Mathew Lu Explaining The Wrongness of Cannibalism (Recovered) (Recovered)

Explaining the Wrongness of Cannibalism
Mathew Lu
Abstract. In this paper I take up the claims of a number of recent commentators

who have argued that there is no rational basis for a moral judgment against can-
nibalism because no successful argument against it can be articulated within the
dominant consequentialist or neo-Kantian deontological approaches in normative
ethics. While I think cannibalism is clearly morally repugnant, it is surprisingly
difficult to explain why. I argue not only that a rational justification of the moral
wrongness of cannibalism can be given in terms of a broadly Aristotelian virtue
ethics, but also that this requires a broader conception of moral value, and cor-
responding moral obligations, than is typical within the dominant approaches.
W
hy is cannibalism wrong? This is not a question that often comes
up or seems very pressing. Cannibalism is generally taken to be
obviously wrong. Indeed, an appeal to its obvious wrongness
is often offered as a reductio ad absurdum.1 However, it is surprisingly difficult
to explain the wrongness of cannibalism within the leading approaches of nor-
mative ethics. In fact, a number of commentators have argued that neither the
dominant consequentialist nor deontological2 conceptions of normative ethics
1
Leon Kass is typical: “Can anyone really give an argument fully adequate to the horror
which is father-daughter incest (even with consent), or having sex with animals, or mutilating
a corpse, or eating human flesh, or even just (just!) raping or murdering another human being?
Would anybody’s failure to give full rational justification for his or her revulsion at these practices
make that revulsion ethically suspect? Not at all” (Leon Kass, “The Wisdom of Repugnance,” The
New Republic 216 [2 June 1997]: 17–26, at 20).
2
As will become clear below, my interlocutors and I are more or less taking it for granted
that the only sort of deontological theory relevant to the present discussion will take a broadly
(neo-) Kantian form (i.e., it will involve some sort of appeal to duties understood in terms of
what rationality requires). Of course, a divine command theory that directly involved a divine
prohibition of anthropophagy would, in some sense, be a deontological account of the wrongness
of cannibalism, but beyond the fact that such theories do not have much currency in the present
discussion, we still might conclude that such a theory did not explain the wrongness of cannibal-
ism so much as merely stipulate it.
©
2013, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 3 pp. 433–458
doi: 10.5840/acpq201387332
434 American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
give clear grounds for saying why cannibalism per se is wrong. The more we
reflect on the problem the less clear it becomes.
I take up the problem of cannibalism not because I think its moral status
can really be in doubt, but because it is an interesting challenge case for our moral
theories. In striving to explain its wrongness we will discover that non-person
objects3 (e.g., some animals, features of nature, works of art, human corpses)
represent a category of moral value that the dominant theories of normative
ethics have real difficulty explaining. In turn, this category of moral value can
give rise to moral obligations that are not grounded in that object’s relation-
ship to a living person. Ultimately, I will argue that a virtue ethics of a broadly
Aristotelian form provides us with the best account of this kind of value and
the corresponding obligations. Further, I argue that because the conventional
forms of the dominant consequentialist and deontological moral theories have
such difficulty explaining this category of moral obligation, this represents a real
weakness of both of those approaches qua moral.
I.
Active vs. Passive Cannibalism. In any discussion of cannibalism we must

make a clear distinction between what William Irvine calls active versus passive
cannibalism.4 Active cannibalism involves killing another human being in order
to eat him, while passive cannibalism is merely the eating of already dead hu-
man flesh (from an individual for whose death the eater is in no way morally
culpable). We are for the most part not interested in active cannibalism, because
the wrongness of active cannibalism would naturally include the wrongness
of killing. I take it as given that it is wrong to kill someone simply in order to
eat him. However, this is true at minimum because it is wrong to kill unjustly,
whatever may be the moral wrongness of subsequently consuming the deceased.
So let us set aside active cannibalism. If any good reasons can be adduced for the
wrongness of passive cannibalism, these will apply mutatis mutandis to active
cannibalism, and we thereby avoid confusing the moral question of cannibalism
with the wrongness of killing.
So let us focus on passive cannibalism, the consumption of already dead
human flesh or anthropophagy. Further, let us specify that the flesh comes from
an individual who died in no morally questionable way. We should also set aside
any complications arising from the presumptive fact that most people do not
want their bodies to be eaten after their deaths and any obligations that might
3
Throughout, when I refer to “non-person objects” I mean simply objects of moral concern
(possessing moral value) that are not persons.
4
See William B. Irvine, “Cannibalism, Vegetarianism, and Narcissism,” Between the Species:
A Journal of Ethics 5 (1989): 11–7.
Explaining the Wrongness of Cannibalism 435
generate (e.g., in respecting the wishes of the deceased, etc.), which are a dis-
traction from the central question about cannibalism that forces us to consider
more general questions about what, if anything, we owe to the dead. Instead, let
us isolate the real moral question about cannibalism by specifying a case where
such considerations do not come into play. Suppose some person, in sound mind
(in the legal sense), includes within his will a stipulation that he does not mind
being eaten after his natural death.5 In such a case, would there be any wrong
in the mere postmortem consumption of his flesh?
II.
Consequentialist and Deontological Analyses. Both Jeremy Wisnewski and

John Shand have recently argued that there is no intrinsic wrong in cannibalism.6
Wisnewski begins by questioning whether either utilitarian7 or “Kantian” grounds
can be given for a moral judgment against cannibalism. With respect to the former,
while he can envision particular circumstances in which cannibalism might reduce
overall net happiness, nonetheless he thinks that some circumstances might be
found in which the utility calculus does not come out against cannibalism. For
instance, an individual with no family or friends, or one whose family and friends
did not object, could perhaps be eaten without causing unhappiness. In any case,
Wisnewski concludes that utilitarian arguments cannot show that cannibalism is
“wrong in itself” because “there are conditions under which the wrong-making
consequences no longer obtain.”8 Of course, he is correct in saying that there is
nothing in utilitarianism that can show that cannibalism is wrong per se, but that
is less a feature of cannibalism itself and more simply a consequence of the fact
that utilitarianism cannot show that any normal type of act is wrong per se. So
long as some circumstances might obtain in which the practice would produce a
positive gain in net happiness, classical utilitarianism will potentially license it.9
5
We might make the case even stronger by having the deceased positively charge his execu-
tor to feed his corpse to his heirs. Now, again, I do not want to get into the question of whether
the heirs would have some sort of duty to comply with the deceased’s wishes, so it would be best
to avoid this question for now.
6
See J. J. Wisnewski, “A Defense of Cannibalism,” Public Affairs Quarterly 18 (2004):
265–72; J. J. Wisnewski, “Murder, Cannibalism, and Indirect Suicide: A Philosophical Study of a
Recent Case,” Philosophy in the Contemporary World 14 (2007): 11–21; John Shand, “Abhorrence
and Justification,” Ethical Perspectives: Journal of the European Ethics Network 17 (2010): 515–28.
7
I follow Wisnewski’s usage of “utilitarian” when explicitly discussing his view as opposed
to Shand’s, but I will subsume both Wisnewski’s and Shand’s discussions under “consequentialist”
when treating them together below.
8
Wisnewski, “A Defense of Cannibalism,” 267.
9
When I say that no “normal type of act” can be ruled out by consequentialism, I mean no
normal human act under the proper formal description that includes a specification of the good the
agent is pursuing. This would rule out any act whose purpose is the maximization of unhappiness
Wisnewski next considers what “Kantian” arguments might be offered

