“I Don’t Eat People!”

Reluctance as a Root of Human Right

Seventy years ago, the British comedy duo Flanders and Swann performed a song titled The Reluctant Cannibal. A young cannibal says one day at the family table, just as a fresh “delicacy” is being served: “I don’t eat people. Eating people is wrong!” Immediately there is great uproar. The father is furious: “Have you gone mad? People have always eaten people. What else are we supposed to eat? If the Juju had wanted us not to eat people, he wouldn’t have made us out of flesh. I have never heard such a ridiculous idea in my life. And that a son of mine should grow up to be such a weakling! Have you been talking to one of your mothers again? You’re not going to become one of those fools who think eating people is cruel, are you?”

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The audience was highly amused. The humor, however, has a certain aftertaste—especially today, when hypersensitive tasters of woke sensibilities abound. Are we allowed to joke like that? The worst kind of racist cliché! But if one sets aside all the uproar of indignation, the song expresses a deep, probably irresolvable conflict that belongs to the human condition—more loftily put: the conflict between universalism and particularism.

Every culture or tradition carries the seeds of this conflict. For human beings are local creatures. That means they define themselves to a significant extent through the environment into which they are born and in which they grow up. They first learn ways of behaving and thinking within their family, then concentrically within a wider circle of acquaintances, in social networks, in school, in their profession, in political associations. To be human always also means to belong to a particular culture.

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Ingrained habits and accumulated experiences give rise to intellectual attitudes: mentalities. What we call “mental” is not merely intellectual, but also physical. Mentalities are attitudes toward the world that have sunk into our bodily being. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called them habitus. Habitus determines what seems plausible or offensive to us, what we intuitively morally approve or reject. Our judgment is always also visceral.

This is the basis of the dictate of tradition: You must! When asked “Why must I?” since time immemorial it answers: Because your ancestors have always done X, you must also do X! We do it this way because we do it this way! The dictate of this tautology governs life in tradition. Whoever does not submit must expect social or physical sanctions. The young cannibal risks being labeled a fool—an outcast. In reality, matters can be more violent. “I do not want to marry the man I am told to marry!” says, for example, a young woman. Even today, it happens that she is murdered—by family members.

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It is difficult to argue against the inertia of tradition. The young cannibal does not justify his reluctance; he simply repeats it again and again. He has a feeling that comes from the gut: “This is wrong.” And in this a socio-psychological phenomenon becomes apparent. Traditions are hard to change by means of universal principles and norms—from above; they are far more easily changed through a transformation of practices and habits—from below. Through people who have simply had enough of the “always-already.” They break out of their assigned roles, shed habits, violate commandments and taboos: they simply no longer want to. “I don’t want to eat people”; “I don’t want to be a slave”; “I don’t want to believe what I am told to believe”; “I don’t want to marry the man I am forced to marry”; “I don’t want to be only a mother and housewife just because my family demands it”; “I don’t want to force my sexual feelings into a binary grid.”

This no-longer-wanting is a reluctance that can act as a signal. Its persuasive power lies in the example it embodies. It quite literally embodies a defiant mentality. And the greater the number of such reluctant individuals, the more unstoppable the transformation of tradition—up to and including revolution. All these people make the elementary and at the same time magnificent experience: one is not chained to one’s origin and tradition.

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What is decisive about this experience is that it can lead to a new mentality—a universal one. It does not remain with the defiance of “I don’t want to.” It justifies it. It creates an authority to which all human beings can appeal when they do not want to comply. For example, the dignity of the autonomous individual who freely and by virtue of reason decides about his or her actions: I choose this way of life. I wear this headscarf because I want to, not because God, the state, custom, or whatever else wants it. Kant called this “causality through freedom.” And he surmised a universal capacity: practical reason. It tells us, “You ought, because you can!” It appeals to the “practically rational” human being.

Had the young cannibal read Kant, he might reply to his father: “I do not approve of this eating behavior because it is not suitable as the basis of a universal eating practice. One cannot expect all human beings to eat people.” To which the father might morally lecture him: “You and your wishy-washy dignity! What is it compared to our tribal dignity, which among other things demands that we eat human flesh?”

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Here lies the tinder of the problem mentioned at the outset. The dignity of the individual is an abstract feature. It “abstracts” from people all the concrete characteristics they have thanks to their tradition and origin. It was introduced by philosophers—an “elite”—white, male, European people.

Today this accusation is voiced both from the left postcolonial side and from the right identitarian side. It can be reduced to a common denominator: a struggle against abstraction. Against an abstraction as it has been established in general human rights and in the institutions that support them. This opposition is certainly justified against the historical background that human rights have repeatedly served as a cover for claims to power.

But the problem lies in the claim to universality itself. It is raised in the name of “the” human being. Yet “the” abstract human being does not exist; there are “only” concrete human beings, groups of human beings. And how can one group of people impose its customs and practices on another?

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This proves to be a thorny question—at least in modern secular societies in which one can-not so easily appeal to an absolute metaphysical or religious authority. Tradition then offers itself as a solution. It is not something bad. It conveys identity and meaning in life. But identity can have a repressive effect: “This is how you must be!”

It is against this that the young cannibal turns. He does nothing heroic. He does not found a movement, write a manifesto. He says only a single, simple sentence: “I don’t eat people.” In a favorable case, this sentence spreads to other tribes. And gradually, above tribal customs, the thought takes hold: “Eating people is wrong.” With this sentence one reaches a position outside tradition. It makes tradition begin to crumble. And the father makes him-self ridiculous with his defense of cannibalism.

In short: moral progress does not begin with lofty principles and solemn declarations. It begins with reluctance at the dinner table.