Vegetarianism and Virtue: On Gassendi's Epicurean Defense

Gassendi, who was influenced in the development ofhis moral theory by Epicurus,2 was, as was Epicurus, a vegetarian. Gassendi argues, in his Philosophiae Epicuri Syntagma,3 his reconstruction of Epicurus' theory, and in his Syntagma Philosophicum,4 presenting his own ethics, that abstaining from flesh is a moral requirement, i.e., a requirement for "doing well."5 Further, Gassendi represents, as an Epicurean position, the view that rights and the obligations attendant upon rights pertain only to those bound together by a social contract, and, agreements with animals being infeasible, we have no obligations which follow from their rights. Why and how, then, is vegetarianism a moral requirement? In what follows, I will examine a Gassendist response to this question to ascertain how vegetarianism can be supported in the context of a Gassendist moral theory. Bernier's Abrege de la Philosophie de Gassendi (Lyons, 1684), which is an abridgement and translation into French of Gassendi's lengthy Latin Syntagma Philosophicum, served to popularize Gassendi's views. Bernier provides a reasonably faithful rendition of Gassendi's views. It is Bernier's text that is translated into English in Three Discourses ofHappiness, Virtue and Liberty, a 1699 publication on moral philosophy that is attributed to Gassendi.6 To better comprehend the views of Gassendi as understood by seventeenthcentury Gassendists, in what follows, English translations of passages presenting Gassendi's view will, where possible, be.taken from Three Discourses on Happiness, Virtue and Liberty.? Likewise, English translations of passages from Gassendi 's representation ofEpicurus' view will be taken from Thomas Stanley's translation of Gassendi's Philosophiae Epicuri Syntagma. 8 In the context of Gassendi's virtue ethics, in which he defmes moral philosophy as "the art of doing well" [TD, 2],9 Gassendi discusses the fundamental virtues of temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence, with happiness as the summum bonum. Vegetarianism is said to be a requirement of sobriety, a virtue of temperance. He explains: