The Bloody Connection Between Vampires and Vegetarians

By Wayne Yuen

“It’s life that I ingest, gives back life to me.”

”Your diet Mr. Renfield is disgusting.”

—Renfield and Dr. Seward in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Vampires should not drink human blood. This is not a terribly controversial statement, but asking ourselves why this is so leads to the underlying moral principles that govern how we make decisions about what is right and wrong. It is our job as moral individuals to investigate these principles and try to live a life that is consistent with them. If we look at the situation of vampires and come to understand why it is that we evaluate their particular eating habits as immoral, we will discover the moral principles that can help us gauge whether or not our own eating habits are consistent with our belief that vampires should not eat people.

We get plenty of examples of the eating habits of vampires from Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but we actually see a vampire learning to become a vampire in the film Interview with the Vampire (Interview). So this chapter will concentrate, for the most part, on that particular film.

Reasoning with Vampires

Before we look at the principles governing vampires’ eating habits, we should examine what it takes for something to have moral responsibility. Moral agency, the ability to have moral responsibilities, at minimum requires two conditions: sufficiently developed rationality and free will. For example, I wouldn’t say that my cat, Fizzgig, has a moral responsibility not to kill birds in the backyard, even if the birds are endangered species. I would like it if she would not kill the birds in our backyard, especially the endangered ones, but she does not have what it takes to be a moral agent. She lacks moral agency because she does not have a the rationality necessary to think about the world in moral terms. Are vampires rational creatures?

The answer is an unequivocal yes. Aristotle believed that if an agent can envision what the best outcome of a situation would be, and successfully bring that outcome about through acting in a way that would best and most consistently promote the desired outcome, then they hold practical wisdom, a high form of rationality. The ability to deliberate well is difficult to obtain, but vampires can clearly envision a goal, such as kidnapping or seducing a woman, and produce fairly intricate plans to achieve the goal. Although Aristotle would disapprove of most of the goals envisioned by vampires as the “best outcome,” vampires match all of the other criteria set forth by Aristotle to be a rational deliberator.

By this standard of rationality, vampires are rational creatures. In Interview Lestat is intelligent enough to make financial investments for the future so that he can live a comfortably luxurious lifestyle. Vampires can reflect intellectually (if not in mirrors) about the world and more importantly upon their own actions. They are aware of the consequences of their actions. They even make moral judgments. Lestat believes that “evil doers are easier and they taste better,” referring to Widow St. Clair who blamed a slave for the murder of her husband, with the innuendo that either she or her lover had killed her husband. Lestat’s claim is an aesthetic judgment about the tastiness of evil people, but to make this judgment at all, one must be able to morally judge people to be good or evil.

The second quality, free will, is much more problematic. Some philosophers believe that free will does not exist, and that all actions are fully determined. However since we are concerned about ethical behavior here, we may rightfully assume that free will is possible. If there is no free will, then it makes little sense to talk about ethical behavior at all. It’s beyond the scope of this chapter to offer a defense of free will;[1] the matter at hand is do vampires have free will? Just because free will exists, it does not follow that vampires have free will.

Free will is the capacity to act in a way of our own choosing, without being forced by something external to ourselves. Imagine if someone were to hold my family hostage and ordered me to rob a bank or they would kill my family.  In this case an external force would be compelling me to commit an act that I know was wrong. My free will has been compromised. If I am in a straitjacket, I do not have the freedom to pet my cat.

To say that somebody ought to do something, in the moral sense, implies that they could do it. Imagine this scenario: A woman dies during childbirth. It would make little sense to say that the baby is morally responsible for killing his or her mother. The baby is the cause of the mother’s death, but is not responsible for her death because the baby could not do otherwise. Similarly it wouldn’t make sense to say that vampires should not drink human blood if they did not have an alternative. If the blood of humans was the only thing that could sustain them, then we couldn’t say that vampires should not drink human blood. I believe that vampires in popular culture have an alternative to drinking human blood.

In Interview we get an intimate look at the life of a particular vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac. After Louis is turned into a vampire by Lestat, he confronts the nature of the vampire, feeding on human beings, and is disturbed by it. He struggles with the morality of his previous life as a human being and his existence now, dependent upon blood. But when Lestat reveals to Louis that he could live off animal blood, he tries living off rats, but eventually drinks human blood. Other examples of vampires living off of non-human blood can be found in the Buffy the Vampire and Angel television series: Angel, and later Spike, survive by drinking the blood of animals.

Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t

The freedom of vampires is closely connected to the nature of what vampires are. Vampires at the most basic level are human beings who have been condemned to an eternal life. Most people would see eternal life as a gift, or a blessing. But the vampire is damned because of this “gift.” Vampires are left to live their lives with an eternal hunger. Dracula hungers not only for human blood, but for love. He is only released from his curse when Mina finally is able to satisfy that craving. With such a craving driving the vampire’s action, can a vampire exhibit free will? Again this is a difficult question to answer, but let’s imagine that it does annihilate the vampire’s free will. If this is so then any case of extreme craving would remove a person’s free will. A heroin addict, who because of her compulsion for the drug robs a store in order to get money to get more drugs, would not be considered to be morally responsible for her action.  She was under a compulsion. If we cannot accept this conclusion, we must reject the initial assumption that leads to this conclusion, that the craving for blood annihilates a vampire’s free will.  This leads one to believe that vampires have free will over themselves when choosing to drink human blood.

To make matters worse there seem to be important differences between the heroin addict and the vampire. Firstly, vampires seem to be in full control of their faculties even while they crave human blood, whereas drug addicts typically cannot control themselves. They are compelled, depending upon the degree of addiction, to seek the drug.  Consider another example of compulsion: People who are lost at sea have been known to drink ocean water, even when they rationally knew that they should not drink the water. Their thirst is so great that it overwhelms any kind of rational ability. Dracula, Louis, and Lestat all exhibit restraint even when they are in the densely populated cities. This suggests a difference between a craving and a compulsion: a compulsion cannot be resisted. A drug addict is under a compulsion to seek drugs. A craving is a strong preference. When I crave vanilla ice cream, I have a strong preference, but I would not rob the grocery store to satisfy it.

A second problem that is unique to the vampire is a question of character. If a vampire is damned, then perhaps nothing that the vampire can do would be good, because the character of the being prohibits any good from being done. Being damned then does not compel a being towards evil acts, but rather it taints all their acts with evil. This idea is rooted in a model of virtue ethics associated with Aristotle. Developing a good character is primary. From a virtuous character, virtuous acts follow, and from a vicious character, vicious acts follow. Hitler is the typical example of a person who has a stained character. No good that Hitler has done can change the fact that he is a morally vicious character. Vampires are stained with evil, someone might claim, and so consequently nothing that they do can ever make them good moral agents. When it comes to new vampires like Louis, however, there are few if any character traits that we can point to when trying to evaluate his moral character. Louis is a different person after he becomes a vampire. Perhaps more importantly, we can evaluate an agent’s character separately from his or her actions. For example, if Hitler decided to give a large donation to famine relief in the world, the act of donating can be evaluated as good, even though the person’s character (Hitler) is vicious. In this chapter, we’re mostly concerned about a particular action of vampires: their feeding habits.

A third and final problem that is unique to the vampire is rooted in a different conceptual model of the vampire. If the vampire is not merely an undead human cursed with a craving, but rather a demonically possessed body whose human soul has left,[2] then do vampires simply have different moral values? This might be true in a cultural sense of the word. In America most people believe that it is wrong to eat dogs, but okay to eat cows; in other parts of the world, it is okay to eat dogs; and in still others, cows should not be eaten. However, all things being equal, there are principles that appear to be universal. For example, a world with more unnecessary suffering is worse than a world with less unnecessary suffering. Even our model vampire Lestat tells Louis that vampirism is a gift that helps him escape a painful world. It is precisely this principle that motivates Louis to live off rats instead of human beings. Ironically enough, Lestat also utilizes the same principle, in a short-sighted way, to justify drinking human blood, to spare himself from the unnecessary discomfort of not drinking human blood. It is short-sighted in that Lestat does not consider the unnecessary suffering that is brought about for the humans.

