Moral status of animals in the ancient world
Encyclopedia
The 21st-century debates about animal welfare
and animal rights
can be traced back to the ancient world. The idea that the use of animals by humans—for food, clothing, entertainment, and as research subjects—is morally acceptable, springs mainly from two sources.
First, there is the idea of a divine hierarchy based on the Christian concept of "dominion," from Genesis (1:20-28), where Adam is given "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Although the Christian concept of dominion need not entail property rights, it has been interpreted over the centuries to imply some form of ownership.
There is also the idea that animals are inferior, because they lack rationality and language, and as such are worthy of less consideration than humans, or even none. Springing from this is the idea that individual animals have no separate moral identity: a pig is simply an example of the class of pigs, and it is to the class, not to the individual, that human responsibility or stewardship applies. This leads to the argument that the use of individual animals is acceptable so long as the species is not threatened with extinction
.
, dating from the 6th century BCE, is the oldest religious philosophy which has advocated complete non-violence towards animals of all forms. The concept of Ahiṃsā is so much intertwined with Jainism that it conjures up images of ascetics who cover their mouths and sweep the ground before them with small brushes to avoid injuring the most minuscule forms of life and Jain-owned animal sanctuaries where even the sickest, most deformed birds and beasts are protected and cherished. Non-violence is of the top most priority in the basic set of Principles of Jainism.
Psychologist Richard Ryder
, former Mellon Professor at Tulane University
and chairman of the RSPCA in 1977, writes that it is in 6th century BCE Greek philosophy that we first find concern for the treatment of animals.
Four schools of thought were influential in Ancient Greece
: animism
, vitalism
, mechanism
, and anthropocentrism
. The philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras
( c. 580–c. 500 BCE), who has been called the first animal rights philosopher, was the central figure within animism. He urged respect for animals, because he believed that humans and non-humans had the same kind of soul, one spirit that pervades the universe and makes us one with animals.
The souls were indestructible, made of fire and air, and were reincarnated
from human to animal, or vice versa, the so-called transmigration of the soul. He was a vegetarian, and was reportedly the first animal "liberationist," buying animals from the market in order to set them free.
Against these ideas, Aristotle
(384–322 BCE) argued that non-human animals had no interests of their own, ranking far below humans in the Great Chain of Being
, or scala naturae, because of their alleged irrationality. He was the first to attempt the creation of a taxonomical categorization and hierarchy of animals. Aristotle perceived some similarities between humans and other species and developed a sort of "psychological continuum", recognising that human and non-human animals differ only by degree in possessing certain temperaments. Nevertheless, he denied animals rationality and moral equality. "Plants are created for the sake of animals," he wrote, "and animals for the sake of men." Aristotle argued that humans were the “masters” in his created hierarchical structure based upon their rational powers. The philosopher Richard Sorabji writes that, in denying that animals had reason, Aristotle created a crisis both for the philosophy of mind and for theories of morality.
One of Aristotle's pupils, Theophrastus
, disagreed with him, arguing against eating meat on the grounds that it robbed animals of life and was therefore unjust. He argued that non-human animals can reason, sense, and feel just as human beings do. Theophrastus did not prevail, and it was Aristotle's position—that human and non-human animals exist in different moral realms because one is rational and the other not—that persisted largely unchallenged in the West for nearly two thousand years.
The first chapter of Genesis describes how God gave human beings dominion over animals, tempered throughout the Torah
, or Old Testament
, by injunctions to be kind. Severing a limb from a live animal and eating it was forbidden (Genesis 9:4), cattle were to be rested on Biblical Sabbath
(Exodus 20:10; 23:12), a cow and her calf were not to be killed on the same day (Leviticus
22:28), a person had to feed his animals before himself (Deuteronomy
11:15), animal suffering had to be relieved (Deuteronomy 22:4), oxen treading the corn were not to be muzzled (Deuteronomy 25:4), kids
were not to be cooked in their mother's milk
(Deuteronomy 14:21), mother birds not to be disturbed while sitting on eggs (Deuteronomy 22:6-7), and oxen and asses not to be yoked together (Deuteronomy 22:10).
