The Grumpy Vegan recalls Professor Sprigge speaking at the RSPCA’s historic symposium, “The Rights of Animals,” at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1976. The title of his paper was “The Animal Welfare Movement and the Foundation of Ethics.” He concluded
If the view outlined here is correct, namely that people cannot really grasp the nature of the suffering which their behaviour creates without wishing to refrain from it, you may ask how do experimenters, factory farmers, cattle transporters, etc., carry on? The answer is, in one way or another, I believe, that they do not really grasp what they are doing. At some level it may be right to say “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But the immediate task is to make people realise sufficiently what they, or others on their behalf, are doing, so that it will be done no more.
Many of the books included notations in pencil made by Professor Sprigge. He comments on what is written, and a few were personally given by the author and dedicated to him.
Professor Sprigge taught at Sussex University and at the University of Edinburgh. According to The Daily Telegraph
Philosophy for Sprigge was a matter of life and death, not least the life and death of non-human beings. When he was due to undergo cardiac surgery he requested that no parts taken from an animal be used.
From 1991 to 1994 he was chairman of Advocates for Animals, an office that meant as much to him as did his being elected President of the Aristotelian Society in 1991. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1993. A volume of essays in his honour has just appeared.
The Grumpy Vegan greatly regrets that his recent move to Hastings did not provide him with an opportunity to get to know Professor Sprigge who had retired to nearby Lewes.
