What's Wrong with Eating People? by Cave Peter

Author:Cave, Peter [Cave, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Oneworld Publications (trade)
Published: 2008-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

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We may deal quickly with the scenario sketched, once we have the background question: what’s wrong with eating people? After all, I had not consented to their gastronomic intentions and was far from wanting to be cooked; so, that was why eating me was wrong.

Jonathan Swift gave satirical voice to eating babies and the young, to stave off impending starvation. The idea has not been much taken up. True, in extreme cases when, for example, survivors of air crashes would otherwise die, people typically accept that eating those already deceased is morally permissible. Many people, though, would be appalled at the dining habits of our club above, even if members ate only humans recently deceased through natural cause or accident. Yet, many of these appalled people are probably pleased to be blood donors, when alive, and pleased to donate organs on death.

To maintain focus, we cast to one side cases when eating those accidentally or naturally deceased is required because of imminent starvation. Those instances excepted, is something otherwise wrong with the consumption of human remains by humans, even when such cannibalism is voluntarily agreed? After all, many of us enthusiastically eat the flesh of other creatures – fish, fowl, and beasts of the field – and sometimes we savour, sometimes unwittingly, snakes, whales, and crocodiles, even the odd cat, dog, and chimp. Yet only the perverted would defend eating people – it seems.

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