Antapodism, as used here, refers to a diet based around Aristotle's notion of antapodosis, which translates roughly to “reciprocity.” As originally used by Aristotle, antapodosis refers to an effort of mutuality that exists between a superior and an inferior, such as between parent and child, teacher and student, or ruler and subject, in which each contributes proportionally to their capacities, thereby receiving their just deserts, or what each are due in consideration of the proportion contributed and the consequences thereto owed. In the case of antapodist lacto-ovo vegetarianism (from here on out, simply antapodist vegetarianism), it is different from classical notions of veganism, because it admits some animal products, but is more strict than basic lacto-ovo vegetarianism in being so stringent about sourcing animal products as to make one effectively vegan in many cases. However, it also has affinities with certain traditional practices of animal husbandry, which strongly distinguishes it from standard veganism.
Antapodist vegetarians only eat honey, eggs, and dairy from animals who are raised in a mutualistic fashion, where the animals are well cared-for and their presence contributes to the wellbeing of the land, and where their products are accidental and incidental to these other goals. If the animals are a burden to the land, are not well cared-for, or are raised with commercial intentions, antapodists opt instead to eat entirely plant-sourced. This means that antapodist vegetarians maintain a largely vegan lifestyle, insofar as their purchasing habits are concerned, but are willing to consume dairy, eggs, honey (and wool, hair, and other products) from the right animals, almost always limited to their own or someone's who they know personally who happens to produce an accidental domestic surplus in pursuit of practicing good land stewardship. This placing of such great limits onto sources of animal products, and the emphasis on reciprocation with the soil, plants, and animals, makes antapodist vegetarianism vegan-adjacent. However, at the same time, it also runs strangely adjacent to animal husbandry practices found appropriate to projects such as permaculture and agroecology.
There are potentially antapodist vegans. An antapodist vegan would be one who prioritizes sustainable sources of produce, such that they prioritize small farm produce grown with manure over large farm produce grown without, or who consumes purely from produce grown with vegan organic gardening practices. Whereas many vegans would not concern themselves with the matter, or might prefer mega monoculture farming over small-scale farmsteading, antapodist vegans are willing to admit that the source of the animal manure used in growing their produce matters, and that animal manure is a better source of fertilizer than the chemical fertilizers used in commercial farming with regards to the land. Those who do not consume purely from vegan organic farms have a preference for those run by antapodist vegetarians and flexitarians. An antapodist flexitarian would be essentially the same as an antapodist vegetarian, with the exception that flexitarians will be willing to eat meat that will otherwise go to waste (such as from elderly animals or from animals that are otherwise causing a problem for others, such as aggressive males), but only after having taken care of the needs of their dogs and cats.
Believe it or not, by some subjective standards, antapodist vegetarianism is a form of veganism. This is because subjective standards are often about intentions, and the intentions of antapodism are very much vegan-adjacent. For instance, by some subjective standards, indigenous peoples who eat meat are considered to be vegans, insofar as they show a commitment to respecting the lives of animals (such as by way of thanking them for their meat or milk) and have no other option for survival. This has largely been an attempt encouraged by postmodern outlooks on veganism to avoid accusations of colonialism, so as to keep veganism politically and, to say the same, academically correct. Andrew Rakich, in “He Was an Anti-Racist Vegan Radical... in 1738,” plays on the definition provided by the Vegan Society: “A philosophy and way of living that excludes and opposes forms of animal exploitation whenever practicable and possible.” He exclaims with a neo-Marxist grin that this is different from what he considers to be a consumerist definition of eating “plant-based,” suggesting that this consumer choice definition is capitalistic. While also referring to him as a “proto-vegan,” Rakich makes the argument that Benjamin Lay, a radical abolitionist, Quaker vegetarian, may actually qualify as a vegan under the definition provided by the Vegan Society. Despite Benjamin Lay being a self-sufficient beekeeper who drank milk from a goat and perhaps a cow-- though Rakich thinks this is not proven, though admissible as possibility--, Rakich implies that his fervent vegetarianism during the Colonial Era excepts him from the definition that functions according to consumer choice.[1] Antapodist lacto-ovo vegetarianism may be considered to similarly be vegan by the subjective definition applied to Lay as such. In fact, Lay would make a pretty good figurehead or forefather for antapodist vegetarianism, in so far as Lay lived a vegan-adjacent lifestyle that was self-sufficient and involved animal husbandry and land stewardship.
