Preliminary statements:
(1) We recently posted an essay, "Veganism must remain a secular cause," which we removed in reconsideration of some of the phrasing as being not entirely appropriate, which some of our readers may have found offensive – we sincerely apologize if anyone did – as well as in reconsideration of our approach to the issue we wish to draw attention to. The following essay will tackle it in a more specific, targeted and, we hope, appropriate way.
(2) We wish to avert, at the outset, any possible misunderstanding concerning our position on religion and spirituality (which we think can be distinguished from religion although we are not concerned to argue this here) by saying, prominently and unreservedly, the following. Toward neither religion nor spirituality do we harbor any ill, although we are atheists/agnostics ourselves. Furthermore, we unequivocally reject the phenomenon of "new atheism" (promoted by the likes of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins), which we see as politically reactionary and as more like a peculiarly scientistic form of anti-religious hatred than a serious form of atheism such as is to be found in, for example, the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. What we reject is the religious diversification of the meaning of veganism in vegan advocacy, in the sense and by way of characterizing, even if only in part, veganism using religious notions. Consequently, the discussion that we wish to begin with this essay is not to be framed as being between atheist and religious animal advocates, although it may superfically appear to be. Rather, it is to be framed as being between (i) advocates - who may or may not be religious or spiritual - who think that the notion of veganism that is used for the purpose of political advocacy, i.e., when we speak in the capacity of abolitionists and anti-regulationists (see below) to the general public in a pluralistic society, should be fully characterizable independently of any particular religion, that it should have no provision(s) that depend(s) upon any religious notions, such as those of Jainism, and (ii) advocates who seek to incorporate religious notions into vegan advocacy or who at least do not have any objection to doing so.
Gary Francione's website "The Abolitionist Approach to Animal Right" is now displaying on its home page the symbol of Jainism, below which it reads,
Veganism is about nonviolence: nonviolence to other sentient beings; to yourself; to the earth.
This statement raises the questions of what could be meant by (not) doing violence to oneself or to the Earth. The answer appears to be found in Francione's blog essay, "Veganism Morality, Health, and the Environment" (Feb. 2010).
In it, Francione writes:
We have a moral obligation that we owe to ourselves to be healthy; ingesting products that cause us harm is a form of violence we inflict on ourselves.
And:
[A]lthough I do not believe that we can have moral obligations that we owe directly to nonsentient beings, we certainly have an obligation to all of the sentient beings that live in the nonsentient environment. Indeed, because there are so many sentient beings who inhabit the environment, it is difficult to see the environment as non sentient in any way that would affect our moral obligations. A tree may not be sentient in the sense of being perceptually aware, but there are many sentient beings who live in or on the tree or who depend on the tree.
''The line between these arguments,'' Francione writes, ''is not as bright as you might think in that health and environmental arguments have a moral dimension."
We do not intend in a narrowly technical sense to lecture those familiar with Francione's work about the inapplicability of a rights approach to "yourself" or "the earth," "the planet" or "the environment"; nor to remind Francione himself of this, when it is his work that has taught us most about the philosophical concept of rights in the first place.
Instead, we would like to draw attention to what we regard as Francione's equivocating between two paradigms, a moral/legal and a religious one, when he speaks respectively of veganism as being about nonviolence to other sentient beings and to "yourself and the earth."
In the aforementioned essay, Francione writes:
The spiritual component is certainly not necessary to get to an abolitionist conclusion; I do not rely on it, for instance, in the philosophical argument that I make in Introduction to Animal rights: Your Child or the Dog?.
True; Francione's moral argument for abolition is fully characterisable independently of Jain ideology. Yet, on the other hand, his linking veganism with Jainism has been a common theme in his animal advocacy outside his print work for a long time, becoming more manifest and explicit and culminating in the addition to his website of a Jain symbol, below which is exhibited a sloganized definition of veganism, whereby that notion is given a distinctly religious inflection, again taken from Jainism. To be clear, we do not criticize Francione, or any other vegan, for attaching, for themselves, a religious meaning to veganism: as for example a Christian vegan may do in viewing Jesus's teaching of universal love as applying to animals as well as humans, and as requiring all Christians to be vegan. In public outreach, however, it is important, we think, to be unequivocal about whether by attaching such a meaning, one is speaking as a member of a religion, reaching out to other members of a particular religious community - or as a purely political activist whose vegan advocacy is aimed at the public in general. Concerning the latter kind of advocacy, the message must, we think, be a political one, wholly independent of any faith: that people ought to stop consuming animal products irrespective of their religious or atheistic beliefs.
When someone is a Jain, it can be pointed out to them – by someone who is a Jain herself, for otherwise it would lack authority – that taking the principle of Ahimsa seriously requires them not to consume any animal products. Conversely, to someone who is not a Jain, or does not have any religious faith, their moral obligation not to consume any animal products cannot be derived from the principle of Ahimsa. To put it another way, the notion derived from Jainism that veganism is "about" not doing violence to "yourself," or "the earth," as well as to animals, is intelligible to Jains, but not to non-Jains. In political terms, the violence done to animals in institutionalized exploitation is a social justice issue; animals are the victims of injustice. Whatever violence you can do to yourself or the earth, neither you nor the earth can intelligibly be referred to as thereby being made the victims of injustice.
While from a religious perspective we may be concerned with the spiritual violence - as one could put it - that we may be doing to ourselves, from a political perspective we are exclusively concerned with the victimization of others who suffer violence resulting from injustice.
