In December last year, I adopted a strictly vegan diet. All was going great until I asked a friend whether honey is vegan.
His answer was an emphatic NO! But I argued that vegans do not eat animal products. And as far as I know, you do not look at a swarm of bees and say, “Hey look at all those animals.” My point was that bees are not animals; they are insects, which means honey is suitable for vegans.
His counter-argument was that vegans eat plant-based food, to which I responded that that is not the same as “not eating animal products.” We had two definitions of veganism. After a good tussle, I turned to Google to settle this matter once and for all. But oh, it became a lot more complicated!
As it turns out, bees are insects – so I was right – but insects fall under the invertebrate category of animals – so I was wrong. Be that as it may, this line of argument is ineffectual because veganism is grounded on an ethical premise which makes their views on animals an outcome rather than a cause.
The ethical premise of veganism is to avoid using other sentient beings as a means to an end; with sentient referring to those who are self-aware, feel or have a consciousness. This rule was fleshed out in great detail by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who is widely considered the most important philosopher of all time. Kant argued that it is immoral to use other beings as a means to an end because our Beingness, as it were, exists prior to, or beyond the flesh – a priori. In a sense, he argued that there is a trascendentant spirit which renders us the way we are, and therefore none of us can lay claim of why we are the way we are. It follows that none of us has moral grounds to impose our will on others because even that freedom to “Will” precedes us. In this respect, we cannot use what we have not earned [our being] to determine or lay claim on what equally belongs to others [their being]. Kant effectively created a moral basis to end slavery, a uniquely human phenomenon which is as old as the hills.
Naturally, people cross-contaminate philosophies without fully appreciating them. For instance, consider the vegan application of Kantian morality in the production and consumption of cows and their milk.
Firstly, it is argued that cows are sentient beings because they are self-aware, feel, perceive and have consciousness. This beingness renders them the way they are, including producing milk to nurture their calves. Therefore taking their milk or causing them to produce milk even when they do not have calves is immoral because it disturbs their being. Therefore, it follows that ethical veganism believes that slaughtering a cow or consuming its products is immoral.
Ethical vegans eat plant-based food, on the other hand, because plants are not self-aware, meaning they have no capacity to suffer. In this sense, plants are not sentient beings, and therefore consuming them is exempt from the guillotine Kantian morality.
This argument falls apart because who is to say that a different kind of consciousness, the kind we find in plants, cannot feel simply because it does not express itself in terms of the extensions of our Being. After all, when we study the ecosystems of forests, we see that as a collective, plants are very much alive and in some sense possessing a sophistication which can be construed as sentient.
Therefore, one can argue that vegans make this ethical exception purely because they have to eat something at some point! They choose a “being” that does not visibly kick, scream or bleed when slaughtering it; they classify it as non-sentient, thus providing the moral basis for consuming it with a clean, albeit purely ideological cleansed conscience, of not causing any harm.
Given these arguments, my conclusion is that ethical veganism is flawed. In any case, Kant warned that pure [ideological] reasoning tends to lead us astray. Hence he advised that we ought to ground ourselves in practical reason as well.
Nevertheless, my dismay with ethical veganism does not take away that our bodies – my body at least – evidently functions much better on a plant-based diet. Our immune systems are more robust; we feel livelier and heal faster. For this reason, I will preach that you try it, albeit without any ethical baggage. If anything, consider a vegan diet purely for its practical benefits of eating diverse, fresh and healthy food.
Yours truly,
Vegan (with a dash of honey)
