“Aesop, Aristotle, and Animals: The Role of Fables in Human Life” by Edward Clayton

In the reading by Edward Clayton, he talks about Aristotle’s comparison of human and animal characteristics and why it is important to understanding the lesson of a fable. Clayton mentions the four ways Aristotle links human and animal characteristics, tame vs. wild, meeting basic human needs, war and desires. Tame vs. wild talks about how it is impossible to classify something as tame or wild, some animals can be tames but they were originally wild and that is where the similarity with humans comes in, humans start off wild but learn to become tames members of society. Meeting basic human needs is self-explanatory but it is not just humans that do this it is as well animals’ making sure that they have what is necessary for survival. War is, as Clayton puts it, “inevitable,” it is the competition and fights that occur within a species, these fights are often held in order to achieve meeting basic human needs. The last way Aristotle compares human characteristics and animal characteristics is with desires, all creatures have desires to do things that bring pleasure to them. It is because of these links in characteristics that fables use animals instead of humans. The readers will make connections between the characteristics of the animals in the fables and the characteristics in themselves, when they do this it makes it possible for the fables message to get across to the reader. “By dramatizing the limits of mere animal nature, fables can inspire efforts to become more human,” this is to say that in order for humans to become better they must see there flaws through the dramatizing the limits of other animals so that they can learn from the mistakes of these animals and take a lesson away from the fable and incorporate it into theirs.

Give it a read:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3wGiBIAGeM_c0FUa1dORzVpLTQ/edit