Medieval soul theory ranked beings by reason, excluding animals from moral law

Evidence

But both the Platonic and the Aristotelian conceptions of ‘soul’ distinguished between kinds of soul and the possession of the lower kind implied, in the case of animals, for example, little more than a capacity for movement or life and no inclusion in the kingdom of ends (see Plato 1973: Phaedrus 49). Both Augustine and Aquinas, as well as other Aristotelian-influenced church fathers, are explicit that animals lack the crucial ingredient of reason and, having no commonality with humans, are not subject to moral law or to salvation (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, ‘On killing living things’ question 64, article 1). — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 768

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Merchant’s account of the medieval organic cosmos and to the book’s earlier Plato ranking of species by reason — this passage pins down that the Christian soul doctrine inherited precisely this exclusion. — connects to: Plato ranked species by how little reason they exercise — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 364; Reason is what distinguishes redeemable humans from eternally trapped animals; Kantian ethics made morality rational and shorn of embodied form, displacing Aristotelian ethics — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival…, 191

Broader Connections

• Reason is what distinguishes redeemable humans from eternally trapped animals #corroborates (0.85)
• Kantian ethics made morality rational and shorn of embodied form, displacing Aristotelian ethics #expands (0.75) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 191