Everyone all excited about that bug essay, but Plato covered all this long ago, in one of his rarely read works, The Beetle: Socrates: Tell me, Philon, what is it that troubles you? Philon: Your indifference, Socrates. You speak of justice as though it belongs only to certain men. But surely all humans deserve justice? Socrates: What in particular do you mean? Slaves? Persians? Egyptians? Philon: Yes Socrates all of those. Socrates: Even though they worship other Gods? Philon: Yes, that doesn’t make them less human, less deserving of justice. Socrates: You cannot pour the same measure into every vessel, Philon. A person must possess the capacity for justice before he can properly participate in it. Philon: What of children then? Socrates: Because they have the capacity for it, though they do not yet possess it. That is why they are nurtured and ruled by their parents until they develop that capacity. Callicles: Philon, if I may, if you want to extend justice to every human, regardless of the strength of their will, why not to all creatures. Why not cattle. Why not dogs. Why not fish? Why not a beetle! Philon: We certainly should consider that as well. They are alive. They feel pain, that must count for something? Callicles: Something? Philon: Yes. And there are millions upon millions of them. Their number gives their suffering, however negligible, considerable weight. Socrates: Weight? Is the beetle capable of knowing what is just or unjust? Philon: We cannot say. Socrates: Of governing its appetites according to reason? Philon: Again, we cannot say. Callicles: Then why should its suffering govern us? Philon: Because suffering is suffering and it if a beetle suffers, which it most propabably does, given how it flees when I try to kill it, then it must be considered. Callicles: Then are suggesting that when I crush a thousand beetles beneath my feet, I have committed a greater injustice than when a tyrant murders a man? Philon: Perhaps, in aggregate— Socrates: In aggregate? Philon: Yes, if you sum up the injustice, there comes a point at which killing beetles becomes a greater injustice than killing a man, and you must admit once you have done that, you have done wrong. Socrates: No, Philon. Justice is not water or grain that becomes greater when you heap more of it together. A sum of many nothings is still nothing. Callicles: Philon. Hold on. Are you suggesting if I am to kill a million beetles to protect my crops, I’ve done wrong? Philon: Perhaps. It needs to be considered. Callicles: So we should let men be ruled by insects? Great, now I’ve heard it all. See Socrates, this is where your thinking ends. First we let the weak men control the strong, and then we are ruled by beetles. Socrates: I have been agreeing with you Callicles. Your scorn should be towards Philon, not me. Callicles: Look what you have done Philon. You have made me agree with Socrates, and that gives me greater pain than all the suffering of all the beetles in the world combined. Socrates: The feeling is mutual. Callicles: Fuck it all. I'm going to get drunk, and find some young men to wrestle with. Socrates: Wait for me Callicles, I need a big glass of meed as well. Beetles. Ha!

The bug essay -- stealing from Plato, like all modern Philosophy