NML

• The hierarchy of souls

  A) sensitive

  B) rational

  C) reason

  
• In this hierarchy, the ability of animals to have sense perception and to move means that they are able to make use of plants as a food supply for nutrition and growth. Equally, Aquinas follows Aristotle in assuming that humans, at the top of this hierarchy, have the same right in relation to animals. Animals were created, in Aquinas’ view, for any use to which humans choose to put them.
• Animals have instrumental value only, meaning that they exist for the sake of the humans that use them.
• Aquinas


  “There is no sin in using a thing for the purpose for which it is made. Wherefore it is not unlawful if man use plants for the good of animals, and animals for the good of man...''
• Aquinas goes on to say...

  ‘He that kills another’s ox, sins, not through killing the ox, but through injuring another man in his property. Wherefore this is not a species of the sin of murder but of the sin of theft or robbery.
• It could be argued that it is difficult to see a rational justification for Aquinas’ view. For a start he relies on Aristotle’s account of the hierarchy of souls, according to which all souls have a final end, in which case it must be wrong to interfere with that final end.
• Barad


  ''An animal’s capacities have value independent of their usefulness to human beings.”
• Applying the Primary Precepts

  Worship God - dominion vs stewardship..

  LPIAOS - is the natural order