against cannibalism. He notes that the best candidates for a Kantian argument
“invoke what is typically called ‘The Formula of Humanity,’” which “holds that
one ought to treat other human beings as ends, never merely as means.”10 It is not
necessary to rehearse at length Wisnewski’s arguments for why such “Kantian”
arguments fail, because they all basically turn on the same observation—a hu-
man corpse is not a moral person. His reasoning is straightforward: “as a being
without autonomy, the corpse does not have dignity. Therefore, consumption of
the corpse does not violate the formula of humanity: the corpse is but a thing,
not a person.”11 Wisnewski considers the possibility that it might be possible to
disrespect someone by eating their remains against their previously expressed
wishes, but, again, this topic is not directly relevant to the question of anthro-
pophagy per se. For, even if pre-death intentions do continue to bind us in some
way, we can simply consider the case, which I proposed above, of an individual
who does not have such intentions for his moral remains.
Lastly, Wisnewski considers what he calls a “quasi-Kantian” argument “re-
garding the sacredness of the body,” but he quickly dismisses this on the grounds
that such a claim is unclear and question-begging. Further, the major premise
of this argument (that the body is sacred) “can probably only be based on a
religious belief ” and that would disqualify it from serving as part of a “rational
justification” by his lights. At this point Wisnewski seems to think that he has
shown that there is no “rational justification” available for the common moral
intuition against cannibalism, and he takes that to show, at minimum, that this
intuition should be questioned. And “if we are wrong about cannibalism, we
might well be wrong about many other common moral intuitions.”12
John Shand adopts a very similar strategy to Wisnewski. He too considers
whether either “deontological” or “consequentialist” arguments can have force
against voluntary, passive cannibalism and likewise concludes that they do not.
His reasoning is similar: deontological (Kantian) arguments do not apply because
“the person here is dead, so there is no person involved by the usual definitions
of personhood. . . . Nothing that fits with not respecting another person or
trampling on another person’s rights even arises here.”13 Similarly he concludes
that the “consequentialist arguments fare no better” because “it is hard to see
and/or the minimization of happiness. While such an act would presumably be impermissible
according to classical utilitarianism, no normal human act would properly be described that way.
10
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid., 271. It is worth noting that in some ways the real purpose of these authors in discuss-
ing cannibalism is perhaps less to establish its legitimacy than to show how weak the justifications
are for other similar intuitions of moral repugnance.
13
John Shand, “Abhorrence and Justification,” 525.
what bad consequences would follow from an instance of cannibalism.”14 As

noted above, even if there were bad consequences in some given case, e.g., in
terms of distressing the deceased’s family, those consequences would be contin-
gent on changeable circumstances and some other case could easily be adduced
that avoided them.
In short, both Wisnewski and Shand are basically offering the following
argument against the widespread moral condemnation of cannibalism:
(1) If there is a rational justification against cannibalism it must take either
a consequentialist or deontological form.
(2) No consequentialist or deontological argument successfully holds against
cannibalism.
(3) Therefore, there is no rational justification against cannibalism.
This is obviously an appeal to the excluded middle, and, while the argument is
formally valid, there are obviously questions we can raise about both premises.
Since it is difficult to discuss all possible permutations of consequentialist or
deontological theories, we might legitimately doubt whether (2) actually holds.
We might wonder if Wisnewski and Shand have truly exhausted all of the op-
tions available for formulating such an argument.
In any case, we should clearly reject premise (1). Both Wisnewski and Shand
take it for granted that the only possible rational justification for a moral judgment
must take either a consequentialist or deontological form. Wisnewski does not even
seem to recognize that he is doing anything controversial. In his article he consid-
ers “three utilitarian, three Kantian arguments, and one quasi-Kantian argument
against cannibalism.”15 As noted above he argues that “each of these arguments . . .
fails to demonstrate that cannibalism is morally wrong”; therefore, he “concludes
that the moral prohibition against cannibalism is not rationally justified.”16
At least Shand is a bit more aware of his assumptions: “we may now go
about seeing whether a rational moral justification can . . . be given for forbidding
. . . cannibalism . . . by seeing what classical deontological and consequentialist
moral theories have to say about them.”17 He allows that “it may be arguable
that these positions are exhaustive of moral theory; it is undoubtedly the case,
however, that they are central, and perhaps the most widely appealed to moral
theories, and as such one would expect to find strong moral argument here, if
anywhere, applicable to”18 cannibalism. He even claims that “while there are
14
Ibid. Shand does not seem to be aware of Wisnewski’s earlier discussions.
15
16
Ibid., 265–6.
17
Shand, “Abhorrence and Justification,” 521.
18
Ibid.
other refined, or combined, moral theories we might look at, this is unneces-
sary because where moral convictions are widespread, virtually universal, and
strongly felt, there is usually no problem . . . of coming up with some powerful
deontological or consequentialist arguments as to why those feelings and con-
victions are justified.”19
Of course, dismissing the need to come up with another account on the
grounds that there is “usually no problem” of constructing “some powerful
deontological or consequentialist arguments” ignores the possibility that there
might be systematic gaps in those moral theories. That is to say, both Wisnewski
and Shand casually assume that just because these are “the most widely appealed
to moral theories” one or the other must be able to provide an account of the
wrongness of any act condemned by “widespread, virtually universal, and strongly
felt” moral convictions.
Of course, Wisnewski and Shand have casually ignored an entire branch
of contemporary moral theory: virtue ethics. For an excluded middle argument
to work it must invoke a truly comprehensive disjunction. At the very least, in
order to be tolerably complete the first premise really ought to be adjusted to
something like:
(1′) If there is a rational justification against cannibalism it must take a
consequentialist, a deontological, or a virtue ethics-based form.20
And, of course, the second premise would need to change to:
(2′) No consequentialist, deontological, or virtue ethics-based argument
successfully holds against cannibalism.
So, if one could construct an argument from virtue ethics against canni-
balism that would deny (2′), then it would prevent (3) from following. Such a
virtue-ethics-based account of the wrongness of cannibalism would also present a
real challenge to adherents of the other theories because it would represent an ac-
count of genuine moral wrongness that they have great difficulty explaining. This,
in turn, would cast doubt on the adequacy of those theories qua moral theories.
III.
Non-Person Objects of Respect. We need a way of explaining why a dead

human body can possess some sort of moral value such that it is presumptively
19
Ibid.
20
Of course, this assumes that these three forms are truly comprehensive, which one might
think requires justification. For my purposes here, however, I am content to make the merely
sociological claim that there are a sufficient number of working moral philosophers broadly com-
mitted to a “virtue ethics” perspective, and therefore it is simply unreasonable to leave virtue
ethics out as a “contender” theory, especially if, like Wisnewski and Shand, one is attempting an
appeal to an excluded middle.
wrong to treat it in certain ways, including and particularly eating it.21 Wisnewski
and Shand both think that all possible “Kantian” or deontological arguments
against cannibalism fail, basically, because those arguments turn on respecting
persons, and dead bodies are not persons. Accordingly, we need an understanding
of the demand for moral respect that embraces objects beyond human persons.
In short, we need to be able to say that some non-person objects have a kind of
moral value that is due a kind of moral respect, and that this rules out certain
ways of treating those objects. While the dominant theories have trouble making
sense of this sort of value, I will show how a broadly Aristotelian virtue ethics
provides us with the resources to offer a reasonable account of that kind of moral
value and our obligation to respect it.
I think it is helpful to begin with some examples to help us locate this
kind of non-personal moral value. Many people think that the environment or
“Nature” is worthy of protection from needless destruction because it has, in
itself, a kind of moral value that makes its needless destruction a morally defec-
tive act. While we can certainly seek to explain the value of Nature in terms of
its usefulness to us, I doubt that such explanations fully capture the value of
Nature for the committed environmentalist. We often see conservationist argu-
ments advanced on grounds of enlightened self-interest; e.g., we should preserve
the rain forest because it has a biosphere of unparalleled richness, which holds
out hope for the discovery of medicinally useful compounds, etc. Such a claim
could conceivably be expanded into a moral argument by holding that we have
some sort of duty of beneficence to persons that requires us to properly manage
natural resources that could be important to improving the welfare of persons.
Construed in this way the moral value of the environment is merely instrumental;
we have moral duties to preserve it only because persons now, or in the future,
might benefit.
I suspect these sorts of arguments are favored mostly for their rhetorical
effectiveness and not because they capture what most sincere environmental-
ists really care about. Many people believe that Nature possesses some sort of
moral value in itself, such that its preservation is a moral duty independent of
the effects on any persons whatsoever. On a view like this unspoiled Nature is
morally valuable precisely because it is unspoiled, even if no one is present to
21
I will argue below that cannibalism is a species of a more general genus of disrespect
that might also include other acts like mutilation or public display (e.g., dragging a dead body
through the streets). Accordingly, we will ultimately have to distinguish between the wrongness
of anthropophagy per se and the more general wrong of disrespecting the dead, of which can-
nibalism is just one example. Further, I am going to argue that anthropophagy is a prima facie,
but defeasible, evil. Therefore, cases may arise in which some other greater good will outweigh
the evil involved, especially in extreme scenarios, as I will discuss below.
enjoy it.22 It is difficult to account for this kind of intrinsic moral value within
the dominant theories of normative ethics.
Perhaps we might say that Nature has interests that we are obligated to
respect, and this opens up the possibility of accounting for its value in terms
of the dominant theories.23 So the consequentialist might argue that we have a
general obligation to respect or optimize interests, while the deontologist might
consider anything with interests to be a “quasi-person” that we must respect.
While I am sympathetic to the notion that non-persons can possess interests (in
terms of what contributes to or diminishes their flourishing), I think it is actu-
ally unlikely that either consequentialist or deontologist moral theorists would
embrace obligations to optimize or respect interests in these general terms.
It is inconsistent with the thrust of the vast majority of utilitarian arguments
to embrace the idea of interests divorced from psychological experience. In other
words, the vast majority of consequentialist arguments are grounded in psychologi-
cal claims about feelings or preference satisfaction. For example, characteristic
utilitarian arguments about expanding moral consideration to include animals
(and denying moral consideration to fetuses) turn on claims about suffering (or
the lack thereof ).24 While particular animals might suffer, Nature as a whole
does not have such psychological experiences, which means that Nature or the
environment as a whole is an unlikely moral patient for the utilitarian.
Similarly, in a deontological argument built upon a demand for respect, the
object of respect (i.e., person) is understood to possess some intrinsic property
that is the ground of that demand, generally rationality. Accordingly, for the
vast majority of deontologists the mere possession of interests in the absence of
rationality would not be considered adequate for anything close to personhood.
Any living thing (including plants, amoebas, bacteria, etc.) possesses interests
in this sense, and it would certainly be inconsistent with the practice of the vast
majority of contemporary theorists to treat those sorts of things as persons or
quasi-persons.25
22
The strength of these kinds of intuitions is apparent in the strong opposition to things
like genetically modified food crops, or the exploitation of oil resources in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge.
23
I am indebted to an anonymous referee for suggesting this line of argument about Nature
having interests, including the notion of “quasi-persons.”
24
Obviously I have in mind here animal rights and pro-abortion arguments like those ad-
vanced by Peter Singer in Practical Ethics, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
25
I suspect these observations are enough to undermine the claim that interests of this sort
can inform a deontological demand for respect in the conventional sense. Of course, in principle
any theory that involves duties is deontological, so we could generate an appropriate deontologi-
cal theory by stipulation, but, as I noted above, that would not explain anything. As Rosalind
Hursthouse notes, what we generally mean by a deontological theory in contemporary ethics
involves a conceptual link “between the concepts of moral rule and rationality” (“Virtue Theory
On the other hand, the notion of interests is completely at home in the

