C:/ITOOLS/WMS/CUP-NEW/27984340/WORKINGFOLDER/MARMODORO-HYB/9781108833691C10.3D 174 [174–192] 2.3.2021 5:13AM chapter 10 Porphyry on Justice towards Animals Are Animals Rational and Does It Matter for Justice? Riin Sirkel The issues concerning vegetarianism or abstinence from animal food are sometimes considered to be contemporary issues, but they were already a feature of the philosophical landscape in Ancient Greece. The Platonists of late antiquity, in particular, take abstinence from animal food to play a central role in philosophical life. The focus of this essay is on Porphyry’s account of the just treatment of animals in his treatise On Abstinence from Killing Animals, which offers the most comprehensive surviving ancient discussion of this issue. More specifically, my aim is to examine Porphyry’s views on justice and the rationality of animals, as they are presented in Book 3 of the treatise. Porphyry begins On Abstinence from Killing Animals by presenting differ- ent arguments against abstinence from animal food, and responds to some of them in later books of the treatise. He devotes significant attention to the Stoic argument that justice extends only to rational beings on the assump- tion that only humans and gods are rational. His response to the Stoic argument is found in Book 3, where he introduces a number of consider- ations to show that other animals are to some extent rational. It is usually assumed that Porphyry thereby commits himself to the view that animals are rational, thus breaking from the tradition of treating rationality as distinctive of humans. This common assumption has been recently challenged in a series of essays by G. Fay Edwards (2014, 2016, 2018), who argues that Porphyry does not himself believe that animals are rational or that justice extends only to rational beings. Rather, Book 3 ‘constitutes a dialectical attack on the Stoic position, arguing that the Stoics ought to believe that animals are rational, given their theory of rationality, and that, because of this, the Stoics ought to believe that it is unjust for humans to eat animals, given their theory of justice’ (2016: 263). Edwards distinguishes her inter- pretation from the ‘consensus interpretation’, according to which Porphyry believes that ‘all animals are rational, and that the killing of rational beings for food by other rational beings (such as humans) is unjust’ (2016: 265). 174