Abstract

Within the third book of Porphyry's On Abstinence from Animal Food, an ethic of community is developed in order to provide the basis of an account of our ethical obligations to animals. I argue that in spite of Porphyry's rejection of this account, it constitutes a coherent and comprehensive nonanthropocentric ethical theory. It conforms with ethical intuitions insofar as it grants that animals are moral subjects, but does not demand impartiality. By appealing to Theophrastus's notion of to oikeion and to the Stoic notion of oikeic6is it provides the theoretical resources for showing why it is often appropriate to favor human beings over other animals.