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The 21st-century debates about animals can be traced to the ancient world, and the idea of a divine hierarchy. In the Book of Genesis (5th or 6th century BCE), Adam is given "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Dominion need not entail property rights, but it has been interpreted over the centuries to imply ownership.
Animal were things to be possessed and used, whereas man was created in the image of God, and was superior to everything else in nature.
The philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras (c. 580–c. 500 BCE), urged respect for animals, believing that human and nonhuman souls were reincarnated from human to animal, and vice versa. Against this, Aristotle (384–322 BCE) argued that nonhuman animals had no interests of their own, ranking far below humans in the Great Chain of Being. He was the first to create a taxonomy of animals; he perceived some similarities between humans and other species, but argued for the most part that animals lacked reason (logos), thought (dianoia, nous), and belief (doxa).One of Aristotle's pupils, Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BCE) argued that animals had reason too; he opposed eating meat on the grounds that it robbed them of life and was therefore unjust. Theophrastus did not prevail; Richard Sorabji writes that current attitudes to animals can be traced to the heirs of the Western Christian tradition selecting the hierarchy that Aristotle sought to preserve
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The 21st-century debates about animals can be traced to the ancient world, and the idea of a divine hierarchy. In the Book of Genesis (5th or 6th century BCE), Adam is given "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Dominion need not entail property rights, but it has been interpreted over the centuries to imply ownership.
Animal were things to be possessed and used, whereas man was created in the image of God, and was superior to everything else in nature.
The philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras (c. 580–c. 500 BCE), urged respect for animals, believing that human and nonhuman souls were reincarnated from human to animal, and vice versa. Against this, Aristotle (384–322 BCE) argued that nonhuman animals had no interests of their own, ranking far below humans in the Great Chain of Being. He was the first to create a taxonomy of animals; he perceived some similarities between humans and other species, but argued for the most part that animals lacked reason (logos), thought (dianoia, nous), and belief (doxa).One of Aristotle's pupils, Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BCE) argued that animals had reason too; he opposed eating meat on the grounds that it robbed them of life and was therefore unjust. Theophrastus did not prevail; Richard Sorabji writes that current attitudes to animals can be traced to the heirs of the Western Christian tradition selecting the hierarchy that Aristotle sought to preserve
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