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Chapter 3 considers the work of two Dominicans, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. Albert placed humans at the top of a hierarchy. He saw many similarities between animals and humans, the likeness diminishing with every step down the hierarchy. Although a hard boundary between humans and animals remained, it was just one of many that divided animals into categories, the pygmy from the human, the monkey from the pygmy, and so on. In the Summa theologiae Aquinas consistently stressed differences between humans and animals, but also noted significant similarities. Even if they could not grasp universals, for example, some animals could nevertheless think generally about types of other animal. Aquinas’s earlier work, the Summa contra gentiles, was especially imaginative in the way it explored the relationship between similarity and difference. Within the hierarchy of being, for example, he showed how difference might be generated by similarities in a variety of ways. Aquinas took an entirely different approach, however, when he set aside every aspect of the human which was in any way similar to the animal, concluding that contemplation of the truth was the sole feature that defined the human absolutely.
Exploring what theologians at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century understood about the boundary between humans and animals, this book demonstrates the great variety of ways in which they held similarity and difference in productive tension. Analysing key theological works, Ian P. Wei presents extended close readings of William of Auvergne, the Summa Halensis, Bonaventure, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. These scholars found it useful to consider animals and humans together, especially with regard to animal knowledge and behaviour, when discussing issues including creation, the fall, divine providence, the heavens, angels and demons, virtues and passions. While they frequently stressed that animals had been created for use by humans, and sometimes treated them as tools employed by God to shape human behaviour, animals were also analytical tools for the theologians themselves. This study thus reveals how animals became a crucial resource for generating knowledge of God and the whole of creation.
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