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Animal Rights in Byzantine Thought PDF
Animal Rights in Byzantine Thought PDF
edited by
Evangelos D. Protopapadakis
Berlin 2012
Animal Ethics: Past and Present Perspectives
Edited by Evangelos D. Protopapadakis
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Acknowledgements 13
Introduction 15
R
egarding animal rights, a useful distinction is to be made between
formal rights and hegemonical rights; it is quite obvious that the
issue of formal animal rights in a medieval society like Byzantium
is rather weak. The hegemonical rights on the other hand embrace
a crucial debate since antiquity about the intellectual factor as distinctive
human feature, in reference to the Stoic hegemonikon (the governing prin-
ciple) that stands for this kind of mind-majesty. In the light of this distinc-
tion, any discussion about the relation of animals and reason in Byzantium
belongs to the enquiry about animal hegemonical rights. It must be un-
derscored that Christian philosophy (and the Byzantine thought is greatly
indebted to it) clearly exalts the status of the human person over species.
The specifically theological representation about animals includes re-
ligious sentimentality and anthropomorphism. The Christian approach to
animals appears often unsympathetic in a way that Christian metaphysics
seems bound to morals that exclude animals from rights. Yet, in Christian
perspective, every living thing embodies some significance by denoting
God's presence in the world. Byzantine ideas about living things (animals
and plants) carried on a tradition that synthesized elements from ancient
Greek philosophy and the Christian religion (especially the philosophy of
the Church Fathers). The crucial point is the introduction by Christianity
of the theory of the historical creation of the world, from its initial elements
to the formation of humans, who were seen as the crown of the universe.
In a rural civilization like Byzantium, proximity to the world of
plants and animals produced popular literary works that played with the
idea of human primacy over all other living beings, primarily animals, of-
ten through prosopopoeia; among these animal fables, the Physiologus, the
Pulologus etc.1 In the Middle Ages there was a general appeal to the testi-
mony of creatures in order to edify the faithful and correct the morals as
part of the technique of sermons.2 A text like Physiologus, written in Al-
exandria in the third century AD, condenses the symbolic significance of
come suffering like humans do. For Plutarch, animal rationality actually
exists, it is just not perfectible (963 B); in some aspects, this is also Michaels
view. For the Stoics, animal sensations as conscious phenomena are
in the mode of as if (961 F); for Plutarch, the as if mode shows that
animals can use hypothetical syllogism, while to Michaels view, the as if
mode refers to the intentional universe.
Animals according to the Stoics are without intentionality and, in this
regard, Michael of Ephesus seems to be on the side of animals. Plutarchs
interest lies less on the scientific or cognitive level, than on the moral les-
sons that can be extracted from the animal condition and, in that, Michaels
position is quite divergent. If Plutarch criticizes the Stoic apatheia, Michael
is for another kind of apatheia, that of the scientific neutrality, since he de-
mands the overcome of aversion in front of animal parts.15 Plutarch shows a
distinctive Neo-platonic repugnance for meat-eating, and speaks of dread-
ful meals of meat (De esu carnium, 993 C), which may be juxtaposed to
Anna Comnenas (Michael of Ephesus alleged mentor) story of meat eating
as an element in the quarrelling of the powerful. Michaels work, like Plu-
tarchs, contains some contradiction regarding animals. Plutarch, in his De
amore prolis (493 F 494 A), refutes De esu carnium claiming the presence
of lesser justice in animals. In Adversus Colotes, he says that:
...animals live the lowly life they do because they have no knowl-
edge of anything finer than pleasure, and do not understand
the justice of the gods, caring nothing for the beauty of virtue
(1125A).
He [sc. Aristotle] says, once the omissions and that which must
be supplied from elsewhere are brought together, that in ac-
cordance with the assumptions of the Epicurean and later Stoic
philosophers concerning happiness, one can attribute a share of
happiness even to the non-rational animals, while according to
myself and Plato and others who along with us would place hap-
piness in the intellective life, it is impossible for the non-rational
animals to be happy in that way...16
sphere of body-like, then symbolic animals are part of the sphere of reason-
like? For Plutarch, there is a natural rationality in animals (De esu carnium,
997E); nature is reason for animals or, else, nature and reason are com-
patible in them. This is animal perfection, their nature being not humbler
than reason, which is unknown to humans. Plutarch concludes in this way
his criticism of the Stoics: animals are more in accord with natural reason.
Hence, humans are more counter nature because of human reason, while
animals are more virtuous naturally virtuous. The Byzantine Michael of
Ephesus grants no intellectual virtue to animals, but he is disposed to ad-
mit that humans are more inclined to vices, bodily pleasures and alienation
from knowledge. Animals have the right to be respected as part of the Crea-
tion, yet this exigency, for Michael, is embedded in a general appeal to the
practice of science.
Notes
1. See Karl Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur (Munich, 1897), vol. II,
section 2.3.
2. Carlos Steel, Animaux de la Bible et animaux dAristote, in Aristotles Animals in the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance, edited by C. Steel, G. Guldentops and P. Beullens, 11
30 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999).
3. bid., 1213.
4. Ingvild Slid Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans: Changing Attitudes to Animals in
Greek, Roman and Early Christian Ideas (London-New York: Routledge, 2006), 263.
5. For speaking animals in Ancient Greek culture and the Bible, compare Iliad 19.40817
and Numbers 22:2830.
