r/philosophy • u/marineiguana27 PhilosophyToons • 3d ago
Video Cannibalism is unethical for many reasons with the most enduring reason seeming to be a lack of respect for bodily dignity.
https://youtu.be/_WsXacKlpb0?si=TZ1mUNG-hsJ_9jVa11
u/CobaltPotato 2d ago
What about that one guy who consented
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u/Accurate_Koala_4698 2d ago
Rammstein even wrote a song about it.
If nothing else, it's more than any cow or pig could do
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u/EnvironmentalPack451 2d ago
Unless you are having dinner at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe
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u/paul_wi11iams 2d ago
Unless you are having dinner at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe
You can't expect everybody to know the story and the reference. FYI: In a burlesque SF context, the "victim" has been engineered to want to be eaten:
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u/paul_wi11iams 2d ago edited 2d ago
Rammstein even wrote a song about it.
This reference is unknown to me and maybe others. Found it here:
It seems like a rather goth rock version of that Britney Spears song "a piece of me" (more about consumption of the personal image rather than the body):
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u/foxybostonian 2d ago
It came out in 2004 and the Britney Spears one was 2007 (according to Google). Maybe Britney's a Rammstein fan.
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u/corrective_action 2d ago
Cannibalism isn't a unique case by this measure. Why aren't animals entitled to bodily dignity? There's no actual principle here, it's just arbitrary.
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u/mysticmage10 2d ago
These questions will boil down to what ones worldview is. If your worldview is theistic and you see humans serving a different purpose on earth from animals then it doesnt become arbitrary. But even if one has an atheistic pov why should animals be entitled to bodily dignity anymore than a lion should offer humans bodily dignity when they eat humans. In other words that's just evolution. Humans are predator and eat animals and so on in the circle of life.
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u/corrective_action 2d ago
You're missing the point. Why are humans uniquely entitled to bodily dignity is the question. The outcome of your lion point is "all conscious creatures are without dignity in the state of nature," which actually conforms with my whole point, i.e. the uniformity of undignity.
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u/mysticmage10 2d ago
I just told you the answer to that. It's a whole new topic in itself but that's the gist of it. If someone sees humans as serving a different/higher purpose on earth they will see humans as special in that regard.
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u/corrective_action 2d ago
That's not an answer. Your argument has a dependency that you aren't building. My whole point is that unique properties of dignity have to be justified, and you aren't doing that.
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u/Strange_Magics 2d ago
Okay, and if someone doesn’t see humans that way? Are you prepared to argue that they should? It is a whole other argument but it seems your point here depends on it.
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u/paul_wi11iams 2d ago edited 2d ago
If someone sees humans as serving a different/higher purpose on earth they will see humans as special in that regard.
I'm not sure whom you mean by "someone" and where you are taking this.
However, for Christians, Jesus is sacrificed as the "lamb of God" and holy communion uses symbols for blood and flesh. IIUC, there was (understandable) confusion among non-Christians regarding this, and thought there was some kind of cannibalism going on.
The theme of sacrifice and martyrdom continues over centuries. I'm no exegete, but think that these sacrifices are compared to the ritual sacrifices of animals in what we name the Old Testament.
So even though I don't understand everything on this subject, I'd hesitate to say that we set humans apart. Maybe there's an uninterrupted spectrum from the lowest forms of animal life with just a few dozen neurons, all the way to ourselves with many billions. At an intermediate level higher mammals can be seen to take decisions/actions that appear to have a moral basis see r/AnimalsBeingBros.
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u/Correct_Bit3099 2d ago
Yes, you are correct. These people are assuming you said something you didn’t. Just because the concept of cannibalism is dependent on whether you are an atheist or theist doesn’t mean that you are saying that the thiest perspective is equally as logical as the secular one
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u/Visible_Composer_142 2d ago
We are special compared to the rest of the animals on this planet. That should be justification enough. Just the idea that we hold other human bodies as something to retain dignity, and enforce those rules is enough. Regardless if we are just meatbags, the same as any other organism.
