultural traditions. There are cases, however, where veganism does not require willpower. For example, where veganism is second nature (Lumsden 2017 , p. 221); or one finds joy rather than sacrifice in veganism (Aaltola 2015 , p. 42). In general, though, the act of becoming a vegan does require some degree of willpower.

Willpower in Deliberation

One may object on the grounds that, if animals have no moral status, as Hsiao ( 2015 , p. 284) proposes, then the moral motivational question of veganism does not arise. However, I disagree that this is necessarily the case. It appears to me that moral thinking and motivation are inseparable in the same way that reason and feeling cannot be fully separated, any more than form and content can. Indeed, without motivation, moral thinking would not be possible, for what else would motivate the thinking insofar as moral thinking is not purely theoretical? Hence, when I speak about moral motivation, albeit broadly conceived, I also include the motivation to deliberate about moral matters, including those concerning animals. According to this view, which I refer to as the ‘motivational unity thesis’, motivation is not always something that takes place at the end of a practical deliberation as to whether it is right or wrong to act (this is the narrow conception of motivation). Motivation is also needed to see certain others as worthy of moral deliberation in the first place.

The idea that animals have no moral worth is not commonplace, but the notion that animals are of lesser worth is central to the orthodoxy of animal welfare, a commonly held view which justifies animal suffering according to their utility to humans. This view has been said to explain ‘some of the apparently schizophrenic attitudes to animals that occur in Britain and elsewhere’ (Garner 2013 , p. 80). Regardless of whether one believes that animals are of lesser, or indeed no moral worth (or whether one has ever considered any of this in terms of moral worth), the motivation to think things through with moral seriousness fails when we conclude that we have a right to eat or kill an animal merely because, for example, it is traditional, natural, or simply because the animal was raised on a local farm or one with higher welfare standards than some other farms.

More elaborate justifications against veganism can be provided, but we fail to do justice to animals as the objects of our deliberation if we conclude that safeguarding our lifestyle habits is generally a good enough reason to justify animal exploitation. This constitutes a broad motivational failure insofar as we fail to view animals as individuals who are ‘equally real’, to borrow Thomas Nagel’s phrase (Nagel 1970 , p. 14). Still, one might lodge at least two objections. First, there is no motivational failure if it is not deemed morally objectionable to use animals as commodities in industrialised societies. Second, one might concede that a motivational failure only exists if one holds the conviction that veganism is morally obligatory, yet otherwise fails (akratically) to act accordingly.

Since this paper is not an argument for veganism, I cannot respond to the first objection directly but can link it to the second objection. To clarify, I can invoke the motivational unity thesis to argue that motivational failures can take place at the level of thinking alone (including what kind of beings to include in these considerations), and not merely when it comes to putting beliefs into action. Based on this premise, the exclusion of animals from serious moral consideration is tantamount to moral nihilism and leads only to further rationalisations when probed. Therefore, in addition to the prudential ( bona fide ) reasons against veganism discussed earlier, I now turn my attention to some common rationalisations.

Two Rationalisations

Rationalisations against veganism readily occur when the issue is not thought through. Indeed, we are prone to motivated ignorance (Tam 2019 , p. 6). The objection that animals only exist to be eaten and various other defensive tactics, exhibit apathy in the face of superior evidence to the contrary. Poor argumentation is relevant to motivation because thinking requires effort, while social habits and contempt inhibit it. Many rationalisations against veganism are merely strawmen, yet more sophisticated objections permeate the animal ethics literature, namely the causal inefficacy objection and the principle of unnecessary harm. On the one hand, causal inefficacy is the idea that an individual’s veganism has no impact on the market, specifically that one’s veganism will not make a difference to overall meat consumption. On the other hand, unnecessary harm is the principle (in the current context) by which it is unjustifiable to harm animals when vegan alternatives are available—a principle that is subject to distortion. Both principles are nonetheless interesting as they serve as a double-edged sword, both for and against veganism.

The causal inefficacy objection to veganism has accrued a vast literature which has been recently summarised by Fischer ( 2020 ). It is related to the ‘free-rider’ problem of rational choice theory, although my concern here is with the role of motivation in our thinking about causal inefficacy serving effectively as a proverbial ‘get out of jail free card’. There is a parallel with global warming, whereby people manage feelings of hopelessness with expressions such as ‘what can one person do?’, often to avoid thinking about a challenging issue (Cole & Morgan 2011 , p. 156). In fact, from the existence of a global problem alone, nothing clearly and directly follows with regards to individual responsibility.

In this context, group identity can be powerful, since a group can be more impactful and offer moral support: ‘within the safe bubble of the vegan community, its practitioners are noticeably joyous’ (Twine 2014 , p. 637). Relatedly, hope plays an important role in moral thinking. Moody-Adams ( 2017 , p. 155–6) discusses the motivating power of hope, specifically how those social movements which deepened our understanding of justice and compassion were driven by those who were confident in acting on their moral convictions and hopeful of moral change. Similarly, Agnes Tam emphasises the power of “We-reasoning” as a distinctive form of communitarian rationality (Tam 2019 , p. 3). Naturally, this does not mean that one abandons self-critical thinking, but it is a potential pitfall of identity groups (Fukuyama 2018 , p. 115).

As Garner points out, the phrase ‘unnecessary harm’ is somewhat vague, a catch-all that can have political advantages in supporting a spectrum of speciesist positions depending on geographical and historical factors (Garner 2013 , p. 81). For example, animal harm is viewed as a necessary evil in support of traditional forms of hospitality and economic interests. Central to the manipulation of these principles is the conflation of difficult, often potentially intractable empirical and analytic problems with practical moral matters about how one should live. In this vein, Reid has pointed out that simply not having a fully worked out theory of veganism is not sufficient reason, in of itself, for not becoming a vegan, in the same way as not having a fully worked out theory of knowledge is not a justification for epistemic scepticism (Reid 2017 , p. 38). Indeed, veganism can be seen as a practical stance in response to animal exploitation, even though it can only ever be aspirational, for it is not possible to avoid causing harm altogether (Gruen and Jones 2016 , p. 157–158). In order to reach the vegan practical conclusion, one need not have to resolve intractable problems of causation, collective responsibility, or necessity.

I have argued, because moral thinking and motivation are not entirely separable, that distorted thinking can dampen motivation, while motivational failures may also result in morally distorted thinking. Take, for instance, the conflation of difficult empirical and philosophical matters with practical moral considerations. Next, I consider how philosophers have traditionally accounted for the breakdown of moral motivation in practical deliberation, and how this can be applied to the vegan motivational problem.

Omnivore’s Akrasia

Akrasia , sometimes referred to as a weakness of will or incontinence, is often understood to mean an intentional action contrary to one’s better judgement. It is, by definition, rather a failure of practical rationality in the shape of a motivational failure. The literature on akrasia dates back to ancient Greek philosophy and the contemporary literature in moral psychology is often technical. To be concise, I assume that akrasia is possible and follow Davidson’s ( 1980 ) definition of akrasia as an action that is free, intentional, and contrary to a full-blown practical judgement.

