Veganism And Vegetarianism

They might get used in very similar ways, but the words veganism and vegetarianism have differing ideas behind them.  The concepts each word is supposed to refer to are not the same, so in the sense of conventional language, veganism and vegetarianism are not interchangeable words.  Veganism is an ideology that rejects all consumption of animal-based products and even all wearing of animal-based clothing in its strictest forms that extend beyond diet alone.  Rather than eating or wearing animals, consistent vegans eat plant-based items and could even wear clothes fashioned from material originating in plants.  Vegetarianism is a looser dietary philosophy--or it can be practiced out of personal preference or for health reasons instead of belief that it is or is likely morally required, as I will address below--that does not preclude eating things like eggs or honey, which still come from animals in some way.

The different kinds of vegans or vegetarians could have rather distinct motivations and/or explicitly philosophical reasons (all things are philosophical, but not everyone is intending to align with or live out grand truths in this matter), however rational or irrational those might be, for choosing this dietary lifestyle: there could be people who become vegan or vegetarian out of personal preference, for health reasons, or for alleged moral reasons.  Out of these three motivations into which all motivations for veganism or vegetarianism reduce down to, the first has no philosophical authority but simply acting on it is not necessarily irrational or evil, the second is only about practically achieving a goal without necessarily caring for any ultimate truths about reality, and the third, despite most people only coming to it from emotion, at least involves a goal of far more substance than mere survival or preference.

Now, conscience, social norms or pressures, and even human legal systems do not ground or reveal morality, so believing in moral veganism/vegetarianism on the basis of any of these is just as irrational and invalid as believing in any other moral obligation because of such things.  If something is obligatory or evil, it will not cease to be obligatory or evil because someone's subjective conscience flares up for or against it: not even the consciences of every human on Earth, if they all happened to actually have the same reactions to the same ideas, practices, or intentions, would not mean anything more than that everyone has the same morally charged emotional reaction to something.  The same is true of consensus (having the same conscience as other people does not mean everyone just assumes conscience illuminates anything beyond itself), social norms, and human laws.  If vegetarianism or the stricter veganism is morally obligatory, and not even just good or permissible but not obligatory, then there is neither logical proof nor even fallible evidences that one can access that so much as hint at this being true.  Every version of the idea that veganism or vegetarianism is true are just assumed and not proven, not that this makes voluntary veganism or vegetarianism irrational.

One of the moral objections certain vegans/vegetarians might hold to is that killing animals for food is cruel, which is both based on a misunderstanding of what cruelty is and based on the provably false, conscience-rooted assumption that they can know morality from personal feelings or social experience (since veganism and vegetarianism have more mainstream popularity now, some people might embrace them as explicitly philosophical stances just because of that).  There are ways to raise and kill animals for food that do not involve cruelty.  The factory farming style of raising animals for human consumption can be quite cruel to animals, yes; this being cruel and cruelty being wrong, which together would necessitate that factory farming is unjust in its treatment of animals, would still only mean that this general method of preparing animals to be eaten is evil, not killing animals to eat them itself.  Then, there is the fact that some animal products could be taken from dead animals a person stumbles upon-- if killing animals is necessary to more quickly obtain certain bodily features for food or clothing, taking them once the creature has died could not be evil even if killing them was.

If, though, someone's philosophical objection is that consuming any living or formerly living thing to stay alive is by default evil, then eating plants also immoral, which contradicts veganism and vegetarianism.  Even many animals consume other animals or plants, which are themselves living, and certain plants could be carnivorous, so humans killing and eating animals would only be a human-led version of what would already occur among the various animals and sometimes plants in the natural world.  That does not mean there could not be a special moral significance to humans killing and eating animals, as animals might be too metaphysically inferior to have the same obligations as humans, but it does mean that the total avoidance of killing animals that ideological vegans want is not part of how many animals already behave on their own.

It is, however, logically possible for someone to eat meat and enjoy doing so while actively caring, thinking, and talking about the cruelty-free treatment of animals--in fact, this is the true Christian stance on the matter, since neither dietary style is prescribed and it is Biblically sinful (Deuteronomy 4:2), internally inconsistent on the Christian worldview, and philosophically asinine for non-Biblical reasons to confuse something the Bible does not demand for something that it does.  It is also possible to be a vegetarian or even a vegan without assuming that it is morally mandatory in light of that being rooted in nothing but emotionalism, unverifiability, or shifting social conventions.  Veganism and vegetarianism do not, as is the case with practically everything, logically follow from or necessitate the ideas and/or aggressiveness that the present culture pretends they are associated with.