Abstract

This is a learned and informative study in ancient philosophy of mind and in ancient ethics and religious practice. It consists of two parts. Chapters 1-8 are a study in ancient philosophy of mind, and in particular in ancient views about the mental or psychological capacities of animals. Sorabji begins with the claims of Aristotle and the Stoics that animals do not have reason or belief. This denial of reason and belief to animals led Aristotle and the Stoics to reexamine such psychological capacities as perception, perceptual appearance, belief, concept-possession, memory, intention, preparation, anger and other emotions, and speech. Sorabji also shows how Pythagoreans, Platonists, and some of Aristotle’s successors, such as Theophrastus, contested the Aristotelian and Stoic denial of reason to animals. Aristotle’s interests in these matters were mainly scientific, but for the Stoics and for their opponents the question about animal rationality raised religious and ethical issues, which Sorabji explores in chapters 9-15. He surveys Stoic, Epicurean, Neoplatonist, and Christian discussions of the treatment of animals, and in particular of the eating of meat and of animal sacrifice. He finds that the moral status of animals and their claims on humans were the matter of a serious and extended debate in pagan philosophy, a debate that has been largely overlooked ever since Western Christianity accepted the Stoic denial of reason to animals and its supposed consequence, the denial that animals have any claims on humans. Sorabji finds the Aristotelian and Stoic arguments against animal rationality less than persuasive, but his more substantive philosophical contention is that even if these arguments worked they would not be relevant to the moral issue of how humans should treat animals; what is relevant is that animals can feel pain.