Eat This Book - A Carnivore''s Manifesto

If we want to improve the treatment of animals, Dominique Lestel argues, we must acknowledge our evolutionary impulse to eat them, and we must expand our worldview to see how others consume meat ethically and sustainably. The position of vegans and vegetarians is unrealistic and exclusionary. Eat This Book calls at once for a renewed and vigorous defense of animal rights and a more open approach to meat eating that turns us into responsible carnivores. Lestel skillfully synthesizes Western philosophical views on the moral status of animals and holistic cosmologies that recognize human-animal reciprocity. Vegetarianism isolates humans from the world by refusing to accept that cruelty, violence, and conflicting interests are part of life. Lestel presents the carnivore's position as more coherently ethical, describing how meat eaters assume completely, which is to say, metabolically, their animal status, appreciating fully the life-giving power of animal flesh. Lestel vehemently condemns factory farming and the terrible footprint of industrial meat eating.

About the author

Dominique Lestel is a French philosopher and associate professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He teaches in the Department of Cognitive Science, where he is a founding member and part of the Archives Husserl Research Center, and has written a dozen philosophical books, including, with Thierry Bardini, Journey to the End of the Species.

Summary

A provocative defense of meat eating as an affirmation of our vital relation and debt to animals.

Report

"Eat This Book is a refreshing and engaging appraisal of ethical vegetarianism and, by association, the more encompassing field of animal ethics. Witty and comical yet always serious in its defense of meat eating, Dominique Lestel's book is a pure joy to read." - Brett Buchanan, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Laurentian University

Product details

• Authors: Dominique Lestel, Lestel Dominique
• Assisted by: Gary Steiner (Translation), Steiner Gary (Translation)
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 08.03.2016
• EAN: 9780231172974
• ISBN: 978-0-231-17297-4
• No. of pages: 160
• Series: Critical Perspectives on Animals: Theory, Culture, Science, and Law; Critical Perspectives on Anima
• Subjects: Guides > Food & drink > Healthy cuisine, light cuisine; Humanities, art, music > Philosophy; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Miscellaneous; SOCIAL SCIENCE / General, PHILOSOPHY / Social, PHILOSOPHY / Political, PHILOSOPHY / Ethics & Moral Philosophy, Social & political philosophy, Ethics & moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, Animals & society, Ethics and moral philosophy, Animals and society, cooking; vegetarian; moral philosophy; animal rights