It was only after the Flood that meat-eating was permitted either for humans or for animals, God telling Noah and his sons: "[a]nd let the awe and dread of you be upon all the land animals, and all the birds of the sky, and all that creep on the ground, and all the fish of the sea: they are given into your hands. Any small animal that is alive shall be food for you, like green grasses — I give you [them] all." (Genesis 9: 1-3).
Peter Singer
argues that the Christian New Testament
is devoid of injunctions to be kind, with Paul of Tarsus
interpreting the Sabbath requirement, "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox as he treadeth the corn" as intended to benefit human beings. "Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope." (1 Corinthians
9:9-10).
Saint Augustine
(354–430) argued that Jesus
allowed the 2,000 Gadarene swine
to drown to demonstrate that man has no duty of care toward animals: "Christ himself shows that to refrain from the killing of animals and the destroying of plants is the height of superstition ..." Thomas Aquinas
(c. 1225–1274) took up Augustine's position, arguing that human beings should be charitable to animals only to make sure that cruel habits do not carry over into our treatment of other humans, or cause a financial loss to the animal's owner. "If in Holy Scripture there are found some injunctions forbidding the infliction of some cruelty toward brute animals ... this is either for removing a man's mind from exercising cruelty towards other men ... or because the injury inflicted on animals turns to a temporal loss for some man ..."
The Augustine/Aquinas argument was later supported by a number of philosophers, including John Locke
(1632–1704) and Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804), and it underpinned much of the 19th and 20th centuries' animal protection legislation. It is an early example of what law professor Gary Francione calls "legal welfarism," namely that the welfare of animals is viewed as important only insofar as it benefits human beings.
, first held in 366 BCE:
Meat eating was a status symbol, and animals were often cooked alive; Ryder writes that pigs were skewered alive on hot spits to improve the taste. He writes that there were nevertheless signs of tender feelings for animals in the poetry of Virgil
(70–19 BCE), Lucretius
(99–55 BCE), and Ovid
(43 BCE–17). The statesman Seneca
(4 BCE–65) was a vegetarian and said that he found the practice not only moral but delightful, as were the philosophers Plutarch
(46–120), Plotinus
(205–270), and Porphyry
(232–305). Porphyry wrote two tracts on the issue, De Abstinentia (On Abstinence) and De Non Necandis ad Epulandum Animantibus (On the Impropriety of Killing Living Beings for Food). Plutarch, who was Greek but lived in Rome, argued strongly against meat eating, seeing it as responsible for much of the cruelty in the world:
writes that the Romans gave us the concept of "ius", meaning what is right, just, or lawful, and it is from this concept that the idea of a "right" as a claim, an entitlement, an immunity, or a liberty, arose in the late-medieval to modern period.
He writes that it remains unclear how the concept of ius developed into the idea of modern rights, but a key feature of the latter is that the relationship between persons is articulated from the perspective of the relationship's beneficiary, the holder of the right. This is an important idea in the development of the concept of animal rights, the essence of which is to view the relationship between human and non-human from the perspective of the animal as beneficiary, rather than from the perspective of the human, which is how most animal protection legislation is framed. The idea is that any wrong not only "deforms the agent," as Finnis writes of human beings, but also offends the victim's "fundamental equality."
and Buddhist
societies saw widespread vegetarianism from the 3rd century BCE, in line with ahimsa
, the doctrine of non-violence. Ryder writes that animals were thought to possess the same feelings as human beings, and several kings of ancient India built hospitals for sick animals. To kill a cow in Hinduism was as serious as killing a high-caste man , and the killing of a dog equivalent to killing an untouchable .
Human souls could be reborn as animals if they had behaved badly, with all souls regarded as part of the Supreme Being. Failing to observe the duty to care could lead to bad karma
, which increased the likelihood of returning as an animal next time round.
(570–632) taught that it was permissible to kill animals, but to do so unnecessarily or with cruelty was forbidden. "If you must kill, kill without torture." He saw animals as having internal mental states. They should not be bound when being slaughtered, and should not be made to wait. To let an animal see you sharpen your knife is to kill it twice.
, totemism
, religions of indigenous peoples, paganism
and many polytheism
believe animals are spiritual beings, people have great respect towards animals
Animal welfare
Animal welfare is the physical and psychological well-being of animals.The term animal welfare can also mean human concern for animal welfare or a position in a debate on animal ethics and animal rights...
and animal rights
Animal rights
Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
can be traced back to the ancient world. The idea that the use of animals by humans—for food, clothing, entertainment, and as research subjects—is morally acceptable, springs mainly from two sources.