conceptual universe of virtue ethics. Under its Aristotelian understanding, virtue
ethics explicitly connects “virtue and flourishing (or living well or eudaimonia).”26
While this is generally concerned with the agent’s own flourishing, the more
general point is that moral value is best understood in terms of the actualization
of potentialities intrinsic to a thing’s nature.27 Thus, even if it is correct to think
that Nature or the environment has interests, the obligation of moral agents to
respect those interests is much more naturally explained in a virtue ethics context
than in a consequentialist or deontological one.28
While it will perhaps be more controversial than claims about the destruc-
tion of Nature or the environment, I think that the senseless destruction of a
beautiful artwork is another example of a morally problematic act that harms
a non-person object. Suppose a solitary last man remained after global plague.
If, out of pique and frustration or simple ennui, he wantonly destroyed the
otherwise untouched Uffizi museum simply to watch it burn, I think that he
would be doing something morally wrong. And this is true even if he is the last
person ever to live on earth, and thus no human person (himself included) is
denied anything (e.g., future enjoyment or property rights).
The central point is that the wrongness of this kind of wanton destruction
does not primarily depend on the claim that some person’s property rights have
been violated or that some person has been deprived of legitimate enjoyment.
The wrongness consists in the destruction of something beautiful to no purpose.29
and Abortion,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 20 [1991]: 223–46, at 224). As such, it is highly
unlikely that the notion of interest not grounded in a rational nature could serve as the grounds
for respect for any kind of “Kantian” deontologist.
26
Hursthouse, “Virtue Theory and Abortion,” 226.
27
This is certainly the case in the Aristotelian conception of virtue ethics grounded in a robust
metaphysical conception of nature. Some contemporary virtue ethicists tend to downplay such a
metaphysical grounding. Nonetheless, the idea of flourishing in terms of the specific characteristics
of a life-form remains present in most virtue ethical reflection.
28
While Nature as a whole is not a natural kind and so lacks a specific telos, nonetheless
we certainly recognize ways in which ecosystems are healthier or worse off. At the same time we
can recognize the ways in which the creatures that constitute an ecosystem flourish, and while
we certainly do not have an overriding obligation to promote the flourishing of all of them (e.g.,
mosquitoes), nonetheless the health of an ecosystem can be meaningfully understood in terms of
the coincidental flourishing of its constituent creatures, especially since so many of those creatures
live interdependent lives.
29
In more normal circumstances, these other considerations of property rights and de-
privations could of course come into play as well. My point is merely that the destruction of a
beautiful artwork is per se wrong, even if there are also other wrongs connected with persons. Of
course, there may be cases where things of real value ought to be sacrificed for the sake of some
greater good, but proportionality requirements would apply. In the imagined case, our last man
is destroying out of the sheer joy of destruction (e.g., as a pure negative expression of will), not
In my view this sort of wanton destruction would represent a genuine evil, a

less grave evil compared with the senseless destruction of an innocent person,
but a moral evil nonetheless. If that is right, we have here another example of a
morally defective act whose wrongness consists in a kind of disrespect directed
towards something other than a person.
In both Nature and art I have tried to offer plausible candidates for non-
personal objects of value. I think other examples might be adduced as well, such
as higher animals like chimpanzees and dolphins. Whether the reader finds any
particular example compelling, however, is less important than the basic claim
that objects other than persons can possess objective value worthy of respect.
This kind of objective, non-personal value in turn generates an obligation for
moral agents that is analogous to the demand to respect persons. The expanded
explanatory power of a virtue ethics approach over the other theories becomes
especially apparent for giving an account of this kind of value and the corre-
sponding obligation.
John Hacker-Wright has argued that “virtue ethics can account for the
wrongs of such actions as the outgrowth of a vicious disposition independently
of any harm they might produce, and a fortiori independently of whether
those harms have a chance of accruing to members of the purported moral
community.”30 He is contrasting a virtue ethics approach to “the dominant,
rights-based conception of justice,” which conceives of justice as primarily an
issue of “resolving the conflicting claims of rights-bearing agents who engage in
reciprocal contractual relations.”31 Instead, Hacker-Wright argues for an
alternative conception of justice [that] applies to non-reciprocal relations
among unequally situated creatures, as between strong and weak, eloquent
and stammering, wealthy and poor. The demands of justice, in this sense,
fall exclusively on the former of each pair. The latter of each pair are de-
fined by their vulnerability; they are, in a given situation, powerless and
in the thrall of the former of each pair.32
On this virtue ethics conception of justice, it is not primarily an issue of

resolving a set of conflicting rights-claims according to a legal model. Instead,
those in a position of power have a direct, non-reciprocal obligation to protect
the “vulnerable.” As Hacker-Wright explains:
in the service of some other good. However, there would certainly be possible cases in which it
would be justified (though deeply regrettable and tragic) to destroy things of beauty in the service
of other higher goods, such as saving the lives of innocent persons.
30
John Hacker-Wright, “Moral Status in Virtue Ethics,” Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal
Institute of Philosophy 82 (2007): 449–73, at 454.
31
Ibid., 461.
32
Ibid.
Vulnerability is not a stand-in for sentience, since I am not talking only

