Defining Veganism
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Defining Veganism
07/22/2025
The Vegan Studies Initiative (VSI) at Arihanta Institute is dedicated to “promoting and enacting veganism as an expression of multispecies nonviolence.” This mission begs the question of what exactly is meant by the word veganism. There is no lack of content—academic articles, popular blog entries, YouTube videos, social media posts—debating the meaning of the word. In a 2021 article in Food Ethics, my co-author Dr. Jan Dutkiewicz and I promote a specific definition of veganism, a definition adopted by the mission of the VSI.
In attempting to stabilize a definition of veganism, we do not assert some “pure” or “original” meaning of the word. However, we do resist “the ‘implement’ or ‘Humpty Dumpty’ fallacy, the view . . . that words are simply ‘tools’ to be ‘employed’ in ‘communication’” (Höpfl 1983, 14). Veganism cannot simply mean whatever a speaker wishes it to mean for the sake of communicating some point or other. The term should mean something stable and coherent, and we feel that clarity can be achieved without too much difficulty.
In “The Ism in Veganism: The Case for a Minimal Practice-based Definition,” Dutkiewicz and I argue for a basic, conduct-descriptive meaning for veganism—defined as the practice of avoiding animal-derived products. Coincidentally, this is the most common definition found in dictionaries. We wrote the article to address what we saw as a growing conceptual confusion around the term, which increasingly functions as a catch-all for a wide range of ethical, political, and ideological commitments. While this expansion may be well-intentioned, we believe it is both logically faulty and hinders productive movement building.
Many advocates and scholars treat veganism as not only a practice, but also as a full-fledged moral worldview tightly bound to positions on animal rights, environmental justice, anti-capitalism, and other issues. We both acknowledge and share many of these commitments, but also caution against assuming that they are inherent to the definition of veganism itself. In our view, someone who avoids animal products for health reasons, aesthetics, or habit is no less “vegan” than someone who does so out of an ethical commitment to animal liberation.
The widely used “practice and philosophy” framing of veganism appears to derive from The Vegan Society’s still influential definition. Yet in describing veganism as both a “way of living” and a “philosophy”, the “-ism” in veganism paradoxically refers both to a set of actions—namely, avoidances of animal-derived products—and to an overarching ideology that justifies, encompasses, and exceeds those actions. As Dutkiewicz and I note, the term thus oscillates between denoting a “recurrent performance” or “routinized mode of intentionality” and the “system or theory” that animates that performance or mode (Dutkiewicz and Dickstein 2021, 4–5). The circularity of this logic can be captured in the following formulation:
“I’m vegan because I avoid animal products, and I avoid animal products because I’m vegan.”
Beyond this paradox, two further conceptual problems arise when veganism is described as a philosophy. First, it presupposes that all who abstain from animal-derived products do so on the basis of a shared ethos—an assumption that is empirically false. The suggestion that there are multiple coexisting “philosophies of veganism” only further destabilizes the claim that veganism itself constitutes a coherent philosophical position. Second, we are unaware of any philosophical framework unique to veganism that does not borrow from or restate existing theories. Most philosophical formulations of veganism—especially those emphasizing the rejection of animal exploitation—are effectively reformulations of theories of harm reduction, justice, abolitionism, antispeciesism, or total liberationism. Indeed, while the term “antispeciesism” emerged after the coining of “veganism,” it more precisely articulates the logic underlying many vegans’ commitments to nonhuman animals.
Beyond the conceptual issues of coherence and unanimity, there’s also an immediate practical concern: veganism is more publicly legible as a practice than as a philosophy. When people ask why I’m vegan (that is, why I avoid animal-derived products), a response such as “Because I’m vegan” is unlikely to register meaningfully. By contrast, if I explain my veganism through the lens of a distinct ethical theory or theories—such as antispeciesism, anticolonialism, and/or harm reduction—the reasoning is more readily understood.
A second practical concern is that any attempt to tie veganism to a singular ideology is exclusionary. This approach risks marginalizing practitioners whose reasons for avoiding animal products differ from dominant narratives. It promotes an essentialist view of vegans as a monolithic group bound by a unified ideology, something that doesn’t reflect the actual diversity of practice and belief among actual vegans.
We sense that this broad, inclusive (“big tent”) definition of veganism gives rise to what might be called an “anxiety of association”—a discomfort some vegans feel when others who abstain from animal-derived products do not share their specific ethical or political commitments, and may even hold objectionable (even discriminatory) views in other areas. This discomfort, we suggest, partly explains why some individuals seek to define and defend veganism as a fixed ideology.
In response, we pose a comparative question: Don’t some racists also engage in socially or environmentally responsible behaviors, such as driving electric cars, voting for progressive parties, or boycotting harmful corporations? If an antiracist does the same, does it meaningfully associate them with racists? We argue that sharing a pattern of action—such as avoiding animal-derived products—need not threaten one’s values or commitments if it is seen as just that: a pattern of action. The discomfort arises only when veganism is treated not as a practice but as a totalizing moral worldview.
In sum, a minimalist conduct-descriptive definition of veganism clearly doesn’t deny that veganism can be linked to broader ethical or political commitments; it simply avoids baking those commitments into the definition itself. Returning to the mission of the Vegan Studies Initiative, Arihanta Institute—rooted in Jain values—favors a "Jain veganism" understood as a real-world expression of multispecies nonviolence (ahiṃsā). Others, Jain and non-Jain alike, may arrive at their veganisms through similar or dissimilar philosophical paths. After all, veganism is the “what” and not the “why,” the practice and not the philosophy behind it.
Jonathan Dickstein, Tirthankara Shreyansanath Endowed Assistant Professor of Jain and Vegan Studies at Arihanta Institute, completed his PhD in Religious Studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara. He specializes in South Asian Religions, Animals and Religion, and Comparative Ethics. His current work focuses on Jainism and contemporary ecological issues, extending into Critical Animal Studies, Food Studies, and Diaspora Studies.
Professor Dickstein is the lead organizer of the Vegan Studies Initiative at Arihanta Institute. arihantainstitute.org/vegan-studies
Additional articles by Professor Dickstein: