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Animal Passions1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Gillian Clark
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Extract

Judges, and tabloid newspapers, have a habit of saying that violent criminals ‘behaved like animals’. After all those years of David Attenborough they ought to know better: very few other species behave as badly as humans. But they are invoking the ancient belief that animals have neither reason nor justice. Consequently, ‘animal passion’ is fierce and overpowering. Animals are beasts. They are savage and unsocial. They cannot control their passions by reason and are unrestrained by respect for others, by a sense of fairness or by social order.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , April 2000 , pp. 88 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2000

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References

Notes

2. Plato, , Protagoras 320c–322dGoogle Scholar.

3. Works and Days 277–9.

4. On philosophical debate about passions, see Braund, S. Morton and Gill, C. (edd.), The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature (Cambridge, 1997), especially 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brunschwig, J. and Nussbaum, M. (edd.), Passions and Perceptions (Cambridge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Plotinus, , Ennead 4.4.28.33–4Google Scholar; ‘temperaments’ translates kraseis, a disputed reading. On belief and emotion, see Sorabji, Richard, Animal Minds and Human Morals: the Origins of the Western Debate (London, 1993), 50–61Google Scholar.

6. Plutarch, , Moralia 446f–447aGoogle Scholar; more references in Long, A. A. and Sedley, D. N., The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1987), i. 410–23Google Scholar. See further Sharpies, R. W., Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics: an Introduction to Hellenistic Philosophy (London, 1996), 68–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. I owe this point to Catherine Osborne.

8. Abst. 3.22.3.

9. Abst. 3.14.1. All translations are from Clark, G., Porphyry: On Abstinence from Killing Animals (London and Cornell, 1999)Google Scholar.

10. Abst. 3.6.4.

11. Abst. 3.11.1.

12. Abst. 3.4.7.

13. Abst. 3.10.4–5.

14. Plutarch, , Moralia 989cGoogle Scholar.

15. Plutarch, , Moralia 988b–3Google Scholar.

16. Abst. 3.12.4–5; Aristotle, , Hist. An. 608b19–21, 30–5Google Scholar.

17. Abst. 1.33.6.

18. Abst. 3.19.2.