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This question emerges in many contexts including that involving the decision to have children which is for obvious reasons connected with instinct and its imperative to reproduce the species. The responsibility we are referring to here though is obviously connected to the needs of the child which include providing for their physiological needs so necessary to keep them alive but also their security, love and belongingness needs, self-esteem needs as well as cognitive and aesthetic needs. We are the human form of psuché, and therefore, so many of our needs and desires are connected to the communal/social form of life necessary to provide the conditions for fulfilling these complex needs and desires. Aristotle pointed out that the community needs to be larger than the village if it is to be relatively self sufficient and provide a reasonable quality of life for its inhabitants. Size, however, is not the only condition for self-sufficiency: there ought also to be regulation of the community in the form of humanistically oriented laws and a peaceful relation with other communities.
The human form of psuché needs to develop a number of powers if it is to be able to create and maintain such a self sufficient community that allows needs to be met as well as a certain amount of freedom to choose the kind of life one desires to live.Ancient Greece was the model we in the West imitated and the matrix of ideas the community was built upon included areté (doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) arché (principles or laws), diké ( justice), epistemé (knowledge), techné ( art and crafts), aletheia (truth), phronesis ( practical wisdom) philosophia–(filia, sofie: love of wisdom). These ideas emerged from the powers the human form of psuché possessed and exercised during the course of their lifetime. Aristotle attempted to provide an essence specifying definition of this form of life and its powers in the following terms:
“Rational animal capable of discourse”
Rationality and the role of discourse in the social-life of the polis were broadly conceived by Aristotle and incorporated concern for the above matrix of ideas in the context of a form of life he described using the term eudaimonia which is best translated as “good-spirited flourishing life.” Religion, in this kind of hylomorphic account was kept at arms length without being dismissed and God was conceived as a pure form possessing the qualities of eternal life and the power of thinking about thinking. Human life was finite possessing a language with a subject predicate structure permitting us at best to think something about something and also to think about ourselves as phenomena subject to particular categories of thought which in turn can be regulated by Reason and its principles( arché) of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. We can according to Kant and perhaps also Aristotle, think or speak indirectly about what the Ancient Greeks thought to be pure form and Kant thought to be things in themselves that underlie our experience of these things. Our powers are obviously manifold and combined are capable of providing us with a glimpse of pure form or things in themselves, but they are not, according to Kant sufficient to give us “knowledge” of things in themselves. When we use our powers in the name of the love of wisdom or Philosophy we can at best use the principles underlying our understanding and judgement but not have knowledge of what these principles are in themselves. This fact has traditionally been used by skeptics to prove that there is no such thing as knowledge but such arguments overlook the relationship between finite conceptual thinking and the living activity of thought related to the pure form of the infinite.
According to Kant Practical thought relating to The form of the Good brings us a little closer to some kind of understanding of the pure form of things in themselves when we symbolically express and appreciate phenomena related to the idea of freedom and responsibility that is connected to our moral principles and laws. This brings me to the topic of responsibility in relation to Psuché. Insofar as both the Ancient Greeks and Kant are concerned the concept of life is well defined in the major premise of the well known syllogism: All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, Therefore Socrates is mortal. The major premise, All men are mortal, is in other words, according to Kant a synthetic a priori truth which entails both that one cannot conceive of an immortal Socrates or an Immortal man, i.e. it is a contradiction of the concept of life to believe that there is life after life has ended as has been done in many religions. Death, is a final terminus for every individual man such as Socrates. His memory lives on in the minds of all who become acquainted with his life and deeds but that fact does not in any way mitigate the absolute and final loss of the life of Socrates. It is in virtue of the fact that we are rational animals capable of discourse that we can talk about Socrates: it is for example part of the essence of language to represent objects in their absence. But our third person representation of this form of life does not unfortunately have any consequences insofar as this form of life’s first person consciousness of itself is concerned. That, we know no longer exists and on this account death is more like the Socratic long dreamless sleep than the Christian ascension into a heavenly realm where different human forms of life dwell.