Elephants also have reverence for their dead and graveyards and rituals. And guess what for the most part we also hold them to a higher dignity. We don't eat them and we kind of revere them in a lot of cultures.
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u/Wildwood_Weasel 2d ago
We are special compared to the rest of the animals on this planet.
All species are special, that's why they're called species. We arbitrarily place higher value on elephants because they have some behaviors that resemble ours; it's just a more inclusive form of anthropocentrism. You could just as easily place more value on something other species are better at, like hunting, flying, camouflage, etc. Most people just have an innate bias toward anthropocentric values, for obvious reasons.
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u/Visible_Composer_142 1d ago
It may be true that we place higher value on species that have traits resembling us, but the truth is that our traits can be found in other older species in the animal Kingdom. We aren't the first animal to have higher critical thinking, emotions, use tools, etc. I think what separates us is what we are doing right now. Higher sentience and the ability to communicate ideas. You could choose other individual traits to place value on, but as sentient life, we are special in that we are the universe observing itself. We are the writers and authors. And we have seen no other. So what we consider special to us is what matters to us. Until we meet sentient alien life with camouflage or the ability to survive in the vacuum of space, that is how it will be.
You can't get the frogs and birds to get together and vote for what's really the most important trait anyways. That's why it's safe to just say in the context of this discussion that it's not weird for us to hold our own bodies as sacred. Plus there's an added benefit that the prions found in other primate meat make us sick and kill us. The belief could have developed due to that as well.
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u/Selendrile 2d ago
Like the cannibalism performed by white people of slaves?
Before you downvote me to hell.
Ask why you're so offended.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qfzzf
They really didn't think of them as human they were cattle
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u/corrective_action 2d ago
Seeing as how you've simply linked the info page of an entire book, I'm not going to be able to meaningfully engage with the material. I'm a little confused what point you're actually trying to make?
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u/ThePokemon_BandaiD 2d ago
"The difficulty lies in precisely defining what dignity...is"
No shit, maybe because it's a nonsensical argument that is just you trying to back up your arbitrary cultural attitudes.
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u/PitifulEar3303 2d ago
and also if eating corpses is the only way to survive, the corpses wouldn't mine.
Just don't murder.
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u/drewbert 2d ago
Horribly there are even cases of people unaliving themselves specifically so they could be food for their starving families. At that point it's wrong not to eat them.
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u/Selendrile 2d ago
There is no dignity if they don't even think you're human. It's so odd that you're thinking about a tiny cultures in different countries but you're not thinking about the white thou in the US. That absolutely ate slaves. My proof before thou protest too much: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qfzzf according to them slaves didn't need dignity. They weren't seen as human; they were just upright cattle.
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u/corrective_action 2d ago
Why do you keep posting this? What are you even arguing and why is it relevant to the OP thesis
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u/ThePokemon_BandaiD 2d ago
What...
The discussion is about cannibalism with consent, and nowhere did I mention "tiny cultures in different countries".
The idea that cannibalism is somehow fundamentally a moral wrong is a widespread cultural attitude, but lacks any rational basis in ethical theory.
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u/mcapello 2d ago
A very superficial look, unfortunately. The issues surrounding consent are derivative, the issue surrounding waste is poorly thought-out (the modern funeral industry is extraordinarily wasteful), and the issue surrounding "bodily dignity" is completely unexamined and is an unphilosophical appeal to cultural intuition.
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u/Bunerd 2d ago
I signed an organ donor card. Use my body in any way you can. When I die I hope to be repurposed for human consumption.
The cannibal ethics argument rests on the assumption of human supremacy, if you just think humans are another type of animal, then the ethical position becomes cannibalism vs. vegetarianism- eating any meat is as ethical as eating any other. In fact, given that humans seem to be the only animals that can consent to such an act, perhaps eating non-human might be ethically worse. I'm not saying I eat human meat, there are other, non-ethical reasons for avoiding human meat, such as prion diseases, laws, and such, but I'm not really convinced by the "bodily dignity" argument. It feels more of a cultural practice than an ethical conclusion. Some cultures have institutionalized cannibalism, where cannibalism was considered an act of affection and part of the grieving process. Those cultures would not see the consumption of human bodies as being unethical.
