I've mentioned we have around 300,000 slowly rotating links in the link-vault and this is one that popped out earlier this week.
From The Point, March 15, 2017:
Dear Aristotle,
My son came home for Christmas from his freshman year of college with his head full of new ideas. One of them has driven a wedge in our holiday feasts: the issue of eating animals. We’ve always enjoyed burgers, roasts, ham and turkey during the Yuletide season. But not only does my son refuse to partake of the hard labor of his poor mother, he also glares at all of us during dinner like we’re committing some kind of crime. Last night, he told us that cows were beautiful creatures that deserve our respect. How do I respond to him?
– Fed Up in Indiana
Dear Fed Up in Indiana,
The function of an animal is to serve the needs of human beings. This is both natural and expedient. Your son’s point, that animals which are beautiful should not be eaten, is a valid one, as beautiful animals fulfill our desire for beauty. However, the statement that cows are beautiful is false. No animal that is very small or very large can be beautiful. I’ve already covered the matter in On the Generation of Animals:
Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of time that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness.
A beef steer is about 750 pounds; a butcher pig is about 400 pounds. They are both too difficult for a human to look at all at once. (You’ve got to walk around it a few times.) A broiler chicken weighs about five pounds and therefore also cannot be beautiful, because looking at it takes too small a portion of time. Your son can only call animals beautiful that are approximately more than a third of his weight or less than twice his weight. We can say that a dog, gorilla or leopard is beautiful, but we cannot say that a turkey, beef steer or giraffe is beautiful. It follows that it is not good (that is, not useful) to eat dogs, gorillas, or leopards, but it is good (that is, useful) to eat turkey, beef, or giraffe....
....MORE
The Point used to be open access but they've gone to the three-free-test-drives-and-a-paywall subscription model. If the reader would prefer to window shop their offerings rather than read the next Aristotle answers your questions bit, here is their homepage:
https://thepointmag.com
Their current top oessay was linked by us in April 8's "What Comes After Post-Political?"
