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Why "Animal" for the genus of man?

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God is also equipped for thinking, a la Aristotle. Arguably, he is either "more complex than" or "more simple than" man, depending on in what sense you mean.

More complex, more simple... Whatever be the case "more perfect" would be accurate right?

Interesting btw. I don't know whether Aristotle calls God a rational animal too. Then again, it's never very clear what Aristotle is saying when he talks about God. I'll see if I can find something about it somewhere.

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  • 4 months later...
I have a question about the definition of man, which has troubled me.

Why is animal the proper genus? As opposed to mammal, life form, primate, etc.?

I should think that primate or hominid would be the smallest general class into which homo sapien would fit. Man = rational animal goes back to Aristotle, does it not? Aristotle did not use the same taxonomy as was used after the time of Lineus.

Bob Kolker

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  • 1 month later...
More complex, more simple... Whatever be the case "more perfect" would be accurate right?

Interesting btw. I don't know whether Aristotle calls God a rational animal too. Then again, it's never very clear what Aristotle is saying when he talks about God. I'll see if I can find something about it somewhere.

Aristotle viewed the prime mover as sufficient in himself, not composed of parts; as man finds happiness, according the Nicomachean ethics, by the contemplation of existence, the prime mover gains happiness in the contemplation of itself, as the most perfect mind should only be concerned with the greatest things, which are his own thoughts.

"For both thinking and the act of thought will belong even to the one who thinks of the worst things in the world, so that if this ought to be avoided, the act of thinking can not be the best of things. Therefore it must be of itself that the divine thought thinks, and its thinking is a thinking on thinking."

Metaphysics 1074b (Book XII, Chapter 9, Lines 30-34)

"Since, then, thought and the object of thought are not different in the case of things that have not matter, the divine thought and its object will be the same, i.e. the thinking will be one with the object of its thought."

Metaphysics 1075a (Book XII, Chapter 9, Lines 1-4)

So if I understand him correctly, this divinity would not be an animal, but rather pure consciousness. It would most certainly be rational, however, as it would have to be in order to contemplate itself.

Such a man was Aristotle that even his nonsense is brilliant :)

Edited by Praxus
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