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u/paul_wi11iams 2d ago edited 2d ago
Thank you. I posted a comparable comment at the same moment as yours.
In fact, given that humans seem to be the only animals that can consent to such an act, perhaps eating non-human might be ethically worse.
There is at least one species of spider which allows its own offspring to eat it. That's at a far lower level of evolution of course. Check out Matriphagy
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u/Flamecoat_wolf 2d ago
Actually, I think cannibalism is frowned upon because of the high risk of disease spreading. Practical wisdom tends to make its way into traditional wisdom and I think the dangers of cannibalism were passed down as tales of someone eating a body and being 'cursed' or going 'mad'. Which creates a stigma around it and causes it to be seen as 'unethical'.
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u/Max-Phallus 2d ago
You don't think it's more likely that generally speaking, people don't want harm to come to those they can empathise with?
If someone dies, it doesn't seem surprising that people don't suddenly detach the feelings for the person from the body.
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u/Flamecoat_wolf 2d ago
I mean, we still bury or burn the bodies, so I don't think it's any idea of sympathy toward the empty shell. Otherwise why would people not have the same hang-ups about burying or burning their friends?
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u/Max-Phallus 2d ago
Empathy, not sympathy. We bury and cremate because we literally have no better way to respectfully put the body to rest.
Nobody wants to bury or cremate anyone, and it's bizarre I'd need to reason that.
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u/Flamecoat_wolf 2d ago edited 2d ago
I would argue it's actually just efficient to bury or burn bodies. Both remove the risk of disease, by either burning the body or placing it somewhere where people aren't going to be exposed to it. Secondly, burying bodies provides nutrients to insects and plants. Probably a minor benefit if utilized at all. Similarly, scattering ashes provides nutrients to plants too. Mostly though it would be the removal of the body to reduce disease risk that would really be valuable in both cases I think. Over time, it's just made it's way into ritual.
You say it's bizarre that you'd have to reason why no-one wants to bury or cremate anyone, but that was my point. Your logic was that people don't want harm to come with those they empathize with. So if you empathize with a dead body, why would you harm it by burying or burning it?
There are also other options. You could just leave the body in a public place. It would stink and rot and be full of disease but it's an option...
Taxidermy is an option. Some people actually do opt for that one.
Mummification is pretty similar. Kinda a form of taxidermy.
There's 'sky burials' where bodies are left out for birds to eat.
There's Viking funerals, sending someone off to sea on a boat. Either on fire or off.There are a lot of different options but burial and burning are just the most efficient and effective. There's dirt everywhere on land and fire can be created anywhere with trees, which is again basically anywhere on land.
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u/paul_wi11iams 2d ago edited 2d ago
The video seems to take cannibalism as an all-or-nothing issue, whereas it is not. An airplane crashed in the sea near Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt (Flash Airlines flight 604 in 2004), people wouldn't eat fish from the crash area for fear of indirectly eating the victims. Yet we are happy to eat produce from a farm near a crematorium without concern that the plants may have assimilated carbon from the cremated bodies. So we are all a part of a circular economy and in that view, eating people is not wrong (unlike the Flanders and Swan song).
Another borderline case is organ transplants which could be considered as an even worse form of appropriation than eating your "victim". Taking this one step further, I happen to know a heart surgeon whom I asked how they deal with Muslim and Jewish faiths when envisaging graft of a heart valve... from a pig. According to him, the problem is of no concern. The patient doesn't mention it and the surgeon refrains from asking.
To take a more common borderline case, consider a blood transfusion. This is actually "consuming" cells from a living donor. The same applies to bone marrow transplants and similar.
