Morality and Ethics in Vegetarianism

“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality."( Schopenhauer). Vegetarianism and animal rights movement have been crossing each other since 70’s. The meeting point between two is veganism which means strict vegetarianism. Vegetarianism was firstly founded as being formed on ethical issues and then it became mostly based on health reasons. Even though vegetarianism has evolved drastically over time, some of its current forms have come back full circle to its early days, when vegetarianism was an ethical-philosophical choice, not a mere health choice.
As believed, vegetarianism had been originally founded in ancient India and was generally formed on ethical and moral issues. There were two religions that were the first ones who accepted vegetarianism. Hinduism made a cow a sacred animal. Over the time, there were other reasons founded by Hindus that encourage them to be vegetarians: Ahimsa principle that obliges not to injure a living creature, a fear of negative karmic impact and dietary purity. Since there was no religious law prohibiting the consummation of meat, the strong commitment to vegetarianism was based mostly on moral reasons. Buddhism had distinctive reasons for supporting vegetarianism. One of them is the first precept that tells not to kill any living organism. In addition to prohibition of killing, there was also a requirement not to participate in the murder and not to be the cause of death of a living creature. However, there was an amendment that if the animal is already dead and the man did not kill him specifically ...

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... i.e. for pragmatic reasons, the evolution of ethics had different roots - psychological, spiritual. It is based on the person’s ability for empathy, which is the basis of moral behavior of a person, his kindness and decency. It can be argued that the ability for empathy highlighted man from the world of animals. With the development of spirituality and feeling of compassion, people began to feel uncomfortable by the fact that their actions were constantly associated with the infliction of suffering to other beings and even their killing. Even in ancient times high minds have concluded that man as being rational and moral should not defile themselves with murder. The alternative is to live a more moral, more humane life, without killing animals. Humanity will then become higher in the spiritual sense and feel a beneficial effect of merciful attitude to the weakest.