The Rational Animal: A Rereading of Gregory of Nyssa's De hominis opificio

1999 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Behr
Keyword(s):  
Rational Animal ◽  
De Hominis Opificio

Cultivation as Immanent Critique: Horticultural Metaphors in Gregory of Nyssa’s Reception of Origen and Basil

Open Theology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 388-400
Author(s):  
Taylor Ross
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Basic Premise ◽  
Natural Development ◽  
Origen Of Alexandria ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
De Hominis Opificio

Abstract The present article asks after Gregory of Nyssa’s debts to Basil the Great, and this by re-examining two texts the former wrote shortly after the latter’s death: De hominis opificio and Apologia in Hexaemeron. It does so on the premise, mostly promissory for now, that Gregory’s efforts to sort through Basil’s legacy in his late brother’s wake was part and parcel of the Nyssen’s career-long project to reprise Origen of Alexandria under a “pro-Nicene” banner. Defending his elder sibling’s apparently incomplete Homiliae in Hexameron while also disputing their basic premise, that is, gave Gregory an opportunity to negotiate the dialectic of dependence and distinction that ultimately determined his reception of earlier authorities, including the great Alexandrian they both revered. With that much longer story in sight, this article focuses on Gregory’s deployment of horticultural metaphors, especially in the Apologia in Hexaemeron, to describe his stance toward both Basil and Origen. Closer scrutiny of these images alongside his more technical means of differentiating between himself and Basil suggests that Gregory considered his own work to be both a natural development of his predecessors and, precisely thereby, the immanent perfection of their thought.

The Distinctive Unity of the Human Being in Aquinas

2021 ◽  
pp. 580-595
Author(s):  
Therese Scarpelli Cory
Keyword(s):  
Human Being ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Rational Animal ◽  
The Core ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores the fundamental vision of the human being at the core of Aquinas’ anthropology. Aquinas has typically been construed as defending a fundamentally ‘Aristotelian’ vision of the human being. I show that this label has generated a skewed reading of Aquinas. Accordingly, this chapter does not lay claim to identify what it would take for an anthropology to be authentically ‘Thomistic’. Instead, it makes a proposal concerning what I argue is the ‘guiding vision’ of Aquinas’ anthropology: namely the ‘distinctive unity of the human’. Aquinas prioritizes this notion of distinctive unity in the different areas of his anthropology. I explore how this distinctive unity is expressed (a) in Aquinas’ account of the human soul as the ‘horizon’ of the bodily and spiritual worlds, and (b) in his definition of the human being as ‘rational animal’.

Biology and the rational animal

The Sciences ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 7 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 28-32
Author(s):  
JOSHUA LEDERBERG
Keyword(s):  
Rational Animal

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Angela Dalle Vacche
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Irrational Belief ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Rational Animal ◽  
Automatic Response

Bazin’s work explores a key question: What is a human, in contrast to an animal, a plant, an object or a machine? A human is simultaneously a rational animal and an irrational being. Human irrationality can lead to cruelty and madness unless it becomes creativity through art, or it turns into spirituality through irrational belief. Well aware that a human being can reduce the Other to an animal or an object, Bazin’s anti-anthropocentric ethos upholds empathy and coexistence. At the same time, Bazin approves of the anthropomorphic nature of human perception. For him, anthropomorphism is an automatic response that taps into the unavoidable contiguity of humans, animals, and things. Notorious for his dislike of Soviet montage, Bazin’s essays on children’s fairy tales, animal documentaries, and Robert Montgomery’s Lady in The Lake (1947) prove that, in his film theory, editing is as important as camera movement in filmmaking.

Defining Man as Animal Religiosum in English Religious Writing ca. 1650–ca. 1700

2019 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 925-952 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. W. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Rational Animal ◽  
Cambridge Platonism ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Subsequent Incorporation ◽  
The Continuum

This article surveys the emergence and usage of the redefinition of man not as animal rationale (rational animal) but as animal religiosum (religious animal) by numerous English theologians between 1650 and 1700. Across the continuum of English Protestant thought, human nature was being redescribed as unique due to its religious, not primarily its rational, capabilities. This article charts said appearance as a contribution to debates over man's relationship with God; then its subsequent incorporation into the discussion over the theological consequences of arguments in favor of animal rationality, as well as its uses in anti-atheist apologetics; and then the sudden disappearance of the definition of man as animal religiosum at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In doing so, the article hopes to make a useful contribution to our understanding of changing early modern understandings of human nature by reasserting the significance of theological writing in the dispute over the relationship between humans and beasts. As a consequence, it offers a more wide-ranging account of man as animal religiosum than the current focus on “Cambridge Platonism” and “Latitudinarianism” allows.

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