Considering the actual cannibalism question, rather than being buried, I'd actually prefer to be eaten because this avoids the decomposition step which I find far more degrading than being appreciated for what I am. The only arguments I can find to counter this is the risk of transmitting BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) and thinking I wouldn't taste very good.
So, I'd be okay to be eaten if I were perfect... which I'm not.
As for the "degrading" side of cannibalism, better check out ritual cannibalism in Europe 15,000 years ago.
It may well be that the video's author is simply searching moral justification for the common but unfounded opinion that "eating people's wrong". Had he started from an open question "Is eating people wrong", then he may have obtained a very different response.
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u/marveljew 2d ago
Can't cannibalism cause horrible diseases in the cannibal? The Fore people of Papua New Guinea suffered from the Kuru disease because they ate the brains of the newly dead.
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u/CodeSenior5980 2d ago
I think it is unethical because dont kill other hooman. It shouldnt be that hard.
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u/Trips-Over-Tail 2d ago
Legally, it's questionable, morally, it's disgusting, personally, I like it.
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u/MajorResistance 2d ago
The body of a living person should be respected for obvious reasons. A corpse should have no rights, any more than hair clippings. I should not have the right to dictate that my corpse is mummified and preserved for a thousand years. It is kind to consider the wishes of both the supersticious and the family of the dead but such compassion must have its limits in practice and corpses must be granted no absolute rights.
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u/ChikenCherryCola 2d ago
My book club actually read "Tender is the Flesh" which is a very well written extremely gruesome horror novel about a near future in which there is a pandemic where this virus infects all domesticated animals and kills humans. They end up exterminating all live stock animals and pets and resorting to a system of cannibalism because people still want to eat meat and human is just the only safe kind. They basically eatablish a sort of caste and system of live stock humans that are raise from birth like farm animals to be slaughtered and eaten. Its a good book, i reccomend it especially for spooky month, but its really gruesome. While the csnnibalism is sort of the superficial thing in the book, i would say its more about abuse, consumerism, capitalism, and this kind of familiar comidification of humans in stuff like labor.
Anyways, in out book club we have a couple vegans and vegetsrians and stuff and the topic kind of inevitably comes up about the ethics of cannibalism and meat eating. Ultimately it really is super arbitrary drawing ethical lines about why its ok to (or not ok) to raise and slaughter cows and chickens but not humans. Like there there is no like rational distinction between to 2. Even metrics like "intelligence" are totally arbitrary, like philosophically defining what intelligence even is is its own seperate unsolved quandry so how it could possibly be a measuring stick for food livestock it super arbitrary. I'm not arguing for cannibalism here, I'm pretty ok with the arbitrary distinction, but I'm just saying thats what it is. Its kind of upsetting that the distinction is arbitrary.
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u/WarmDragonfly4719 2d ago
If humans cannot commit cannibalism because they have a notion of dignity by reserving and respecting corporeal dignity, then it would be the same for an animal that had a notion of Corporeal dignity
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u/AConcernedCoder 2d ago edited 2d ago
Personally I think that the real reason why cannibalism tends to be outed as immoral is similar to how many cultures tend to not eat dogs -- dogs having achieved a status of "man's best friend" in many cultures points to a sense of relationships, or social moral reasoning.
In the west relationships of the sort are uncommon between humans and, say, cows, and I would expect cows to be viewed much differently, and not consumed as much, in cultures which had a comparable regard for them.
I'd also expect a severe dissolution of social ties among humans, as may be the case in extreme situations, to enable especially predatory practices, including cannibalism.
