The new book ‘Why Vegans Don’t’ is a thought-provoking exploration of vegan philosophy that includes controversial issues still debated within the vegan movement, this book goes deep into the ethical, scientific, and philosophical reasons why vegans reject some products and practices, uncovering an enlightened worldview that challenges exploitation, inspires moral progress, and celebrates sentient life in all its forms. From the main axioms of the philosophy of veganism to the reasons behind refusing backyard eggs, ahimsa silk, oysters, or horse riding, each chapter offers clarity, evidence, and insight for anyone seeking to understand what living by the vegan philosophy means.
KIM STALLWOOD: Jordi Casamitjana is a vegan zoologist who specialises in animal behaviour. He is the author of two books about living as a vegan and animal rights. The first is called Ethical Vegan: A Personal and Political Journey to Change the World, and was the focus of an interview I published here in 2024. His new book is ‘Why Vegans Don’t: A Philosophical Guide to Vegan Behaviour‘… is a thought-provoking exploration of vegan philosophy that includes controversial issues still debated within the vegan movement.
The book goes deep into the ethical, scientific, and philosophical reasons why vegans reject some products and practices, uncovering an enlightened worldview that challenges exploitation, inspires moral progress, and celebrates sentient life in all its forms. From the main axioms of the philosophy of veganism to the reasons behind refusing backyard eggs, ahimsa silk, oysters, or horse riding, each chapter offers clarity, evidence, and insight for anyone seeking to understand what living by the vegan philosophy means…
Here is the author’s interview:
KS: Your new book is called Why Vegans Don’t: A philosophical guide to vegan behaviour. How is this book different from your first?
JC: My second nonfiction book directly comes from the first one. It is the logical consequence of digging deeper into some of the subjects I dealt with in the first book. In Ethical Vegan, I explore veganism as a philosophy, with a lot of emphasis on history. In Why Vegans Don’t, I deconstruct this philosophy with more detail, focusing more on its internal logic and consistency, and then showing how it is applied to every decision vegans make. After the initial chapters analysing the philosophy, each of the subsequent chapters showcases all the main arguments and evidence we use to reject the products and activities we reject (dairy, eggs, meat, fishes’ flesh, honey, wool, silk, horse riding, visiting zoos, products tested on animals, etc.).
I also tackle the grey areas and issues still debated within the movement (backyard eggs, oysters, insect flour, cultivated meat, ahimsa silk, etc.). So the book can also be useful to experienced vegans engaged in those debates, not only to new vegans and vegan-curious people trying to understand why we behave in the way we do. Why Vegans Don’t also differs from my previous book in that it is more of a reference book, whose chapters can be read in any order as they work as complete units (even each chapter has its own bibliography at its end). This new book is also more up-to-date, using more recent evidence, but it retains my style and voice as a zoologist (which is scientific but not over-academic), and draws from my personal experience anecdotally (which I think helps with readability). SOURCE
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