{"id":538,"date":"2004-01-15T03:46:46","date_gmt":"2004-01-15T11:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/01\/15\/the-case-for-cannibalism\/"},"modified":"2012-10-02T10:25:48","modified_gmt":"2012-10-02T17:25:48","slug":"the-case-for-cannibalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=538","title":{"rendered":"The Case for Cannibalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

In City Journal<\/i>, Theodore Dalrymple issues a challenge<\/a> to his readers:<\/p>\n

The case raises interesting questions of principle, even for those who take the thoroughly conventional view that eating people is wrong. According to the evidence, Meiwes and Brandes were consenting adults: by what right, therefore, has the state interfered in their slightly odd relationship?<\/p>\n

Of course, one might argue that by eating Brandes, Meiwes was infringing on his meal\u2019s rights, and acting against his interests. But Brandes decided that it was in his interests to be eaten, and in general we believe that the individual, not the state, is the best judge of his own interests. […]<\/p>\n

Lest anyone think that the argument from mutual consent for the permissibility of cannibalism is purely theoretical, it is precisely what Meiwes\u2019s defense lawyer is arguing in court. The case is a reductio ad absurdum <\/i>of the philosophy according to which individual desire is the only thing that counts in deciding what is permissible in society. Brandes wanted to be killed and eaten; Meiwes wanted to kill and eat. Thanks to one of the wonders of modern technology, the Internet, they both could avoid that most debilitating of all human conditions, frustrated desire. What is wrong with that? Please answer from first principles only.<\/div>\n

I have libertarian tendencies, but I don’t go so far as to say that “individual desire is the only thing that counts.” Take the minimum wage, for example: Sally wants to pay Bob $1 an hour to work in Sally’s store. Bob, for whatever reason, genuinely wants to work for $1 an hour. In this case, frustrating their individual desires seems justifiable to me, because having a minimum wage law prevents a “race to the bottom” that would hurt thousands more workers.<\/p>\n

But I really can’t see that sort of logic applying to the cannibalism case. It seems to me the desire to eat people must be rare – and the desire to be eaten rarer still. It doesn’t seem likely that we’d be creating any sort of “race to the bottom” by allowing consenting adult meals to be eaten by consenting adult diners.<\/p>\n

I suppose one could make a public health argument; I’ve heard that cannibalism is a particularly effective route for transmitting diseases. But, again, it doesn’t seem that banning cannibalism is necessary to prevent this from becoming a major problem, because there are simply too few wannabe meals in our culture.<\/p>\n

I do have a problem with the idea of someone consenting to be murdered; there is a good argument to be made that laws against murder need to be enforced with as little slippage as possible. (Otherwise, we might have problems like murder victims being forced to sign consent forms at gunpoint before being killed.) But we could easily get around that by having the meal commit suicide rather than being killed by the eater.<\/p>\n

So put me down in the pro-cannibalism column, I guess. If a competent, consenting adult wants to be a meal, and his competent, consenting adult friend wants to be an eater, I wouldn’t want to be invited to the dinner – but nor do I see a need to ban it.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I find that conclusion disturbing enough so I’d welcome anyone coming up with an argument that would change my mind.<\/p>\n

Thoughts?<\/p>\n

Via Invisable Adjunct<\/a>..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple issues a challenge to his readers: The case raises interesting questions of principle, even for those who take the thoroughly conventional view that eating people is wrong. According to the evidence, Meiwes and Brandes were … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[153],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-libertarianism-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=538"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15904,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions\/15904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}