In doing x an agent acts incontinently if and only if: (a) the agent does x intentionally; (b) the agent believes there is an alternative action y open to him; and (c) the agent judges that, all things considered, it would be better to do y than to do x . (Davidson 1980 , p. 22)

Practical reasoning often starts with prima facie judgements, whereupon various reasons are weighted against each other until an evaluative conclusion is derived. When deliberating whether one ought to become a vegan, prima facie reasons might include animal welfare, health, or environmental concerns (notwithstanding myriad other reasons for and against veganism, including one’s psychological and social wellbeing, or how one’s actions will be perceived by others). An individual may accept good overall reasons for adopting veganism, yet fail to embrace it in practice. Indeed, this seems quite plausible. Elisa Aaltola ( 2015 ) coined the term ‘omnivore’s akrasia ’ to refer to the state arising in those who voluntarily consume animal products despite believing that they have been produced by immoral means. Could widespread akrasia , then, play a major role in preventing a significant proportion of the public from adopting veganism? I argue that, despite its explanatory power, the traditional approach is subject to two limitations.

The Limits of Traditional Akrasia

A limitation of akrasia is that moral decisions, such as the decision to go vegan, may not necessarily be the outcome of practical deliberation. On the flip side, one’s better judgement may be faulty. In explanation, ‘all things considered’, or prima facie judgements may not necessarily yield a correct moral answer, not least because we are limited as epistemic and moral beings. Some philosophers (Arpaly 2000 ; Audi 1990 ; McIntyre 2006 ) have even questioned whether akrasia is necessarily irrational. What if the better judgement itself is faulty, or if the desires which ground the ‘better judgement’ fail to represent the agent’s overall desires and interests?

I shall illustrate this with a powerful example from Bennett's reflections on Huckleberry Finn (Bennett 1974 ), so that I can then explore how this applies to veganism. In Mark Twain’s famous novel, Huck believes that, all things considered, the right thing to do is to turn his slave friend Jim in to the authorities, but he fails to do so. ‘Huck hasn’t the strength of will to do what he sincerely thinks he ought to do’ (Bennett 1974 , p. 126). He acts simply out of sympathy for Jim. This turns akrasia on its head, for Huck acts out of moral necessity (he cannot do otherwise), yet he acts against his better judgement.

Similarly, veganism may not necessarily be the direct outcome of practical deliberation. For some, the commitment to veganism may happen over and above any prima facie considerations. It may be the case that one already has an inner necessity. For example, one is moved by the visceral repugnance of the slaughter and ingestion of animals or a deep sense of compassion.

Thus, one could argue that the akrasia explanation of non-veganism involves an overly simplistic, syllogistic account of moral thinking, largely ignoring the social context. Individuals are not disembodied moral agents capable of making rational decisions independently of the social contex—there is much more at stake than merely prima facie reasons in terms of practical deliberations about what one morally ought to do. Could a more nuanced, socially informed notion of akrasia serve to overcome this limitation?

Sociopolitical Akrasia

Aaltola ( 2015 , 2016 ) takes a nuanced sociopolitical approach to omnivore’s akrasia . Like Amelie Rorty ( 1997 ), she views akrasia as a social problem, in that social forces prevent veganism by placing individuals within a continual state of akrasia wherein conscious deliberation and self-control are futile. These forces include ambiguity or conflict at the root of our institutions, habit, consumerism, and the culture of immediate reward or sensory hedonism. Significantly, the meat-eaters’ paradox, in which a societal love for certain animals such as dogs and cats is cultivated, while cows, pigs, and other animals, which are equally sentient, are mistreated and slaughtered, is entrenched within our institutions (Aaltola 2016 , p. 118).

Despite these conflictual beliefs, Footnote 2 most individuals believe that food choices are rational but overlook how these choices are grounded via emotive, cultural, or otherwise more ambiguous justifications (Aaltola 2016 , p. 117). Habit perpetuates the meat-eaters’ paradox for, although the original reason for eating meat was survival, it is no longer essential for a large part of the world’s population, so it is in some ways a mindless habit and one that is exacerbated by consumerism. Given this, asking individuals to exercise self-control is insufficient (Aaltola 2016 , p. 124). Indeed, ‘our akratic choices may take place beyond the possibility of conscious deliberation, and thereby beyond the possibility of conscious hedonism or egoism’ (Aaltola 2016 , p. 131). This results in a vicious circle wherein contempt may feed moral apathy and we may thus become apathetic to act altruistically. Therefore, Aaltola ( 2016 , p. 135) concludes that we are in a state of continual akrasia .

Whilst such application of akrasia is insightful, akrasia may not be the best explanation for the phenomenon of widespread omnivorism. Crucially, the possibility of perpetual akrasia seems absurd, especially given that akrasia is, by definition, free intentional action contrary to one’s better judgement. In the context of permanent akrasia , as described by Aaltola, individuals are not acting freely or intentionally, and their better judgement is not to become vegans. As such, they are not akratically failing to become vegans: they never set out to do so in the first place, so there is no motivational failure as the rational outcome of practical deliberation.

Similarly, akrasia may not be the best notion to incorporate mindlessness, self-deception or voluntary ignorance. The notion of akrasia struggles to accommodate the fact that not all our thinking is transparent, bona fide , or easily moulded into practical syllogisms. For instance, it has been said that, once we are accustomed to behaving in ways that have implicit normative content, we struggle to contemplate the possibility of change and may thus engage in self-deception to justify wrongful actions (Cooke 2017 , p. 9). John Searle exemplified one such deception: ‘I try not to think about animal rights because I fear I’d have to become a vegetarian if I worked it out consistently.’ (Cooke 2017 , p. 10).

Indeed, such deception is more likely to be widely shared, given that most people give similar excuses against veganism, commonly referred to as the 4Ns (the belief that eating meat is natural, normal, necessary, and nice; Piazza et al. 2015 ). For Luke ( 1992 , p. 106), such rationalisations consume abundant social energy. However, one can object that very little thinking power is normally used, even though the passions may be inflamed. Given these limitations, one must ask whether the notion of false consciousness would fare any better in accounting for such persistent motivational gaps and largely unreflective responses to veganism or be more cohesive with the idea that animal exploitation is largely systemic.

Omnivore’s False Consciousness

False consciousness is a post-Marxian notion. Although Marx did not use the phrase ‘fase consciousness’, the notion is embedded in much of his thinking. Thus, Miller ( 1972 , p. 433) argues that a broad interpretation of the related concept of ideology, understood as applying to theories, belief-systems and practices involving the use of ideas, has great explanatory power concerning the persistency and influence of ideologies over the actions of the groups who adopt such ideologies. Crucially, if such a group is confronted by others holding incompatible ideas, ‘it has no resources to fall back upon, it can only reaffirm its original faith’ (Miller 1972 , p. 433). Alternatively, if the ideology is seen primarily as an explanatory framework, then ‘the ideology is given repeated empirical confirmation, through the selection of what is perceived’ (Miller 1972 , p. 433). When ideologies function in these ways, they can be said to involve false consciousness. If Miller is correct, and omnivorism can be shown to depend on an ideology that necessarily involves false consciousness, then this may account for the persistency of omnivorism over reasoned arguments, thus filling the gaps left by omnivore’s akrasia .

