Animals in Islamic Philosophy: Humility to Nature and The Bounds of Humanity

Philosophers and mystics in the Islamic tradition generally seek to reconcile the innate anthropocentrism of Islamic cosmology with the Aristotelian axiom that humans are animals. Thus, animals are central to the philosophical question of human nature and the justification for an anthropocentric worldview. Animals have also been consistently used by Islamic philosophers from the 8th century to the modern era to push for an ecological ethic of humility in the face of a natural world created by God.