Pythagoras and the Origins of Western Vegetarian Thought

In English, the word “vegetarian” was not formally coined until the mid-nineteenth century, but the practice of refusing to eat animal flesh has a much older history in the Western world. The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras and his followers advocated abstaining from meat because they believed in the transmigration of souls and held that animals might carry within them the souls of human ancestors.

A Philosophical Rather Than Religious Motivation

Unlike Eastern vegetarian traditions, which are rooted more in religious precept, the Pythagorean practice of vegetarianism sprang from something closer to a philosophical and ethical position: that all things possess a soul, and that life is fundamentally equal. This line of thought went on to influence a number of thinkers in the classical period, and it left vegetarianism in the West permanently marked with the cultural imprint of a philosophical way of life.

An Intermittent Legacy From Antiquity to Modernity

This tradition was never continuous throughout Western history; instead, it surfaced and receded in turns:

• The medieval Christian world was, on the whole, fairly conservative in its attitude toward vegetarianism
• The Renaissance and the Enlightenment saw the scattered reappearance of vegetarian advocates
• The founding of vegetarian societies in the nineteenth century marked the beginning of the vegetarian movement in its modern sense
• The formal adoption of the word “vegetarian” unified what had previously been scattered practices and discussions

Understanding this lineage helps us recognize that vegetarianism is not the property of any single civilization, but a set of ethical choices about life that grew up independently within different philosophical and religious systems, East and West alike.