Doubting oneself. Continuing the theme from the Obama and Dunlop entry on Wednesday...

In this week's radio essay, my colleague Louise Collins is tempted not only by the aroma of a frying bacon but also by the moral arguments for vegetarianism. In The New Yorker Steven Shapin reviews Tristram Stuart’s new history of vegetarianism. Shapin ends with a story from the young Benjamin Franklin, who during a long sea voyage wavers from vegetarianism when he smells just-cooked cod. Recalling that fish eat other fish, he justifies his decision to dine heartily on cod, noting the primacy of human desire over reason: "So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do."

Shapin says the long saga of vegetarianism is "a history of human morality, but it’s no less a history of human ingenuity in moral argumentation." Ingenious as our moral reasoning might be, we should challenge our own arguments, which can easily be made to serve desires rather than good reason.

It is said that the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, who remained active to a very old age, gave a lecture in Boston when he was nearly 100 years old. At the end of the talk, he invited questions from the audience, but he found their questions too accepting of his views. "Does no one refute me?" he said. "Very well, then. I will refute myself." And he proceeded to discuss the most vulnerable parts of his lecture.

("Vegetable Love," Review of "The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times," The New Yorker, 1/22/07) [0 & P]