Of course, by objective standards, those consumer choice-based ones that Rakich denies as “capitalist” (they're not capitalist, but market-oriented), antapodist vegetarianism cannot be considered vegan, and neither can Benjamin Lay or indigenous people such as the Inuit or Massai, who rely on meat from seals and fish or meat, blood, and milk from cattle. Thankfully, objective standards allow us not to try to fit things to our subjective demands, but to analyze things and ask ourselves, “But, is it right?” Subjective sentiments make it hard to accept it as right when a lion wrestles the life from a zebra, but common sense and rational inquiry tell us that this is how nature currently operates, and that such operation contributes to the ecological system at-large. Of course, this does not impede our conscience from wanting things to be different, but it does allow us to understand that change is an evolutionary process that takes time to implement, and that, until we have created the heaven we are right in pursuing, we have to be willing to accept some parts of hell into our conception of reality. This means grounding our idealism into reality as it actually is, with all of the causes of misery still intact, so that we can begin to unravel that misery and set things straight. The reality is that human beings eat animal products and probably depended upon doing so from time-to-time. While there are certainly people such as the Burusho people-- possibly descended in part from the army of Alexander the Great-- from the Hunza Valley in Northern Pakistan, who have sustained a near-vegan diet for thousands of years, a vegan diet would be basically impossible for people in harsh refuge zones such as the Arctic or Sahara, and for people who have not evolved past a hunter-gatherer or herding lifestyle or even past basic horticulture. As with Benjamin Lay, even coming into modern times, and if dedicated to self-sufficiency or ecological sustainability, it can still be quite difficult to maintain a purely vegan diet. However, for those who are living in urban environments, and who purchase their food from others, maintaining a vegan or majority-vegan diet appears to be a moral and ethical responsibility.
This all being the case, maintaining a vegan diet, for those who are pursuing a self-sufficient and ecologically-sound lifestyle, appears to be a luxury pursuit, insofar as it should not be demanded of the individual, though nonetheless contributes something that may be extra. In other words, while veganism may be a saintly pursuit, it may not be one that everyone should be held up to as a moral or ethical standard in our current state of evolution.
This is, of course, assuming that strict veganism is the correct outlook to have for anyone. There are, of course, challenges to this idea. Among these is the concept of freeganism, that one may maintain a vegan purchasing habit, especially in regard to first-hand goods, while making use of animal products that will otherwise be discarded or, sometimes, even purchasing second-hand animal products such as used leather items found at thrift stores. According to freegans, such use is a form of harm-reduction, because no demand is being created for the items, which were already created and may as well get their use. Another challenge to veganism comes from ethics-minded meat producers and consumers, such as permaculturists, who suggest that animals are needed for sustainable agriculture. Vegans have further been criticized as not having a role in mind for animals to occupy in our expanding societies, and so having failed in addressing the integration of animals into our lives and societies as the wilderness is annexed from wild animals. Vegans have been challenged in general for their habits of consuming imported produce, such as avocados and coconuts, or for consuming highly water-dependent crops such as almonds, as well as for raising pets such as cats and dogs, who are fed meat, or for relying on dietary supplementation of certain nutrients. There are many practical and ethical dilemmas that vegans have to face and reconcile.
Antapodist vegetarianism addresses these matters by making use of animal products for vegan-adjacent reasons and with vegan-adjacent aims. The antapodist relationship to animals is not one of exploitation, but of mutual aid. This kind of mutual aid can also be found in nature, and is known as biological mutualism. It happens, for instance, between certain kinds of ants and aphids, a relationship that involves ants herding and “milking” aphids like cattle, including taking them in at night. This is a relationship that has been categorized as mutualism because it is not parasitic, as many vegans might suggest, owing to the benefits that accrue to the aphids. While likely not satisfying the human, economic definition of mutualism, as established by Pierre Proudhon, it was nonetheless inspired by this definition by way of Pierre van Beneden. This mutualism is what distinguishes the antapodist from the postmodern vegan. However, it is understood through an Aristotlean lens, insofar as Proudhon's balance of forces cannot be expected between humans and animals, nor can an internal constitution of the social power be promised to the animals. While mutualism may be the ideal sought after, antapodosis is the optimum accepted for the current state of evolution, which involves a proportional contribution wherein it is accepted that the greater must give more than the lesser.
