Socrates’ shepherd
Why these myths about animals should have stayed in the past
On noble shepherds and just rulers
What better way to start this discussion than at the beginning? So let’s go back in time, close to the very roots of Western philosophy, Chapter I from Plato’s Republic. In here, we have Socrates discussing the nature of just rule with a variety of characters.
One of them, Thrasymachus, uses the timeless argument of comparing rulers to shepherds (indeed, it is an insult to this day to call a group of people ‘sheep’). Just as shepherds “seek the good of their sheep and cattle, and fatten them and take care of them” mainly for some kind of profit, so the argument goes, rulers think about their subjects pretty much as sheep and abuse their power for personal gain.
Socrates, being himself, employs a sleight of hand, arguing that taking care of sheep and profiting from them are two different things. A ‘true shepherd’ then, has the well-being of his herd as his main priority, no matter if he earns something from that or not. It is in the nature of ruling to not “seek anything other than what is best for the thing it rules and cares for.”
As a former shepherd, I find this unconvincing. And I don’t mean the part about ruling over humans but the myth of the ‘true shepherd’. Socrates argument is a bit like the idea of separating work from life – in the real world, it doesn’t work like that. We don’t live in the world of Severance1, where two realia can easily be detached. Indeed, there would be no shepherds around if there were no profit to make out of the trade (whether you think of it in the form of money, cheese, meat, breeding animals to trade or sell, having the bigger flock, etc). Shepherding is not charity. That’s why we don’t call workers at animal sanctuaries ‘shepherds.’
At the age when the youth of old Athens were ‘corrupted’ by Socrates with his philosophical questions, I was in the mountains of Romania, tending to the sheep, milking the cows and cooking polenta while my uncle was curdling the milk that would later become cheese. So, as a former shepherd, I have no reason to hold back: obtaining meat, cheese, wool or other types of compensation is the goal of animal agriculture and it is intimately connected with every aspect of the practice.
My preference for democracy aside, Socrates is right to talk about fairness and justice when it comes to ruling over humans. However, there is nothing fair about shepherding or animal agriculture as a whole. Indeed, it is probably the unfair and often brutal nature of these practices that made it necessary for humans to develop such strong myths. And it is why stories of gentle shepherds have been repeated since the times of Socrates. In the words of anthropologist James Suzman:
“Almost all societies that depended on hunting for meat considered animals to have souls of a sort, even if they weren’t always exactly the same as human souls. Many also considered the fact that hunters were in effect harvesters of souls to be morally troubling and came up with a different way to rationalize the killing. […] For farmers involved in meat production or butchers, there is little room for the intimacy that comes from hunting an animal on foot with a spear or bow. The emotional weight of animals' souls would be too great a burden to bear. Humans, though, have evolved the ability to be selective in deploying the empathy that underwrites our social natures.”2
Now, this doesn’t mean that all types of animal husbandry are the same – there is a hell of a difference between traditional practices and the industrial farming of today3. To begin with, people in the past were expected to not abuse animals. It is the traditional view that animals have moral value4 and should not be mistreated, with the big caveat that using them for human needs was not considered mistreatment. By contrast, we don’t expect the large-scale farmers of today to care about the well-being of their animals; for most of us, it is easier to ignore the matter.
We should also mention that some people find pleasure in rearing animals. Indeed, it is likely that in many cases, there is a mix of both pleasure and economic calculations. But in all cases, the well-being of the sheep is ultimately serving the interests of their owners: either because healthy sheep produce more milk and meat or because hobby shepherds usually prefer healthy sheep.
Now, it might as well be that the myth of the kind herdsman and selfless animal farmer likely results in a better treatment for animals, but such myths also needlessly romanticise some rather brutal practices in an era when they are optional. That is why I believe it is better to look things in the face. In my experience, the same people who wouldn’t shut up about the virtues of shepherding were also the cheapest ones when it came to actually paying for the services of shepherds.
So instead of pretending that animal rearing is a just endeavour, may we face the real nature of this practice. And if we are to continue eating meat, we have to accept that the more financially cheap animal products are, the more they are morally expensive5. If you want your nourishment to strike a balance between financial affordability and moral consistency, consider more vegan options on your plate.
Animal consent and true symbiosis
While the previous myth can sometimes lead to fruitful discussions about fairness and whether ruling over others can ever be just, the next idea is quite obviously a feel-good story. Perhaps for that very reason it is still a powerful fantasy: we would like it to be true. In Eating Animals, J.S. Foer presents a very good expose of the ‘myth of animal consent’:
“A common trope, ancient and modern, describes domestication as a process of coevolution between humans and other species. Basically, humans struck a deal with the animals we have named chickens, cows, pigs, and so forth: we’ll protect you, arrange food for you, etc., and, in turn, your labor will be harnessed, your milk and eggs taken, and, at times, you will be killed and eaten. Life in the wild isn’t a party, the logic goes – nature is cruel – so this is a good deal. And the animals, in their own way, have consented to it.”
