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Aristotle on Why Study Lower Animals (De Partibus Animalium, I,5, 644b22–645a36)

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Thein K.

Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina

2014

vol. 50

issue 1-2

208-229

The paper comments upon On the Parts of Animals I,5 and its leading question of why a naturalist should study all animal species, including those that are perceived as worthless and more or less repugnant. It analyzes different reasons produced by Aristotle in order to justify a systematic biological inquiry and argues that a common feature of these reasons consists in their connection with Aristotle’s understanding of human nature as situated at the juncture of perishable individual substances and intellectual activity that “shares in the divine.” Starting from the epistemic contrast between our conjectures about the most valuable celestial region and the more easily available knowledge about the sublunary world, Aristotle emphasizes not only the sum of what we can learn about the animals that live around us but, especially, the possibility to grasp the teleological structure shared by the latter and mankind alike. Learning about nature and its inner workings implies learning about human nature, including its capacity to imitate the works of nature in art and to understand them through science. The parallel between the pleasure obtained by understanding art and the pleasure gained by scientific inquiry only confirms that the latter offers us some independent value which is irreducible to the superior but not quite attainable knowledge of the divine.

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1 Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina

1 Thein K.

1 2014

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Aristotle on Why Study Lower Animals (De Partibus Animalium, I,5, 644b22–645a36)