In Marxist theory, false consciousness is essentially deemed to be political in nature and refers to the social consciousness of the proletariat as an exploited class under capitalism. It is thereby related to the concept of ideological power and forms the basis of Luke’s third dimension of power, wherein the illegitimate use of power by one group over another confers the power to mislead (Lukes 2005 , p. 149). To put it simply, it is the power to control what groups think as being right, resulting in biased acceptance without question. Marx and Engels used the concept of ideology to refer to ‘the distorted beliefs intellectuals [hold] about society and the power of their own ideas. Those who produced ideologies suffered from false consciousness: they were deluded about their own beliefs.’ (Eyerman 1981 , p. 43). Given this tenet, one may be puzzled by my use of false consciousness, as it seems to shift the construct of veganism to being about people rather than about animals. How, then, is false consciousness relevant to the problem of motivation in veganism, given that animals are the exploited group in question, even to the extent that some theorists, such as Perlo ( 2002 , p.306), have likened animals to the proletariat?

The notion of false consciousness has evolved since its origins, and my intention here is to expand its application further. Marx’s concept was further developed by Gramsci, Lukacs and the early Frankfurt School, and later expanded to apply to any social class with a ‘limited form of experience in society’ (Eyerman 1981 , p. 43–44). Thus, it is not limited to Marxian class and has been more applied broadly to groups both before and after the rise of capitalism. For example, Michael Rosen ( 2016 , p. 10) sees Marxian false consciousness as a critique and the development of rationalistic understandings of a previously unformulated notion of false consciousness, beginning with Plato, for whom irrationality of the soul led to the injustices of the state; and Aristotle, for whom false consciousness is necessarily akratic . Omnivore’s false consciousness may thus be viewed as a novel development and a particular application of false consciousness Footnote 3 to a broad majority of humans who practise omnivorism in economically developed societies.

Narrow and Broad False Consciousness

So, what then is false about false consciousness? False consciousness is often portrayed in terms of one being misled about one’s true interests. However, there is a distinction arising between being blinded by one’s interests (i.e., being impetuous) and being blind to them, where false consciousness is often associated with the latter (Runciman 1969 , p. 303). The self-interest interpretation, however, omits the altruistic and moral dimensions of human thinking, whereby one may also be blind not only to others’ interests but also to their moral dimension. Traditionally, false consciousness is about group interest and social ontology, but I shall argue that it can also distort moral thinking in much the same way as it distorts non-moral thinking. The notion that Marxism is not totally abstracted from morality is not novel (e.g., Lukes 1985 ), so I will instead set the context before I explain how it bears on veganism.

Marx avoided talk about morality, not only because he hated preaching and was distrustful of the moralist per se (Popper 1995 , p. 220), but because he saw contemporary morality as being part of the bourgeois superstructure, in which class morality added an extra layer of false consciousness. The worker believes, according to Singer, that capitalist has a moral right to the profits Footnote 4 (Singer 2018 , p. 83). Although Lenin and others claimed that Marx’s theory was purely scientific, it has since been argued that Marx held a normative position, not least because of his desire to end capitalism (Cochrane 2010 , p. 95; Singer 2018 , p. 82), his hatred of servility, and his ‘desire for a better world that it is hard not to see as moral’ (Lukes 1985 , p. 3).

Central to the Marxian notion of false consciousness is the tenet that both the capitalist and proletariat are afflicted by it and, thus, that the proletariat believed, whether implicitly or explicitly, that the capitalist had a moral or legitimate right to profit. If proletarian Jim held such a belief about himself, he would also believe that the capitalist had a right to the labour of his fellow proletarians. In this world view, the proletariat is both wronged by the capitalist and unaware that they have been wronged. Similarly, capitalists had so distorted or delimited moral ideas insofar as they too failed to acknowledge the true interests of the exploited group and were unaware of their wrongdoing. In the case of animals, the public largely carries on supporting systemic practices of animal-exploitation without acknowledging the wrongs inflicted on animals in its name.

Hence, false consciousness may be understood narrowly as relating to either self or group interest or, more broadly, as including an altruistic moral dimension in the sense of limiting such a dimension. Indeed, if I am blind to my own true interests, then I may not necessarily be receptive to those of other people or those of animals. My claim is not that there is a causal link between blindness to one’s own interests and blindness to the interests of others, but rather that it is absurd to contend that false consciousness impacts only one’s self-interested thinking. Crucially, false consciousness may so taint one’s conception of the good and limit the moral self, that it has the effect of occluding the motivational difficulties of veganism. Hence, the akratic break (motivational failure) does not actually take place, at least not explicitly.

This broad interpretation of false consciousness presupposes a close link between alienation and false consciousness. As Rosen states in his discussion of Marx’s early writings on alienation as a form of life, ‘the alienated worker’s failure to recognize himself in the product of his labour and the failure of isolated individuals to recognize each other fully as fellow human beings are expressions of false consciousness that are lived and experienced before they are theorized about or reflected upon.’ (Rosen 2016 , p. 35). In this sense, the moral self is not impervious to false consciousness. This is interesting within the context of the vegan debate, as the cumulative case for veganism (i.e., the case from a wide range of perspectives) encompasses both moral and enlightened self-interested strands. If we deem both the narrow and broad sense of false consciousness to be appropriate, then this may help to explain how a substantial proportion of the general public may be somewhat blinded by the dominant animal-exploiting ideology in contrasting, yet complementary ways, so as to render the ideology quite impenetrable.

This narrow sense of false consciousness applies to the case for veganism from either anthropocentric or enlightened self-interest perspectives. Strictly, these perspectives support plant-based living as opposed to fully blown ethical veganism but are largely consistent with it. Overall, exploitative animal practices are agreed to have a detrimental impact on the environment, sustainability, and climate change (Rosi 2017 ; Sabaté & Soret 2014 ), as well as global human health (Tuso 2013 ) and that of future generations (Deckers 2011 ). Zoonotic diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have also been traced to wet markets where animals are confined within unnatural and unsanitary conditions (Singer 2020 , pp. 82–83). Despite these, and other harms to humans, the animal agricultural complex has a vested interest in continued animal exploitation. Moreover, the advertising industry and media can exercise tremendous power in perpetuating the desire to consume animal products.

There are at least two difficulties with the attribution of narrow false consciousness in these scenarios. First, the oppressor and oppressed (or exploiter and exploited) groups are not distinct, for at least some humans count as the exploited, even though they too contribute to animal exploitation through their consumption and labour. Although this complicates matters, it does not in of itself make the premise of false consciousness impossible, for (unlike Marxian social class) an individual can belong to more than one group at any one time. In this respect, animals are posited as the oppressed, yet humans are both oppressor and oppressed. In fact, the presumption of such a stark dichotomy of classes would have very little application in terms of the animal agricultural complex which lacks any clearly defined boundaries.

Second, false consciousness is supposed to affect both the exploiter and exploited alike, but it is not altogether clear why it would not be in the interest of the exploiter to exploit, particularly in terms of material self-interest. It may well be that the exploiting group is subject to false consciousness but is not necessarily deceived about its own material self-interest. After all, many people’s livelihoods depend on animal agriculture, which does not go against their immediate, material self-interest. However, the exploiter might be in denial about the consequences of their own exploitation. In Hegel’s dialectic, which influenced Marx’s thinking, the master (to his own detriment) becomes too dependent on the slave. When translated in terms of the current exploitation of animals and nature, exploiters act in such a way as though they are blind to the ultimate consequences of their actions, yet the crucial difference here lies between enlightened self-interest in the medium term and the long run, for it is the latter that false consciousness is supposed to affect.

