Moral and Philosophical history of Vegetarianism.
Vegetarianism is the theory or practice of living solely on vegetables, fruits, grains and nuts. It is practiced for moral, ascetic or nutritional reasons. In Western society today meat in many different forms is readily and economically available, yet the current trend shows a growing number of voluntary vegetarians around the world. In the United States, roughly 3 to 4 percent of the total populations are considered vegetarian. The origins of modern day Vegetarian philosophy and its influences can be traced back nearly three thousand years. Most vegetarians are people who have understood that to contribute towards a more peaceful society we must first solve the problem of violence in our own hearts. So it is not surprising that thousands of people from all walks of life have, in their search for truth, become vegetarian. Many well known influential philosophers have both preached as well as practiced its inherent advantages. .
The earliest archeological data we have that suggest a voluntary partial vegetarian diet is the Old kingdom of Egypt. There are hieroglyphic inscriptions, which suggest the avoidance of eating some animals. The priests avoided eating pig for its lack of cleanliness, and cow for their belief that it was sacred mainly did this. This is believed to been practiced as early as 3000 BC. There are few historical sources on the practice of abstaining from meat in ancient Egypt, but we do know it directly influenced the beliefs held across the Mediterranean in Greece (6).
Pythagoras was born off the coast of Turkey on the Island of Samos in the 6th century BC. He is most famous for his well-known proposition about right angle triangles, known as the Pythagorean Theorem. Having spent time in Egypt and Babylon, much of his main philosophical teachings are a combination of ideas expressed in the places he traveled to (1).
