Aristotle and animals

Philosophie | 9 pages | 04-02-2006 | Format : | Note : Non noté |

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Résumé

Essay on the following topic : The ancient philosopher Aristotle saw all of nature as a hierarchy in which “(p)lants exist for the sake of animals, and brute beasts for the sake of man... Since nature makes nothing purposeless or in vain, it is undeniably true that she made all animals for the sake of man”. Do you agree or disagree ? Justify your answer.

Extract:

The idea that all living beings are classified in the form of a hierarchy on the top of which there are humans is widely widespread and often unconsciously accepted. Whilst nowadays it is blatant that we cannot harm war prisoners, black people or mentally handicapped persons; that women, homosexual people and countries colonised in the past have equal rights with their former masters or oppressors, animals are still considered as inferior beings. These lines extracted from a Shakespeare's play perfectly illustrate something seen as obvious : animals exist for us, humans, they are only tools we can freely use for our own desires. Nobody (except for animal liberation activists) really finds astonish that we kill animals to eat, to make clothes, luxury bags and that we keep animals in jails to exhibit them in zoos, that we torture them in laboratories to test a new shampoo or a new medicine before they could be available on market, that people go hunting for fun, shooting animals as an entertainment, that in Spain bulls are killed in arena during corridas (what Romans did with gladiators). Violence upon animals is a very widespread practise. Until very recently, we did not examine our attitude towards them. In the nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth, some laws forbidding public cruelty towards pets have been promulgated. But these laws which regulate our attitude towards animals are based on the relations we have with them, on their resemblances with us and the affection they inspire us. Some people treat also their pets as well as a human person (in New York and Las Vegas one can let her dog in luxurious hotels being washed and well fed) and in the same time a lot of animals are detained in awful conditions waiting for being eaten or tortured in laboratories. Likewise a famous car brand did not hesitate to use baboons for testing the resistance of a car to a crash against a wall. This use of animals is a very old practice which was already justified in Greek Antiquity by Aristotle. According to him, Nature is indeed a hierarchy in which “(p)lants exist for the sake of animals, and brute beats for the sake of man... Since nature makes nothing purposeless or in vain, it is undeniably true that she has made all animals for the sake of man.” Is this idea of a natural hierarchy right ? The purpose of this paper is to answer no to this question and to show how this conception of nature led to the current situation in which men have no mercy on animals, use and maltreat them without wondering any questions. The Aristotelian conception of nature will first be outlined and then it will be explained why rather than seeing animals as inferior as us we have to treat them with an equal moral consideration ...

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