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Is Animal Suffering Evil? A Thomistic Perspective

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Notes

  1. Recent monographs include Christopher Southgate, The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008); Michael Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Nicola Hoggard Creegan, Animal Suffering and the Problem of Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Trent Dougherty, The Problem of Animal Pain: A Theodicy for All Creatures Great and Small (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014).

  2. William L. Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16, no.4 (October 1979): 335.

  3. Ibid., 337.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, 41–72.

  6. Murray, 42 (emphasis in original).

  7. Robert Francescotti, “The Problem of Animal Pain and Suffering,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Problem of Evil, ed. Justin P. McBrayer and Daniel Howard-Snyder (Somerset: John Wiley and Sons, 2013), 125.

  8. Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” 336.

  9. “The truth is that we are not in a position to prove that (1) is true. We cannot know with certainty that instances of suffering of the sort described in (1) do occur in our world. But it is one thing to know or prove that (1) is true and quite another thing to have rational grounds for believing (1) to be true” (Rowe, 337).

  10. Paul Draper, “Christian Theism and Life on Earth,” in The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, ed. J. B. Stump and A. G. Padgett (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 306–316.

  11. Ibid., 312.

  12. Ibid., 315.

  13. ST I, q. 49, a. 1; all quotes from the ST are from Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, first complete American ed., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947).

  14. ST I, q. 48, a. 3; see also Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de malo (De Malo), q. 1, a. 2.

  15. ST I, q. 48, a. 3.

  16. ST I, q. 48, a. 5, ad. 1.

  17. ST I, q. 48, a. 5; De Malo, q. 1, a. 4.

  18. ST I, q. 48, a. 5; De Malo, q. 1, a. 4.

  19. G. Stanley Kane, “Evil and Privation,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 11, no. 1 (March 1980): 49–51.

  20. Mark Ian Thomas Robson, “Evil, Privation, Depression and Dread,” New Blackfriars 94, no. 1053 (September 2013): 558–561.

  21. ST I-II, q. 35–39.

  22. ST I-II, q. 35, a. 1.

  23. For a brief overview of Aquinas’s understanding of the emotions and how they compare to contemporary views on emotions, see Peter King, “Emotions,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, ed. Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 209–226.

  24. ST I-II, q. 23, a. 2.

  25. ST I, q. 81, a. 2.

  26. ST I-II, q. 36, a. 1.

  27. ST I-II, q. 23, a. 2.

  28. ST I-II, q. 35–39; q. 40, a. 4.

  29. ST I-II, q. 36, a. 1.

  30. ST I-II, q. 35, a. 2.

  31. ST I-II, q. 23, a. 2.

  32. ST I-II, q. 23, a. 1; Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate (De Ver.), q. 25, a. 2.

  33. I borrow this and the following examples (hope, despair, fear, and confidence) used to explain the irascible emotions from King, “Emotions,” 15.

  34. ST I-II, q. 39, a. 1.

  35. ST I-II, q. 40, a. 8, ad. 3.

  36. ST I-II, q. 44, a. 4.

  37. Roughly similar to the four aspects described in J. D. Loeser, “Perspectives on Pain,” in Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics: Proceedings of Plenary Lectures Symposia and Therapeutic Sessions of the First World Conference on Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics London, UK, 3–9 August 1980, eds. P. Turner, C. Padgham, and A. Hedges (New York: MacMillan Publishers, 1980), 313; and Serge Marchand, The Phenomenon of Pain (Seattle: IASP Press, 2012), 12.

  38. Marchand, The Phenomenon of Pain, 12.

  39. Colin Klein, What the Body Commands: The Imperative Theory of Pain (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015), 57.

  40. A. D. Craig, “A New View of Pain as a Homeostatic Emotion,” Trends in Neurosciences 26, no. 6 (June 2003): 303–307.

  41. For a survey of views entailing that all pains are unpleasant, see Adam Swenson, “Pain and Value” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2006), 18–26.

  42. R. M. Hare and P. L. Gardiner, “Pain and Evil,” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 38, no. 1 (1964): 97.

  43. For examples of arguments supporting the distinction between pain and suffering, see Klein, What the Body Commands, 49–55.

  44. See Klein, 186–188.

  45. Manolo Martinez, “Imperative Content and the Painfulness of Pain,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 10, no. 1 (March 2011): 76.

  46. Klein, 188.

  47. Edmund T. Rolls, Emotion and Decision-Making Explained (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 14; See also A.D. Craig, “Interoception and Emotion: A Neuroanatomical Perspective,” in Handbook of Emotions, 3rd ed., eds. Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman Barrett (New York: The Guilford Press, 2008), 272–274.