about susceptibility to physical or psychological pain. It is a susceptibility
to being damaged or wronged, as well as [possibly] being harmed. Rare
natural formations, an endangered plant, or a work of art can be properly
called vulnerable even though they can be damaged and wronged, but not
harmed. To be damaged, by contrast with being harmed, a thing need
not be aware of that damage. To be wronged, no damage need accrue to a
thing; rather, being wronged need involve only being the target of a vicious
action. Nor need there be awareness or potential awareness or possibility of
objecting to the vicious action for something to be wronged. In each case,
there is something of value in the vulnerable thing; that value need not be
correlated to any of the capacities that ordinarily underwrite something’s
moral status on the legalistic view. That value makes a claim, sometimes
a very powerful claim, on the virtuous individual. The demand of justice
is that this value be attended to, cared for, or in some manner respected.
There is therefore, I contend, no capacity that a thing need possess to be
considered vulnerable. Vulnerability does not confer a right, and yet clearly
an injustice is committed against the vulnerable when their powerlessness
is exploited for its own sake or for the sake of some further benefit.33
Because the powerful have an obligation to protect the vulnerable, mis-

treating or exploiting the vulnerable is simply unjust. What is so helpful in this
conception of justice34 is the idea that an agent can have duties towards objects
that are not grounded in that object’s possession of sentience or rationality.
This allows us to recognize that agents can have duties without corresponding
rights-claims on behalf of the objects.35 So there is no need to claim that Nature
or a piece of art or a corpse has a right to be treated with respect. Instead, the
obligation is entirely on the side of the agent to respect the vulnerable. This is
fundamentally an example of justice precisely because it focuses our attention
on what is owed to the vulnerable by the powerful, even if the vulnerable are
not persons (or even sentient).36
33
Ibid.
34
Hacker-Wright claims that the “first treatment of this conception of justice occurs in
Simone Weil’s ‘Human Personality’ in Simone Weil: An Anthology, ed. Siân Miles (New York:
Grove Press, 1986), 49–78” (ibid., n. 18).
35
“Mary Midgley argues that it is proper to speak of duties in this context, and indeed,
duties towards the creatures that are wronged. Duties, on her account, need not be correlated
with rights; as she points out this is not such an unusual notion, since widely recognized duties
toward oneself lack correlated rights” (Hacker-Wright, “Moral Status in Virtue Ethics,” 462). See
Midgley’s “Duties Concerning Islands” in Ethics, ed. Peter Singer (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1994), 374–87, cited by Hacker-Wright.
36
Also from a virtues perspective Christine Swanton has similarly argued for the indepen-
dent value of such things as “natural objects, including human infants, animals, large rocks, rock
Hacker-Wright observes that this conception of justice “would not be easily

justifiable under Kantian or utilitarian principles,” though he does not insist that
it “definitively cannot be justified under those principles.”37 Nonetheless, this
conception is much more naturally at home within the context of a virtue eth-
ics, for there justice is understood as a virtue, a perfection of a properly ordered
soul. As such, it also possesses an epistemic aspect; that is, the possession of the
virtues makes one sensitive to real goods in the world that someone lacking
in the virtues might very well miss. In this particular case, the vulnerability of
certain (non-person) objects, such as a beautiful artwork or some fragile feature
of the environment, calls out for protection; the possession of a well-ordered
soul is what makes the virtuous person sensitive to this fact because he is aware
of such objects as having real value.
Again, it is important to see that the moral value of the vulnerable is not
merely derivative from some relationship to a living human person. Their value is
in some sense intrinsic.38 Accordingly, someone who fails to recognize this value
has a defective character, ipso facto. Further, this is a moral defect, not merely a
kind of cognitive error (though they often go together). Following Iris Murdoch,
Hacker-Wright labels this epistemic dimension moral attention. “Moral atten-
tion is a crucial moral component of our character because in order to manifest
justice or caring, or appropriate courage, we must attend to the individuality of
those around us, properly perceiving their needs and interests.”39 In other words,
the capacity to recognize certain objective values in the world requires already
formations, rivers” (Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003],
40) and an appropriate responsiveness to that value. In a different context, Alasdair MacIntyre
has argued that the virtues perspective is particularly suited to helping us recognize “that the care
that I give to others has to be in an important way unconditional, since the measure of what is
required of me is determined in key part, even if not only, by their needs” (Dependent Rational
Animals [Chicago: Open Court, 1999], 108). In other words, within the virtues perspective we
find obligations grounded in the neediness of others, rather than in some kind of formal rights
claim. Of course MacIntyre has in mind here obligations to other human beings and not non-
personal objects, but I think the point generalizes once we recognize that vulnerability represents
a kind of neediness that extends beyond human beings.
37
Hacker-Wright, “Moral Status in Virtue Ethics,” 462–3.
38
This does not preclude us from saying that, for example, an artwork’s value is grounded
in beauty. The key point is that the value of the object (artwork or natural feature) is not simply
derivative from some human person’s act of valuing. The value is objective; the agent’s subjective
valuing is secondary to (and properly responsive to) the reality of the object’s value. Furthermore,
the failure of an agent properly to value (subjectively) the (objective) value of the object is itself
grounds for moral criticism of that agent; i.e., it is evidence of some viciousness of character. This
also does not prevent us from recognizing that all value might be grounded in some relationship
to the divine.
39
Hacker-Wright, “Moral Status in Virtue Ethics,” 471.
possessing a certain order of soul or character. Conversely, a disordered soul can

make one blind to certain moral realities.
Of course it is not that we somehow bring about moral truths through our
recognition of them. A similar point could be made about other kinds of order-
ing of the soul that enable certain epistemic powers. For instance, a well-trained
musician will be sensitive to musical structures (e.g., a chord progression) that a
casual listener is not. Similarly, a well-trained hitter is able to recognize a curve
ball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand in a way that the casual baseball fan cannot.
In all of these cases the agent possesses an epistemic power that is consequent
on possessing a certain ordering of the soul, itself acquired through long habitu-
ation. Naturally, this power of recognition is a prerequisite for certain kinds of
voluntary action (e.g., hitting the curve ball).
Both recognition (e.g., of vulnerability) and moral blindness (e.g., as
manifested in certain kinds of racism) can be morally significant and thus in
themselves subject to praise or blame, apart from any actions that might follow
from that recognition or blindness. For example, to fail to recognize a certain class
of human beings as human beings is simultaneously an epistemic and a moral
defect. Since sensitivity to some values is only possible for the agent with the
right kind of habituation or training, that epistemic sensitivity is itself a moral
issue consequent on the right kind of soul-ordering or character.40
Precisely because virtue ethics evaluates the moral value of acts as they pro-
ceed from the agent’s character as a whole, and not simply in terms of rules,41 an
agent who fails to perceive and/or respect the vulnerable has violated the virtue
of justice. In short, the non-person object is owed respect in justice; and, if an
agent fails to pay that respect, he manifests the vice of injustice. The failure is
potentially two-fold: a failure to recognize a vulnerable object for what it is (i.e.,
objectively valuable), and a failure to act appropriately in protecting it. Both of
these failures proceed from a disordered or defective character.
It goes almost without saying that this account will fail to move someone
solely committed to a legalistic, rights-based conception of justice. This illustrates
the starkness of the choice that the Wisnewski/Shand analysis above offers us. If
they are correct that a rational justification for any moral wrong requires either
40
In other words, the epistemic defect inherent in failing to recognize the full humanity of
some class of human beings is morally defective in itself, independent of whether or not the agent
acts on those false beliefs. For example, the belief that members of a certain race are intrinsically
subhuman or that embryos are non-persons is itself morally wrong, even if someone holding
such a belief does not actually discriminate against a person of that race or procure an abortion.
41
As Aristotle puts it, it is not enough to do the right thing, to be truly virtuous one must
have the right “feelings at the right times, about the right things, towards the right people, for the
right end, in the right way” (Nicomachean Ethics, trans. T. Irwin [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999],
1106b22–23).
a deontological or consequentialist explanation, then it is likely that the moral

