Philosophy of vegetarianism and the animal condition

Abstract

The article reconstructs the genesis of the philosophy of vegetarianism and the animal condition, illustrating its interconnections with Christian thought and its future developments in the philosophy of animal law. In particular, it is documented how the animalist and vegetarian sensitivity of the first Greek philosophers was eclipsed with the advent of Christianity, and then resumed also thanks to the theological rethinking on biblical anthropocentrism put in place in the eighteenth century by Anglican theologians who led to two new theologies of the genitive: that of animals and that of vegetarianism.