by Umberto Eco
26. “Fictiones poeticae non sunt ad aliud ordinatae nisi ad significandum” (“Poetic fictions have no other objective but to signify”) and their meaning “non supergreditur modum litteralis sensus” (“Does not go beyond the mode of the literal sense”) (Quodl. VII.6.16, ob. 1 and ad 1).
27. “Nam per voces significatur aliquid proprie et aliquid figurative, nec est letteralis sensus ipsa figura, sed id quod est figuratum” (“For words can signify something properly and something figuratively; in the latter case the literal sense is not the figure of speech itself, but the object it figures”) (S. Th. Ia q.1. a. 10 ad 3).
28. [Translator’s note: The allusion is to the poem Meriggiare pallido e assorto, from twentieth-century poet Eugenio Montale’s first collection of verse Ossi di seppia (1927), which concludes: “E andando nel sole che abbaglia / sentire con triste meraviglia / com’è tutta la vita e il suo travaglio / in questo seguitare una muraglia / che ha in cima cocci aguzzi di bottiglia” (“And walking in the blinding sun / to feel with sad surprise / how the whole of life and its labor / is in this following a high wall / topped with sharp shards of bottle glass”).]
29. “Ad evidentiam itaque dicendorum sciendum est quod istius operis non est simplex sensus, ymo dici potest polisemos, hoc est plurium sensuum; nam primus sensus est qui habetur per litteram, alius est qui habetur per significata per litteram. Et primus dicitur litteralis, secundus vero allegoricus sive moralis sive anagogicus” (“For the elucidation, therefore, of what we have to say, it must be understood that the meaning of this work is not of one kind only: rather the work may be descibed as ‘polysemous,’ that is, having several meanings; for the first meaning is that which is conveyed by the letter, and the next is that which is conveyed by what the letter signifies; the former of which is called literal, while the latter is called allegorical or moral or anagogical”) (Epistole, XIII, 7). Dante Alighieri, Epistole, a cura di Arsenio Frugoni e Giorgio Brugnoli, in Opere minori, tomo II, Milano-Napoli, Riccardo Ricciardi Editore, 1979, p. 611).
30. This and subsequent quotations from the works of Pseudo-Dionysius are from Pseudo-Dionysius 1987. On this sixth-century Greek author, sometimes referred to as Denys or Dennis, and erroneously believed to have been the magistrate of the Athenian Areopagus converted by Saint Paul (Acts, 17, 34), see Rorem 1993.
31. To be precise it is the psalmist who says he is a worm in Psalm 22, 6, though it is possible that an allegorical interpretation might see the psalmist as a prefiguration of Christ.
32. Thomas will comment: “Ostendit quomodo Deo [pulchrum] attribuitur.… Dicit ergo primo quod in Causa prima, scilicet Deo, non sunt dividenda pulchrum et pulchritudo.… Deinde … ostendit qualiter attribuuntur creaturis; et dicit quod in existentibus, pulchrum et pulchritudo distinguuntur secundum participans et participatum, ita quod pulchrum dicitur hoc quod participat pulchritudinem; pulchritudo autem participatio primae Causae quae omnia pulchra facit: pulchritudo enim creaturae nihil est aliud quam similitudo divinae pulchritudinis in rebus participata” (In librum beati Dionysii De divinis nominibus expositio IV, 5: 335 and 337). “He demonstrates how beauty can be attributed to God.… He says first of all that in the First Cause, i.e., in God, the beautiful and beauty are not to be separated.… He then proceeds to demonstrate how they are attributed to creaures; and he says that in existing things the beautiful and beauty are distinguished with respect to participation and participants. Thus, we call something ‘beautiful’ because it is a participant in beauty. Beauty, however, is a participation in the First Cause, which makes all things beautiful. So that the beauty of creatures is simply a likeness of the divine beauty in which things participate” (Eco 1988, p. 27).
