![]() ![]() “The moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality,” writes Immanuel Kant in “Critique of Practical Reason.” In this assertion, at least, the Western intellectual tradition has been remarkably consistent. It is rationality that gives us dignity, that makes a claim to moral respect that no mere animal can deserve. One difficult thing to face about our animality is that it entails our deaths being an animal is associated throughout philosophy with dying purposelessly, and so with living meaninglessly. (One of us does this better than the other does.) Our shared qualities - the fact that we are both hairy or that we have eyes or we poop, for example - are disconcerting if I am an immortal being created in the image of God and the squirrel just a physical organism, a bundle of instincts. Like a squirrel, I have eyes and ears, scurry about on the ground and occasionally climb a tree. It’s almost as though the existence of animals, and their various similarities to humans, constituted insults. But if we truly believed we were so much better than squirrels, why have we spent thousands of years driving home the point? We can congratulate ourselves on the threat averted. We are conscious, and squirrels, allegedly, are not we are rational, and squirrels are not we are free, and squirrels are not. ![]() ![]() Rationality and self-control, as philosophers underline again and again, give humans a value that squirrels lack (let’s just stick with this species for the time being), a moral status unique to us. The Great Philosopher will, before addressing himself to the deep ethical and metaphysical questions, pause for the conventional, ground-clearing declaration: “I am definitely not a squirrel.” This is evidently something that needs continual emphasizing. The separation of people from, and the superiority of people to, members of other species is a good candidate for the originating idea of Western thought. If one were to read through the prefaces and first paragraphs of the canonical works of Western philosophy, one might assume the discipline’s primary question to be this: What makes us humans so much better than all the other animals? Really, it’s astonishing how relentless this theme is in the whole history of philosophy. ![]()
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