![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Animals – both tame and wild, as metaphors and as real presences – populate many of More’s works. In this essay, I show that, from the early Psychodia Platonica to the Divine Dialogues, animals are at the core of key metaphysical issues that reverberate on the levels of psychology and ethics. In particular I discuss three main aspects: (1) the role of animals in More’s critique of atheism, both as safeguard for the body–soul interaction and as proofs of divine providence in nature; (2) the problem of evil in the universe, and how to justify the existence of ‘evil’ animals in particular; (3) the differentiation between animals and humans, especially on the basis of their respective possibility of attaining happiness. In all three cases, I argue that More attempts to ‘tame’ the nature of animals, and yet that he is aware that ‘animality’ remains partly untamed.
Acknowledgements
A draft version of this essay was presented at the conference Henry More (1614–1687). A Conference to Mark the Fourth Centenary of his Birth, The Warburg Institute, 5 December 2014. I wish to thank the organizers, Guido Giglioni and Sarah Huttton, as well as all participants for their useful comments. I also wish to thank two anonymous referees and the Guest Editor, Sarah Hutton, for providing insightful comments.
Notes
1 A famous interpretation is that provided by Cottingham, ‘A Brute to the Brutes?’, 551–9.
2 Descartes to More, 5 February 1649 in Descartes, Philosophical Writings, vol. 3: The Correspondence, 366 (see also Œuvres, vol. 5, 279; and Correspondence, 53).
3 See Wilson, Ideas and Mechanism, 502. The portrait of More as gentle towards animals stems from Ward, The Life of Henry More, 58–9:
his Kindness went so low as to the very Beasts; Who had the least (he said) and worst of it. And he abhorr’d that Cruelty and Stupidity of Temper with which over-many are apt to treat the Animals of whatsoever kind.
4 An overview of the More–Descartes controversy on animals is presented by Cohen in Correspondence. See also Wilson, Ideas and Mechanism, 495–512; Reid, The Metaphysics of Henry More, 240, 365–6; Gabbey, ‘More and the Limits of Mechanism’, 19–35; Crocker, Henry More (1614–1687): A Biography of the Cambridge Platonist, 66–8; and Hall, Henry More and the Scientific Revolution, 124, 154.
5 See Reid, The Metaphysics of Henry More, 366. On the ethical implications of More’s position, see Muratori, ‘Henry More on Human Passions and Animal Souls’.
6 Descartes to More, 5 February 1649 (Œuvres, vol. 5, 275). On this letter, see Gabbey, ‘Henry More lecteur de Descartes: Philosophie naturelle et apologétique’, 363–4.
7 See on this Hatfield, ‘Animals’, 404, and Hatfield’s entry ‘Animal’ in The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, 19–26.
8 On animals as self-movers, see Des Chene, Spirits and Clocks, 13–14.
9 See Leech, The Hammer of the Cartesians. More’s critique to Cartesianism stemmed from deep knowledge of Descartes’ work: see Henry, ‘Henry More’s Materialism’, 173; and Webster, ‘Henry More and Descartes’.
10 It is important to remember that for More both corporeal and spiritual substances are extended: see Gabbey, ‘Philosophia Cartesiana Triumphata: Henry More (1646–1671)’, 192.
11 Henry, ‘A Cambridge Platonist’s Materialism’, 176. See also Henry, ‘Henry More’.
12 More to Descartes, 11 December 1649, translated in Correspondence, 51. On this, see also Gabbey, ‘Philosophia Cartesiana Triumphata’, 217.
13 Correspondence, 51. On animal souls according to Plato, see Carpenter, ‘Embodying Intelligence’.
14 On Gómez Pereira’s position, see Muratori ‘Between Machinery and Rationality’. In a letter to Mersenne Descartes denied knowledge of Gómez Pereira’s work (Descartes to Mersenne, 23 June 1641, in Œuvres, vol. 3, 386).
15 See Campanella, Del senso delle cose, 19. On Campanella’s views about animals, see Ernst, ‘L’analogia e la differenza.’
16 On Taurellus’ position on animals, see Muratori, ‘Seelentheorien nördlich und südlich der Alpen'.
17 Taurellus, De vita et morte libellus, G3v: ‘Nam animae brutarum animantium nequaquam a morte supersunt’.
18 Taurellus, De vita et morte libellus, G4v: ‘Animalia vero bruta propter hominem facta sunt’.
19 But see also Antidote (Appendix), 178: ‘Onely we will adde, That if the Souls of Brutes prove immortal (which the best Philosophers have not been averse from) the Tragedy is still less horrid’.
20 The same argument is used in the case of plants: Antidote, 59.
21 For a thorough discussion of More's engagement with Cardano, see Hutton, ‘Henry More and Girolamo Cardano’.
22 Girolamo Cardano, De subtilitate, 524 and 550a. See Giglioni’s analysis of teleology in Cardano in ‘Humans, Elephants, Diamonds and Gold’, 248–9. On the afterlives of Cardano’s conception of the animals’ happy life, see Muratori, ‘From Animal Happiness to Human Unhappiness’, 187–92.
23 See Menely, The Animal Claim, 111, where the author quotes from the Appendix to An Antidote in which More discusses the ‘false principle, That the World was made for man alone’ (see Antidote [Appendix], 178).
24 Cardano, De subtilitate, 550a: ‘Quaeres, cui tandem usui musca? […] Respondeo, animal ipsum ut specie ipsa manet, et per se solum, et ad ornatum mundi esse, et omnia sibi necessaria, non solum ad vitam, sed ad beatam vitam sortitum esse’.
25 ‘Evil’ is ‘malum’ in the original Latin version (More, Enchiridion ethicum, 18).
26 More, ΨΥΧΩΔΙΑ Platonica, or A Platonicall Song of the Soul, Book 1. 67–8, pp. 33–4. For an overview, see Nicolson, ‘More’s Psychozoia’.
27 Divine Dialogues, 239: ‘As the Fire will burn if it take hold, though to the consumption of a whole Forest, notwithstanding the Wood never did the Fire any hurt’.
28 Divine Dialogues, 238: ‘Judge then what this foolish pity of ever sparing them would bring upon men. They would multiply so fast, that they would die for famine and want of food.’ Interestingly, these are arguments still used today in discussions of vegetarianism: see, for instance, on the ‘interests of farmed animals’ in Milligan, Beyond Animal Rights, Chap. 2.
29 See Antidote (Appendix), 178: ‘all these Creatures that are thus a prey to others are their sport and sustenance, and so pleasure others by their death, as well as enjoy themselves while they are yet in life and free from their enemy.’
30 See Divine Dialogues, 359, on ‘philosophical happiness’, defined as ‘a very small accession to that Moral Happiness, which is common to all men’.
31 Crocker, Henry More (1614–1687), 121, 143–4. See also Walker’s interpretation of this episode in The Decline of Hell: Sixteenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment, 128.
32 Pauli, Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a., vol. IV, part II (1953–1954), 218, 290 (and 480 on Fierz’s plan to publish a study of More).