born 1959 in Buenos Aires, has been a features editor for the FAZ for many years. He has been a vegetarian for over 10 years. Among his most recent publications is “Schwieriges Glück. Versuch über die Vaterliebe” (2007).
Are you a vegetarian? There are lots of reasons to be one – like our health or the conditions and ecological consequences of intensive livestock farming. But isn’t the idea that we do not have the right to eat animals because we do not have the right to kill animals reason enough? Nothing forces us to do it after all, least of all our nature. So why aren’t you a vegetarian yet? Nothing would be more decent and better for you, for everybody else and for our closest relatives: animals.
Iris Radisch and Eberhard Rathgeb turn the tables and prove that there aren’t any good, convincing arguments to eat animals. They have collected literary and philosophical texts which full of shock and despair describe how we are still doing it. For centuries humans have dealt with the question of who is allowed to kill whom and why.