33. See, however, the observations of Lo Piparo (2000: 60–61) who criticizes current translations of the beginning of the Categories which define synonymy and homonymy as properties of things and not of names. Owens (1951) would reflect a post-Aristotelian theory of synonymy.
34. A convincing treatment of analogy in Aristotle can still be read in Lyttkens 1952.
35. For an examination of Thomas’s theories on analogy from the point of view of their evolution, see Marmo 1994: 305–320 (with more exhaustive references to the literature on the subject).
36. Which is after all the situation faced by Robinson Crusoe: he sees the footprints in the sand and knows they must have been made by a human being, but he as yet has no inkling that they were left by a particular “savage” whom he will call Friday.
4
The Dog That Barked (and Other Zoosemiotic Archaeologies)
By no means soft on Scholasticism, in his De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (I, 24), Francis Bacon, after reminding us that Scylla had the face and bosom of a young and beautiful woman, points out that she subsequently revealed herself (according to Virgil’s Eclogue VI, 75) “candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris” (“with howling monsters girt about her white waist”).1 Whereupon Bacon goes on to comment that in the writings of the Scholastics one finds concepts appealing at first sight, but which, when you delve more deeply into their distinctions and divisions, rather than proving fertile and capable of generating benefits for human life, “in portentosas et latrantes quaestiones desinunt” (“end in monstrous altercations and barking questions”).2
The Scholastics could never have suspected that at the beginning of the seventeenth century their exquisite quaestiones would be rudely defined as “barking” (latrantes), particularly since, in a number of those quaestiones, they had devoted their respectful and benevolent attention to nothing less than the barking of the dog. What did they have to say on the subject? Did they have anything new to say or did they simply repeat traditional notions handed down from the ancient world?
4.1. Animals from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
4.1.1. The Soul, Rights, and Language of Beasts in Antiquity
In myths and fables animals never quit talking, and these anthropomorphic fantasies reveal how we human beings have always been fascinated by our inscrutable fellow travelers, always at the ready with promises of troubling and illuminating revelations.
As for the philosophers and encyclopedists, a comprehensive survey would take up too much space, and the relevant bibliography is extremely vast. We will therefore confine ourselves to a particular consideration of those arguments that, among the various animals, are concerned with the dog. The comparison between the philosopher and the dog recorded (albeit tongue in cheek) by Plato (Republic II, 375a–376b) is well known. Well-bred dogs are gentle toward their familiars and aggressive toward strangers, and this demonstrates a happy trait in their nature: “your dog is a true philosopher, I venture to say.” The dog can tell a friendly figure from a hostile one purely on the grounds that he is familiar with the one and not the other: How can we deny a certain learning ability to a creature who is able to distinguish friends and strangers simply on the basis of knowledge or ignorance?
The Latin Aristotle makes a distinction between mere sound (sonus) and voice (vox) or utterance, and in De anima (II, 429b) he says that a sound can be defined as a “voice” when it is emitted by an animated being and is significant (semantikos). In any case, animal sounds are not emitted according to convention (they are not symbols, but manifestations of something at a symptomatic level) and they are agrammatoi, that is, not articulate (see, for instance, De interpretatione [On Interpretation] 16a and Poetics 1456b).
We will return to these distinctions later, because they will become central in the medieval debate. Aristotle asserts in his Politics that man is the only animal to possess the faculty of language, but this tells us nothing yet about the animals, because, as we will see, ever since antiquity there have been three recurring problems that crop up in this regard: (i) whether animals have a soul, or at least some form of intelligence; (ii) whether they communicate in some way among themselves and with us; and (iii) whether we should respect their dignity by abstaining from killing them and eating their flesh.
The Aristotelian
texts that discuss point (i) are the subject of widespread debate, because, though Aristotle, in defining the soul as “the first actuality of a natural body possessed of organs” (De anima [On the Soul] II, i, 412b), could not deny a soul to animals, it is often unclear what kind of intelligence he means to attribute to them, given that not only was he clear about the distinction between the sensitive and the rational souls, but he drew distinctions among the intellective qualities of different animal species, without reaching any definitive conclusions (De anima II, 413b–414a).
