A Critique of Mario Vargas Llosa’s Putative Justifications of Bullfighting

Abstract

The Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa praises the legal protection of bullfighting by a Peruvian law that prohibits the torture of animals except in the case of cultural traditions, such as bullfighting and cockfighting. He claims that his defense of bullfighting follows from his liberal point of view and advances three reasons in favor of its preservation: It is a tradition, it is a fine art, and the individuals should be constitutionally free to choose what to see and where to go. I argue that his arguments are morally irrelevant and logically unsound.