When Aristotle argued that ‘Man is by nature a political animal’, or Seneca that ‘Man is a reasoning animal’, the emphasis was very much on the idea that man is a part of the natural order ‐ an animal, but an animal which is political and which reasons. These moral and cognitive capacities allow man to rise above the other animals. But given his innately bestial nature, man was seen as subject to the same sorts of instincts and drives as all the other species, and thus always in danger of relapsing to the level of the brutes.
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