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14 Animal Welfare and Human Values outright condemnation of slavery. Moreover, according to Aristotle, the master has an inherent duty both to treat slaves with justice and to instruct them rationally rather than by command. For Aristotle, slaves must be ruled so that the best interests of the slave are served—again a principle not dissimilar from that of Pythagoras, and again something which is not mentioned by the animal liberationists. What animal liberationists do tell us is that Aristotle ignored the interests of animals. In The Politics Aristotle writes: Plants exist to give subsistence to animals, and animals to give it to men. Animals, when they are domesticated, serve for use as well as for food; wild animals, too, in most cases if not in all, serve to furnish man not only with food; but also with other comforts, such as the provision of clothing and similar aids to life. Accordingly, as nature makes nothing purposeless or in vain, all animals must have been made by nature for the sake of men.5 We must presume that the animal liberationists are not objecting to the statements about usage, food and clothing for they are incontrovertible statements of fact. The objection is, and should be, to the idea that animals exist for the sake of humans. Yet this, too, must be understood in the context of other statements. Aristotle not only recognizes the human as a social animal with similar if more advanced characteristics to the beast—about pleasure and pain for example—but also he recognizes that humankind can descend below the level of the animals. "Man, when perfected," Aristotle tells us, "is the best of animals; but if he be isolated from law and justice he is the worst of all."6 He tells us further that "Tame animals have a better nature than wild, and it is better for all such animals that they should be ruled by man because they then get the benefit of preservation." Moreover, "the use which is made of the slave diverges but little from the use made of tame animals."7 Given the requirements of the just treatment of slaves and the recognition of the interests of self-preservation among animals which deserve consideration we can only conclude—despite the paradoxes in Aristotle's writings—that Aristotle considered the ethical treatment of animals a responsibility—even if not one of the highest—of human behaviour. Aristotle was among those who took the initial steps to diminish the exploitation of both humans and animals and to recognize that humans shared a great deal with the animal realm. He knew that to demand everything was to gain nothing politically. To 5 Ernest Barker, ed., Tlie Politics of Aristotle (London: Oxford, 1952), VIII, 11, 12, p. 21 6 Ibid., II, 15, p. 7. On pleasure and pain, see II, 11, p. 4. 7 Ibid., V, 6, 8, p. 13. From Human Origins to Humanism 15 press for piecemeal improvementswas to succeed. But if we are to think more kindlyof Aristotle than do the animal liberationists, we should not fail to recognize that when Thomas Aquinas and other Roman Catholic thinkers borrowed freely from Aristotle they did so without regard to the nuances of Aristotle's thought. Neither Judaism nor Christianity has served animal interests well, though perhaps the former rather better than the latter. Judaism, forming its ethical foundations earlier than Christianity, retained some of its recognition of the primitive condition of the human as one animal among others. Nonetheless, the belief in the Jews as the chosen people of God served effectively to deify man and raise him above his animal origins. As Desmond Morris reminds us, "One of the great weaknesses of the Bible is that, between its covers, it is possible to find a quotation to justify almost any attitude."8 We might add that the same is true of many religions, including the paradoxes to be found in Taoism and Buddhism, among others. Although there are undoubted discrepancies in the Bible, if any kindness at all toward animals is to be found it is almost exclusively in the Old Testament. To be sure, St. Paul is sometimes quoted as the exception. He referred to "One God who is Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all."9 Using a different translation, the animal liberationist Michael W. Fox offers "within all" as the concluding words, thus suggesting a kind of pantheism. Indeed, Fox explicitly refers...

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