The tendency among vegans is to approach the topic with the same sort of zeal that postmodernists have given to human identarianism in its various renditions. By this communistic worldview, equality is assumed and any deviation from equality is considered to be a form of oppression. This has resulted in the various redefinitions of racism, sexism, and etc. to mean not only the neglect of natural rights owing to racial or sexual discrimination, but to unfavorable personal assessments and areas of personal opinion as well, such that “hate,” a natural feeling imbued by evolution, has become a target for attack. When applied to concerns related to veganism, this has resulted in the idea of speciesism, which is often interpreted to mean that animals have the same entitlements as humans, and that those entitlements are being neglected if humans do not provide for them without asking for compensation. Because this comes from communistic reasoning, such entitlements include, especially, free stuff. As such, if a vegan is to have animals, the animals must be given free room and board, and must not be expected to give back in any way, such as by laboring, being shorn for wool, milked, having eggs or honey harvested, etc.
Instead of an altruistic sensibility, antapodism is based in reciprocity and conscience. Conscience is a rational agent, which considers the outcomes of sensibilities and discerns their moral worth. In the case of the lacto-ovo antapodist, conscience has led to the paramounce of mutual aid and, in particular, antapodosis, or reciprocation between inequals. This means that, from their mutualist perspective rather than a communistic one, the use of animal products is not fundamentally exploitative. Whereas the communist tends to view all commerce as exploitation, the mutualist believes that exchange is fundamental to flourishing. The mutualist does not shun exchange between humans, but embraces it, and the antapodist vegetarian wants to bring animals into that world of exchange as much as is possible, to have friendly relations with animals. While communistic vegans will try to paint this as an endeavor to justify the exploitation of animals, the goals of the antapodist vegetarian are actually vegan-adjacent, and, as mentioned, meet the subjective qualifications set out by postmodern vegans, as the goal of antapodism is not to exploit animals, but to establish synergistic, agroecological systems that benefit everyone involved, from the soil on up, including the animals.
Biological mutualism is interesting, in part because it can develop from different sources. Ideally, it occurs when both participants in the interaction are engaged with one another in pursuit of their own interests, such that each enters the relationship voluntarily and ready to give back. However, it can just as well come from parasitic or commensalist foundations that change over time. In the case of domesticated animals, dogs and cats started out as commensalists, who would live on our scraps or pests, but who were later welcomed into our societies in recognition of their contributions. Sheep, goats, and cattle were our prey, who we later started engaging more parasitically, but who some have since started to engage with more mutually. Hadza people in Africa have a mutualism with a bird, which helps tribesmen find sources of honey and exists on the remaining scraps, while Eurasians developed mutualism directly with the bees, with Italian varieties becoming particularly gentle toward their keepers. Among the different races of humans, who we are coming to find evolved from different species and perhaps even genera, mutualism is developing as coming from warfaring and dominating stages such as slavery, feudalism, and now private, corporate, and state capitalism. The adoption of animals into our societies mirrors to some extent the subordination of evolutionarily dwindling or adolescent people groups to those who were evolutionarily advanced or matured. It is not a relationship of pure, voluntary consent, but of statism, though it can nonetheless have elements of reciprocation. These elements have been good enough for the early stages of human societies, and they should be good enough for the early adoption of animals into our societies. As animals convergently and in parallel evolve along with us in our societies, and develop conscientiousness of their own, antapodism will increasingly give way to mutualism, as appropriate.
An antapodist vegetarian lifestyle would typically be afforded best by rural or urban smallholders who are engaged in homesteading or farmsteading, or urbanites who live near to these sources while they are accidentally producing a domestic surplus. That “accidentally” part is important, because that is one of the qualifications of antapodism, that domestic surpluses in animal products are coincidental rather than sought-after. Animals are not to be reared in cages or stock pens throughout the year (stocking during Winter may be acceptable), and their numbers must be limited to what the land can sustain during Spring, Summer, and Fall, with minimal supplementation, ideally from local sources, during the Winter. The purpose of raising the animals must primarily be to encourage increased velocity of the nutrient cycles of the land, which is understood as a syntropic pursuit, secondarily to provide the animals with a pleasant life, and only thirdly to derive from these pursuits one's “just deserts,” or “fairness in consideration of consequences,” which include not only consumables for humans, but any benefit to the humans, however indirect. These deserts must be limited to what abundance the producer has actually contributed towards, and only after satisfying the needs of carnivorous or omnivorous animals on the holding, lest they not be just, and instead be exploitation. If the presence of the animals is a net harm to the land, if the animals cannot be maintained in a state of satisfaction, or if the animals cannot give back, the continued effort to rear these animals conflicts with the goals of antapodism.