  48. Rolls, Emotion and Decision-Making Explained, 14.

  49. Ibid., 16.

  50. Ibid., 15.

  51. George A. Bonanno, Laura Goorin, and Karin G. Coifman, “Sadness and Grief,” in Handbook of Emotions, 3rd ed., eds. Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman Barrett (New York: The Guilford Press, 2008), 799. See Dacher Keltner and Ann M. Kring, “Emotion, Social Function, and Psychopathology,” Review of General Psychology 2, no. 3 (September 1998): 324.

  52. Bonanno, Goorin, and Coifman, “Sadness and Grief,” 799. See Richard S. Lazarus, Emotion and Adaptation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 251.

  53. Bonanno, Goorin, and Coifman, 799. See Norbert Schwarz, “Warmer and More Social: Recent Developments in Cognitive Social Psychology,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 245.

  54. Arne Öhman and Susan Mineka, “Fears, Phobias, and Preparedness: Toward an Evolved Module of Fear and Fear Learning,” Psychological Review 108, no. 3 (July 2001): 483.

  55. Peter J. Lang, Michael Davis, and Arne Öhman, “Fear and Anxiety: Animal Models and Human Cognitive Psychophysiology,” Journal of Affective Disorders 61, no. 3 (December 2000): 139.

  56. Öhman and Mineka, “Fears, Phobias, and Preparedness,” 486–487.

  57. Nicholas B. Allen and Paul B. T. Badcock, “Darwinian Models of Depression: A Review of Evolutionary Accounts of Mood and Mood Disorders,” Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry 30, no. 5 (July 2006): 819.

  58. Sherry Anders, Midori Tanaka, and Dennis K. Kinney, “Depression as an Evolutionary Strategy for Defense Against Infection,” Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 31 (2013): 9–22.

  59. ST I, q. 5, a. 1; De Ver., q. 21, a. 2.

  60. For example, see Elna M. Nagasako, Anne Louise Oaklander, and Robert H. Dworkin, “Congenital Insensitivity to Pain: An Update,” Pain 101, no. 3 (February 2003), 213–219.

  61. Marchand, 8.

  62. Ibid.

  63. ST I-II, q. 39, a. 1.

  64. ST I-II, q. 37, a. 1.

  65. Bill Anglin and Stewart Goetz, “Evil is Privation,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13, no. 1 (March 1982): 5.

  66. Ibid., 7.

  67. Adam Swenson, “Pain’s Evils,” Utilitas 21, no. 2 (June 2009): 208–216.

  68. Ibid., 210–211.

  69. Ibid., 208–209.

  70. For examples see Peter Harrison, “Theodicy and Animal Pain,” Philosophy 64, no. 247 (January 1989): 79–92; Peter Harrison, “Do Animals Feel Pain?” Philosophy 66, no. 255 (January 1991): 25–40; and Murray, 41–69.

  71. For examples see Robert Wennberg, “Animal Suffering and the Problem of Evil,” Christian Scholar’s Review 21, no. 2 (1991): 120–140; Joseph J. Lynch, “Harrison and Hick on God and Animal Pain,” Sophia 33, no. 3 (November 1994): 63–68; and Francescotti, “The Problem of Animal Pain and Suffering,” 117–121.

  72. Francescotti, 120 (emphasis in original).

  73. Ibid., 126.

  74. ST III, q. 1, a. 1.

  75. ST I-II, q. 91, a. 1–2; SCG III, c. 114.

  76. For a more detailed discussion of Aquinas’s writings regarding God’s purpose for creating, see B. Kyle Keltz, “God’s Purpose for the Universe and the Problem of Animal Suffering,” Sophia (2017), https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-017-0611-z.

  77. De Malo, q. 5, a. 5.

  78. ST I, q. 25, a. 6, ad 3.

  79. For example, see C. John Collins, Genesis 1–4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing Company, 2006), 164–165.

  80. This is true regardless of whether death existed before Adam and Eve sinned or not.

  81. Another objection might be that there were no humans around for millions of years while non-human animals were suffering, and this likely included a lot of physiologically pointless pain and suffering. However, the Bible includes passages such as Job 38:7 indicating that angels enjoy viewing God’s creation. Thus, physiologically pointless pain could still have served a purpose for communicating God’s goodness even in times when humans did not exist. This makes it so that it cannot be said that Christian theism precludes a world in which God allows non-human animal pain and suffering before humans exist.

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Keltz, B.K. Is Animal Suffering Evil? A Thomistic Perspective. J Value Inquiry 54, 1–19 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-019-09680-x

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