judgment against cannibalism (and other forms of disrespect towards non-person
objects) is rationally unjustified. On the other hand, if we are to hold onto the
strongly shared conviction that vulnerable non-person objects can have real moral
value, then we should reject their limited conception of rational justification.42
At the very least, I think that the examples above strongly suggest that we
owe some kind of respect to some non-person objects and that a failure to pay
that respect is morally vicious. If I am correct in this, then Wisnewski and Shand
are wrong to claim that there is no possible rational basis for a moral judgment
against cannibalism. We can have a moral duty to respect vulnerable objects
that are not persons because those objects can possess some kind of objective
moral value. Provided that we can give an account of the value of a corpse, we
are now in a position to construct a substantive argument against cannibalism
from a virtue ethics perspective.
IV.
The Wrongness of Cannibalism. After all of this ground laying we can now
return to the question with which we began: why is anthropophagy wrong per
se? As we saw above Wisnewski and Shand argue that there is no rational basis for
a judgment of the wrongness of cannibalism on the basis of an excluded middle
inference. If neither consequentialism nor deontology (broadly construed) can
give a rational ground for the wrongness of cannibalism, then there is no ratio-
nal ground, and our strong intuitions against it notwithstanding, the judgment
against cannibalism is nothing more than an irrational taboo.
I hope that the foregoing discussion already suggests that this excluded
middle inference is mistaken. There is in fact a middle ground; indeed, there must
be a middle ground to make sense of the common convictions that non-person
objects can generate morally serious demands for respect, which I discussed
above. In particular, I have argued that respect understood only in terms of what
is owed to persons is simply inadequate to account for the complexity of our
moral life. We need a broader conception of respect and justice to make sense
of the world of moral values as we actually live it.
42
Of course, this judgment depends on the assumption that no adequate deontological or
consequentialist moral argument can be given for the demand to respect non-person objects. Rather
than adopting the precipitous assumption that no better arguments are possible from those camps
(particularly the neo-Kantian one), the virtue ethicist can simply note that the ball is firmly back
in the court of those committed to the rights-based conceptions of justice to account for non-
personal value. I strongly suspect that Wisnewski and Shand are correct about the impossibility
of a deontological or consequentialist argument against cannibalism, at least in their conventional
forms. For his part, Hacker-Wright is content to note that “this conception of justice is justifiable
via virtue ethics, but not readily justifiable under other moral theories” (460–1).
So my claim now is simply this: a dead human body possesses a kind of

