A horizontal aspect to transsubstantiation

The Eucharist has the vertical dimension of our union with Christ and a horizontal dimension of our union with our fellow Christians. The doctrine of transsubstantiation ensures the vertical dimension in an obvious way. But yesterday, while at a Thomistic Institute retreat on the Eucharist, I was struck by the way that transsubstantiation also deeply enhances the horizontal dimension of the Eucharist as a common meal.

Normally, in a common meal we eat together. Sometimes we eat portions cut from one loaf or carved from one animal, and that makes the meal even more unifying. But according to transsubstantiation, in the Eucharist we have a common meal where miraculously we each eat not just a portion of the same food, but the numerically very same portion: the whole of Christ. That is as deep a unity as we can have in eating.

Consider how there is less unity on the main alternatives to transsubstantiation:

• On symbolic views, we eat and drink different portions of bread and wine with the same symbolism.

• On consubstantiation, we eat the same Christ along with different portions of bread and wine.

• On Leibnizian views (where the bread and wine becomes a part of Christ), we eat different parts of the same Christ.

The transsubstantiation view has as much substantial unity in what is eaten as is logically possible. (Though there is some accidental disunity, in that the accidents—shape, color, position—are different for different communicants.)

NYT's why it's ethical to eat meat contest

The New York Times is having an essay contest (600 words, April 8 due date) on why it's ethical to eat meat.

I think the challenge is somewhat poorly defined. The challenge seems to be to argue for the thesis that it is morally permissible to eat meat when this is not necessary to human survival.

But what does the thesis mean? If it means that in all cases where human survival is not at stake it's permissible to eat meat, the answer is uncontroversially negative. For instance, when you've made a promise to a vegetarian friend not to eat meat today, it won't be permissible to eat meat on that day.

But if it means that in some cases where human survival is not at stake it's permissible to eat meat, that thesis is not particularly controversial. For instance, a typical philosophical vegetarian is unlikely to dispute that it can be permissible to eat meat from non-conscious species (worms?), accidental roadkill when doing so does not encourage further killing, or meat from a predator which one killed in the defense of one's (at least equally cognitively sophisticated) pets.

If, on the other hand, the thesis is that it's permissible to eat meat under typical circumstances obtaining in our culture, then we have to get into a messy discussion of the particular methods of meat farming in our culture, and that's the sort of discussion the contest wants us to avoid.

Using body parts and other natural human systems

While I'm inclined to agree that

1. it's wrong to use a natural human system (body part, aspect of the soul, naturally grounded activity, etc.) contrary to one of its natural purposes,

I am less sure about the stronger thesis that

2. it's wrong to use a natural human system in a way that isn't contrary to any of its natural purposes, but is also not in accord with any of its natural purposes.

I've been thinking about (2) today, and thought of an argument in favor of it. The human person is a closely unified whole (I actually do not think the human person has any actual proper parts). To use a part is to use the whole in respect of that system. Likewise, the telos of the system is a telos of the whole in respect of that system. Thus, to use one's system in a way that is not in accord with any telos that it has is to use oneself as a mere means, unless somehow one can create a new telos for one's own natural systems. Therefore if we keep the Kantian thesis that we shouldn't use ourselves as mere means, and supplement it with the metaphysical thesis that we cannot create a new telos for a natural system (this thesis seems anti-Kantian in spirit, but I think the historical Kant might well be friendly to it, given the Natural Law components in his ethics—say, his discussion of euthanasia or the solitary vice), we have an argument for (2). This would be a Kantian theory with a significant injection of Natural Law. Perhaps this kind of injection of Natural Law also helps with the problem of Kantianism being too formal to apply to concrete situations.

I wonder if (2) could be defended in the case of non-human natural systems. On the face of it, not: after all, it's perfectly acceptable to ride a horse, and carrying a burden doesn't seem to be a natural telos of its back. But I am inclined to think that it may be a telos of every non-human living creature on earth to serve human beings (maybe with some proportionality constraint built in). That may be why we may kill and eat at least some of them (it's uncontroversial that we may kill and eat edible plants and fungi). If this is right, then if one uses an animal for a purpose that is not a good, say by riding out on a horse to an unjust war, one not only does wrong by pursuing something that isn't a good, but one also does wrong by misusing the animal.