Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

by John Gray

Aristotle’s account of ethics is anthropocentric and hierarchical. Though he allows that virtues exist in other animals, he insists that the good life is realized most fully in a few human beings. The human mind most resembles God’s – a divine intellect or nous, the final cause or ‘unmoved mover’ of the universe – and everything that exists is striving to be like God. It follows, for Aristotle, that the human animal is the telos – the end or goal – of the universe. This idea fitted well with Christianity and persisted in popular theories of evolution. Darwin’s theory, however, is altogether different: natural selection has no purpose and the human species has come about by accident. Humans are not ‘better’ than countless extinct species. But Darwin found it hard to stick to this view.7 Today, many of his followers hold to the idea that humans are worth more than other animals, though this makes no sense unless you believe in a cosmic hierarchy of values. In Taoist thought, on the other hand, human beings are in no way special. Like every other creature, they are straw dogs – ceremonial objects that were carefully prepared for rituals, then casually burned. As Lao Tzu puts it, ‘Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs.’8 The universe has no favourites, and the human animal is not its goal. A purposeless process of endless change, the universe has no goal. In the central western tradition, humans rank higher than other animals because human...