First, there is the idea of a divine hierarchy based on the Christian concept of "dominion," from Genesis (1:20-28), where Adam is given "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Although the Christian concept of dominion need not entail property rights, it has been interpreted over the centuries to imply some form of ownership.
There is also the idea that animals are inferior, because they lack rationality and language, and as such are worthy of less consideration than humans, or even none. Springing from this is the idea that individual animals have no separate moral identity: a pig is simply an example of the class of pigs, and it is to the class, not to the individual, that human responsibility or stewardship applies. This leads to the argument that the use of individual animals is acceptable so long as the species is not threatened with extinction
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
.
Jainism
JainismJainism
Jainism is an Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence towards all living beings. Its philosophy and practice emphasize the necessity of self-effort to move the soul towards divine consciousness and liberation. Any soul that has conquered its own inner enemies and achieved the state...
, dating from the 6th century BCE, is the oldest religious philosophy which has advocated complete non-violence towards animals of all forms. The concept of Ahiṃsā is so much intertwined with Jainism that it conjures up images of ascetics who cover their mouths and sweep the ground before them with small brushes to avoid injuring the most minuscule forms of life and Jain-owned animal sanctuaries where even the sickest, most deformed birds and beasts are protected and cherished. Non-violence is of the top most priority in the basic set of Principles of Jainism.
6th–3rd century BCE Greece
Richard D. Ryder
Richard Hood Jack Dudley Ryder is a British psychologist. He is a former Mellon Professor at Tulane University, New Orleans. He served as chairman of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Council from 1977 to 1979, and is a past president of Britain's Liberal Democrat Animal...
, former Mellon Professor at Tulane University
Tulane University
Tulane University is a private, nonsectarian research university located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States...
and chairman of the RSPCA in 1977, writes that it is in 6th century BCE Greek philosophy that we first find concern for the treatment of animals.
Four schools of thought were influential in Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
: animism
Animism
Animism refers to the belief that non-human entities are spiritual beings, or at least embody some kind of life-principle....
, vitalism
Vitalism
Vitalism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is#a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from biochemical reactions...
, mechanism
Mechanism (philosophy)
Mechanism is the belief that natural wholes are like machines or artifacts, composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each other, and with their order imposed from without. Thus, the source of an apparent thing's activities is not the whole itself, but its parts or an external...
, and anthropocentrism
Anthropocentrism
Anthropocentrism describes the tendency for human beings to regard themselves as the central and most significant entities in the universe, or the assessment of reality through an exclusively human perspective....
. The philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...
( c. 580–c. 500 BCE), who has been called the first animal rights philosopher, was the central figure within animism. He urged respect for animals, because he believed that humans and non-humans had the same kind of soul, one spirit that pervades the universe and makes us one with animals.
The souls were indestructible, made of fire and air, and were reincarnated
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
from human to animal, or vice versa, the so-called transmigration of the soul. He was a vegetarian, and was reportedly the first animal "liberationist," buying animals from the market in order to set them free.
Against these ideas, Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
(384–322 BCE) argued that non-human animals had no interests of their own, ranking far below humans in the Great Chain of Being
Great chain of being
The great chain of being , is a Christian concept detailing a strict, religious hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been decreed by the Christian God.-Divisions:...
, or scala naturae, because of their alleged irrationality. He was the first to attempt the creation of a taxonomical categorization and hierarchy of animals. Aristotle perceived some similarities between humans and other species and developed a sort of "psychological continuum", recognising that human and non-human animals differ only by degree in possessing certain temperaments. Nevertheless, he denied animals rationality and moral equality. "Plants are created for the sake of animals," he wrote, "and animals for the sake of men." Aristotle argued that humans were the “masters” in his created hierarchical structure based upon their rational powers. The philosopher Richard Sorabji writes that, in denying that animals had reason, Aristotle created a crisis both for the philosophy of mind and for theories of morality.
One of Aristotle's pupils, Theophrastus
Theophrastus
Theophrastus , a Greek native of Eresos in Lesbos, was the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He came to Athens at a young age, and initially studied in Plato's school. After Plato's death he attached himself to Aristotle. Aristotle bequeathed to Theophrastus his writings, and...