It’s a Matter of Taste

The obvious “justification” for vampires eating people is that, for vampires, humans are really tasty. If humans taste better than rats, then that may be enough reason to choose to eat humans instead of rats. Louis describes Lestat’s killings as if describing a gourmet dinner. “A fresh young girl. That was his favorite for the first of the evening. For seconds, he preferred a gilded beautiful youth. But the snob in him loved to hunt in society, and the blood of the Aristocrat thrilled him best of all.” Compared to rats, humans are a marvelous delicacy. But the pleasures of the palate do not excuse the immorality of drinking human blood either. Given the choice between killing a person and killing a rat, killing the rat is the lesser of the two evils. Saying that killing the human is the better choice, because they taste better, does not make the act any less evil.

All of this, of course, presupposes that human beings do have some kind of value that is of greater worth than a rat. All kinds of justifications have been offered for the greater worth of humans, but many of them fall flat: that human beings have souls, and animals do not, for example. It’s hard to prove either way that humans do have souls, and that animals do not have souls, without appealing to the authority of a religious text, which draws its authority from faith, not reason. However, since we are discussing vampires as possibly humans who have lost their souls, we should entertain the notion. The intrinsic value of a soul might provide a reason to choose animals over humans. Something is intrinsically valuable if we value it for no other reason other than for what it is. Money has instrumental value because it can get us stuff. Happiness has intrinsic value, because we value it for what it is. The Judeo-Christian tradition is pretty clear on the non-soul status of animals, but this does not mean that animals should receive no consideration when we make decisions that concern their well-being.

Another quality that should be considered is human rationality. Although it is safe to say that humans reason since we are aware of our own internal mental states and operations, we cannot say with any kind of authority that animals cannot reason in any manner. On the contrary there are many animals that seem to have an intellect that is at least equivalent to a human child’s.[3]  Finally consider that both humans and animals can feel pain and suffering.

What separates humans from animals may not be any particular quality, but more precisely, the degree to which humans possess the quality. Humans clearly have a greater capacity for reason than animals do, and this extends our capacity for suffering in unique ways. We as humans can worry about our futures. We can be actively aware of the things we have not acquired yet and be aware of our lost capacity for acquiring those things. When I see my lemon tree slowly withering from disease, I realize that I have lost all the future fruit that the tree will bear, which makes the loss of the tree that much more unfortunate. When my life is put into danger, I realize not only that I may lose my life, but also that my wife may lose her husband. Choosing to kill a human over a rat is choosing to bring more unnecessary pain and suffering into the world, which is universally undesirable, something that even some vampires try to avoid.

Perhaps Vampires don’t need human blood to survive, but to thrive. To reach their full potentials, they need to eat humans. Vampire popular culture is a mixed bag on this point. Vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, notably Angel and Spike, can thrive on butcher’s blood fighting off a litany of demons and gods.[4] However, when Lestat survives and grows stronger “on the diet of the blood of snakes, toads, and all the putrid life of the Mississippi” he still looks likes a corpse. Without human blood Lestat is weak and putrid; with human blood, Lestat can read people’s minds and is handsome and vital.

There are two problems with this position. First is the problem of what is meant by full potential. Peak physical condition is not always necessary for a person to reach his or her fullest potential. Steven Hawking is an excellent example of a person who has been hampered in reaching his fullest potential, yet still greatly excels in life. Or perhaps Hawking has reached his own individual physical potential. In either case, the condition of his physical body is irrelevant to whether or not Hawking is excelling in life. Few would argue that Lou Gehrig’s disease has made Hawking less of a physicist. The second problem with this position is to assume that there is only a singular maximum that people can reach. Imagine Louis swearing off humans, and surviving solely on rats. He could have a lucrative career as an exterminator. What makes this choice better or worse than his eating human beings and developing mystical empowerments? Any answer that could be given to this would rely on either an arbitrary social standard (being an actual mind reader is better than being an excellent exterminator), or on some moral standard. It’s almost not worth stating that being an excellent rat exterminator is better, morally speaking, than being a serial killer.

In Interview Louis says, “I knew peace only when I killed. When I heard her heart in that terrible rhythm, I knew again what peace could be.” So, another reason that vampires drink human blood is because it brings them a spiritual peace of sorts. But this doesn’t give us the kind of justification Louis might hope for as to whether it is right for vampires to eat people. For example, a cult that derives spiritual satisfaction from human sacrifice would not be morally justified in their practice, especially if the people being sacrificed were unwilling, like the victims of vampires. David Berkowitz claimed a great feeling of peace after his killings as well. Robbing a person of their life for an individual’s temporary spiritual gain fails the simplest moral litmus tests like reversibility, equality, and fairness.