Apart from having children there is a different relation we can have to other species of animals –e.g. animal forms of life such as domestic pets. Upon acquiring a dog, for example, they very rapidly become a family member and given their relatively short span their life draws relatively rapidly to a close. There passing away can be more or less natural. In extreme cases where the quality of their life is diminished by pain and suffering it is left to the owner to decide whether to end the life of the pet. Now whilst quality of life can be estimated by what the animal is and is not able to do, there is nevertheless an element of guesswork involved when it comes to determining the right time for the action of ending the animals life. Animals cannot talk so we do not exactly know whether there is any analogy with humans, who may well wish their life away. Indeed this situation raises the Kantian question as to whether it is a practical contradiction to wish your life away since according to Kant it is a practical contradiction to use a life to take a life. Suicide during the last century used to be accompanied by the following comment upon the death certificate:
“Committed suicide whilst the balance of the mind was disturbed”
Extreme pain and suffering obviously disturbs the balance of the mind temporarily and extended suffering does the same with prhaps more long lasting mental health consequences. Psuché is best translated as form of life but has been both translated as “soul” during the dark ages and in more modern times as “psyche”: a term that the Psychologists of the late 19th century associated with consciousness which Freud refused to regard as the primary psychological phenomenon. Indeed, Freud regarded Consciousness as a vicissitude of instinct and spoke of the latter as belonging to his “Mythology” or foundation of his later theory, extending over the realm of knowledge constituted by three different kinds of sciences which studied our psychological and mental powers in different ways. Accusing Freud of being non-scientific when his theory was forced to range over the theoretical, practical and productive sciences is therefore otiose because his explanations were in accordance with different kinds of principles depending upon which of the sciences he was concerning himself with. Compared with the treatment of mental illness of his time by hospitals Freud’s “talking cure” was regarded as a “moral treatment” : a term that is an astute description of the revolution he brought about for all mentally ill patients. The balance of mind of these patients were clearly disturbed in very many different ways and Freud’s matrix of possible causes provides us with a diagnostic system that complemented well the psychiatric system of the time which attempted to account for all maladies in terms of lesions of the brain or brain anomalies.
Animals may possess the same sensory systems we possess but for us who walk upright on two legs the visual and auditory fields far surpass in power the smell/taste system of animals that appears to tie them to the present moment and the stimuli immediately surrounding them .Our powerful human sensory powers firstly provide us with a memory and language system that is not necessarily tied to the current stimuli in present circumstances, but allows us to think and talk about the past and future using the categories of understanding/judgement and the powers of practical, productive, and theoretical reasoning. These sensory , psychological and mental powers have allowed us to build and create the institutions necessary to maintain civilisations and cultures in which for example, I can attend a play that had been performed in Shakespearean England in the Elizabethan times and correctly interpret the symbolism and metaphorical structure that allows me to appreciate the beauty of an art that sets the truth of beings to work and also allows me to appreciate the sublime moments where the events I am witnessing surpass the power of my imagination and appeal to my intellectual moral powers in experiences of the sublime. Involved in this process is the sublimation my emotions of pity and fear which are embedded in a larger matrix of psuché, areté, diké, arché, epistemé, aletheia, phusis, phronesis and eudamionia. Most of these ideas aim at restoring the balance of the mind as part of the Greek oracles challenge to “know thyself!”
Animals do not have the psychological and mental complexity of humans and are not capable of taking responsibility for their life beyond the strong desire they possess to survive if they are living in the wild. Animals that share our human form of life and live in our homes, however, appear to exhibit an affection for us that comes very close to friendship which both we and they fear to lose. We become their guardians and they for the most pat trust that we will do what is best for them. This is an unproblematic relation for the most at until they begin to age and may be unable to sustain the kind of life they appear to enjoy most filled as it is with movement and play. It is at this point that our responsibility for them can be tested, extending even to making a decision not to allow them to unnecessarily suffer any further. The problem with this lies in this term “suffer”. At which point does the suffering become “too much” so we can apply the oracular proclamation “Nothing too much!” Animals, as Pythagoras rightly claimed are forms of psuché, and ought to be respected given that we too are animals and he objected to dogs, for example, being subjected to cruelty. One of the questions I am raising in this context is an epistemological one: namely, given that we are different species and animals cannot speak and articulate their wants and desires, how do we know when the desire not to suffer any further reaches that point when we can faithfully in the name of our friendship help them to end their lives well (euthanasia). Now in some cases when the animal for example is terminally ill with some disease their suffering becomes evident in their desperate behaviour but the issue is somewhat more problematic when we are dealing with the winding down of the functions of the body associated with old age, especially the reduction of that vital aspect of life, the ability to move. At which point do we say enough pain is enough. Do we even know for certain that the animal is experiencing pain?. There is for example anti-inflammatory medicine and there are injections. Either pain or stiffness may be causing the difficulty of movement the animal is experiencing. We could, of course ,ask a vet, that medically trained animal expert and once the vet begins to doubt whether the animal is leading a meaningful life most people would follow any mediacl recommendation to help the animal die in their sleep. But, one can wonder whether the vets point of view may be fixated in a conceptual framework that fails to appreciate other possible causal factors and treatments such as those related to diet for example, which of course take much longer to implement. A tailored diet would not of course affect the course of any serious diseases but it might give you a few extra months with your ageing four legged best friend. They may not know their life is drawing to a close but we do and this knowledge might make those last few months even more precious.