ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines one of the deeply influential ways in which the human subject has been constituted historically: as the suppression of other animals. For this concept, the human is only in relation to the animal that it is not. The Greek world into which Diogenes, Plato, and Aristotle were born was a world of poetic myth, where the received wisdom tending beyond the strictly practical was largely transmitted through the memorization and recitation of myths in poetic form. Poets stand in an important position of authority on matters human, animal, and divine, and perhaps among them none stand taller than Homer. Sacrifices serve a vital role in the world of poetic myth. Plato is taken to stand at the head of the Western tradition of political thought as a kind of founding father. Perhaps more than either Homer or Plato, it is Aristotle who has given us the most lasting conception of the human being as a political agent.
