Even the Middle Ages, which condemned and punished animals in due form, was in this way much closer to them than we are. They held them to be guilty: which was a way of honoring them. We take them for nothing, and it is on this basis that we are "human" with them. Jean Baudrillard
About This Quote

In the Middle Ages, people believed that animals were innocent of wrongdoing and deserving of compassion. In this way, they were treated differently from humans. In the Middle Ages, animals were not considered to be human; rather, they were considered beings that possessed human-like characteristics. Animals were held to be guilty but not like humans since they didn’t possess the capacity for evil—rather, they were held to be thoughtless and innocent. Today, however, we consider them to be somehow less than human; they are thoughtless and innocent but somehow also guilty.

Source: Simulacra And Simulation

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