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The Judeo-Christian Tradition

The Judeo-Christian Tradition. (Aristotle cont.) Great Chain of Being. Aristotle saw all life as organized as a ladder leading from lowest to highest, simple to complex, with worms at the bottom Man at the top of the ladder.

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The Judeo-Christian Tradition

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  1. The Judeo-Christian Tradition

  2. (Aristotle cont.)Great Chain of Being Aristotle saw all life as organized as a ladder leading from lowest to highest, simple to complex, with worms at the bottom Man at the top of the ladder. The chain is perfect: no link is missing and no link contains more than one species.

  3. Three kinds of souls Soul = form, essence, life force • Vegetative soul: capable of nutrition and growth • Sensitive soul: capable of sense perception and movement • Rational soul: capable of intelligent thought Plants have only vegetative soul. Animals have vegetative and sensitive souls. Only humans have all three.

  4. Dualism in Aristotle Form vs. matter The first cause vs. other causes Humans vs. other animals Humans are animals, but they are special. Humans are at the top of the Great Chain of Being. Only humans have a rational soul.

  5. Questions for discussion Are people rational animals? Are they the only rational animals? Is there a better way to define a human being? Does nature have a plan? Does everything have a function? What is the function of a grasshopper? Is an organism’s natural functioning necessarily good? What about the natural function of the smallpox virus?

  6. Genesis God creates the universe in six days. Creation of man in Chapter 1: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

  7. Reading for next week Required: White, Lynn, Jr., (1967) “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” in Science 155: 1203-1207, available at: aeoe.org/resources/spiritual/rootsofcrisis.pdf

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