When Louis is first turned into a vampire, Lestat has to teach him to overcome his feelings of guilt and anguish. “You’ll get used to killing…. You’ll become accustomed to things all too quickly.” No doubt, a person can become accustomed to many things, even killing, but Louis feels the guilt that comes with it. Louis gets no spiritual peace from killing people at first. Perhaps the spiritual peace that comes with killing humans is a feeling that comes only through habituation. Only through his love of Claudia, who is arguably more psychotic than Lestat, does Louis ironically lose his humanity and begin to drink human blood. Louis’ love for Claudia encourages him to engage in the habit of drinking human blood, much as the love for a child may encourage a parent to engage in the habit of exercise. In both cases they aid in the improvement of the self for the sake of another, but of course the analogy breaks down when we compare the two morally, which is the question at hand.

Thus far, we have seen that vampires are moral agents, because they possess both reason and free will; that vampires have a viable alternative to eating humans, namely animals; and that we cannot morally justify drinking human blood over animals via a preference of taste, a fulfillment of maximum potential, or because of a spiritual peace that is derived from it.

Cold Clammy Consistency

“There is much to be learned from beasts.”

—Dracula in Bram stoker’s Dracula

If vampires have a moral obligation not to drink human blood, what does that mean for us as humans? On the surface it may allow us simply to say that vampires that kill humans are morally corrupt, which can give us justification for slaying them. More importantly, however, it offers us an opportunity to evaluate our own actions to see if our actions are consistent with what we would demand of vampires. Consistency can be conceived of in a few related, but different ways. Consistency may mean a lack of contradictions, that is, it is not possible for both claims to be true at the same time. We cannot within our moral beliefs hold that it is acceptable to stab innocent people in the heart with a stake, and that murder is wrong. Consistency also means that we should apply rules and justifications in a consistent manner. If I use an argument in one case, I must apply that same argument in every similar case, unless there are relevant differences. Consistency in our moral beliefs is imperative. Barring relevant differences, we assign rights and freedoms to everyone consistently. The Golden Rule demands that we treat other people according to the standard by which we would like to be treated, and we expect consistent application of the law. If I were to get ten years in jail for murder and someone else were to get only a fine for the same crime, it would be a gross miscarriage of justice, precisely because the law would not be treating two similar cases equally.

We have examined and rejected a number of arguments for why it is acceptable for vampires to drink human blood. Vampires get a spiritual peace from eating humans. Vampires need human blood to reach their full potential. Humans are pleasing to the palate of vampires. We’ve also found a reason why vampires should drink the blood of rats rather than humans:  More unnecessary suffering is caused when a human dies at the hands of a vampire than when a rat does. If we are to be consistent in our condemnation of vampires for eating humans, then we must examine our human eating habits in a similar fashion. Clearly, cannibalism, a type of human-eating, is wrong under normal circumstances.[5] But most people don’t eat other people on a daily basis; instead we eat chicken, pork, or beef, with a generous helping of potatoes. If we are to be consistent in our condemnation of vampires, can we continue eating like this?

We are in a very similar position to the vampire’s to begin with. We are rational creatures who can reflect upon the morality of our actions. We also have options before us.  It is not absolutely necessary for us to eat meat to survive. There are eight essential amino acids that people need to ingest to survive (ten for children), and they can all be found in plant sources. All vitamins and minerals that are necessary to avoid deficiency diseases like scurvy, pellagra, and rickets can either be manufactured by the body or readily found in fruits and vegetables.[6] Vegetarianism is the alternative to the human diet, just as rats are the alternative to the diet of vampires.

