Pythagoreans

Vegetarianism

Pythagoreans believed that human beings were animals, but with an advanced intellect and therefore humans had to purify themselves through training. Through purification humans could join the psychic force that pervaded the cosmos. Pythagoreans reasoned that the logic of this argument could not be avoided by killing an animal painlessly. The Pythagoreans also thought that animals were sentient and minimally rational. The arguments advanced by Pythagoreans convinced numerous of their philosopher contemporaries to adopt a vegetarian diet. The Pythagorean sense of kinship with non-humans positioned them as a counterculture in the dominant meat-eating culture. The philosopher Empedocles is said to have refused the customary blood sacrifice by offering a substitute sacrifice after his victory in a horse race in Olympia.