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“While ants and bees, and perhaps even wolves, may be more social than human beings, we are by far the most rational of all animals. Just as leopards ought to excel at running if they are to count as good leopards, so human beings ought to excel at reasoning if they are to count as good human beings. If we aim instead to excel at running or jumping or making money, we have not properly understood what it means to be a human being. Thus, of one who boasted of his diving, Aristippus [a student of Socrates] asked, ‘Are you not ashamed to be proud of that which a dolphin can do?” — Neel Burton
While ants and bees, and perhaps even wolves, may be more social than human beings, we are by far the most rational of all animals. Just as leopards ought to excel at running if they are to count as good leopards, so human beings ought to excel at reasoning if they are to count as good human beings. If we aim instead to excel at running or jumping or making money, we have not properly understood what it means to be a human being. Thus, of one who boasted of his diving, Aristippus [a student of Socrates] asked, ‘Are you not ashamed to be proud of that which a dolphin can do?