Soul of a Dog

Soul of a Dog

Dogs and Souls If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons. ÑJames Thurber

Until recently, i’d never spent much time with aristotle, one of the world’s pioneer thinkers. When I finally sat down with him, I found his essays tough going but rewarding; his ideas came as something of a jolt.

Like many of the early philosophers and scholars, Aristotle took a hard, clear line when it came to animals and souls. He exalted the rational being that a human had the potential to become. There was nothing like it, he wrote. A human could develop morality and responsibility. Since animals aren’t widely believed to possess those traits (not even in our contemporary animal-worshipping culture, although that’s changing), he argued that humans had a higher status, that human values and attributesÑincluding the soulÑcouldn’t and shouldn’t be attributed to animals.

What made humans distinct from other living things, Aristotle believed, was that very ability to reason about ethics, to be held morally accountable for their decisions. Our ability to perceive what was right, and to struggle to do right rather than wrong, was our most distinguishing characteristic.
Animals (and children) weren’t able to determine right from wrong, Aristotle believed, and thus existed on a different plane. One could no more attribute human consciousness to animals than to trees.

Religious scholars, sorting out questions of faith and the afterlife, carried these arguments further and codified them. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas established Aristotle’s ideas as part of Christian doctrine, which states clearly that animals, lacking reason, don’t have immortal souls. Animals couldn’t read the Bible, accept God, or worry about heaven and hell. Therefore, they bore no responsibility for their choices. They were beasts, under our control, subordinate.

Mainstream Christianity, writes contemporary theologian Andrew Linzey (who believes that animals do have souls) remains “firmly humanocentric.”

Maybe so, but in the United States at least, the faithful are creating their own animal theology. Society’s broader view of animals has shifted radically. Scientists’ investigations suggest more intelligence and consciousness among animals than Aristotle or Aquinas could have perceived. Animals, particularly dogs and cats, are moving toward the center of our emotional lives. It sometimes seems that our love, even adoration, of animals is approaching the dimensions of religion itself.

Excerpted from Soul of a Dog by Jon Katz Copyright © 2009 by Jon Katz. Excerpted by permission of Villard, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.