The Issue of Animals' Souls within the Anglican Debate in the Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries

The debate on animal souls and the problem of theodicy with respect to animal suffering, a discussion that has been a feature of European thought since the seventeenth century, became the perfect pillar for those philosophies that were born in the wake of scientific discoveries and which aimed to assert the unreasonableness of Christianity. Such philosophies questioned how a good and almighty God could let innocent animals undergo all the evils they endure daily. One solution was to deny to animals feelings and reason; for instance, Descartes’ theory of the animal-machine suggested that animals were unable to feel pleasure and pain, thus safeguarding God as both good and almighty. But alongside this theory alternative solutions were proposed, basically in opposition. Put in these terms, it clearly emerges that this debate arose from a need to redefine the human and not from a real interest in the lives of animals. Even if this debate originated primarily in human concerns over the metaphysical structure of reality, it was in the wake of this discussion that reflection on the status of animals was born in eighteenth and nineteenth-century England and led to social and legal renovation. During this time period, attention shifted from the human to the animal plane, and this led to the development of an ethics inclusive of non-human animals, which were previously considered ‘outside the terms of moral reference’. This work will focus on four books published between 1742 and 1838 that trace the rise of Christian animal ethics. However, first, it is worth noting the cultural milieu in which these texts were written.