, disagreed with him, arguing against eating meat on the grounds that it robbed animals of life and was therefore unjust. He argued that non-human animals can reason, sense, and feel just as human beings do. Theophrastus did not prevail, and it was Aristotle's position—that human and non-human animals exist in different moral realms because one is rational and the other not—that persisted largely unchallenged in the West for nearly two thousand years.
Bible
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
, or Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
, by injunctions to be kind. Severing a limb from a live animal and eating it was forbidden (Genesis 9:4), cattle were to be rested on Biblical Sabbath
Biblical Sabbath
Sabbath in the Bible is usually a weekly day of rest and time of worship. The Sabbath is first mentioned in the Genesis creation narrative. The seventh day is there set aside as a day of rest—the Sabbath. It is observed differently in Judaism and Christianity and informs a similar occasion in...
(Exodus 20:10; 23:12), a cow and her calf were not to be killed on the same day (Leviticus
Leviticus
The Book of Leviticus is the third book of the Hebrew Bible, and the third of five books of the Torah ....
22:28), a person had to feed his animals before himself (Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy
The Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, and of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch...
11:15), animal suffering had to be relieved (Deuteronomy 22:4), oxen treading the corn were not to be muzzled (Deuteronomy 25:4), kids
Goat
The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep as both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae. There are over three hundred distinct breeds of...
were not to be cooked in their mother's milk
Kashrut
Kashrut is the set of Jewish dietary laws. Food in accord with halakha is termed kosher in English, from the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew term kashér , meaning "fit" Kashrut (also kashruth or kashrus) is the set of Jewish dietary laws. Food in accord with halakha (Jewish law) is termed...
(Deuteronomy 14:21), mother birds not to be disturbed while sitting on eggs (Deuteronomy 22:6-7), and oxen and asses not to be yoked together (Deuteronomy 22:10).
It was only after the Flood that meat-eating was permitted either for humans or for animals, God telling Noah and his sons: "[a]nd let the awe and dread of you be upon all the land animals, and all the birds of the sky, and all that creep on the ground, and all the fish of the sea: they are given into your hands. Any small animal that is alive shall be food for you, like green grasses — I give you [them] all." (Genesis 9: 1-3).
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...
argues that the Christian New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
is devoid of injunctions to be kind, with Paul of Tarsus
Paul of Tarsus
Paul the Apostle , also known as Saul of Tarsus, is described in the Christian New Testament as one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with the writings ascribed to him by the church forming a considerable portion of the New Testament...
interpreting the Sabbath requirement, "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox as he treadeth the corn" as intended to benefit human beings. "Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope." (1 Corinthians
First Epistle to the Corinthians
The first epistle of Paul the apostle to the Corinthians, often referred to as First Corinthians , is the seventh book of the New Testament of the Bible...
9:9-10).
Saint Augustine
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...
(354–430) argued that Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
allowed the 2,000 Gadarene swine
Legion (demon)
Legion is a group of demons referred to in the Christian Bible. The New Testament outlines an encounter where Jesus healed a man from Gadarenes possessed by demons while traveling, known as Exorcising the Gerasenes demonic.- In the Bible :...
to drown to demonstrate that man has no duty of care toward animals: "Christ himself shows that to refrain from the killing of animals and the destroying of plants is the height of superstition ..." Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...
(c. 1225–1274) took up Augustine's position, arguing that human beings should be charitable to animals only to make sure that cruel habits do not carry over into our treatment of other humans, or cause a financial loss to the animal's owner. "If in Holy Scripture there are found some injunctions forbidding the infliction of some cruelty toward brute animals ... this is either for removing a man's mind from exercising cruelty towards other men ... or because the injury inflicted on animals turns to a temporal loss for some man ..."
The Augustine/Aquinas argument was later supported by a number of philosophers, including John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
(1632–1704) and Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
(1724–1804), and it underpinned much of the 19th and 20th centuries' animal protection legislation. It is an early example of what law professor Gary Francione calls "legal welfarism," namely that the welfare of animals is viewed as important only insofar as it benefits human beings.