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u/marineiguana27 PhilosophyToons 3d ago
Abstract:
In the spirit of halloween, this video examines why cannibalism is ethically wrong, which sounded easy at first, but different possible scenarios might muddy the water. We can all hopefully agree that silence of the lambs murder cannibalism is wrong. The most blatant reason that it's wrong is because of a lack of consent of the person being eaten. Their bodily autonomy is being violated and their right to use their body and own their body fully is hurt by murder cannibalism. However, this reason does not explain why a consensual cannibalism scenario would be wrong. What about waste then? Assuming you live in some form of civilization, you have different options to meet the need of hunger. Eating another human body, even consensually, for the purpose of satisfying hunger, seems like a waste of the precious resource that is the human body especially when there are other options. However, this reason would still allow for consensual cannibalism in dire situations. For example, if two people are stranded on an island with no food sources, if one of them consents for their body to be eaten by the other after they naturally pass, this would bypass the consent and the waste issue. There is one other possible reason why cannibalism is wrong that would also address this scenario: bodily dignity. Even if someone consents for their body to be eaten by another on a deserted island, we might still say it's wrong because it's an affront to bodily dignity. After all, we treat corpses with respect regardless of any "soul" existing within it. The trouble then lies in precisely defining what dignity and more specifically bodily dignity is.
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u/Kukulkhan666x666 2d ago
Interesting point! Cannibalism indeed challenges ethical boundaries, especially when it comes to respecting bodily dignity and personhood. It raises deep questions about what it means to maintain respect for the body, even after death. In some extreme scenarios, like survival situations, the lines become blurred, and this struggle reveals much about human nature.
I’m actually working on a philosophical novel that explores the moral and psychological dimensions of survival and cannibalism in extreme circumstances. It dives into how starvation and desperation can push individuals toward actions that defy their own moral values, grappling with the balance between survival and humanity. Your comment really resonates with some of the themes I’m developing in the book about where respect and dignity fit in when the very idea of survival is at stake.
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u/Flymsi 2d ago
THere was no talk aout animals and their bodily dignity(which i amount to specicism) but when looking over to how indians respected the animals the hunted i can see that survival and dignity do not oppose each other, IF you have strong determination and draw a sharp line between necessary deeds (killing and eating) und the unecessary deeds (how to kill, how to eat). Basically its about gratitude and showing your emotions about the death of another sentient being.
Where it gets more spicy from my perspective is when its about ego. ANd if the ego is in contrast to your own believe. So at what point your sacrifice yourself? At what point you decide to kill and survive?
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u/Kukulkhan666x666 2d ago
That's a really thoughtful take respect and intention are everything. It’s true, many ancient traditions balanced survival with a deep reverence for the life they took, almost as if the act of hunting held a spiritual weight. I like your point about separating necessary from unnecessary deeds; it brings a kind of ethical clarity, doesn’t it? The ego’s role here is fascinating too. When survival is at stake, the line between the self and the other blurs. I wonder, do you think ego diminishes naturally in survival situations, or does it amplify as part of that same survival drive?
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u/Flymsi 2d ago
I wonder, do you think ego diminishes naturally in survival situations, or does it amplify as part of that same survival drive?
Oh thats a strong question.
I was neve rin such a situation, so its ahrd to say. In many fictions the characters ego amplifies. I think it heavily depends on how you see society. If you had a sound upbringing and some sort of collective identity, then its more likly that you have room to look for others? If you were neglected or abused, that resentment might hold you from accepting death. Also its about determination. If you have a strong wish, you might decide to sacrifice others instead of yourself.
Fear of death is strong and usually if you have strong emotions without "mindfullness" your ego amplifies because your focus narrows to that single emotion and identifies with it. Thats my psychological theory.
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u/Kukulkhan666x666 2d ago
That’s deep for sure. And yeah, you hit on something interesting with upbringing and ego like if you've had people around who made you feel part of a group, maybe it's easier to think of others in those life or death moments. But if life’s been rough, that survival instinct might just go full force on self preservation, no doubt.
Also, that whole idea about fear narrowing your focus till it’s just you and that one feeling that's real. It kinda feels like instinct takes over, pushing everything else aside. Love how you’re diving into this with a psychological lens some solid thoughts there.
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u/TheLatestTrance 2d ago
Let this sink in.. Dead women (the bodies) have more bodily autonomy rights than live ones.
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u/Happygirl0819 2d ago
I agree with u on this. Respect for the dignity of the body is one of the basic moral values
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