Get the brief

to 1789

Pythagoras to Bentham

The idea is far older than the word. For twenty-five centuries, in Greece, in India, in the Arab world, and in the European Enlightenment, people argued that eating animals was a moral choice and chose not to. None of them called it veganism. All of them were reaching for it.

Ancient Greek and Indian thinkers who argued against eating animals.
Wikimedia Commons / Pythagoras
  1. 5th-4th c. BCE

    Composed 5th-4th c. BCE

    Ahimsa in the Acharanga Sutra

    In parallel, and independently, Jain scripture in India set out ahimsa, non-harm to all living things, as a way of life rather than a diet.

    nothing which breathes, which exists, which lives, or which has essence or potential of life, should be destroyed or ruled over, or subjugated, or harmed, or denied of its essence or potential

    Acharanga Sutra, a foundational Jain text
    Source: Wikipedia, Acharanga Sutra
  2. c. 100 CE

    Written c. 100 CE

    Plutarch Turns the Question Around

    Plutarch flipped the usual framing: the burden of proof, he argued, belongs on the person who kills to eat, not the one who abstains.

    But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.

    Plutarch, 'Of Eating of Flesh' (Moralia)
    Source: International Vegetarian Union (IVU), History (archived)
  3. c. 270

    Written c. 268-271

    Four Books Against Eating Animals

    Plutarch turned the question around; a century and a half later Porphyry organized the answers. Writing to win back a friend who had returned to meat, the Neoplatonist produced antiquity's most systematic case for a meatless table, four books long.

    Porphyry argues that there is a moral obligation to extend justice to animals because they are rational beings

    Porphyry of Tyre, On Abstinence from Eating Animals (De abstinentia)
    Source: Wikipedia, On Abstinence from Eating Animals
  4. c. 500s BCE

    Written c. 8 CE

    Pythagoras Refuses the Altar

    The earliest named argument in the Western record against eating animals reaches us through Ovid's poem, putting the case in Pythagoras's mouth five centuries after he lived.

    Alas, what wickedness to swallow flesh into our own flesh, to fatten our greedy bodies by cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the death of another!

    Pythagoras, as rendered by Ovid, Metamorphoses XV (trans. from the Latin)

    We have no surviving words from Pythagoras himself; Ovid wrote these lines around 8 CE, centuries later.

    Source: International Vegetarian Union (IVU), History (archived)
  5. c. 1000

    Written c. 1000

    al-Ma'arri's Bloodless Table

    A blind Syrian poet kept a plant-based table and defended it in verse, a thousand years before the word vegan existed.

    Do not unjustly eat what the water has given up, and do not desire as food the flesh of slaughtered animals

    Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri, Syrian poet and philosopher (973-1057)
    Source: Wikipedia, Al-Ma'arri
  6. 1789

    Written 1780, published 1789

    Bentham Asks the Only Question That Matters

    The philosopher who founded utilitarianism reframed the whole debate about animals in a single footnote, moving the test from reason to suffering.

    The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

    Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
    Source: Wikipedia, Jeremy Bentham

The bookshelf

The book on this era

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  1. The history

    On Abstinence from Killing Animals (opens Bookshop.org)

    Porphyry · 2000

    The third-century philosopher Porphyry argues that a life of reason requires giving up animal flesh. Gillian Clark's translation is the accessible English edition.

  2. The history

    Metamorphoses (opens Bookshop.org)

    Ovid · 8

    Book XV of Ovid's poem puts a speech in Pythagoras's mouth against eating animals. The passage is the source of much later vegetarian writing.

  3. The history

    The Bloodless Revolution (opens Bookshop.org)

    Tristram Stuart · 2006

    Tristram Stuart traces vegetarian thinking from the seventeenth century into the twentieth, including Indian influences on English thought.

  4. The history

    Vegetarianism: A History (opens Bookshop.org)

    Colin Spencer · 1993

    Colin Spencer surveys vegetarian and vegan food and thought from ancient India and Greece to the twentieth century, with attention to what people ate.

This history is still being written.

Every morning we read the movement and write down what changed. When a fight resolves, it lands on this page and in your inbox. Free forever.

Free forever. No guilt. No preaching.