Author Talk: Matthew Halteman in conversation with Andrew Chignell

Perhaps you’ve looked at factory farming or climate change and thought, I should become a vegan. And like most people who think that very probably you haven’t. Why? Well, in our world, roast turkey emanates gratitude, steak confers virility, and chicken soup represents a mother’s love. Against that, simply swapping meat for plants won’t work.

In Hungry Beautiful Animals, philosopher Matthew C. Halteman shows us how—despite all the forces arrayed against going vegan—we can create an abundant life for everyone without using animals for food. It might seem that moral rectitude or environmental judgement should do the trick, but they can’t. Going vegan must be about flourishing, for all life. Shame and blame don’t lead to flourishing. We must do it with joy instead.

Hungry Beautiful Animals is more than philosophy: it’s a book of action, of forgiveness, of love. Funny and wise, this book frees us joyfully to want what we already know we need.  

Matthew C. Halteman is professor of philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and fellow in the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, UK. He is the author of Compassionate Eating as Care of Creation. Andrew Chignell is a professor in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton, with appointments in the Religion and Philosophy departments. Andrew co-directs the new Princeton Project in Philosophy and Religion and is on the faculty steering committee for the Princeton DeCenter and the Princeton Food Project. Together, Matthew and Andrew co-edited the book Philosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments About the Ethics of Eating.