So why do we eat animals? Few would argue that they get some kind of spiritual peace from eating chicken, beef, or pork. But even if they did, it seems like there is a more important concern that we must take into consideration, the pain and suffering inflicted upon animals. To meet the demand of human consumption, animals are often raised in what are known as “factory farms” that aim to produce the greatest amount of meat with the least amount of input in the shortest amount of time. Little concern is given to the animals’ welfare at these farms. Chickens’ beaks are cut off and talons are removed, so they do not peck or scratch each other to death in overcrowded conditions. Pigs’ tails are cut off to prevent them from being chewed on by other pigs. Slaughterhouses (which almost all animals go to before they reach the supermarket) sometimes skin animals alive, or boil them alive because their conveyer system runs too quickly for the animal to bleed to death.[7] Reducing these creatures’ pain and suffering is much more important than achieving some kind of spiritual peace from eating them. Quite the opposite, it may be rather difficult to reach a spiritual peace knowing that the animal you are eating lived a life of painful misery, solely to deliver the meat at $4.50 a pound for it instead of $6.00 a pound. The efficiency of the factory farm keeps prices low, but the cost savings is at the expense of the quality of animals’ lives.

Perhaps humans need to eat meat to reach their fullest potential. Again the question arises: what do we mean by fullest potential? But even if we push that argument aside for the moment, we are faced with yet another problem, the world class vegetarian athlete. Athletes that win gold medals at the Olympics and hold world records are generally considered the pinnacle of human physical potential. Dave Scott is a six-time Hawaii Iron Man Champion (a triathlon competitor) and a vegetarian. Andreas Cahling won the Olympic gold medal in the ski jump in 1980. Bill Pickering swam from England to France in 14 hours, 6 minutes—a world record time—and is a vegetarian. Bill Pearl won the Mr. Universe Bodybuilding title in 1971 without steroids on a vegetarian diet.[8] These are just a few examples of people who have reached the pinnacle of physical human performance, and are vegetarians. Peter Singer (a philosopher who holds the chair of the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University), Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso) are all vegetarians who have arguably reached the pinnacle of mental human performance. If fear of not reaching one’s own fullest potential is keeping a person back from being a vegetarian, then these examples show that it can be done. It may not be easy, but reaching one’s full physical or mental potential is not an easy task, vegetarian or not.

Finally, we reach the last argument: that animals are pleasing to the taste of human beings. Just as vampires prefer the taste of human blood, many people prefer the taste of animals. But for the same reasons, this provides little justification for the eating of animals. Morality is not about satisfying our preferences, but rather evaluating our actions and choices to make the best one. I may have an intense desire to bite Kirsten Dunst in the neck, but it would be wrong for me to do so, at least without her (and my wife’s) permission. The wrongness in eating animals stems from the pain and suffering that is caused not only from raising them, but from their unnecessary slaughter. It is unnecessary because we have a viable option to do otherwise—vegetarianism.

Of course there are many opponents of vegetarianism. Some may argue that animals in the wild will kill each other, so what makes it wrong for us to kill them? The difference is that animals, for the most part, are not moral agents. They cannot think and reflect about their actions in a moral fashion, so they cannot be held morally accountable for their actions. It would be wrong for me to relieve myself on the lawn of a neighbor—in fact I could be arrested for such an act—but my cat would not be arrested for such an act since she doesn’t know any better and cannot do otherwise.

Some might wonder why vampires are allowed to eat animals, while humans are not allowed to eat animals. If vampires could exist without drinking blood of any kind, then perhaps they would have a moral duty to do so as well. But by most accounts vampires need some kind of blood to continue in a minimal way. Usually insanity is the result of a lack of blood for a vampire. When a vampire is insane, he or she cannot reason, and would be free of moral responsibilities not to drink human blood. Much like a person who is so drunk that they are not aware of what they are doing, they technically have no moral responsibilities. However, this is not to say they are off the hook entirely, since they have the ability not to get that drunk in the first place. Similarly if vampires simply refuse blood until they go insane, they can still be held accountable for that action. This accounts for a need to drink blood. Without blood, they cannot be moral agents. So between the lesser of two evils, they should choose to drink animal blood in the most humane way, rather than human blood. When vampires choose to drink human blood they cause unnecessary suffering to the victim and to the victim’s loved ones. Since it is necessary for vampires to eat, choosing to eat a less intelligent animal would cause less suffering. Similarly, we as humans must choose between killing vegetables or animals. Since vegetables cannot feel in any sense of the word, because feeling would require a nervous system of some sort, there would be less pain and suffering generated by eating the plant than the animal.

The connection between vampires and vegetarians is a simple one: we as human beings are vampiric. We need to ingest life for us to live, just like vampires. But how we choose the life that we ingest determines whether or not we are monstrous like vampires, or virtuous.