value that the virtue of justice requires us to respect. Obviously, this demand
for respect is not as strong as the demand generated by a living person. Thus
we can readily agree that the obligation to respect a dead body is defeasible in
light of other, higher goods. For example, a dead body might be legitimately
used as means of protection, as when a soldier uses a dead comrade as a shield
against enemy fire. Since the obligation to respect the dead is defeasible in light
of other moral duties, we can also recognize that acts of anthropophagy might
be justified in extreme cases, when higher goods are at stake. While in normal
circumstances it would be morally defective to burn down a rain forest (even
one I own) just to enjoy the spectacle of destruction, if such an act were neces-
sary to preserve the life of a person, it might be justified. Similarly, in extreme
cases of isolation and depravation acts of passive cannibalism might be justified
to preserve human life. However, even if it is justified in a particular case, it
would still be regrettable. The fact that the violation of a real good is sometimes
necessary in the service of higher goods does not show that the lesser good was
not itself a genuine good.43
Therefore, even if a corpse can be legitimately sacrificed in some situations,
it is perfectly sensible to say that there are real limits on what it is permissible to
do to a dead human body, wholly independent of the desires of the deceased.
Dead human bodies bear an objective value independent of the intentions of
the deceased. This value in turn grounds an obligation of justice to treat a corpse
in particular ways that cannot be obviated even at the behest of the deceased.
We should recognize that this is analogous to the claim that a living person
has objective value independent of what that person thinks or desires. Thus,
for example, persons do not have the moral right to sell themselves into chattel
slavery. Personhood has an objective value that demands respect, even from the
person himself. This legitimately restricts what we can do to ourselves; we cannot
43
This kind of moral tragedy is probably impossible to capture within a consequentialist
framework. If moral goodness is simply defined in terms of an optimific state of affairs, it is dif-
ficult to assign true moral value to anything that the optimizing principles would require to be
sacrificed. Rosalind Hursthouse captures this idea when, concerning abortion, she writes, “even
when the decision to have an abortion is the right decision . . . it does not follow that there is
no sense in which having the abortion is wrong, or guilt inappropriate. For, by virtue of the fact
that a human life has been cut short, some evil has probably been brought about.” (Hursthouse,
“Virtue Theory and Abortion,” 242). In other words, ceteris paribus, human life is a good and
thus cutting it off is an evil, even if (according to Hursthouse) it is justified in a particular case.
Whether or not we agree that this applies in the case of abortion, the more general point is that
the moral complexity of life sometimes requires the sacrifice of some genuine goods in the service
of other higher goods. Recognizing this opens up to us the fundamentally tragic dimension of
nature (i.e., that it is Fallen, though perhaps redeemable at a higher, supernatural level).
stop being persons simply by choosing to do so.44 Similarly, we cannot will away
the objective value of our corpses even if we might want to do so.
For the most part acts of anthropophagy are wrong because they involve
the despoiling of something vulnerable; they manifest the violation of an obliga-
tion to respect the objective value of a human body even after death. Therefore,
in most (but not absolutely all) circumstances cannibalism is a violation of the
virtue of justice and the act of a vicious character. Of course there are other ways
in which we can disrespect a dead body besides cannibalism, and so to complete
this argument we still need to discuss what particular wrongs are involved with
the eating of human flesh. At the same time, this general account gives us the
resources to explain why other misuses of the dead, such as necrophilia, are wrong.
We are now finally in a position to articulate a schematic argument against
cannibalism:
(I) Human corpses possess genuine moral value and so are morally vulner-
able.
(II) Justice demands respect for the vulnerable.
(III) Therefore, justice demands respect for human corpses.
(IV) An act of cannibalism (anthropophagy) for unserious reasons violates
respect for dead human bodies.
(V) Therefore, cannibalism for unserious reasons is contrary to justice.
I readily admit that this is a schematic argument and the premises require both
more specification as well as justification. However, I believe that this captures
the basic structure of a virtue ethics argument against most acts of anthropophagy
by bringing them under the virtue of justice in terms of the respect owed to the
morally vulnerable. At the same it leaves open the possibility that in extreme cases
an act of passive cannibalism might be justified in service of other higher goods.
If the above analysis of the virtue of justice in terms of care owed to the
vulnerable is broadly correct (manifested in premise (II)), then the key remaining
tasks lie in justifying premises (I) and (IV). The heaviest normative burden lies
44
This obviously has implications for the moral legitimacy of suicide. Leon Kass has pow-
erfully argued that we do not own our own bodies (not because somebody else owns them, but
because they are not the kind of thing that can be owned), and thus we cannot dispose of them
in any way we might happen to choose (see Leon Kass, “Is There a Right to Die?,” Hastings Center
Report 23 [January 1, 1993]: 34–43). Similarly, it would be illegitimate to sacrifice one’s own life
to donate a vital organ to a loved one or even to radically mutilate one’s body (e.g., amputating
a limb) for cosmetic reasons. All of these examples show that there are real limits to how we may
dispose of our own bodies, limits more extreme than those we recognize for alienable property,
which may be sold, destroyed, or given away. This, in turn, shows the conceptual gap between
our bodies and our alienable property, which makes it inappropriate for me to think of my body
as if it were simply my property that I could dispose of in any way according to my will.
in making sense of premise (I) by explaining what sort of moral value inheres
in human corpses. Further, to articulate a full argument against anthropophagy,
we will also need to discuss why eating human flesh is disrespectful in most cir-
cumstances. As noted above, however, premise (IV) leaves open the possibility
that there can be cases of justified (though tragic) anthropophagy in extreme
circumstances. Let us begin with the first question regarding the nature of the
moral value of a human corpse.
V.
The Value of Human Beings and Human Corpses. In some of the above ex-
amples of vulnerable, non-person objects it was easy to identify the grounds of
their value. In the case of a Rembrandt painting or a delicate natural rock forma-
tion, a large part of the object’s value lies in its beauty. In other cases, however, I
think it is more difficult.45 What is the corresponding value of a human corpse?
We should begin our attempt to grasp the value of a human corpse by
seeking to understand the grounds of the value of a living human person, be-
cause the value of the corpse will be derived from the living person. Ultimately,
this will require us to recognize something morally significant about human
embodiment. If we view the moral value of persons as lying merely in their
being an instantiation of rationality or in their capacity to experience suffering
or pleasure, we will radically misconstrue the nature of the human person as
essentially embodied.
Kant famously excludes merely “anthropological” considerations from his
analysis of the pure will,46 and so his account of moral obligation turns on the
45
The moral value of animals, as well as the grounds of the distinction between higher and
lower animals, is another difficult case. Of course there is the ancient notion that all beings stand
in a hierarchical, ontological relationship such that, for instance, animals are higher than plants,
and living things are higher than non-living things. Furthermore, among animals we commonly
draw distinctions between more intelligent higher animals like dolphins and chimpanzees and
less intelligent lower animals like insects. It likely follows from this that the killing of higher
animals for food in non-extreme circumstances is morally problematic. That is, I tend to think it
would be morally questionable (in non-extreme circumstances) to kill a dolphin or chimpanzee
for food (e.g., because one has a particular taste for their flesh), while killing a lower animal like
a chicken or cow does not present the same concern. However, a moral restriction on the killing
of higher animals for food does not thereby drive us to vegetarianism. In any case, while such
implications are present from embracing such a metaphysical view, they are beyond the scope of
this discussion, and fully embracing this hierarchical picture of reality is not necessary to follow
my argument on cannibalism.
46
For Kant himself these “anthropological” considerations are excluded because they are
ultimately empirical and thus cannot inform the determination of a purely rational will. Of course
this means that were there any non-humans possessed of practical rationality, the grounds of their
moral obligations would be identical (though the application of the demands of duty to concrete
possession not of a human nature, but of a rational will. As such, the duties
that bind moral agents have nothing to do with what is uniquely human about
them. Understood formally, Kant does not offer a human ethics at all, but an
ethics for rational beings as such.
From a utilitarian point of view, moral obligations are built on a demand to
bring about the putatively optimific state of affairs by the most efficient means
possible. There are of course disagreements among utilitarians about both whose
pleasures or preferences count (e.g., should non-human animal suffering enter
into the calculus?) and whether some pleasures or preferences might count for
more than others (e.g., some distinction between “higher” and “lower” plea-
sures). But the key point is that what makes any individual a moral patient for
the utilitarian turns on a capacity to experience pain and suffering or pleasure
and satisfaction. It is precisely this focus on the capacity for experience that
makes the demand to expand consideration to include non-human suffering so
compelling for many utilitarians, and conversely the limitation of the calculus to
human suffering seem arbitrary and “speciesist.” Again, there is a deep tendency
built into the heart of the utilitarian project to prescind in important ways from
a specifically human nature.47
In contrast, virtue ethics makes explicit appeal to aspects of human nature.
As ultimately grounded in human flourishing, the central meaning of the virtues
inescapably makes reference to specific characteristics of human nature. For the
traditional Aristotelian forms of virtue ethics, not only is there explicit appeal to
virtue concepts that intrinsically involve “anthropological” content, the ground
of moral obligation itself arises out of human nature, as the political animal that
speaks. While some contemporary forms of virtue ethics are rather chary of an
explicitly metaphysical grounding in an essential human nature, the conceptual
apparatus of the virtues necessarily involves frequent appeal to common sense
facts about human nature.48 This does not mean that non-human moral agents
(if any exist) could not also have similar virtues leading to their flourishing (e.g.,
situations might vary with contingent, empirical circumstance). The key point for our purposes
here is that our embodiment per se has no moral value for Kant, though of course it conditions
our moral activity and so has moral implications.
47
We should recognize the departure from a (neo-)Kantian view in that what is at stake
here is who counts as a moral patient, not as a moral agent. In other words, unlike the Kantian
view, in utilitarianism the grounds of moral agency (rational efficiency in bringing about the
optimific state of affairs) is separated from the ground of moral patiency (the capacity for experi-
ence). However, similarly to the Kantian view this allows the utilitarian perspective to embrace
non-human, rational agents. The key point, for either moral theory, is that the humanity of the
agent is not what is ultimately relevant to his, her, or its agency.
48
The work of leading contemporary virtue theorists like Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hurst-
house manifest this tendency to prescind from the more traditional robust metaphysical grounding
we find in the older virtues tradition; nonetheless they do recognize and build arguments upon the
justice, temperance, etc.), but if they do it would be precisely because their na-
ture shares important characteristics of human nature, not merely because they
instantiate rationality or are capable of suffering. Accordingly, it is very important
to see that embodied rationality is an absolutely central feature of human nature.
From a virtue ethics perspective in order to understand the good in general,
and the nature of our moral obligations to advance the good, it is necessary to
understand some of the particularly human aspects of our nature, including and
especially that we are essentially embodied. On this understanding of the hu-
man person, it is not enough to recognize that we instantiate a rational nature
(though we do); we need to see that our rationality is explicitly and inescapably
instantiated in and through our bodies. We are rational animals. Neither our
rationality nor our animality is dispensable, and both of these aspects of our
nature make specific moral demands on us, because both have specific meanings
independent of what we happen to will.
These facts of human nature should be part of our moral reflections no
matter what our ultimate metaphysical convictions might be regarding the full
nature of the human person. Recognizing the moral significance of our em-
bodiment is enough to reveal the objective value of the body and the derivative
value of a human corpse. I regard the traditional Aristotelian way of expressing
this idea as particularly powerful, and it naturally fits in with the virtue ethics
perspective I have developed thus far. Accordingly, I would like to briefly explore
that Aristotelian metaphysical account.
However, it is important to note that I offer it here only as an apt illustra-
tion of a possible metaphysical grounding for my claims about the objective
value of the human body and corpses, and not as a necessary part of the moral
argument. Strictly speaking the moral argument only requires that corpses be
vulnerable. The account I sketch below offers a metaphysical explanation for the
value that underwrites that vulnerability, but the moral argument depends only
on human corpses being vulnerable and not my preferred metaphysical account.
Some other metaphysical account of that value (if available) could be substituted
without affecting the moral argument against anthropophagy.
With that important proviso in mind, we can begin by recognizing that on
the Aristotelian (and Thomistic) conception the human person is a hylomorphic
composite of soul and body, form and matter. On this view the soul/form is both
what makes an individual biological substance the kind of thing it is and also what
animates it as a living thing. It is vitally important to emphasize that this soul is
not a “ghost in the machine,” which somehow immaterially acts on an underlying
material body. Rather, the soul is precisely what makes a living body be a body at
moral importance of specific aspects of human nature. See Foot’s Natural Goodness (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001); and Hursthouse’s “Virtue Theory and Abortion” and On Virtue Ethics.
all. The soul is the organizing principle that informs the individual’s constituent
matter and, as such, is the ground of its unity as an individual biological substance.
While there are obviously material constituents that make up any body
(for example, and arbitrarily, amino acids, carbohydrates, etc.), we need to ask
what unifies any particular bit of stuff into the individual biological substance
that we are interested in. The material constituents alone do not (and cannot)
explain their unity as an organism.49 That unity is exactly what the soul explains
on the hylomorphic conception, precisely because the ground of the unity of
the material constituents cannot itself be material.
Of course the human soul also possesses rational powers, and indeed without
those powers it would not distinguish human beings from other living things.
However, those rational powers are joined with other, non-rational powers
shared with non-human living things, including sentience and motility (with
the animals) as well as nutrition, reproduction, and growth (with the plants).
So on this view all living things—plant, animal, and human—are alive only in
virtue of being ensouled.
This very point leads to an apparent difficulty for our purposes here with
respect to cannibalism. Aristotle famously says that a severed hand is not, prop-
erly speaking, a hand at all, precisely because what makes a hand be a hand is
its capacity to do what hands do, which of course requires that it be alive, i.e.,
ensouled.50 By the same token, a dead human body is, strictly speaking, a human
body in name only. Since it is dead, it will not perform the functions that are
essentially characteristic of a human body, and so, in the terms of Aristotle’s
metaphysics, it is simply not a human body. Therefore, eating dead human flesh
is not the eating of a human being at all, but the eating of some other kind of
49
It is important to see that any list of “material constituents” is arbitrary; we could just as
easily have focused at a “higher” level (e.g., organs, tissues, or cells) or a “lower” one (e.g., elec-
trons, protons, etc.). The key question is what unifies this matter (whether we are talking about
a collection of organs, cells, amino acids, subatomic particles, etc.) into a single biological entity.
In other words, in a different context it might be perfectly reasonable to discuss my body with
respect to a set of organs, or a set of cells, or a set of amino acids and carbohydrates, or a set of
subatomic particles, etc. However, at any of these levels there is no fundamental material explana-
tion of their unity as a single biological substance. Mere spatio-temporal collocation actually does
not explain anything. The soul is the absolutely necessary explanatory principle of the unity of
any organism. Michael Thompson makes a similar point in his “The Representation of Life,” the
first section of Life and Action: Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).
50
“As Aristotle is fond of saying, a hand severed from a living body is a dead hand, and
a dead hand is a hand ‘only homonymously’ (see, e.g., Meta. 1035b23–25, Pol. 1253a20–15,
De an. 412b20–22). Of course, a severed hand still exists as a material object but to be a hand in
more than name only it must be capable of functioning as a hand, and this a severed hand cannot
do” (Daniel T. Devereux, “Inherence and Primary Substance in Aristotle’s ‘Categories,’” Ancient
Philosophy 12 [1992]: 113–31, at 123).
thing. In other words, cannibalism is not the eating of human flesh because once
it is dead it is not actually human flesh anymore. So it might seem that an appeal
to form or soul in explaining the wrongness of cannibalism is ultimately unavail-
ing, precisely because there is no soul present when it comes to cannibalism.
This would be a problem if my account of the wrongness of cannibalism
required that what was being consumed was actually a human being in the full
sense. However, that is not the tack I am taking here, precisely because I recognize
that anthropophagy per se is a lesser evil than murder. To explain why eating
human flesh is wrong does not require us to show that a dead body possesses the
same status as a living person (and thus the same value); rather, it only requires
us to give an account of some genuine moral value, even if that value is inferior
to the value of a living human person. That is why I offer this discussion on
the importance of form, for while it is true that a human corpse is not a human
being, the reason it is a human corpse requires appeal to the now absent form.
In other words, even though a corpse is not a human being, we still recognize
it as a dead human body in virtue of the fact that the corpse’s matter was previ-
ously enformed by a human soul. While in a strict Aristotelian sense the human
form is gone at the moment of death, we might say that the residue of that form
temporarily remains in the corpse. Because even though the corpse is no longer
a human being per se, it temporarily retains an accidental unity (until it decays),
and that unity is best explained in terms of the now absent form.
Recall that for Aristotle the form of a living creature is the organizing
principle that grounds its unity as a single biological substance. Once dead,
a corpse is no longer a single biological substance, and yet it still temporarily
manifests an apparent unity, which is both why we can say it is this corpse and
a dead human body.51 However, precisely because there is no soul to maintain
51
In strict Aristotelian metaphysical terms, I think we should say that the corpse would
only possess an accidental unity (the same sort of unity that a building possesses). This question
arose among the late Scholastics, with Scotus arguing for the need of a “form of corporeity” that
somehow subsisted in the material body independent of the soul and, in a sense, reemerged as the
form of the (now dead) corpse (in order to explain the numerical identity of the living body and
the subsequent corpse, especially the context of Christ’s corpse as it remained in the tomb before
the Resurrection). In section 10 of his Metaphysical Disputation XV Suárez denied this “form of
corporeity” and argued simply that “in the death of a human being or any animal the form of the
corpse is introduced in order that the matter may not remain without a form,” (Francisco Suarez,
On the Formal Cause of Substance: Metaphysical Disputation XV, trans. John Kronen [Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press, 2000], 135). For a more comprehensive discussion of the issues see
Chapter 4 (“Soul as Form”) in Dennis Des Chene, Life’s Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the
Soul (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 67–102.
The analysis I am offering here can be indifferent to the question of whether there is such
a “corpse form” or only an accidental unity of more basic substances. All I need is the claim that
the apparent unity of the corpse is explained by reference to the form/soul of the deceased, which
it, this accidental unity is only inertial and temporary. The material body will
disintegrate because it is no longer unified by a living soul to resist the minis-
trations of ensouled beings like vultures and bacteria or even brute forces like
gravity. Over sufficient time its unity will be destroyed, and that is why I label it
inertial. Just as the continued motion of a ballistic projectile is explained by the
now absent original force of the exploding propellant, so the continued unity
of the corpse is explained in terms of the now absent soul. Just as other forces
(e.g., air resistance and gravitation) will eventually destroy the original trajectory
of the projectile, so other forces (e.g., decomposition) will eventually destroy
the unity of the corpse. That said, while it does remain (accidentally) unified,
there is a loose sense in which the now departed living form remains residually
present in the form of the corpse.52
How we can explain the value of a human corpse in Aristotelian terms
should now be clear. It reflects the value of the living human person because the
corpse reflects the form of a living person. The obligation to respect a human
corpse is in some sense derivative from (but also distinct from) the obligation
to respect a human person. The human person is a human person in virtue of
his or her soul. Similarly, the human corpse is a human corpse in virtue of the
now departed form. However, even though it is a human corpse it is not a hu-
man being and thus does not have the same value as a (living) human being.
Accordingly, it can sometimes be legitimately treated in ways that we could never
legitimately treat a living human being, particularly in extreme circumstances.
This notion of residual or inertial form explains why human corpses have a value
both related to, yet inferior to, living human beings.
My account of the inertial unity of the corpse is merely an attempt to give
an illustration of how one might go about providing a metaphysically contentful
analysis of why we can correctly say that the corpse has a residual humanity with-
out actually being a person. However, as I noted above, all the moral argument
requires is that we recognize that corpses are (morally) vulnerable. As such the
moral argument does not turn on the truth of this hylomorphic account, and it
is possible that an alternative account of residual humanity might be given that
provides grounds for a further argument that the corpse possesses a kind of moral value analogous
to the value of the living person. This apparent unity (whether it is merely accidental or derivative
from a corpse form) grounds the proper moral reaction to the corpse.
52
This metaphorical appeal to a kind of inertia is consonant with the idea that the value of
the corpse decreases as it decomposes. A freshly dead human body (which possesses more residual
form) clearly calls for a greater kind of respect (e.g., closing the eyes; covering the face; keeping it
clothed) than a highly decayed corpse or skeleton. That does not mean that any human remains
are valueless, but clearly in our practices we do draw distinctions between differing degrees of
decomposition. The metaphor of inertia seems to work well here even if there is some vagueness
built into it.
does not depend on hylomorphism. Any account that recognized the vulner-
ability of the corpse would be adequate to sustain my schematic moral argument
against cannibalism. What matters for the moral argument is simply the claim
that corpses are vulnerable on account of having a kind of residual humanity,
not exactly why that is true.53
VI.
The Moral Status of Eating. The completion of our schematic argument now
requires that we turn to the question of eating itself. Even if the argument to
this point is accepted, we have now only arrived at the sub-conclusion (III) that
justice demands a certain respect for human corpses. A full argument against
anthropophagy requires us to show that eating human flesh constitutes, or at least
generally constitutes, a morally relevant form of disrespect. In other words, we
need to sketch a philosophically substantial account of eating.
Leon Kass discusses the philosophical significance of eating in The Hungry
Soul:
insofar as . . . other living beings are regarded as food, they cease to be
treated as what they are, even before they cease to be what they are when
they are ingested. From the point of view of the disinterested observer,
a rabbit is a rabbit and spinach is spinach. Each organism is, in and for
itself, a formed and determinate one of a determinate kind. Yet from
the viewpoint of the hungry rabbit, spinach is lunch, and for a hungry
fox, the well-fed rabbit is dinner. . . . The form of the object is finally
unimportant to the eater; that it is potential material is all that matters.54
53
I am indebted to the editors for this point that it is possible to prescind from a full-fledged
hylomorphic account of the nature of the human person and still retain the general structure of
my moral argument against anthropophagy. It is true that the philosophical account of eating
derived from Leon Kass, which I offer in the next section, does depend on a general notion of
form. However, as we will see, Kass does not use the term “form” with the full specificity of the
Aristotelian hylomorphic account, therefore so long as the non-hylomorphic account of residual
humanity can be conceptualized at least partially in terms of the loose sense of form as Kass uses
it, the overarching argument can still be sustained. This should become clearer in the subsequent
section.
54
Leon Kass, The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of our Nature (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1994), 21. It is important to recognize that Kass is not using “form” or “mate-
rial” in the fully technical, hylomorphic sense I employed above. He has in mind more colloquial
notions of form as something like shape and matter as material stuff. In the discussion below I
will follow Kass and employ “form” in a less technical sense, though I think the colloquial sense
ultimately can best be explained with the technical Aristotelian notion. The advantage of this
looser usage, as I noted above, is that it makes it possible to pursue the argument (to some degree,
at least) while prescinding from some of the more controversial metaphysics, though of course at
the price of technical specificity.
When we treat something as food we completely disregard its form; it becomes