What is certain is that the Historia animalium (History of Animals) (VIII and IX), for example, claims that many animals exhibit traces of psychic qualities (though these may be merely analogous to those of humans), inasmuch as certain beasts display kindness and courage, timidity, fear, and cunning, and quite often something approaching sagacity—so that at times these virtues appear to differ from those possessed by human beings only in degree. Aristotle even seems to suggest an evolutionary progress (from plant to animal and from animal to man), in which it is not easy to draw lines of demarcation. Some animals do not confine themselves to procreating in a specific season, and, while many devote themselves to providing food for their offspring only to abandon them later, others are endowed with memory and live longer in the company of their young, establishing forms of social collaboration. Still others are capable of giving or receiving instructions, both in their intraspecies relationships as well as with humans, whose commands they appear to understand. The Metaphysics (A, 1) states that animals are naturally endowed with sensation, but the more intelligent ones are those in which sensation gives rise to memory, and it is they who are more apt to learn than those without the ability to remember (and this is where the dog comes in). All animals unable to hear sounds (the bee, for instance) may be intelligent, but they lack the ability to learn, while those that possess, in addition to memory, the sense of hearing (see also the Posterior Analytics II, 19) are able to learn. Finally, in the Nicomachean Ethics (VI, 7, 1141a), Aristotle declares that, since it can remember the past, the superior animal is capable of foreseeing its future needs.
In the Dictionary of the History of Ideas entry on “Theriophily” by George Boas (1973–1974), the citations range from Anaxagoras to Diogenes, from Democritus to Xenophon, from Philemon to Menander and Aristophanes, not to mention Theophrastus. But it is the notion of love or admiration for the animal world that is too sweeping.
Among Stoics, Academicians, and Epicureans, a debate had arisen about the possibility of an animal logos, for which the Stoic fragments offer plenty of evidence, though it is often contradictory (for a synthesis, see Pohlenz 1948–1955: I and II). The Stoics distinguish between a logos endiathetos, internally configured, that is, and a logos prophorikos, capable of manifesting itself externally. Now, whereas for Epicurus the difference between an animal voice (vox) and a human voice was simply one of degree, for the Stoics names are imposed by an explicit decision on the part of a rational mind, and therefore the various abilities attributable to animals are merely the consequence of an innate instinct of self-preservation. Along the same lines, Seneca (Ad Lucilium epistulae morales, III, cxxi) will remind us that animals are conscious of their own makeup, which explains their various abilities, and they have innate knowledge, but they are not endowed with reason.3 The adherents of the New Academy on the other hand professed more indulgent opinions with regard to the intellectual capacities of animals.
But it is precisely in the context of the Stoic debate that an argument comes to the fore, unanimously attributed to Chrysippus, and destined for great popularity. We will cite two versions of it.4 The one that is more famous today and more frequently quoted is that in Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism (I, 69):
And according to Chrysippus, who shows special interest in irrational animals, the dog even shares in the far-famed “Dialectic.” This person, at any rate, declares that the dog makes use of the fifth complex indemonstrable syllogism when, on arriving at a spot where three ways meet, after smelling at the two roads by which the quarry did not pass, he rushes off at once by the third without stopping to smell. For, says the old writer, the dog implicitly reasons thus: “The creature went either by this road, or by that, or by the other: but it did not go by this road or by that: therefore it went by the other.”5
Sextus assumes, with respect to Chrysippus’s argument, a position closer to that of the Academicians (as will Porphyry in his De Abstinentia [On Abstinence from Killing Animals], in open polemic with the Stoics). Sextus reminds us in fact (again in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 65–77) that, through its behavior, the dog displays further aptitude for reflection and comprehension: it is able to choose between foods that are good for it and foods that are harmful; it is able to procure its food by hunting; it recognizes people’s merits by wagging its tail when it sees those with whom it is familiar and darting at strangers (it can therefore distinguish between right and wrong); it often shows prudence; and, finally, since it is capable of understanding its own passions and of mitigating them, it is able to remove its own splinters and clean its wounds, it knows it must keep the wounded limb immobile, and it can identify the herbs that will alleviate its pain. Thus, it shows that it possesses a logos. It is true that we do not understand the words of the animals, but then, we don’t understand the words of the barbarians either, who can assuredly speak; and therefore it is not absurd to believe that animals speak. And dogs certainly make different sounds in different circumstances.
