QuestionsDo animals matter as much as we do?The first step: no longer killing in order to eat
Do animals matter as much as we do?A duty of compassion

The first step: no longer killing in order to eat

The first step; Tolstoy at the Tula slaughterhouse

Léon Tolstoï 1828 · 1910At fifty he saw no meaning in anything; he found it again in the faith of simple people.
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What it claims

Whoever seriously seeks a good life must begin by ceasing to eat the flesh of animals: this is the first step.

Why

Moral life is a ladder: it starts with temperance, and temperance starts with no longer killing needlessly in order to eat.

In short

"The first step: no longer killing in order to eat" is an argument by Léon Tolstoï ("The First Step" (1892), preface to H. Williams's The Ethics of Diet) on the question "Do animals matter as much as we do?" (answer: a duty of compassion). Its claim: Whoever seriously seeks a good life must begin by ceasing to eat the flesh of animals: this is the first step. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the conclusion does follow from its 4 premises. AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

"The First Step" (1892), preface to H. Williams's The Ethics of Diet
Valid

Tolstoy does not start from animal rights. He starts from a simple idea: every moral life has an order, like a ladder where you cannot reach a rung without having set your foot on the previous one. The first rung is temperance, the first act of temperance is self-control over food, and the first food one gives up is the flesh of animals, because it has to be obtained by killing, and killing when one can do without wounds the simplest moral feeling: pity. He takes care to say that he does not claim one must be vegetarian to be moral, only that this is where a serious person begins. He tells how he visited the slaughterhouse of Tula to see with his own eyes what he is talking about.

P1A moral life follows a necessary order: one does not reach a higher virtue without first having acquired the one before it, like the rungs of a ladder.
P2The first virtue is temperance, and the first condition of temperance is fasting: there is no righteous life without temperance.
P3Eating flesh is not necessary, it is a luxury, and it requires killing: one thereby suppresses in oneself, unnecessarily, pity for living creatures like oneself, and becomes cruel.
P4In fasting, one first gives up what is contrary to the moral feeling and called for only by greed: therefore what requires killing without necessity.
Therefore whoever seriously seeks a good life must begin by ceasing to eat the flesh of animals: this is the first step.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
The conclusion follows: a good life begins with temperance (P1, P2), temperance with fasting, and fasting with what wounds the moral feeling (P4), that is, killing without necessity (P3). P4 is the debatable point: why begin with flesh rather than another excess, and is pity really the criterion? Tolstoy himself does not say one must be vegetarian to be moral, but that it is the first step of a serious life.
Analogy. To reach the upper floor of a house, one can flounder trying to climb the wall from every side, or one can set foot on the first step of the staircase. Tolstoy thinks that this is the first step of the moral life.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

René Descartes 1637 · attacks premise 3

Pity is misplaced if animals neither feel nor think as we do. Their cleverest acts do not prove they have a mind: it is nature that acts in them according to the disposition of their organs, like a clock that counts the hours. See the argument "The animal-machine" (descartes-animal-machine).

a defender replies
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1637, after the author's death (1910).
P
Philip Low et al., Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness defender of the argument · 2012
A group of neuroscientists concludes in 2012 that non-human animals have the neurological substrates of conscious states and the capacity for intentional behaviour. If that is right, the pity Tolstoy describes in the butchers and the peasant on the road is not an illusion.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Descartes speaks before Tolstoy, who does not discuss him here. Tolstoy relies on what he sees (the pig's screams, the butcher's sadness) rather than on a theory of the animal mind. Today Descartes's thesis is a small minority view among researchers, but what to conclude morally from it is still debated.
Immanuel Kant 1797 · attacks the conclusion

Kant agrees that cruelty to animals blunts compassion. But he holds that we have no direct duties towards them, and that killing an animal by swift means, without torturing it, is permitted. What is forbidden is violence and cruelty, not killing. See the argument "Indirect duties" (kant-devoirs-indirects).

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1797, after the author's death (1910).
The debate goes on (our summary) Kant writes a century before Tolstoy, who does not discuss him in this text. Tolstoy can be defended thus: necessity matters, and killing without necessity for taste alone is exactly what makes pity vanish; the "improved" Tula slaughterhouse (built so that animals suffer as little as possible) is nevertheless what he finds hard to watch. Kant can be defended thus: if one kills quickly there is no cruelty, so no fault. We found no answer from Tolstoy on this point.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Underlying disagreement: is it the way of killing (cruel or not) or the fact of killing without necessity that is at issue? Kant and Tolstoy agree on the role of pity, not on what it forbids.
Tom Regan 1983 · attacks premise 3

The wrong done to the animal does not come from the mood of the person who eats. Animals that are subjects-of-a-life have a value of their own and a right to respectful treatment: they must never be treated as resources for others. Grounding the duty on the agent's pity makes it depend on what each person feels. See the argument "Subjects-of-a-life" (regan-sujet-de-vie).

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1983, after the author's death (1910).
The debate goes on (our summary) Regan writes nearly a century after Tolstoy. Tolstoy can be defended thus: he starts from what man is able to feel and do to become better, and offers a practical order rather than a theory of rights. Regan can be defended thus: a duty that depends on the agent's feeling does not protect the victim when that feeling is missing. Both conclude in favour of abstaining from flesh. We found no answer from Tolstoy to this criticism.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Same conclusion, two grounds: pity and the moral formation of the agent (Tolstoy) or the rights of the victim (Regan). Open point: is a duty based on pity solid enough?