Animal Intelligence: How an Islamic Thinker Questioned Human Exceptionalism

Speaker: Professor Peter Adamson (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany)

Abstract: There was broad consensus in pre-modern philosophy that humans are distinguished from other animals by their rationality. In antiquity, occasional objections were put forward - notably by Platonists who suggested that animals may be capable of rational thought - but the consensus view was generally adopted in the medieval philosophical cultures. This paper discusses a striking exception: Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d.1210), a philosopher-theologian who explored the idea of rationality in non-human animals as part of his systematic attack on the Aristotelian thought of #Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d.1037). Al-Rāzī offered several arguments in favor of the proposal that non-human animals do have intelligence or reason (ʿaql), arguments suggesting that rationality is possessed to greater and lesser degrees by different creatures.

#WorldPhilosophies Lecture Series, #edinburgh #philosophy #islamic #animals #islamicphilosophy #alRāzī #lmu #LudwigMaximiliansUniversität