Table of Contents
Let’s Talk Religion argues that the quarrel over meat is ancient. In the Greek cities the host describes, public religion ran through animal sacrifice. The gods received the portions people would not eat, and the community cooked the rest. A meatless life stood out against that habit. Pythagoras was remembered, whatever the doubts about his biography, as the leader of a strict circle in southern Italy, and later memory gave that circle a rule against flesh. Platonists inherited the memory. The episode centers on Plotinus, who taught in Rome after leaving Alexandria, and on a student who wrote a long case against killing animals for food. The case is ethical and metaphysical. Someone trying to return to a divine self should not live on flesh. Sacrifice is called morally wrong. Animals are still owed justice, and killing them is allowed only in self defense. Gods, in this argument, do not want carcasses. Thoughtful praise is the real offering. A later reply gave the appetite for blood to lesser spirits. Philosophy here is a way of living.
Key points
- Ordinary Greek religion, the episode says, centered on killing animals and sharing the edible meat.
- A meatless rule was remembered as part of the Pythagorean life in southern Italy.
- Later Platonists, especially Plotinus in Rome, inherited that stricter way of living.
- A student’s case against flesh is divided into moral and metaphysical arguments, aimed at philosophers rather than laborers.
- Animals are said to deserve justice, with killing allowed only to save oneself.
- Gods are denied any hunger for carcasses, while a later reply assigns that hunger to lesser spirits.
Short quotes
of History animal sacrifice played a very Central role we find very clear evidence of this as early as in the Epic
Let's Talk Religion, Philosophers who refused meat
The host says animal offerings were already central in the earliest Greek epic. Watch at 2:17
Pythagorean and adhering to this way of life also usually involved being a vegetarian as we saw pythagoreanism was
Let's Talk Religion, Philosophers who refused meat
He ties the remembered Pythagorean discipline to refusing meat. Watch at 5:35
sacrifice is morally and metaphysically wrong in terms of historical arguments against meat consumption and violence
Let's Talk Religion, Philosophers who refused meat
The later case calls sacrificial killing wrong in both morals and metaphysics. Watch at 14:02
sacrifice in periods of Crisis to try to solve these these difficulties indeed animal sacrifice doesn't even make sense
Let's Talk Religion, Philosophers who refused meat
He reports the argument that killing animals does not actually fix a public crisis. Watch at 24:02
Video by Let’s Talk Religion. Watch on YouTube.