6. Gilhus, op. cit., 263.
7. See Marc Diederik Lauxtermann, Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres (Wien:
Universitt Wien, 2003), 205.
8. Nancy P. evenko, Wild Animals in the Byzantine Park, in Byzantine Garden Culture,
edited by Antony Littlewood, Henry Maguire and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (Wash-
ington: Dumbarton Oaks, 2002), 72-73.
9. See Ken Parry, Vegetarianism in Late Antiquity and Byzantium: The Transmission of a
Regimen, in Feast, Fast or Famine: Food and Drink in Byzantium: Byzantina Australien-
sia 15, edited by W. Mayer and S. Trzcionka (Brisbane: AABS, 2005), 171-187.
10. The artists are not to portray the Forerunner pointing to a lamb; In some depictions of
the venerable icons the Forerunner is portrayed pointing with his finger to a lamb, and
this has been accepted as a figure of grace, prefiguring for us through the Law the true
lamb, Christ our God. Therefore, while these ancient figures and shadows have been
handed down as symbols and outlines of the truth passed on by the Church, we prefer
grace and truth, which have been received as fulfillment of the law. Therefore, so that
what is perfect maybe depicted, even in paintings, in the eyes of all, we decree that the
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, Christ our God, should from now
on be portrayed as a man, instead of the ancient lamb, even in icons; for in this way the
depth of the humility of the Word of God can be understood, and one might be led to
the memory of his life in the flesh, his passion and his saving death, and of the redemp-
ANIMAL RIGHTS IN BYZANTINE THOUGHT 111
tion which thereby came to the world. Canon 82 of the Council in Trullo, translated by
Charles Barber in id., Figure and Likeness. On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine
Iconoclasm (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), 42. The Greek text
is in The Council in Trullo Revisited, edited by George Nedungatt and Michael Feather-
stone (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1995), 162-164.
11. See Stephen Thomas Newmyer, Animals, Rights and Reason in Plutarch and Modern Eth-
ics (London: Routledge, 2006). Much of the subsequent argument here draws on this
book.
12. Michael of Ephesus is now thought to be a writer of the twelfth century, one of the circle
of the Byzantine princess Anna Komnenes scholiasts of Aristotle, if we accept the posi-
tion of Robert Browning ["An Unpublished Funeral Oration on Anna Comnena", Pro-
ceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 188 (1962): 112]. See also Peter Franko-
pan, The literary, cultural and political context for the twelfth-century commentary on
the Nicomachean Ethics, in Medieval Greek Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics,
edited by Charles Barber and David Jenkins, 4562 (Leiden Boston: Brill, 2009). For
more information on Michael of Ephesus, see George Arabatzis,
. 1,3 2,10 [Paideia and Episteme in Michael
of Ephesus. In de Part. Anim., I, 1,32,10] (Athens: Academy of Ahens, 2006), 1736.
13. See George Arabatzis, op. cit.; also id., Michael of Ephesus on the empirical man, the sci-
entist and the educated man (in EN X and in PA I), in C. Barber & D. Jenkins (eds.) op.
cit., 16384; (2009); and id., Michael of Ephesus and the philosophy of living things (In
De partibus animalium, 22.2523.9), in The Many Faces of Byzantine Philosophy, edited
by Katerina Ierodiakonou and Borje Bydn (Athens: The Norwegian Institute at Athens,
in press).
14. On what philosophy meant precisely for Michael we are unable to pronounce in a de-
cisive and conclusive manner; see Arabatzis (in press).
15. Yet, Michaels manner of comparison is very similar to that of Plutarch: [Plutarch] often
uses synkrisis not to demonstrate the superiority of one side of the equation over the
other, but rather to explore the issues raised as a whole; see Tim Durff, Plutarchs Lives:
Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 245.
16. In Eth. Nic. X 598.1924, translated by Victor Caston; see Aristotle Transformed: The An-
cient Commentators and Their Inuence, edited by Richard Sorabji (London: Duckworth,
1990), as quoted in Karl Praechter, Review of the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca,
in R. Sorabji, ibid., 40.
17. See Panaetius happiness in agreement with nature (Apud Stobaeum, 2.63.25-2.64.12 =
Panaetius fr. 109 van Straaten). See Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals:
The Origins of the Western Debate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), 139.
As to whether pleasure exists according to nature there was already a controversy in
antiquity; see Sextus Empiricus, Adv. math. XI, 73; also Richard Haynes, The theory of
pleasure of the old Stoa, American Journal of Philology 83 (1962): 41219, 414.
18. Zenon in Diogenes Laertius VII 85. Diogenes Laertius, VII.4, reports that Zeno had
written a treatise on living in accord with nature. F. H. Sandbach offers a helpful overview
of interpretations of what living 'in accord with nature' may entail for the Stoics. He con-
cluded that it may well have meant living a life that is self-consistent and contains no ele-
ment of conflict that can hinder human happiness. It necessarily entailed living in accord
with reason, which of course, the Stoics have denied to animals; see S. T. Newmyer, op.
cit., 128 n. 42; also Francis Henry Sandbach, The Stoics (New York: Norton, 1975), 53-59.
19. See Stephen Thomas Newmyer, op. cit., 58; also M. Schuster, Untersuchungen zu Plu-
tarchs Dialog De sollertia animalium, mit Besonderer Bercksichtingug der Lehrttingkeit
Plutarchs (Augsburg: Hammer, 1917).