Cora Diamond on eating animals - with the help of Wittgenstein´s ideas

Cora Diamond is a new name for me, even if she has worked as a professor in Philosophy in the states for a long time and is still  teaching at the university of Virginia, even she is over 80 years old.

She has written a lot about Wittgenstein and that has helped her to express her view of the topic.

Although she, like Wittgenstein,  has lived in a hut in Norway - and actually brought Tractatus with hes - she seems to be different and for sure more glad than W.

Anyways, its W: s writings that interests her and especially his critics of metaphysics and ethics in philosophy. As it is said in Tractacus : "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

And of ethics philosophy should not speak - why?

Is it like in Buddhism - its better to sit in silence and let know yourself, than to speculate about what will happen when we die?
But for sure there ethical guidelines in Buddhism,  but the behaviors is often named skilful, not good (or bad).

Another W. quote is :

"What is your aim in Philosophy?”
“To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle”

That is to stop the deep inquiries  in philosophy - the answer to the question, "what is the meaning of life?" would just be nonsense. 

But Diamond is a vegetarian and seem to be that for a reason. 

In an interview she explains it started when she and her former husband lived at the countryside in England. Their house was  surrounded y sheeps and and I guess they came to now the quite well.

There were also many pigeons there and one evening they were served cocked pigeons at a restaurant.

That was to much for her husband and Cora followed him in the vegetarian diet, which was not so easy in the sixties. 

For Cora it was not the idea that it was wrong to eat animals or birds that was the root to the behavior. 

No it was the deep feeling that the sheeps shared the same vulnerability as she. She as an animal as the sheep. She was wounded by the insight. 

It was maybe more primitive than an ethical decision, but it was deeper and more profound.

But she also realized that other people may never have had that wound created by imagination. 

Anyway Diamond means that we can heighten our sensibility by reading good literature, like the ones of Coetzee. 

I don't know what wittgenstein would have thought about that. Many farmers seem to have a blind spot for the suffering of cows and pigs on their farms. 

But maybe they are not readers of many books... ?

One question I think is worth  consideration is; is more and more people getting this quality in their minds? 

At least if they have the lower need in Maslow's stair satisfied?   

Actually - do you know that Maslow in the end of his life thought of a last need on the top of the pyramide- Self transcendence?

For me that seems to be the state you sometimes can reach in meditation...