On the other hand, in a somewhat broader sense, false consciousness acts against the case for veganism from the point of view of ethical and political perspectives such as animal rights and care ethics. These are deemed to be ‘veganism for the animals’ perspectives that constitute the core of ethical veganism, which are not defensible from the standpoint of self-interest. In this context, false consciousness might serve as a good explanatory match for two phenomena; namely the absence of moral reflection on whether one ought to become a vegan (in light of the meat-eater's paradox), and second, the poverty of thinking exemplified by the public’s common rebuttals in response to arguments for veganism.

Although not all objections or negative responses to veganism are crude, there is a widespread social malaise in the form of a prevalent moral apathy towards the exploitation of animals. This matter is political, not only from the perspective that humans exercise illegitimate power over animals but also that animals are worthy of political justice as argued, for example, in The Political Turn in Animal Ethics (Garner and O'Sullivan 2016 ). Further, it could be construed that the public’s commonplace objections to veganism are socially determined and thus often devoid of individual self-expression. The issue is also a very personal one, in the sense that moral thinking is inextricably personal, yet such thinking may at times be thwarted by sociopolitical imperatives. When deliberating on whether one ought to become a vegan, insofar as one engages in moral discourse at all, the moral problem is, and ought to be, inescapably one’s own in the sense that one cannot pass it on to someone else to resolve on one’s behalf (on this topic see Gaita 1989 , p. 128), let alone rely on the unexamined opinions of the majority. However, this is precisely what tends to happen when people confront veganism. The next step, then, is to relate common, unreflective objections to veganism to aspects of political false consciousness.

Four Features of False Consciousness

To deconstruct how thinking can be systematically distorted, I build on Miller’s account of the four dimensions of false consciousness (Miller 1972 , p. 443–444), sketching how these features may be manifested in omnivore’s false consciousness. The four interrelated features are conceptual inadequacy, isolation of phenomena, eternalisation, and reification.

First, false consciousness involves a degree of conceptual inadequacy in that it leads to fallacious reasoning . For example, generalisations based on superficial similarity, whereupon subsequent analysis can reveal them to be disparate. Conceptual inadequacy includes such common injunctions against veganism as animals being unintelligent, carnivorism natural, and vegans self-righteous. These claims expose distortion as empirical analysis – and frequently linguistic or logical analysis alone – can prove them to be fallacious.

For instance, does it follow from the premise that animals are less intelligent that we have a moral right to eat them? Does the fact that something is natural necessarily make an action or attitude morally justifiable? Are all vegans self-righteous? Even if they all are, this latter argument is effectively ad hominem and therefore invalid. Similarly, the idea that veganism is impossible because nobody can ever avoid partaking in harming animals is to misunderstand the very concept of veganism. It exhibits fallacious reasoning by misusing the concept of vagueness. Just because there are borderline cases between a child and an adult, or shades of grey, it does not necessarily follow that nobody can ever be an adult, or that nothing can be truly black. The same holds true for veganism. While nobody would seriously deny that adulthood or true blackness are possible, many are prepared to subject veganism to a reductio ad absurdum . These common examples of conceptual inadequacy are not isolated mistakes, or merely manifestations of the ignorance of specific information, but rather are fundamental ways in which thought fails. They are manifestations of how the acceptance of the moral and political legitimacy (or neutrality) of animal exploitation is deeply rooted within the collective consciousness and embedded within our social institutions.

Second, the process involves the isolation of phenomena, notably a refusal to see an instance of individual behaviour as being part of a wider social system. For example, the belief that one exercises free will in consumer choices Footnote 5 and, therefore, that one’s decision to eat animals is autonomous when one is, in actuality, making socially conditioned decisions which are influenced by the meat industry. Hence, Nibert talks of a socially engineered public consciousness, highlighting how organisations such as the ‘Center for Consumer Freedom’ exploit both the concepts of ‘freedom’ and ‘consumer choice’ (Nibert 2013 , p. 266). Since others are doing the same, these attitudes are considered to be justificatory of the wider system.

Third, it involves eternalisation, whereby conventional relationships or characteristics are regarded as being permanently fixed within the nature of things. For example, in medieval Europe, society was ranked hierarchically from God down to inanimate objects. Similarly, the hierarchical belief in speciesism is effectively an extension of the belief that ‘might is right’, wherein biological omnivorism is extrapolated to entail a right to exploit animals. For Cooke, the view of the innate inferiority of animals is embedded within our social consciousness, and the moral imagination must be cultivated to break out of such self-deception (Cooke 2017 , p. 14–15). This feature of false consciousness serves as the key to perpetuating certain practices.

Let us consider an example of eternalisation, such as the common belief (in some countries) that a turkey must be the centrepiece of the Christmas dinner table, as tradition dictates, in such a way that a vegan alternative is deemed to be out of the question. In what way is this thinking distorted? How does it manifest as a form of false consciousness? One of the distortions revolves around the false belief that tradition is alone sufficient justification for engaging in a specific practice. Some traditions, such as forced marriages, are morally wrong and so tradition alone does not morally justify a practice. It constitutes a distorted form of thinking rather than a question of holding a false belief, as most individuals living in liberal societies do accept that tradition alone does not morally justify a practice. It manifests as a form of false consciousness insofar as the distortion is not politically neutral.

Like most animal agriculture, the mass confinement, fattening and slaughter of hundreds of millions of turkeys aged between 14 and 24 weeks for Christmas involves the illegitimate use of power of humans over animals. Yet, such traditions continue, not only because people enjoy certain flavours and family traditions, but also because a powerful industry lobby has a vested interest in perpetuating and normalising this form of animal exploitation. For example, in December 2019, the UK’s National Farmers Union (NFU) took issue with a BBC commercial in which a cartoon turkey wearing an ‘I Love Vegans’ sweater announced ‘less of us have been gobbled this year’ (The Telegraph 2019 ). The NFU feared that the BBC was promoting a political view. What was not questioned, however, was that the farming and killing of animals may not be a politically neutral standpoint.

Finally, it involves reification. It reduces individuals to the status of mere objects of fixed properties, their individuality denied, similar to the archetypal Nazi depiction of the Jew (Miller 1972 , p. 444). Animals, too, are objectified when reduced to the status of commodities such as forms of food or modes of transportation, or even being owned as pets. As expressed by Cole and Morgan ( 2011 , p. 149), ‘ethics are simply ruled out of order by the prior to objectification and invisibilisation of nonhuman animals that speciesist material and cultural practices instantiate’. This takes place on a large scale, even when people are generally aware that animals such as the Christmas turkey are (or rather were) individuals, not mere things. Still, animals are essentially commodified, an idea that also links into Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism.

Miller’s analysis provides a framework for dissecting how common objections to veganism, and the belief systems that ground them, are distorted and thereby largely unmovable. It gives weight to the idea that these objections manifest false consciousness. As a form of political false consciousness, omnivore’s false consciousness involves distorted and limited forms of thinking that are not often scrutinised. I have only touched on a small number of common objections to veganism, although there are many others, such as those exemplified in a defensive omnivore board. Footnote 6 When one of these notions is challenged, many more excuses are proffered.

What these distorted forms of thinking lack in terms of sobriety they make up for in intuitive persuasiveness by conforming to a widely accepted worldview or way of life. According to this worldview, nonhuman animals are inferior to human animals in politically significant ways that accord the latter the moral entitlement to exploit the former. As Miller recognises, one cannot easily fight instances of false consciousness by pointing out isolated errors. Thus a broader stance is needed, yet it may not be possible to avoid false consciousness altogether (Miller 1972 , p. 444). Therefore, one might ask what makes false consciousness not only possible but also so persistent and prevalent?