In the aforementioned essay, Francione states, "[M]y commitment to nonviolence is a significant part of my thinking." Of course it is, in general, laudable to be committed to nonviolence; only that, in Francione's rendering, there seems to be a problematic tendency toward a politically unsober excess of reductionism that is at risk of attenuating important distinctions that should actually be kept as robust as possible. One such distinction, in particular, is between (i) whatever violence we may be inflicting on ourselves and (ii) the violence that we inflict on animals. From a political perspective, not all violence is created equal; there is a categorical distinction between violence that may be spiritually or religiously problematic, and violence that is unequivocally morally wrong and an issue of social injustice. Yet this categorical distinction is obscured in Francione's slogan where religious and moral issues are intermixed. Evidently, for the sake of veganism as a political cause, unequivocal explicitness is required, by Francione himself and those who follow him in this respect, to distinguish categorically whatever violence we may be doing to ourselves and the earth from the violence done to others, particularly in the context of social injustice. For without such forthright clarification, when speaking of such categorically different things in the same breath, Francione can hardly avoid giving the misleading impression of an unwarranted and unwarrantably close connection between them. And this misleading impression is not dispelled when the ''signature line'' of each one of his blog entries reads that veganism is ''[f]irst and foremost … about nonviolence to other sentient beings. But it’s also about nonviolence to the earth and nonviolence to yourself.'' ''First and foremost'' indicates a difference in significance but not in category.
Confusing categories by equivocating in public on whether one is referring to the religious or the political paradigm is problematic in a double sense:
(1) It jeopardizes the argumentative security of the case for veganism, derived from its rational compellingness given by sound philosophical reasoning. In stark contrast, whatever Francione says about veganism from a Jain perspective must be accepted on faith, or according as one finds its ideology appealing. For him to retain the former he would have to categorically distinguish what veganism is as a political and moral matter, on the one hand, and what it may be as a religious or spiritual matter, on the other.
(2) To the extent to which he fails to do so, relying at least to some extent on religious notions for the case for veganism, or characterizing it such that it cannot be fully understood independently of those notions, his vegan advocacy thereby loses at least some of its political cogency. By ceasing to be independent of any particular religious perspective, it becomes attenuated in its power to shift the paradigm in a pluralistic society where people hold a diversity of views, religious, agnostic, and atheist.
When Francione says that veganism is ''about nonviolence to other sentient beings; to yourself; to the earth,'' that is, referring to categorically distinct things in the same breath, those who are familiar with his work know that he does not believe those things to be morally the same or similar. However, unless he makes it clear that he does not, his statement will almost certainly be read by the public as implying that, for abolitionists, there is no difference in kind, but only in degree, between doing violence to yourself and the earth, on the one hand, and to animals, on the other. This reading is especially likely in a world in which one of the most common ''counterarguments'' to veganism as a moral imperative is that vegans, too, harm animals (mice, birds, and other animals getting injured and killed in the process of harvesting crops, etc.), the implication being that there is no real difference between eating a banana and eating a hamburger.
We would like to emphasize, again, that our criticism is not aimed at any religion or any animal advocate's holding religious beliefs; it is aimed at the conceptual ''fortification'' or ''supplementation'' of veganism, its definitional enlargement as being "about" not doing violence to "yourself" or "the earth" as well as to animals -- without clearly distinguishing this definition, which is partly based on religious notions concerning our relation to ourselves and the natural world, from a political one, which is confined to the moral issue of animal exploitation and to animals or sentient beings as the victims of injustice.
Someone might seek to counter our observations by objecting that Francione's placing his definition of veganism below the Jain symbol achieves the required clarification and separation. However, he is not just "quoting' a Jain perspective for edifying effect (in the way that he sometimes quotes Gandhi or M. L. King); he has his name and his blog's title below it, whereby it will be read by the public as implying that as a moral and political matter veganism is about not doing violence to yourself and the earth as well as, if not as much as, to animals - unless it is explicitly indicated otherwise by stating prominently and without equivocation that only violence against animals (and other humans) is a matter of social injustice. Surely, whatever is finally to be said for it, it is at least arguable that it is politically problematic for Francione to partially recast the meaning of veganism in the light of his own religiously inspired enthusiasms. Once again, we are not criticizing his religious beliefs or Jainism as such, qua religion; only its being made by him part of what veganism is about together with the fact that he does not explicitly distinguish what veganism is as a moral and political matter from what it is for him as a religious matter, but rather speaks of these in the same breath, as though they were not categorically distinct.
Since one can, with propriety, identify as an abolitionist only if one embraces Francione's approach in its entirety, his legal scholarship as much as his moral philosophy, which latter we do not support, we have adjusted our mission statement accordingly, identifying now as anti-regulationists rather than as abolitionists. Being an abolitionist does not, however, require, in our view, embracing Francione's merging veganism with Jainism. This is why we note with dismay the curious absence of any critical response to this from fellow abolitionists. Criticizing is not attacking; disagreement is not divisiveness, remember?
Those who, like us, support Francione's scholarly legal work as still the only source of a theoretical grounding of anti-regulationism may find themselves in a somewhat unfair position when linking to his website. (Just to be clear, we are not arguing that anyone should stop doing so - quite the contrary: it is precisely because his website is such an important resource for vegan advocacy that it should not, in our view, be seen as having any religious agenda.) Linking to his website should not unavoidably imply promoting, at the same time, a partly religious definition of veganism that as such outruns all vegans' interests as social justice advocates, and that could in consistency be rejected even by other Jain vegans who in political and religious sobriety recognized that in a pluralistic society animal advocacy, aiming at shifting the paradigm, should transcend any particular religious perspective. It is thus not easy to understand why Francione would declare veganism to be about not doing violence to yourself - a declaration that with its flat want of moral and political relevance is liable to strike one with nothing so much as its superfluousness.