for us “raw material.” That does not mean, of course, that the food lacks a form,
but rather qua food its form is irrelevant to the eater.55 All that is important to
the eater is that the food constitutes raw material.
In consumption, the food’s previous form is completely destroyed as it is
metabolized by the eater. Though not necessary to capture the central insight of
Kass’s observation, it is of course possible to offer an Aristotelian hylomorphic
analysis of metabolization as the transformation of the matter. Food becomes
the source of matter progressively enformed by the living soul of the eater as
an expression of the nutritive and generative powers of its living soul. When
an animal eats through the entire process (from killing to eating to digesting,
etc.), the eater’s form progressively overcomes (i.e., destroys and transforms) the
original form of the food. That is why, for the eater qua eater, the form of the
food is unimportant; food is a source of new matter that will be transformed
and newly enformed by the soul of the eater.56
So eating qua eating involves a denial of the significance of form in the food.
To treat something as food is to deny the significance of its form by treating it
primarily as a source of new material. If we take this conception of eating and
apply it to our case of anthropophagy, I think we can now see the problem. If
my above analysis is correct that a human corpse possesses value in virtue of the
form of its residual humanity, then to treat the corpse as food means essentially
to dismiss the value of its form, that is, to treat it as mere matter. This constitutes
a kind of disrespect, a failure to recognize something for what it is.57
55
It is important that Kass is here talking about animal eating (or feeding) and not human
dining. Human beings are capable of much more than the mere eating of food per se, when,
for instance, we dine upon a cuisine. (Kass notes the apt German language distinction between
fressen [devour] and essen [eat/dine].) That does not mean that humans always dine, however.
There are times when human beings feed much like animals do (e.g., when training athletes gulp
down protein drinks after workouts with no regard to gustatory satisfaction). Form is irrelevant
to the mere eater; it is not irrelevant to the fully human diner. We could draw this distinction out
by thinking about how food becomes cuisine. The former is a raw material, while the latter is a
product of human art. However, it is important to note that the production of cuisine necessarily
involves the treating of the raw materials as food.
56
I think that it is significant that Hegel, who obviously does not straightforwardly accept
a hylomorphic conception of reality, makes a very similar point in his discussion of the Master/
Slave dialectic. Kojeve explains the Hegelian idea: “Born of Desire, action tends to satisfy it, and
can do so only by the ‘negation,’ the destruction, or at least transformation, of the desired object:
to satisfy hunger, for example, the food must be destroyed or, in any case, transformed. Thus, all
action is ‘negating.’ Far from leaving the given as it is, action destroys it; if not in its being, at least
in its given form” (Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, ed. Allan Bloom, trans.
James H. Nichols [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980], 4). This shows that the central
insight of the idea does not depend on the truth of hylomorphism.
57
Incidentally, this basic analysis also gives us the resources to pursue the argument that it is
wrong to kill higher animals like dolphins and chimpanzees for food. While higher animals obvi-
Kass concisely captures something important about the moral defect of

