ANT376H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Great Chain Of Being, Anthropocentrism, Middle Ages
Document Summary
Aristotle: development of ladder of life; scala naturae (organized vertically, nested, and hierarchically) Nested = you have the qualities of those below you but you also have qualities that are unique to the category. Human exceptionalism: superior to animals; only beings with reason and rationality. Anima: capability to breathe, move, have a soul. Labeling an animal -> consequences in terms of how they"re treated. Antiquity, middle ages, renaissance, enlightenment, age of empire, 20th century modernity , postmodernity. Humans = at the centre; their engagements, visibility/invisibility. Dynamic moments of history as we begin to put animal into the anthropocentric history. Antiquity: aristotle (active edge; notion of only humans) Aristotle"s systematic classification of the natural world based on: Identification of essentializing attributes (distinctive) - arranged hierarchically with humans at the top (scala natura) All nonhumans = inferior to the human and exist in a service capacity to humans; humans. Aristotle"s activity of the mind (rationality, speech, ) = distinguishing feature/metaphysical privilege.
