QuestionsDo animals matter as much as we do?Nature makes plants for animals and animals for man
Do animals matter as much as we do?Humans first

Nature makes plants for animals and animals for man

The natural order: animals for man

Aristotle 384 BC · 322 BCObserve, classify, reason: happiness through virtue.
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What it claims

Nature has made all animals for man: using them for food, clothing and tools, and hunting wild beasts, accords with the natural order and does them no injustice.

Why

Nature makes nothing in vain: if plants feed animals and animals serve man, nature must have made them for that.

The same idea through history
Augustine of Hippo426In The City of God, Augustine reads "Thou shalt not kill" as aimed at man alone: plants have no sensation, beasts have no reason and form no society with us. Their life and death are therefore "subjected to our use" by the just appointment of the Creator. The same result as Aristotle, on a different basis: a creator God rather than a nature that makes nothing in vain.
In short

"Nature makes plants for animals and animals for man" is an argument by Aristotle (Politics I, 8 (1256b)) on the question "Do animals matter as much as we do?" (answer: humans first). Its claim: Nature has made all animals for man: using them for food, clothing and tools, and hunting wild beasts, accords with the natural order and does them no injustice. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4, P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Politics I, 8 (1256b)
Valid with an implicit premise

For Aristotle, everything in nature has a purpose. He sees an order: young animals have milk or an egg to feed on, grown animals find plants, and humans find in animals food, clothing and working strength. He concludes that plants are made for animals and animals for man. Using them is therefore not against nature: it follows nature. This idea shaped centuries of thinking about animals; we present it as its defenders understand it, with the objections it has met.

P1Nature makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain: each thing it produces has a purpose.
P2Nature gives each animal its food, first through milk or the egg, then through what the earth produces: so we must believe that plants exist for the sake of animals.
P3Tame animals serve and feed man; wild animals, for the most part, give him food, clothing and tools.
P4 · implicit premiseWhen a whole set of things regularly serves one being, this is no accident: nature made them for that use.
P5 · implicit premiseWhat nature has made for a being may be used by that being without wronging what is used.
Therefore nature has made all animals for man: using them for food, clothing and tools, and hunting wild beasts, accords with the natural order and does them no injustice.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where nature makes nothing in vain, animals serve man, and yet they were not made for him: the use would be a mere effect of chance or adaptation.
The argument is valid with both hidden premises. P4 moves from "this serves" to "this was made to serve": it is the decisive premise and the most attacked. P5 moves from "made for" to "may be used without injustice": Aristotle does not state it in so many words, but he writes that hunting beasts is "naturally just".
Analogy. In a house, the kitchen, the bedrooms and the garden fit one another: the vegetable patch feeds the kitchen, the kitchen feeds the family. Aristotle sees nature as a large house where each floor serves the one above.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

L
Lucretius 55 BC · attacks premise 4

Lucretius, for whom the world arose without design, writes that the nature of the world was in no way created for us by divine power, so great are its faults. That things serve us does not prove they were made for us.

a defender replies
Balbus, spokesman for the Stoics (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods) defender of the argument · 45 BC
The Stoic Balbus defends the same idea and argues from use: wheat, vine and olive benefit only man, who alone knows how to sow, cultivate and store; sheep serve no other purpose than to provide wool; the dog's fidelity shows he was born to serve. Beasts that take a share of the grain do so "by stealth".
Michel de Montaigne 1580 · attacks premise 4

In the Apology for Raymond Sebond, Montaigne asks who persuaded man that the admirable motion of the celestial vault, the light of the stars and the movements of the sea were established for his service. He finds it ridiculous that this "miserable and wretched creature" should call himself "master and emperor of the world": it is presumption, not proof.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1580, after the author's death (-322).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Montaigne does not name Aristotle, but targets the idea that the universe is made for man. Aristotle's defenders can answer that the argument is not about the sky but about what nature gives living things: plants, beasts, food. Open point.
Jeremy Bentham 1789 · attacks premise 5

Bentham says the question is not whether animals can reason or talk, but whether they can suffer. If they can, that a thing was "made for us" takes nothing from the pain we cause it: the use is not thereby just.

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1789, after the author's death (-322).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the objection does not dispute the order of purposes but the step from "made for" to "without injustice" (P5). Aristotle does not examine animal suffering in this passage; he ties the right to use animals to their place in the natural order. The two positions start from different criteria (place in nature, capacity to suffer).