The Persistency of Ideologies

The link between false consciousness and ideology is key to its persistency. Gauthier ( 1997 , p.27–28) points out that the notion of an ‘ideology’ is employed inconsistently, yet is generally regarded as a pejorative aspect of our consciousness. He sees ideology as a theoretical construct, part of the ‘deep structure of self-consciousness’, that is, the capacity to conceive oneself relative to others and therefore to act in light of this conception of oneself as a member of the human species. Although it can be the subject of reflection, it is necessarily pre-reflective. This sounds puzzling, but Gauthier sees a similarity between ideology and language in that ‘both conceal a deep structure which unconsciously affects conscious activity’ (Gauthier 1997 , p. 28). Even if one cannot think outside the boundaries of a specific language or ideology, reflection and critique are still possible, thereby enabling moral progress.

Like languages, ideologies also promote social commonality. One of the main functions of social institutions is to maintain and transmit a common ideology (Gauthier 1997 , p. 28). Hence, individuals with very different ideologies, such as vegans and non-vegans, may find communication difficult. Moreover, for Marx, an ideology was not merely false but served an intentional role both in upholding the extant social order (Rawls 2008 , p. 361) and continuing the status quo in terms of the exploitation of the proletariat. For example, hiding the act of robbery within the construct of capitalism is essential. Similarly, exploiters of animals do not want to be perceived to be exploitative, whether these agents be the state or the lawmakers protecting animal-exploiting institutions. Farmers’ associations have privileged access in terms of shaping the viewpoint of the media and in influencing agricultural policy and legislation (Benton 1993 , p. 160). For example, both the US and Australia have introduced ‘ag-gag’ laws that essentially criminalise the dissemination of information about the treatment of animals (O'Sullivan 2016 , p. 53). Moreover, the institutionalised praise of exploiters and punishment of animal liberationists is not a morally neutral position with regard to conceptions of the good that liberal states purport to do. As Schmitz says, ‘the animal question debunks the appearance of neutrality’ (Schmitz 2016 , p. 42).

If we interpret ideologies as being pre-reflective, this aids in explaining their persistency and evasiveness from rational argumentation. As Miller suggests, repeated selective perception confirms the ideology (Miller 1972 , p. 433), yet it is difficult to construct a simple verification or falsification test, as ideologies are false at the level of the whole (Miller 1972 , p. 435). As such, they are not a mere set of commonly held ideas, but rather embody attitudes, common behaviours, and practices. Thus, the ideology that dominates our relationship with animals in developed societies gives rise to a level of false consciousness. It is pre-reflective in that societies embrace omnivorism without perceiving the moral need to justify it, although it is possible to reflect on it. When the dominant ideology is challenged, rationalisations can ensue. Since an ideology is not a specific set of beliefs that can be proven to be true or false in isolation, it is very difficult to ‘prove’ that omnivorism is morally wrong, or that veganism is right in such a way that any rational moral agent could be convinced.

One might object to the premise that attributing false consciousness is arrogant, for it requires a privileged perspective in terms of intellect and education. As Polsby states, ‘the presumption that the “real” interests of a class can be assigned to them by an analyst allows the analyst to charge “false consciousness” when the class in question disagrees with the analyst’ (Polsby 1963 , p. 22–3). However, is the attribution of false consciousness necessarily arrogant? Lukes ( 2005 , p. 149–150) argues that recognising the possibility of false consciousness is neither condescending, nor inherently illiberal, or even paternalistic. He considers, for example, J.S. Mill’s analysis of the subjection of Victorian women to the rule of men (in Mill 2009 [1869], p. 25) which can be interpreted as showing how most women were subject to false consciousness in the form of voluntary servitude, as opposed to coercive power. In light of such historic examples, and the fact that gender equality is now largely undisputed, the objection from arrogance is begs a question in that it denies the possibility that anyone might ever be politically deceived. It is ad hominem insofar as it attacks the character of the analyst, not the soundness of their views. Similarly, if future generations were to embrace the cause of animal rights and veganism, the attribution of an omnivore’s false consciousness to previous generations may then not seem too paternalistic.

Some Marxists could argue that the notion of false consciousness simply does not apply here. That may well be the case if indeed false consciousness is taken literally in a Marxist context. Instead, I have argued that there is a broad reading of false consciousness according to which it can narrow the moral self precisely because the interests of animals are not perceived in such a way as to trigger the moral motivation to practice veganism. In fact, I have attempted to detach the concept from Marxist theory as far as possible, so that one does not have to embrace Marxism in order to be able to accept how such a concept (and related concepts) may command useful explanatory power where the notion of akrasia falls short. 1

If there is such a thing as omnivore’s false consciousness, it would seem to follow that animal liberation (from human oppression) requires human liberation from omnivore’s false consciousness. Broad false consciousness may need to be confronted head-on through practices that promote more reflective and altruistic thinking (Cooke 2017 ). Narrow false consciousness, on the other hand, may be tackled directly by promoting some of the benefits of plant-based living (Fetissenko 2011 ), or indirectly by creating the conditions that normalise such a lifestyle (Lumsden 2017 ), for example, by making the shift from animal to plant agriculture easier and more desirable for farmers, or through the technological development of realistic alternatives to culling animals (e.g. in vitro meat; see Milburn 2016 ). A drawback of the self-interest approach, however, is that it only favours animals contingently in those instances where enlightened human self-interest happens to be convergent with those of animals. These challenges make a global shift to veganism not only fraught but also currently inaccessible to those on the opposite side of the debate. Considering how humans have habitually exploited animals, the future for most animals looks grim. On the other hand, social movements depend on hope and persist in the belief in moral progress has been said to be a regulative concept (Moody-Adams 2017 , p. 154).

Concluding Remarks

Starting from the assumption that there is a strong case for veganism in the literature, and the hypothesis that moral thinking and motivation are inseparable, I have considered how akrasia and false consciousness are ‘conceptual pathways’ through which our practical thinking about animals is distorted. Omnivore’s akrasia leaves some important gaps, for it is delimited to free and voluntary action against one’s better judgement. As such, the phenomenon of widespread omnivorism in developed societies may be better explained in terms of omnivore’s false consciousness (but I am not thereby suggesting that animal liberationists should embrace Marxism). Where omnivore’s false consciousness arises, there is no clear or explicit motivational failure to become a vegan, precisely because there is insufficient reflection for an akratic break to take occur. Further work in the field of moral psychology is evidently needed to unravel the motivational unity thesis, a theorem upon which this paper leans heavily.

Insofar as veganism expresses an ideology, it cannot be proven either to be true or morally right through arguments alone in such a way as to persuade any rational being or otherwise fully-fledged moral agent. Veganism is, as such, not an analytic truth to be derived from abstract moral principles but rather a moral way of life. Arguably, it is also a moral requirement. Principles such as causal inefficacy and unnecessary harm can be turned against veganism via analytic rationalisations which exploit scepticism and err on the side of narrow human self-interest, rather than an altruistic stance towards animals. Despite difficult technical and analytic considerations, one can experience veganism as an inescapable imperative; as a spiritual necessity; or as a powerful political identity against the oppression of animals. As such, some animal advocates may feel utter despair and therefore struggle to comprehend how others are not similarly moved. They may experience helplessness as to why common reasons against veganism are so weak. This paper is but one expression of such puzzlement, and a first attempt to make sense through the hitherto underexplored notion of false consciousness within the field of animal ethics.

