Soul of a Dog
Reflections on the Spirits of the Animals of Bedlam Farm
Chapter One
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. —James 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 attributes—including the soul—couldn’t and shouldn’t be attributed to animals.
What made humans distinct from other living things, Aristot ...
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