ABSTRACT

In his study of the rigorously anthropocentric character of Greek philosophical thought, cited several times in earlier chapters,1 Robert Renehan isolates, as the capacity which most impressed the Greeks as unique to man alone of animals, the human’s lÒgoj (logos), a term which Renehan proceeds to define, as he considers it to have been employed by the Greeks: “The specific difference which sets man apart from all other mortal animals in this definition is his lÒgoj, his capacity for intellectual activity.”2 The idea that humans possess this unique capacity for intellectual activity became, under the weight of Greek influence upon subsequent thought, what Renehan terms “an accepted commonplace in Western culture.”3 This chapter attempts to assess the senses in which the term logos was applied by the Greeks to refer to human intellectual activity; to understand why the Greeks considered logos to be unique to human beings; to determine what intellectual faculties non-human animals were considered to have possessed in lieu of logos; and to determine why some Greek thinkers denied the proposition that man alone of animals possesses logos, and maintained that the possession of logos might not in fact be advantageous in all aspects of a creature’s life. The chapter includes a reexamination of two modern survivals of the claim that man alone of animals is rational, viewed now beside the ancient case for humankind’s unique rationality set forth in the chapter. We introduced at the outset of this study the contention of philosopher Mortimer Adler that humans differ radically in kind from other animals, and the case developed by bioethicist Wesley J. Smith for “human exceptionalism” that is predicated upon the assumption of human beings’ unique rationality.4 Smith’s goal is to prove that humans’ rationality has significant ethical consequences: rationality, in his view, confers value. The question of the potential connection between rationality and moral status, in ancient and modern thought, is taken up in detail in the next chapter.