For a concise exposition of the cumulative case for veganism see Stephens ( 1994 ). For more recent arguments see Francione ( 2008 ), Huemer ( 2019 ) and Singer ( 2020 ).

There is no conflict if animals are viewed and treated only according to their purpose to humans, but it can be argued that this is how things are (the animal welfare orthodoxy), not how they ought to be.

False consciousness is often assumed without explanation in the Critical Animal Studies (CAS) literature (e.g., Nibert 2002 , p. 247).

Marx may not have thought that the proletariat held such explicit beliefs given that they had no access to the superstructure, but the relevant idea is that the proletariat was blind to their interests.

Vegans too can be consumerist.

A compilation of poor excuses against veganism such as ‘we have carnivore teeth’. For an example see https://vegansaurus.com/post/254784826/defensive-omnivore-bingo .

Aaltola, E. (2015). Politico-moral apathy and omnivore’s akrasia: Views from the rationalist tradition. Politics and Animals, 1 , 35–49.

Google Scholar  

Aaltola, E. (2016). The problem of akrasia: moral cultivation and socio-political resistance. Political Philosophy and Public PurposeIn Paola Cavalieri (Ed.), Philosophy and the Politics of Animal Liberation. Palgrave Macmillan.

Arpaly, N. (2000). On acting rationally against one’s best judgment. Ethics, 110 (3), 488–513. https://doi.org/10.1086/233321 .

Article   Google Scholar  

Audi, R. (1990). Weakness of will and rational action. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 68 (3), 270–281. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048409012344301 .

Bennett, J. (1974). The conscience of huckleberry finn. Philosophy, 49 (188), 123–134. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819100048014 .

Benton, T. (1993). Natural relations: Animal rights, human rights and the environment . . Verso.

Bresnahan, M., Zhuang, J., & Zhu, X. (2016). Why is the vegan line in the dining hall always the shortest? understanding vegan stigma. Stigma and Health, 1 (1), 3–15. https://doi.org/10.1037/sah0000011 .

Cochrane, A. (2010). An introduction to animals and political theory . . Palgrave Macmillan.

Book   Google Scholar  

Cole, M., & Morgan, K. (2011). Veganism contra speciesism: Beyond debate. The Brock Review, 12 (1), 144–163. https://doi.org/10.26522/br.v12i1.568 .

Cooke, S. (2017). Imagined utopias: Animals rights and the moral imagination. Journal of Political Philosophy, 25 (4), e1–e18. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12136 .

Davidson, D. (1980). Essays on actions and events . . Clarendon Press.

Deckers, J. (2011). Negative “GHIs”, the right to health protection, and future generations. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 8 (2), 165. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-011-9295-1 .

Eyerman, R. (1981). False consciousness and ideology in marxist theory. Acta Sociologica, 24 (1–2), 43–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/000169938102400104 .

Fetissenko, M. (2011). Beyond morality: Developing a new rhetorical strategy for the animal rights movement. Journal of Animal Ethics, 1 (2), 150–175. https://doi.org/10.5406/janimalethics.1.2.0150 .

Francione, G. (2008). Animals as persons: Essays on the abolition of animal exploitation . . Columbia University Press.

Fischer, B. (2020). The ethics of eating animals: Usually bad, sometimes wrong, often permissible . . Routledge.

Fukuyama, F. (2018). Identity: Contemporary identity politics and the struggle for recognition . . Profile Books.

Gaita, R. (1989). The personal in ethics. In D. Z. Phillips & P. Winch (Eds.), Wittgenstein: Attention to particulars. (pp. 124–150). Springer.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Gaita, R. (2016). The philosopher’s dog . . Routledge Classics.

Garner, R. (2013). A theory of justice for animals: Animal rights in a nonideal world . . Oxford University Press.

Garner, R., & O’Sullivan, S. (2016). The Political turn in animal ethics . . Rownman and Littlefield International.

Gauthier, D. (1997). The social contract as ideology. In R. E. Goodin & P. Pettit (Eds.), Contemporary political philosophy: An anthology. (pp. 27–44). Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Gruen, L., & Jones, R. C. (2016). Veganism as an aspiration. In Ben Bramble & Bob Fischer (Eds.), The moral complexities of eating meat. Oxford University Press.

Greenebaum, J. B. (2012). Managing impressions: “Face-Saving” strategies of vegetarians and vegans. Humanity & Society, 36 (4), 309–325.

Horta, O. (2018). Discrimination against vegans. Res Publica, 24 (3), 359–373. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-017-9356-3 .

Hsiao, T. (2015). In defense of eating meat. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 28 (2), 277–291. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-015-9534-2 .

Huemer, M. (2019). Dialogues on ethical vegetarianism . . Routledge.

Ilea, R. (2017). Singer, wittgenstein, and morally motivating examples. Between the Species, 22 (1), 1.

Jones, R. C. (2016). Veganisms. In Critical Perspectives on Veganism , eds. J Castricano, and R Simonsen, 15–39. The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series.

Kazez, J. (2018). The taste question in animal ethics. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 35 (4), 661–674. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12278 .

Luke, B. (1992). Justice, caring, and animal liberation. Between the Species, 8 (2), 13.

Lukes, S. (1985). Marxism and morality . . Oxford University Press.

Lukes, S. (2005). Power: A radical view . (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.

Lumsden, S. (2017). Veganism, normative change, and second nature. Environmental Philosophy, 14 (2), 221–238. https://doi.org/10.5840/envirophil201731045 .

McIntyre, A. (2006). What is wrong with weakness of will? Journal of Philosophy, 103 (6), 284–311. https://doi.org/10.5840/jphil2006103619 .

Mill, J. S. (2009). The subjection of women . . The Floating Press.

Miller, D. (1972). Ideology and the problem of false consciousness. Political Studies, 20 (4), 432–447. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1972.tb01435.x .

Mills, E. (2019). Factory Farming and Ethical Veganism. Acta Analytica , 34(4), 385–406. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/ https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-019-00389-x .

Milburn, J. (2016). Chewing over in vitro meat: Animal ethics, cannibalism and social progress. Res Publica, 22 (3), 249–265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-016-9331-4 .

Moody-Adams, M. M. (2017). Moral progress and human agency. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 20 (1), 153–168. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-016-9748-z .

Nagel, T. (1970). The possibility of altruism . . Clarendon Press.

Nibert, D. (2002). Animal rights/human rights: Entanglements of oppression and liberation . . Rowman and Littlefield.

Nibert, D. (2013). Animal oppression and human violence: Domesecration, capitalism, and global conflict . . Columbia University Press.

O’Sullivan, S. (2016). Animals and the politics of equity. In R. Garner & R. O’Sullivan (Eds.), The political turn in animal ethics. Rowman & Littlefield International.

Perlo, K. (2002). Marxism and the underdog. Society and Animals, 10 (3), 303–318. https://doi.org/10.1163/156853002320770092 .

Piazza, J., et al. (2015). Rationalizing meat consumption. The 4Ns. Appetite, 91 , 114–128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2015.04.011 .

Polsby, N. W. (1963). Community power and political theory . . Yale University Press.

Popper, K. (1995). The open society and its enemies . (Vol. 2). Routledge.

