PR 632: An Alternative to Moral Vegetarianism for Meat-Eaters: Moral Cannibalism

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In this paper, I shall argue for Moral Cannibalism, namely the view that cannibalism is morally mandatory, at least for some meat-eaters animals, given some acceptable assumptions about justice and moral duty. Such an incredible claim will be preceded by a short exposition of the rationale for Moral Vegetarianism and for its adversary position Moral Omnivorism (§1), then I will briefly present Moral Cannibalism (§2), and finally I will discuss two arguments for it, a positive one (§3) and a negative one (§4): on the one hand, justice between animal species might imply that it is morally better for some carnivorous species to eat the members of their own species rather than members of other species; on the other hand, the moral wrongness of cannibalism lacks a satisfactory ground.