Aristotle’s view of nature

All for humans

“Plants exist for the benefit of animals, and some

animals exist for the benefit of others. Those which are
domesticated, serve human beings for use as well as
for food; wild animals, too, in most cases, if not all,
serve to flourish us not only with food, but also with
other kinds of assistance, such as the provision of
clothing and similar aids to life. Accordingly if nature
makes nothing purposeless or in vain, all animals must
have been made by nature for the sake of men”
(Politics)
 Eudaimonia

the end of human beings is “happiness” (eudaimonia).

not pleasure or material prosperity but a complex ideal
of moral virtue achieved in community by way of long
practice and reflection. Happiness in this sense
depends crucially on the capacity for rational
contemplation which makes human beings most like
the gods. Animals lack this capacity and hence do not
have any share in happiness.
This makes animals “inferior in their nature to men”
 Cosmic scheme

There is a cosmic scheme of things, and human beings

are superior to animals in that scheme because only
humans possess the contemplative ability that likens
us to the gods.
 DE ANIMA

Living beings and lifeless substances

Lower for higher beings
Nutritional facutlty to reason
 No speech, but voice

Aristotle was aware of the social nature of animals.

But animals do not possess speech. They have only
voice which is an indication of pleasure and pain.
Speech is the exclusive
possession of rational beings. Even slaves possess
reason and speech, but animals “cannot even
apprehend reason; they obey their passions.
 No virtue in animals

For Aristotle, the end of the State is the attainment

of virtue. He treats the Politics and the Nicomachean
Ethics as companion pieces. This means that the
context for interpreting the statement from the
Politics includes the theory of virtue developed in the
Nicomachean Ethics. There Aristotle characterizes
virtue in a way that unequivocally excludes animals.
One cannot be virtuous if one is not a rational being.
Ethical life is the exclusive prerogative of humans
among earthly beings
 Human cannot befriend animals

Because animals lack rational capaciy, Aristotle

excludes them from the ethico-political realm
altogether. We cannot have friendships with animals,
because “there is nothing common to the two parties.”
Nicomachean Ethics 8.11 at 1161b2–3
 No justice for animals

What is lacking is rationality. For the same reason,

there is no justice relation between human beings and
animals: Justice is a virtue; participation in virtue
requires articulate speech, deliberative capacity, and
the capacity for reciprocal dealings with human
beings, all of which animals categorically lack.
Politics 1.2 at 1253a10–15
 Phantasia

In animals phantasia plays the role in action that

thinking plays in human beings. Aristotle explains the
role of phantasia in action by distinguishing between
two forms of phantasia. “All imagination is either
calculative or sensitive. In the latter all animals
partake.”
 On memory

Animals can make immediate associations between

present experiences and past experiences of the same
objects, but they cannot call memories to mind at will,
that is, in the absence of a present impression of the
relevant object.