anthropophagy when he observes that, at a very basic level, “to be human is, for
a human, to be not-food.”58 This is similar to Cora Diamond’s pithy observation
that we “learn what a human being is in—among other ways—sitting at a table
where we eat” animals (i.e., non-humans).59 However, whereas Diamond limits
herself to making a point about the concept of human being, Kass is articulating
an ontological claim about the nature of human beings.
If this analysis is correct, then anthropophagy is always an evil of some
sort, because it always involves treating something that is “not-food” as if it
were “food.” As such, it is an example of injustice, of failing to pay respect to
the objective value of a vulnerable object. As I have consistently reiterated,
however, this does not mean that acts of anthropophagy are always unjustified.
There are higher values than a human corpse, obviously including the value of a
living human person. Sometimes this lesser good has to be sacrificed for the sake
of higher goods. However, the lesser goods so sacrificed are real goods, so that
sacrifice still might represent an evil, even if it is ultimately an evil that must be
borne for the sake of a greater good (i.e., the situation is fundamentally tragic
on the natural level).
VII.
Conclusion. I began this paper by noting that almost nobody who is not a
professional moral philosopher questions the wrongness of cannibalism. How-
ever, when it is questioned it becomes quite a challenge to specify a rational
basis for its wrongness. As we saw, some writers have adopted the precipitous
conclusion that because it is so difficult to explain its wrongness in utilitarian
or neo-Kantian deontological terms, cannibalism is not wrong, and further that
other strongly held moral intuitions might be similarly unjustified.
I have tried to show that such an argument is mistaken on several levels.
At minimum such writers are not entitled to their conclusions simply because
of a rash, false assumption about the scope of moral theory, particularly their
unwarranted limitation of moral philosophy to either utilitarian or neo-Kantian
deontological forms. As such, we can certainly reject their excluded middle argu-
ment as radically incomplete in its simple omission of virtue ethics. However,
ously do not rise to the level of living human beings (nor even, I would judge, human corpses),
their souls clearly do manifest powers sufficiently analogous to the powers of a human soul, and
therefore, to regard them as merely a source of potential matter is also a kind of disrespect of the
genuine value of their kind of soul.
58
Kass, The Hungry Soul, 108 n.
59
Cora Diamond, “Eating Meat and Eating People,” in The Realistic Spirit (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1995), 319–34, at 324.
since I have also offered an account of how a virtue ethics approach can gener-
ate a rational justification of the wrongness of cannibalism, an even stronger
metaethical challenge to the adequacy of the dominant theories has been sug-
gested here.
Admittedly, in the course of my discussion I have employed a variety philo-
sophical resources, such as an Aristotelian metaphysics of biological substances,
that will likely be controversial for many readers. At the same time, however, the
general outlines of my moral analysis of cannibalism does not depend on that
hylomorphic account. All that is really necessary for my virtue ethics argument
to go through is a recognition that human corpses are vulnerable in virtue of
some sort of residual humanity. The hylomorphic account I have sketched gives
an interesting possible metaphysical account of that residual humanity, but it is
not strictly necessary to the moral argument.
My broader conclusion is not only that a rational argument against can-
nibalism can be constructed, but also that something like this analysis helps to
explain the wrongness of many other examples of injustice against non-person
objects. Further, once we see that it is possible to give a rational justification for
the deeply held moral intuition against anthropophagy, we ought to see that it is
misguided of so many contemporary moral theorists to dismiss such intuitions
just because they cannot be easily located within the dominant moral frameworks.
I hope I have shown how the virtues tradition offers the resources to construct
an expansive account of moral value that not only accommodates intuitions like
these, but offers a richer kind of moral analysis that challenges the adequacy of
the dominant utilitarian and deontological frameworks.60
University of St. Thomas

Saint Paul, Minnesota
60
I am particularly grateful to Rachel Lu, John Kress, and Christopher Toner for comments
and helping me to think through many of these issues; to John Kronen, Gary Atkinson, and other
departmental colleagues at St. Thomas for their suggestions on a presentation of this material;
and to two anonymous referees for comments on an earlier draft.

Mathew Lu Explaining The Wrongness of Cannibalism (Recovered) (Recovered)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Mathew Lu Explaining The Wrongness of Cannibalism (Recovered) (Recovered)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Explaining the Wrongness of Cannibalism

Abstract. In this paper I take up the claims of a number of recent commentators

Active vs. Passive Cannibalism. In any discussion of cannibalism we must

Consequentialist and Deontological Analyses. Both Jeremy Wisnewski and

Wisnewski next considers what “Kantian” arguments might be offered

what bad consequences would follow from an instance of cannibalism.”14 As

Non-Person Objects of Respect. We need a way of explaining why a dead

On the other hand, the notion of interests is completely at home in the

In my view this sort of wanton destruction would represent a genuine evil, a

On this virtue ethics conception of justice, it is not primarily an issue of

Vulnerability is not a stand-in for sentience, since I am not talking only

Because the powerful have an obligation to protect the vulnerable, mis-

Hacker-Wright observes that this conception of justice “would not be easily

possessing a certain order of soul or character. Conversely, a disordered soul can

a deontological or consequentialist explanation, then it is likely that the moral

So my claim now is simply this: a dead human body possesses a kind of

When we treat something as food we completely disregard its form; it becomes

Kass concisely captures something important about the moral defect of

University of St. Thomas

You might also like