While the study of certain aspects of the ancient world may derive from mere intellectual curiosity, the study of other aspects is absolutely essential for our understanding of current social, political, and environmental circumstances. The latter dynamic is certainly the case with the history of ancient ideas about “the human” and “the animal.” These ideas, taken up and developed over centuries by Christian theologians and humanist philosophers, have shaped the radically anthropocentric worldview of Western nations. Most Europeans and North Americans are simply unconcerned with how we torture and kill billions of animals each year. They live, without knowing it, in a mental universe constructed by a handful of Greek and Roman philosophers. To escape this universe, it is useful and perhaps even necessary to know what Chrysippus, Epicurus, Cicero, or Saint Augustine said about animals and humans’ interactions with them. The objective of this course is to study—alongside the many pleas of the vegetarian philosophers of antiquity—the incomplete but triumphant responses of their carnist adversaries. 

Course Details

• 6 hours of recorded video content
• Weekly readings for self-study
• Plus+ 4 x 60-minute recorded Q&A sessions with Professor Larue

Learning Area

Animal Advocacy & Biodiversity

Instructor

Renan Larue, PhD

Renan Larue is a professor, French literary scholar, and historian of vegetarianism. He is the author of six books on animal rights, vegetarianism or veganism, including Le végétarisme et ses ennemis (Presses Universitaires de France, 2015), a history of vegetarianism from Pythagoras until the modern day. The French Academy awarded it Best Book of the year in Moral Philosophy. More recently, he published Anthologie végane: 100 textes essentiels (Presses Universitaires de France, 2023). In 2016, he offered the first course in Vegan Studies in the United States at the University of California, Santa Barbara.