Rawls, J. (2008). Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy . Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/leicester/detail.action?docID=3300540 .

Regan, T. (2004). The case for animal rights . . University of California Press.

Reid, A. (2017). Veganism and the analytic question. Between the Species, 20 (1), 38–58.

Rorty, A. O. (1997). the social and political sources of akrasia. Ethics, 107 (4), 644–657. https://doi.org/10.1086/233763 .

Rosen, M. (2016). On voluntary servitude: False consciousness and the theory of ideology . . Polity Press.

Rosi, A., et al. (2017). Environmental impact of omnivorous, ovo-lacto- vegetarian, and vegan diet. Scientific Reports, 7 (1), 6105. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06466-8 .

Rowlands, M. (2013). Animal rights: All that matters . . Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.

Runciman, W. G. (1969). False consciousness. Philosophy, 44 (170), 303–313. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819100009438 .

Sabaté, J., & Soret, S. (2014). Sustainability of plant-based diets: Back to the future. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 100 (1), 476S-482S. https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.113.071522 .

Schmitz, F. (2016). animal ethics and human institutions: Integrating animals into political theory. In R. Garner & R. O’Sullivan (Eds.), The political turn in animal ethics. Rowman & Littlefield International.

Singer, P. (2018). Marx: A very short introduction . . Oxford University Press.

Singer, P. (1980). Utilitarianism and vegetarianism. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 9 (4), 325–337.

Singer, P. (2015). Animal liberation . . The Bodley Head.

Singer, P. (2020). Why vegan? . Penguin.

Stephens, W. O. (1994). Five arguments for vegetarianism. Philosophy in the Contemporary World, 1 (4), 25–39.

Tam, A. (2019). Why moral reasoning Is insufficient for moral progress. Journal of Political Philosophy . https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12187 .

The Telegraph (2019). BBC accused of being partial on poultry with Christmas advert featuring vegan turkeys. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/08/bbc-accused-partial-poultry-christmas-advert-featuring-vegan Accessed 02/02/2021

Tuso, P. J., et al. (2013). Nutritional update for physicians: Plant-based diets. The Permanente Journal, 17 (2), 61–66. https://doi.org/10.7812/tpp/12-085 .

Twine, R. (2014). Vegan killjoys at the table—Contesting happiness and negotiating relationships with food practices. Societies, 4 (4), 623–639. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc4040623 .

Wrenn, C. (2019). Why I’m Giving Beyoncé’s Vegan Campaign a Chance. http://www.coreyleewrenn.com/why-im-giving-beyonces-vegan-campaign-a-chance . Accessed 21/07/2019.

Download references

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the MANCEPT ‘Just Animals? The Future of the Political Turn in Animal Ethics’ workshop in September 2019. I am especially grateful to Robert Garner, Steve Cooke, Josh Milburn and Eva Meijer for their comments and support. I am also greatly indebted to the anonymous reviewers of this journal.

Self-funded.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of History, Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

Susana Pickett

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Susana Pickett .

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest.

The authors declares that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Pickett, S. Veganism, Moral Motivation and False Consciousness. J Agric Environ Ethics 34 , 15 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-021-09857-0

Download citation

Accepted : 29 March 2021

Published : 19 April 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-021-09857-0

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Moral motivation
• Political false consciousness
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

Vegans Thesis Statement

All the essays and thesis papers focus on one particular subject. One of the most interesting thesis topics to college students is on veganism. Thus, when you are writing the vegans thesis, you have to spread the major information properly. The effective presentation of the vegan’s thesis statement will help you to secure higher marks on the paper. To write the thesis statement, you have to make out the purpose behind writing your thesis. This will persuade the readers to read your thesis to get the best information.

Vegans thesis statement- How to make it strong and effective?

You may ask a question – What is the best thesis statement on vegans ? The best and unique piece always informs the readers on the way of interpreting the value of your thesis content. While writing the thesis body or the introduction, you have to concentrate on veganism. Make sure that your readers will be able to interpret what you have written.

As the thesis statement part has to be very precise, you have to answer the chosen question. From the beginning part of your thesis writing assignment, you must refine your views and arguments. This will make your thesis meaningful. Your thesis readers will have a clear sense of all your arguments, presented in the thesis paper.

Where can you add your vegan’s thesis statement?

Most of the students have confusion on placing their thesis statement while writing the vegan thesis. Usually, the instructors say that it is better to place it in the earlier part of your thesis. After composing the introduction of the paper or after the first two paragraphs, you may add your brief thesis statement. Create this part with the major information, and the readers will be able to make out the overall content. You can add one or two sentences at the ending part of the introductory paragraph. The readers will easily find out your arguments. The remaining part of your thesis organizes all the claims with evidence for persuading the readers. You can interpret the lifestyle of the vegans.

Share interesting information in your vegan thesis paper

You may have already written the introduction and thesis statement for vegans essay . Now, you have to define the term, vegan. Not all readers know about vegans. That is why you have to tell them- What is veganism. To write this part, you may look for various vegan-related journals and books. You must also write about the philosophies, related to veganism. For instance, you can say that vegans avoid the consumption of animal products and meat. You may also find out different other facts, related to the lifestyle of vegans.

What stimulates a person to favor veganism?

Veganism creates a positive effect on our health and our environment. This is the most important thing that you may include in your thesis. It is also essential to find out other reasons for which lots of individuals adopt veganism.

In addition to the health-related benefits, there are reasons, related to animal safety and welfare, religious customs, and the antibiotic application on livestock. To back up your claims in the best way, you have to find out the statistical information. You can find out the percentage of vegans in populations all over the world. The readers of your thesis will get interested in reading these statistics.

Another reason behind choosing the veganism is the financial issue. In most cases, the meat-based foods and animal products are available at a high price rate. While you are writing the thesis in favor of vegans, you have to present the reasons that make veganism more accessible. As the fresh vegetables and plant-based items are available all over the year, it is very easy to follow veganism. You may also write about the culinary of vegans. To make the thesis paper more interesting, you can compose it as argumentative content.

Do vegan diets have demerits?

For writing the vegans essay or thesis, you may add information on the cuisine types of the vegans. The vegans have embraced various dietary styles. However, their diet does not include the by-products of animals.

The vegans are of different types. Some of them are pesco-vegetarians, and they eat seafood. Another category is the Lacto-ovo-vegans, who rely on the dairy items. There is more information to be written for your thesis, and you have to analyze it to develop the content of the thesis. The comprehensive analysis will surely add interest to your readers. You may write about your views on what the vegans have to eat to get nutrients in their body. For instance, you can create a list of plant-based foods, containing vitamins, proteins, and minerals. The vegans will stay healthy by taking the right foods every day.

The source of iron in the plant-based diets is much lower than of the meat and poultries. You can add it as your claim. However, it is essential to sustain this claim by presenting the right evidence. For instance, you can say that some vegans have deficiency diseases and face different risks for their unique lifestyle. All these details will make your thesis more reliable to the readers.

The potential benefit for health due to the choice of veganism

You may talk about this topic in the thesis statement for vegans . You have to say how veganism is beneficial to a person. Most of the skilled writers know the way of writing it precisely. You may reveal the fact that a thoughtfully created vegan diet chart will never cause a risk to anyone. Make sure that your readers have identified the proper way of getting the optimized value from the vegan diet.

Some of your thesis readers may be vegans. Thus, by reading your thesis, they will gain much knowledge and refine their everyday diet.