As any clever reader has noticed, so many of us would very much like this to be true. And our ancestors wanted that too:
“In ancient Greece the myth of consent was enacted at the oracle of Delphi by sprinkling water on the heads of animals before slaughter. When the animals shook off the water by nodding their heads, the oracle would interpret this as consent to be slaughtered and say, “That which willing nods… I say you may justly sacrifice.” A traditional formula used by Yakuts reads, “You have come to me, Lord Bear, you wish me to kill you.” In the ancient Israelite tradition, the red heifer sacrificed for Israel’s atonement must walk to the altar willingly or the ritual is invalid. The myth of consent has many versions, but all imply a “fair deal” and, at least metaphorically, animal complicity in their own domestication and slaughter.”
In our day and age, a lot of people are using scientific language to tell the same story – as it goes, “domestication is an evolutionary, rather than a political, development,” and it was a good deal for both us and the animals. Indeed, some even go as far as saying that humans were the true victims because of how much work we put into rearing animals! But this, at best, confuses domestication with symbiosis. At worst, it is yet another misuse of evolutionary language for grim purposes.
Domestication is an imposition; symbiosis means cooperation. If you want an example of the latter, look at the relation honeyguide birds have developed with humans. As the name says, these birds will guide humans to bee colonies: while the humans feast on honey, the birds eat bee larvae and wax. This is then a beneficial deal for both us and the birds.6 Not so much for the bees, but that’s a story for another time. Now compare this interaction to standard agricultural practices, where animals are bred, fed, eventually used for labour, and then sacrificed for meat.
At most, a kind ‘fair deal’ can be found in our traditional relation to pets… but we should not ignore all the other brutal and very traditional practices found around the world (castrating males without anaesthesia so they become more docile or their meat will taste better; chaining dogs; forcing female animals to be pregnant as much as possible; etc). Nowadays, the myth of animal consent “is offered by ranchers in defense of the violence that is part of their profession, and makes appearances in agricultural school curricula.”7 It also serves the interests of big corporations that know of no morals or scruple about treating animals terribly.
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One could see how a dedicated humane farmer might believe the animals she cares for would choose to live with her over the perils of the wild. But apart from that, if this idea convinces us to buy animal products from supermarkets or fast-food restaurants, then we are simply deluding ourselves. What makes this story even worse is that it uses ‘evolution’ as a way to diminish the moral responsibilities of humans. And that is irresponsible – why would we want to live in a culture where the majority of people think we’ve evolved to inflict unspeakable acts of violence upon countless billions of animals annually when this is clearly a choice that we make mostly because we like the taste of meat and cheese? Oh…
Conclusion: the curious case of human superiority
We have seen two ancient myths about our relation with domestic animals and why they don’t hold up: the ‘myth of animal consent’ is a justification for human violence that was useful to our ancestors but makes little sense in today’s context, and the idea of a ‘just shepherd’ is a contradiction in terms. We have also seen that, in some circumstances, such ideas can be conducive to a better treatment of animals than the standards of today.
Other myths are less so: ‘the logic of the larder’ argument states that our rearing and slaughtering of animals is actually good for them since otherwise they wouldn’t exist; the ‘guardians of species’ is, broadly speaking, the idea that humans protect domestic species via animal husbandry. I won’t go into further detail here about these arguments because they are not usually used seriously – at least in my experience. So let us instead look at another idea that has resulted in quite a lot of trouble for animals but could be used for their betterment, and that is the question of human superiority over animals.
In the excellent article Different Religions, Different Animal Ethics?, Rev. Louis Caruana shows how the main religions that emerged from India (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism) and the main Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), all converge surprisingly on the question of our relation to animals.
In short, all of the main faiths argue from a certain perspective of human superiority over animals, but they also emphasise strong moral duties towards animals that can range from endorsing strict vegetarianism (Jainism) to minimising the pain animals feel during sacrifice (Islam). This kind of nuance is often lacking in the discourse of people who argue from a simplistic understanding of evolutionary theory, i.e., might makes right.
While necessity, culture and other factors led to the farming of animals on a large scale, the most important religious and philosophical traditions of the past also encouraged compassion towards animals and decried mistreatment. In today’s world, I’d argue the continuation of this traditional view of things is not the mindless consumption of animal products that were made in ways we don’t even want to think about. Rather, veganism and the labour-intensive humane farming are the continuation of the traditional ideal of compassion and mindful interactions between humans and animals.
And when it comes to the matter of superiority, if by that we mean being more cruel and violent than any other species around, that is simply a difference of degree and not of kind. Let us embrace an area where we are truly ‘superior’, and that is the fact that we are the only ones in the natural world that can be moral. This is something that sets us apart from nature, but it is an ability each one of us has to choose whether to exercise or not. As a great contemporary piece of wisdom emphasises, “with great power comes great responsibility.”
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Petrică Nițoaia is a former shepherd, passionate about philosophy and animal ethics. He writes mainly on the ethics of food production, wild animal suffering, human rights and philosophical pessimism. He finds philosophy and history not only fascinating but also fun and useful for making the world a more joyful and fair place for all.
Petrică Nițoaia on Daily Philosophy:
Resources
Plato, Complete works (J. M. Cooper ed.), Hackett, 1997
Foer, J. S., Eating Animals, Little, Brown and Company, 2009
Suzman, J., Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots, Penguin, 2020
Caruana, L., S.J., Different religions, different animal ethics? Anim Front. 2020 Jan 10;10(1):8-14. doi: 10.1093/af/vfz047.
Cover image: the Carpathian Mountains as seen from the author’s childhood village.