Rome
Singer writes that animals, along with criminals and other undesirables, largely fell outside the Roman moral sphere. He quotes a description from the historian W.E.H. Lecky of the Roman gamesLudi Romani
The Ludi Romani were a religious festival in ancient Rome. They were held annually starting in 366 BC from September 12 to September 14, later extended to September 5 to September 19. In the last 1st century BC, an extra day was added in honor of the deified Julius Caesar on 4 September...
, first held in 366 BCE:
Meat eating was a status symbol, and animals were often cooked alive; Ryder writes that pigs were skewered alive on hot spits to improve the taste. He writes that there were nevertheless signs of tender feelings for animals in the poetry of Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
(70–19 BCE), Lucretius
Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is an epic philosophical poem laying out the beliefs of Epicureanism, De rerum natura, translated into English as On the Nature of Things or "On the Nature of the Universe".Virtually no details have come down concerning...
(99–55 BCE), and Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
(43 BCE–17). The statesman Seneca
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
(4 BCE–65) was a vegetarian and said that he found the practice not only moral but delightful, as were the philosophers Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
(46–120), Plotinus
Plotinus
Plotinus was a major philosopher of the ancient world. In his system of theory there are the three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition...
(205–270), and Porphyry
Porphyry (philosopher)
Porphyry of Tyre , Porphyrios, AD 234–c. 305) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre. He edited and published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. He also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics...
(232–305). Porphyry wrote two tracts on the issue, De Abstinentia (On Abstinence) and De Non Necandis ad Epulandum Animantibus (On the Impropriety of Killing Living Beings for Food). Plutarch, who was Greek but lived in Rome, argued strongly against meat eating, seeing it as responsible for much of the cruelty in the world:
Concept of "ius"
Legal philosopher John FinnisJohn Finnis
John Finnis , is an Australian legal scholar and philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of law. He is Professor of Law at University College, Oxford and at the University of Notre Dame, teaching jurisprudence, political theory, and constitutional law...
writes that the Romans gave us the concept of "ius", meaning what is right, just, or lawful, and it is from this concept that the idea of a "right" as a claim, an entitlement, an immunity, or a liberty, arose in the late-medieval to modern period.
He writes that it remains unclear how the concept of ius developed into the idea of modern rights, but a key feature of the latter is that the relationship between persons is articulated from the perspective of the relationship's beneficiary, the holder of the right. This is an important idea in the development of the concept of animal rights, the essence of which is to view the relationship between human and non-human from the perspective of the animal as beneficiary, rather than from the perspective of the human, which is how most animal protection legislation is framed. The idea is that any wrong not only "deforms the agent," as Finnis writes of human beings, but also offends the victim's "fundamental equality."
Hinduism and Buddhism
Both HinduHinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
and Buddhist
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
societies saw widespread vegetarianism from the 3rd century BCE, in line with ahimsa
Ahimsa
Ahimsa is a term meaning to do no harm . The word is derived from the Sanskrit root hims – to strike; himsa is injury or harm, a-himsa is the opposite of this, i.e. non harming or nonviolence. It is an important tenet of the Indian religions...
, the doctrine of non-violence. Ryder writes that animals were thought to possess the same feelings as human beings, and several kings of ancient India built hospitals for sick animals. To kill a cow in Hinduism was as serious as killing a high-caste man , and the killing of a dog equivalent to killing an untouchable .
Human souls could be reborn as animals if they had behaved badly, with all souls regarded as part of the Supreme Being. Failing to observe the duty to care could lead to bad karma
Karma
Karma in Indian religions is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh philosophies....
, which increased the likelihood of returning as an animal next time round.
Islam
The Prophet MuhammadMuhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
(570–632) taught that it was permissible to kill animals, but to do so unnecessarily or with cruelty was forbidden. "If you must kill, kill without torture." He saw animals as having internal mental states. They should not be bound when being slaughtered, and should not be made to wait. To let an animal see you sharpen your knife is to kill it twice.
Polytheism
AnimismAnimism
Animism refers to the belief that non-human entities are spiritual beings, or at least embody some kind of life-principle....
, totemism
Totemism
Totemism is a system of belief in which humans are said to have kinship or a mystical relationship with a spirit-being, such as an animal or plant...
, religions of indigenous peoples, paganism
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
and many polytheism
Polytheism
Polytheism is the belief of multiple deities also usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own mythologies and rituals....
believe animals are spiritual beings, people have great respect towards animals