Is there any health-related risk to the vegan?

As vegans mostly consume vegetables, nuts, and fruit, your thesis has to make a comparison of the omnivore diets and vegan diet. You can say why it is essential to lower the consumption of cholesterol and saturated fat. Everyone has to increase the consumption of vitamins and fiber-rich foods. Focus on this information to create the thesis statement. While writing the thesis body, you have to clarify everything, related to veganism.

Your academic thesis paper always reflects your enthusiasm, knowledge, commitment level, and intelligence on the chosen subject- veganism. Thus, the evidence, presented to the readers, must also give the best perception. To write the thesis, you have to reveal how this veganism has turned out to be a trend of lifestyle.

The increasing trend of veganism and social media

The social media have already caused an effect on different fields. Thus, for veganism, you may find the impact of social media. There are influencers, playing a role in the increasing growth and popularity of veganism. Through Instagram, Facebook, and various other platforms, the influencers are influencing the social media users.

The social media posts with the hashtag of the term, vegan get millions of likes. The search engine, Google is also recently tracking several searches, related to veganism. Thus, you can find out the information and reveal the picture of veganism of the present and the past years.

You may focus on any of the countries in this world to present the statistical information. For instance, there is an increasing number of vegans in the USA in recent years. Thus, you can include this information in your thesis. After adding the information, you have to clarify the reason behind the trend. You may also apply your skill and knowledge to predict in the future. You can find out the demerits of too much growth of this veganism. In the argumentative thesis, you will be able to write these things in the best way.

Does the young generation play a role to affect veganism?

This is another interesting topic to write on a vegan thesis. It will help you in solidifying the perception of the readers on the veganism. Thus, the thesis statement, associated with vegans, has to reveal how the young generation is showing a different attitude towards the natural environment.

To compose the thesis paper, you have to find out the reasons, for which the young ones and the teens have stopped consuming the animal products. With your thorough research, you have to make out how the veganism or non-veganism is affecting the climatic condition. The teens have learned lots of things on the need of saving the environment, and that is why they are relying more on veganism.

Does veganism affect the economy?

While you are writing on this topic, you have to avoid composing any generic content. In the thesis statement, you have to focus on the economic impact on the agricultural economy. The crops are produced for the consumption of livestock, and these crops cover a part of the farmland. Thus, your thesis has to concentrate on how veganism and its growth is affecting the plant-based food production cycle. You can raise a question – What would the western countries do due to the increasing veganism?

For illustrating your views, you may talk about wheat production. What would be done with the wheat when several people rely on vegan lifestyle? There may be several effects of veganism, and your essay or thesis paper has to deal with those effects. You may reveal your viewpoints on it.

Make sure that your readers will have a belief in your views. You will need to apply your skill for persuading the readers with your views and arguments.

You can present the vegan thesis statement in different ways. One of the common things that you may include in this part is the proper creation of a diet chart. Your vegan theses have to talk about the approaches, made by vegans for their unique lifestyle. You can choose it as one of the interesting topics for your thesis paper.

To make the thesis more informative, you have to say that vegans have a chance to miss out various nutrients in their diet. Your paper has to address different misconceptions, related to veganism. For instance, you can say that most of us have a belief in the healthy effect of veganism. Some vegans also consume junk foods, which are not good for health. Thus, from various viewpoints, you may have a look at veganism.

Backing up your claims in the thesis

It is the most important and toughest step to the writers. Without the right evidence, you may not be able to prove your claims. While you have thought of the vegan thesis topic and its content, you have to focus on the evidence. This helps you in communicating your views and message to the readers. A thesis is always different from an essay. You have to present your arguments and evidence for writing the thesis.

You may add more than one evidence from various sources. For each of the evidence, you have to write 3 to 5 sentences. That evidence will create a framework for the remaining part of your content.

From various newspapers, researchers, personal interviews and references, you can look for the proofs of your claims. Do not forget to add the part of the citation to your thesis. The citation will make your thesis paper more reliable.

Thus, we have guided you briefly to write a thesis about vegans . Focus on your thesis topic to create the statement. Compose each of the parts of your thesis paper properly. You may also hire the writers to write the thesis statement about vegans . You will easily get approval from your college professor. The thesis statement writing is the first step for every student, dealing with a thesis assignment. Add accurate information to the thesis and make it highly reliable to the readers. You must also read our above tips to create the best quality thesis paper on the vegans.

• Essay Database
• world trade center
• Greek Food and Culture
• The Future Portrayed I…
• Intercultural Communications
• In Heart of Darkness, …
• Things Fall Apart by C…
• In J.M. Coetzee's Wait…
• The Criminals Of Profe…
• Socialization of Children
• The Poet of Nature, Wi…
• Leonhard Euler
• Articles of Confederat…
• About all Sharks
• Vietnam Poetry

What is Paper-Research?

• Custom Writing Service
• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy
• Biographies

• Article Sample
• Terms & Conditions
• Privacy Policy

Affiliate program

Refer our service to your friend and receive 10% from every order

Estelle Gallagher

Final Paper

Customer Reviews

1555 Lakeside Drive, Oakland

Extra spacious rarely available courtyard facing unit at the Lakeside…

• Our process

Paper Writing Service Price Estimation

Allene W. Leflore

Finished Papers

Essay writing help has this amazing ability to save a student’s evening. For example, instead of sitting at home or in a college library the whole evening through, you can buy an essay instead, which takes less than one minute, and save an evening or more. A top grade for homework will come as a pleasant bonus! Here’s what you have to do to have a new 100% custom essay written for you by an expert.

To get the online essay writing service, you have to first provide us with the details regarding your research paper. So visit the order form and tell us a paper type, academic level, subject, topic, number and names of sources, as well as the deadline. Also, don’t forget to select additional services designed to improve your online customer experience with our essay platform.

Once all the form fields are filled, submit the order form that will redirect you to a secure checkout page. See if all the order details were entered correctly and make a payment. Just as payment is through, your mission is complete. The rest is on us!

Enjoy your time, while an online essay writer will be doing your homework. When the deadline comes, you’ll get a notification that your order is complete. Log in to your Customer Area on our site and download the file with your essay. Simply enter your name on the title page on any text editor and you’re good to hand it in. If you need revisions, activate a free 14-30-day revision period. We’ll revise the work and do our best to meet your requirements this time.

Laura V. Svendsen

(415) 520-5258

Need a personal essay writer? Try EssayBot which is your professional essay typer.

• EssayBot is an essay writing assistant powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
• Given the title and prompt, EssayBot helps you find inspirational sources, suggest and paraphrase sentences, as well as generate and complete sentences using AI.
• If your essay will run through a plagiarism checker (such as Turnitin), don’t worry. EssayBot paraphrases for you and erases plagiarism concerns.
• EssayBot now includes a citation finder that generates citations matching with your essay.

How Our Essay Service Works

• Human Resource
• Business Strategy
• Operations Management
• Project Management
• Business Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Scholarship Essay
• Narrative Essay
• Descriptive Essay
• Buy Essay Online
• College Essay Help
• Help To Write Essay Online

Essay Service Features That Matter

For expository writing, our writers investigate a given idea, evaluate its various evidence, set forth interesting arguments by expounding on the idea, and that too concisely and clearly. Our online essay writing service has the eligibility to write marvelous expository essays for you.

Finished Papers

Customer Reviews