With these limitations in place, antapodists in urban environments, especially, might do best to maintain a vegan diet, as the accidental production of domestic farm surpluses are likely to be consumed in the rural economy or else to be found only rarely in urban markets anyway. Further, antapodists in both urban and rural environments, who order goods for value-addition that have been produced off-site, should probably limit their commercial activities to strictly vegan pursuits, as it is very unlikely that a stable source of domestic surpluses are going to be produced as a supply to depend upon. This is not a strict rule, but a likely outcome of antapodist pursuits. There may be some exceptions, where such an abundance has been reached that a domestic surplus is promised even without commercial pursuit.
This basically limits the consumption of animal products by antapodists to those eaten by cats and dogs and, only after they are satisfied, farmers and those willing to pay a premium to get ahold of domestic farm surpluses. But, again, those surpluses must be coincidental and accidental, rather than being produced for commercial ends. Animal products eaten by pets, farmers, and purchasers must have originally been made available by the pursuit of maintaining animals for the purpose of stewarding the land, husbanding the animals, and limiting one's consumption to one's just deserts. It is ethically acceptable, even while practically unlikely, for one's just deserts to include what the ethical farmer can be compensated for producing.
The antapodist vegetarian is likely to appear strange to the vegan and the carnivore alike, especially one inclined to irrationality. Antapodism, after all, is based in mutualism, the figurehead of which is Proudhon, “the Man of Paradox.” Proudhon, a rationalist, was the Man of Paradox because he straddled the various dichotomies of his day, especially capitalism and communism, and avoided polarization. In the same spirit, antapodism straddles the grounds of veganism and animal husbandry, which are typically kept as separate as milks and meats on a kosher plate. The communistic vegan scorns the antapodist relationship with animals as exploitation, on the grounds that reciprocity is exploitation. The capitalistic husbandman scorns the antapodist relationship with animals as not advantageous enough. But the antapodist vegetarian protects, guides, shelters, feeds, and waters his or her animal friends, who, in return, provide the antapodist with a greater velocity in the nutrient cycling of the antapodist's land, and, when appropriate and available, with honey, milk, eggs, wool, and, when the time naturally comes, meat for dogs and cats, perhaps pelts for furs and leather (and, for the antapodist flexitarian, and on the grounds of freeganism, an occasional source of meat).
Antapodism provides common ground between flexitarians, vegetarians, and vegans who adopt the ethic, even while keeping the uniqueness of each in tact. As such, it has the capacity to serve as an evolutionary attractor or categorical field of transcendence that can dialectically grandfather in some of the old ways while potentially eliminating animal exploitation altogether. Those stuck in their old ways, if willing to pay the premium, could still acquire meat, dairy, or eggs from time-to-time, or could learn to become good stewards to the land and create such an abundance that it would be a sin to let their meat go to waste. At the same time, overall meat, dairy, and egg consumption would fall to those levels natural to a society that is not rearing animals for commercial ends.
Antapodism is likely to receive scorn from all sides, as Aristotle warns is common to the magnanimous individual who has found virtue in balance. But is it the right decision, when all of the factors are considered? Is it possibly the best solution to the moral dilemmas faced by vegans, such as how to relate positively toward meat-eating humans, how to integrate animals into our societies, to eat more locally, to avoid the need for supplementation, where the manure that supplies nitrogen to our produce comes from, where our pet foods come from, and what our overall relationship not only to animals, but to the Earth is? Antapodist vegetarians believe this to be so.
References
[1] See Rakich, Andrew “He Was an Anti-Racist Vegan Radical... in 1738” (N/A: Atun-Shei Films, 2024) Accessed 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIkQrr8pgSI