11. - Animals

Common talk of animals, and of the difference between human and nonhuman animals in particular, relies on universal notions. In many philosophical traditions, such notions are entangled with a hierarchy of supposed abilities or moral status, such that nonhuman animals are seen as superior to plants but as inferior to humans. Aristotelians commonly held that nonhuman animals lack rational capacities. Cartesians even assumed that nonhuman animals lack a soul.