Paper #3 [Rhetorical Analysis Assignment (2)] (4 full pp. double-spaced)
How To Eat Your Friends Properly: A Rhetorical Analysis of Roger Scruton’s “A Carnivores Credo”
“Duty requires us, therefore, to eat out friends”, a very strong ending statement made by Roger Scruton in “A Carnivores Credo”. This essay was written to relate to the entire world, meat eaters and vegetarians. Scrutons essay consisted primarily of his use of pathos and his boost of ethos, which will be explained later in the essay. Scruton mainly uses pathetic and ethical appeals with guilt, humor, evidence and analogies in his essay by taking us through the consciences of humans, morality, and piety. The guilt opens the audience up emotionally, and while doing so, he floods them with plenty of evidence and analogies to awaken the mind. This is done because he is trying to persuade his audience to revert back to the traditional ways of human morality.
As stated above, pathos was a big factor in his attempt to changing the mindset of his audience. In the opening of this essay, he talks about how the treatment of animals was once a religious issue but now is a matter of ordinary morality. That statement means that we base things on what we think is right and wrong. Scruton believes that morality rests upon three
pillars which are value, virtue and duty. He then explains how moral life cannot be based on just one that all three need to be taken into account in order to understand fully of moral life.
Within the appeal of pathos, guilt was a key element in getting his point across and he used it repeatedly. Scruton centers the very subject of morality on what he calls piety. Piety can be thought of as dutiful respect and fulfillment of religious responsibility. Many people that share Scrutons interest in piety include the “environmentalists, conservationists, and welfare activists” are attempting to make us “acknowledge our weak and dependent state and to face the surrounding world with due reverence and humility”, and recognize that the welfare of the earth is of greater importance than our individual happiness.
As stated above, environmentalists, conservationists, and welfare activists all share the interest of piety and Scruton does. Environmentalists work to protect our environment from harm, conservationists attempt to conserve the environment, and welfare activists help in the circumstances of poor situations.These three are affiliated with piety because their common goal is to make the world a better place.
Scruton gets into depth in the next few paragraphs about human self consciousness. Scruton explains, “Unlike other animals, we are self-conscious. We do not live, as they do, only in the “world of perception”, to use Schopenhauer’s phrase (260). Our thoughts and feelings range over the actual and the possible, the probable and the necessary, what will be and what ought to be.”(260) I believe he is trying to imbed into our minds that we are the ones with a conscience and we have the intelligence to understand the difference between right and wrong. Animals on the other hand, know little about what’s going on in the world, or as Scruton put it,
“their moral incompetence”. Realizing this made me reconsider eating animals like I have been doing in the past. Scruton helped me to put myself in their shoes, so to speak. WouldI want someone taking advantage of me just because I am not strong or knowledgeable enough to put a stop to it? I think not. The essay was not only an awakening to me as a proactive reader but also as a person in general. The consciousness of humans is probably his strongest example of his sense of pathos because he is bringing out his audiences emotions, specifically guilt, by making us think, since we are supposed to be the wise and conscience ones, why do most of us make such irrational decisions. Scruton is talking to people as a whole, not separating them into separate categories and such. He also explains that we are judging beings because we become cut off from our instincts because we are constantly judging our actions from an outside view as others would judge us. This lessens the joy that we get from friendship because we are constantly judging each other.
Scruton’s essay is really pushing the old meat eating habits to “remoralize” our appreciation that we have been so blessed with. He also brings up religious guilt and emotion as what piety also stands for. “And I suspect people become vegetarians for precisely that reason: by doing so they overcome the residue of guilt that attaches to every form of hubris, and in particular to the hubris of human freedom.” (264). Due to the fact that every person has a conscience, the readers and audience connect to the author on more of an emotional and trustworthy level. Scruton is connecting to all the religious beliefs of people and morality. He is trying to say that you can eat what you please but it’s our duty to “reincorporating them into affectionate human relations and using them as instruments of hospitality, conviviality, and peace.” (264)
On the other hand, Scrutons ethical appeal is what really made his essay solid. Although it is his humor that will linger in the minds of his audience when continuing in the reading of his essay and being referred back to, his unbiased opinions and arguments are also what build his sense of ethos. “Keeping them on open pasture in the summer and in warm roomy barns in the winter, feeding them on grass, silage, beans, and maize, attending to their ailments...” (263) He is explaining that these types of farmers are giving their cattle the highest quality of living that they could possibly have and it should be defended. It is very different from battery pig farming, and that all animal lovers should recognize this. Scruton is explaining that it is not only vegetarians who are concerned about the well being of animals but meat eaters are too. Yes we may eat meat, but we also want them to be treated with respect and love for as long as they can until their day has come. Meat eaters along with vegetarians believe animals shouldnot be tortured and maltreated. Scruton is trying to emphasize the fact that although our choices in food are different the morality of animals remains equal.
Humor was a shrewd tactic that Scruton used in his essay that definitely sky rocketed his sense of ethos. I believe his most valid and key points were explained through humor.He would draw people in with a sarcastic remark or funny statement and then going into depth of the real issue at hand. “So far as I know, people do not eat their pets” (261), provides us with a source of comic relief. What is nice about this is that he has been talking very serious the whole time, but now you see a more humorous side of the author. This brings in the fact that the audience should pay more respects to the animals that they eat because at the end of the day they are animals. Then he goes on to say that religions put prohibitions on the way we eat meat, and that shows that it is more than just a physical act. When people used to eat together it was a way
to come together and enjoy the times that they spent together. Time have since changed we are now living in a world of TV dinners and solitary stuffing of junk. This is where Scruton the difference between eating and feeding, or as he liked to put “virtuous and vicious” eating.
“Duty requires us, therefore, to eat our friends”, as mentioned in the beginning of this essay, Scruton uses this as the closing sentence in his. The author again uses his sense of humor in order to end his essay on a less serious note, and to leave the readers thinking. Scruton was able to use this at the end of his essay because he already gained enough credibility and trustworthiness throughout the length of his essay without sounding completely obnoxious. If he would have made these comments in the beginning of the essay, he would have either came off extremely unattractive or not taken on a serious note.
In conclusion the essay turned out to be very effective in the matter of persuasiveness. The author uses pathetic and ethical appeals with guilt, humor, evidence and analogies in his essay by taking us through the consciences of humans, morality, and piety. The composition of the essay is to persuade his audience to revert back to the traditional ways of human morality.
Works Cited
The Best American Essays 2007 (The Best American Series). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Print.