But the information provided by Sextus does not appear till the second and third century A.D., while the discussion goes back somewhat earlier. It appears, for example, in the first century A.D. in the dialogue De animalibus (On Animals) of Philo of Alexandria. Philo’s brother Alexander speaks in favor of animal intelligence, citing in fact the classical example:
A hound was in pursuit of a beast. When it came to a deep [ditch] which had two trails beside it—one to the right and the other to the left, and having but a short distance yet to go, it deliberated which way would be worth taking. Going to the right and finding no trace, it returned and took the other. Since there was no clearly perceptible mark there either, with no further scenting it jumped into the [ditch] to track down hastily. This was not achieved by chance but rather by deliberation of the mind. The logicians call this thoughtful reckoning “the fifth complex indemonstrable syllogism”: for the beast might have escaped either to the right or to the left or else may have leaped. (De animalibus 45)6
In point of fact, for Chrysippus all the argument proved was that the instinctive behavior of animals prefigured a logical behavior, and in the dialogue Philo follows the Stoic line, polemically responding to Alexander:
Even the assertion of those who think that hounds track by making use of the fifth mode of syllogism is to be dismissed. The same could be said of those who gather clams or any other thing which moves. That they seem to follow a definite pattern is only logical speculation on the part of those who have no sense of philosophy, not even in dreams. Then one has to say that all who are in search of something are making use of the fifth mode of syllogism! These and other similar assertions are delusive fantasies of those more accustomed to the plausibility and sophistry of matters than to the discipline of examining the truth.
We agree that there are some decent and good qualities which are applicable to animals and many other functions which help preserve and maintain their courage; these are observed by sight. There is certainty in everything perceived or discerned in all the various species. But surely animals have no share of reasoning ability, for reasoning ability extends itself to a multiplicity of abstract concepts in the mind’s perception of God, the universe, laws, provincial practices, the state, state affairs, and numerous other things, none of which animals understand. (De animalibus, 84–85)7
One of the fundamental texts in the polemic has got to be Plutarch’s De sollertia animalium (On the Intelligence of Animals), which appeared at an unspecified
date between 70 and 90 A.D. Plutarch’s position is decidedly anti-Stoical and—like Porphyry’s De abstinentia—is concerned not just with animal intelligence but with the respect we owe animals. Though the original Greek title translates as “Whether Land or Sea Animals Are Cleverer,” and the Latin sollertia is weaker than the Greek phronesis (and tends to suggest a practical intelligence guided by experience), there can be no doubt that Plutarch is endorsing the thesis of animal rationality and polemizing against the doctrines of those who would deny it. Of course animal rationality is imperfect compared with that of humans but—the argument is common throughout the polemic—similar differences also exist among humans. All living beings share sensitivity and imagination and are capable of perception. But we cannot perceive without the participation of reason, because the data perceived may escape our attention unless an intelligent behavior intervenes to highlight and interpret it (what we experience with our eyes and ears does not result in sensations without the involvement of our rational faculties). (This argument is still extremely current in contemporary cognitivism.) If this were not the case, Plutarch argues, it would be impossible to explain why animals not only perceive but also recall their perceptions and deduce from them notions they commit to memory by which to plan actions useful to their survival.8