Ass Semantics

In my book, Introducing the Medieval Ass (shameless plug), I note the ass’s versatility in that during the Middle Ages the beast of burden was many things to many people – stubborn, steadfast, foolish, irrational, hard-working, holy, through its association with Christ – and by calling someone an ass any one of those attributes could be applied to people. Peter Abelard, the twelfth-century philosopher, called Socrates (the ancient Greek philosopher) an ass. He didn’t mean the sleight intentionally (i.e., he didn’t think that Socrates was a foolish or irrational person); rather, he was using Socrates as an example to make his point about a philosophical argument (Realism). In comparing Socrates (a human) with an ass named Brunellus (an animal) and arguing that both man and ass are rational and irrational beings, his aim was to show the absurdity of his rivals’ stance on Realism. Without getting into any more details about this semantic argument, the point to take from this is that Abelard took the ass’s reputation for irrationality and applied it to Socrates.