If there's a contentious issue within the contemporary Stoicism community, it is this: is eating meat "un-Stoic"?
There's no shortage of people who will tell you it is, and plenty more who will tell you it's not, but I'm here to tell you the answer is far more complicated than yes or no.
One Stoic sage could eat meat while another could choose to be a vegan or vegetarian, and both would still be sages when they put down their forks so long as the way they reasoned to their choice was reflective of their possessing the knowledge of how to live excellently.
We seem to forget, all the time, that Stoicism isn't about the the outcomes our choices result in but is, instead, about the reason and logic involved deciding to make the choice itself.
Rational, reasonable, and logical for you will look different than for someone who lives in another country under a different set of circumstances.
If I'm a sage living in Florida, and I fancy a little bit of coconut juice, well, I'm in luck!
I can walk outside, climb the coconut tree in my backyard, pluck a nut, and get some coconut juice out of it.
If, however, I live in the north of England (which I do), and I fancy a bit of coconut juice, I must kick off a whole lot of complicated solutions in order to get my coconut fix.
Would a sage living in the north of England effort to get coconut juice?
Would they, to paraphrase Epictetus, crave figs in winter (and then go to great lengths in order to get them)?
Both the Floridian sage and the English one would be consuming coconut juice, but it's not the consuming of coconut juice that is at issue when considering whether or not the choice to consume coconut juice is consistent with the wisdom of a sage.
Certainly to fly a coconut from Florida to England is not something a person with a mastery of temperance would do in most any ordinary circumstance.
This provides us part of an answer for the question of whether it is un-Stoic to eat meat:
The ethics of food choice isn't static, it's dynamic.
But coconuts aren't alive, animals are! You can't compare them fairly!
That's true, and that's why we only have half an answer at present. Let's see if we can sort the other half.
The Ancient Stoics would be quick to tell you that part of the nature of some animals is to be food for some other animals.
Part of a gazel's nature, for example, is to be food for a lion.
However, we must not reduce a living thing's nature to a single aspect of its nature.
It is also the nature of a gazel to run in the open plains, to visit the watering hole, to reproduce, to eat, and to be a contributing member of the ecosystem which the are part of, until such a time that they might meet with the part of their nature that finds them being eaten by a lion.
Cows, chickens, pigs, and fish are the same.
Part of these animals' nature might be, one day, to be eaten - by humans or other animals - but this is only part of the animal's nature.
However, even though it's only part of their nature, it provides Stoics with the defence necessary to claim that eating them isn't, in and of itself, "against Nature".
To the Ancient Stoics, killing certain animals for food doesn't go against allowing animals to live according to their nature.
But remember! Being classified as "food" for other animals, is only part of any animal's nature, and it certainly isn't the largest part! It might even be the smallest.
I talked about flying a coconut across the Atlantic and whether or not that would be "craving figs in winter", and therefore out of alignment with sage-like knowledge or behavior. Surely, I hope, you agreed that it would be.
Well, we artificially keep cows pregnant for their entire adult lives so we can produce enough milk to have milk all the time, in every household on earth. We prevent cows from living according to their nature so that we can fill our every dairy craving any time we have them.
Is that a choice that seems sage-like to you?
We raise chickens in tiny quarters, which causes them to fight one another, so we rip their beaks off to prevent them from hurting each other.
Is that a choice that seems sage-like to you?
We're not really talking about eating meat, we're talking about what we're justifying in order to eat meat AT SCALE
I know you don't want to not have meat when you want it, or coconuts when you want them, or milk when you want it, but guess what? Things have seasons, and temperance is part of a Stoic practice.
You can't go on and on about how Stoicism is all about discipline and self-control and not see the sense in what I've said in this article.
If you see the sense, what are you going to do about it?
Nothing?
Well, maybe that's sage-like.
But, then again, maybe it's not.
