Eating meat Quote by Steven Pinker
““But any intuition that vegetarianism and humanitarianism go together was shattered in the 20th-century by the treatment of animals under Nazism.266 Hitler and many of his henchmen were vegetarians, not so much out of compassion for animals as from an obsession with purity, a pagan desire to reconnect to the soil, and a reaction to the anthropocentrism and meat rituals of Judaism. In an unsurpassed display of the human capacity for moral compartmentalization, the Nazis, despite their unspeakable experiments on living humans, instituted the strongest laws for the protection of animals in research that Europe had ever seen. Their laws also mandated humane treatment of animals in farms, movie sets, and restaurants, where fish had to be anesthetized and lobsters killed swiftly before they were cooked. Ever since that bizarre chapter in the history of animal rights, advocates of vegetarianism have had to retire one of their oldest arguments: that eating meat makes people aggressive, and abstaining from it makes them peaceful. Some””
About This Quote
Source Book: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, 2011
The quote highlights how Nazi vegetarianism was driven by ideology and purity, not compassion, exposing the moral compartmentalization that can separate animal welfare from human cruelty.
In simple terms: Nazi vegetarianism was about ideology, not kindness to animals.
Recognize that moral motives can be contradictory.
Themes
Mood
Type
When to use this quote
- academic discussion
- ethical debates
- policy analysis
Key Concepts
Questions to Reflect On
- Can ideology override empathy?
- How do we assess moral consistency?
The example may overgeneralize a specific regime, ignoring broader vegetarian motivations.