Animals in the Philosophy of the Islamic World

Project Information

IslamAnimals

Grant agreement ID: 786762

DOI

10.3030/786762

Project closed

EC signature date 18 June 2018

Start date 1 October 2018

End date 30 September 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 343 661,00

EU contribution

€ 2 343 661,00

Coordinated by

LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITAET MUENCHEN
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - IslamAnimals (Animals in the Philosophy of the Islamic World)

Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2023-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Are animals conscious? Can they think or feel emotions? What makes them different from humans on the one hand and plants on the other? And how should we treat them?

This five year project (2018-2023) funded by the European Research Council has brought to light a rich body of texts written in the Islamic world, which address just such questions about the value and nature of animals. Contrary to common assumptions, such questions were taken seriously in pre-modern thought. Scholars have explored ancient Greek and Indian discussions of animals, but prior to this project little attention had been paid to the contribution of Islamic culture, which produced for instance philosophical and scientific works on animals, moralizing fables featuring animal characters, and treatises on zoology.

Thanks to this ERC-funded initiative, the changing conception of animals revealed in such works is now among the best understood and researched areas of Islamic intellectual history. Our articles, book-length studies, and public outreached initiatives have explored the development of the very concept of “animal” in early Arabic literature, the interrelation of natural philosophy and medicine to generate what can fairly be called a properly “biological” science, and sophisticated ideas about animal minds and animal ethics. Grounds for showing benevolence to animals have been uncovered, with comparison and contrast to modern-day animal ethics.

While the work of the project concerned a huge number of authors, figures especially important in the research were the theologian and litterateur al-Jahiz, the zoologist Ibn Abi Ashʾath, the philosophers Abu Bakr al-Razi, Miskawayh, Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Ibn Bajja, and Averroes (Ibn Rushd), and the theologians al-Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. Innovative and philosophically provocative ideas have been uncovered in all these thinkers, ranging from the development of a new philosophy of mind for animals in Avicenna and Averroes to nuanced arguments for animal ethics in Miskawayh and the rationality of animals in Fakhr al-Din al-Razi.

Because the authors covered were engaged in such a wide range of intellectual disciplines, our work – while being primarily philosophical in nature – has consequences for the study of Islamic religion, history of medicine and science, and even Islamic jurisprudence. It also has broader significance for society insofar as we uncovered ideas about animals, especially animal ethics, that are different from those usually deployed in public and professional discussion of this issue; and insofar as it expands understanding of Islamic culture and its contribution to a question of universal significance.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project was oriented around three intersection areas of investigation in our project: zoology, medicine, and theology. The team was able to make ground-breaking discoveries in all these areas.

On zoology, our work focused on the Arabic version of Aristotle’s zoological treatises and on figures who engaged with this translation, especially Ibn Abi Ashʿath, who lived in the tenth century. We were able to show that the process of transforming Aristotle’s ideas already began with the translation itself, for example by bringing into this translation ideas about the soul and about animal “character” which integrate Aristotle with a more Platonic point of view. Detailed work on Ibn Abi Ashʿath and other zoological texts looked at the way animals were classified and the extent to which these scientists saw animals as sharing features in common with humans. This zoological background is important for understanding developments in both philosophy and theology, which see a steady and often surprising convergence of conceptions about animal nature and human nature.

There was a close relationship between zoology and our second topic, history of medicine. The influence of the ancient doctor Galen was a leitmotif of our work. One study in the project showed how antique ideas about a vivifying “spirit,” which according to Aristotle and especially Galen, pervades animal bodies, were brought into relation with ideas about the soul, and especially, how theologians adapted this conception from Aristotelians like Avicenna. Another member of the team focused on the relationship between medicine nad zoology in Avicenna, suggesting that he combined these with natural philosophy to develop something that could fairly be called “biology.”

The third area, theology (kalam), was important for showing developments in conceptions about animal ethics and minds, and in a field of writing that was arguably more culturally resonant at the time than the rather technical works of philosophers. Especially important for us was the ninth century polymath and theologian al-Jahiz, author of the massive Book of Animals, and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, a theologian of the twelfth century. Jahiz’s refined and ironic works are not easy to mine for straightforward doctrine, but we were able to explore how his ideas about human nature interacted with (and were often represented through) his presentation of animal life, for example his quasi-biological treatment of human races and ethnicities. Fakhr al-Din was important to us for his critique of Avicenna, which includes a remarkable defense of the possiblity that rationality can be found in animals and not only humans.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

As we had three historical focuses, so we had two thematic areas of interest, which provide a useful framework for outlining our major findings.

The first theme was animal minds or animal cognition. One overall finding is that in classical Islamic thought, animals came to be seen as sharing a great deal with humans. This was due to many factors: medical explorations which presupposed that dissecting animals tells us about human bodies; theological perspectives which saw God as caring for animals; and theories about the soul, which increasingly ascribed high-level abilities to animals. Usually this stopped short of saying that animals can think rationally, but even this was not universally accepted. Beyond this more “generous” attitude towards animal powers, our project has shown the interrelation between different discourses about animals (and humans), from zoology to psychology to theology. We also made advances beyond the Arabic tradition by pointing out how these same themes also resonated in works written in Persian and Syriac.

These developments provide a context for understanding what we discovered under the heading of the second theme:animal ethics. Already before the project started, the PI Adamson and others had pointed out that there are striking discussions on this point in Islamic philosophical literature. We were able to plumb the reasons and extent of this development and understand it much more fully, for example with regard to the Brethren of Purity, from the tenth century: one team member showed how tehy argued for animal benevolence by exploring the implications of the distinctively human capacity for justice. Just a bit later Miskwayh spoke of showing justice towards animals, and we produced a study of this arguing that his view is grounded in Aristotelian ideas about teleology. Our work also often connected these “medieval” ideas about animal ethics to the contemporary debate on animals, both in ethics (e.g. by exploring the way that Islamic virtue ethics encouraged a benevolent attitude toward animals) and within philosophy of religion.