SUBJECTIVITY OF ANIMALS AND THEIR MORAL STATUS – HISTORICAL ASPECT

Abstract

A man as a conscious and rational being tries to define his place in the universe, himself in relation to the cosmos, absolute, logos and nature. Nowadays, the issue of our relations with animals is becoming particularly important. Historian Dominick LaCapra even stated that the 21st century would be the age of animals[1]. A man uses animals in different ways: he eats their meat, apparels in their skin, uses them as a train force, plays with them at a cost in the circus and experiments in laboratories. It has been this way for centuries, but what seems crucial is that for some time the farms have become massive laboratories far too saturated with the suffering of animals, and the man, despite constant development, has changed little in his relation to animals. The aim of the paper is a brief description of the historical aspects of this phenomenon based on the views of philosophers over the past two thousand years. The analysis begins with the views of ancient philosophers such as Anaxagoras, Pythagoras and Aristotle, through the key concepts of medieval philosophers, first and foremost St. Augustine and Saint Thomas to modern times where attention was drawn to thinkers such as: Leonardo da Vinci, Michel Montaigne, Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, La Mettrie, John Locke, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Artur Schopenhauer or Jeremy Bentham. The considerations are concluded with a brief summary in the form of Darwin's concept.