This chapter looks at what kind of foods medieval people ate and what impact on their habits religion had. It then looks closer at what they said about animals as food, but also looks at perhaps the most important aspect of medieval food ethics, namely, the moral aspect of eating itself. This is foremost governed by the virtue of fasting and the vice, or even deadly sin, of gluttony.
In this paper I argue that the famous problems of dualism between mind (soul) and body, that is, the problems of interaction and unification, concerned philosophers already in a medieval Aristotelian tradition. The problems, although traceable earlier, become particularly visible after William Ockham in the early fourteenth century, and in formulating his own position on the animal and human souls I argue that Buridan realized these problems and laid down the only views on the soul he thought to be possible in an Aristotelian framework. His discussion then sets the stage for the following centuries. In presenting the background to Buridan's discussion I treat Aquinas, Ockham, Walter Chatton and Adam Wodeham
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