{"id":4408,"date":"2021-12-31T21:15:34","date_gmt":"2021-12-31T21:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=4408"},"modified":"2022-02-01T00:18:41","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T00:18:41","slug":"what-we-give","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/31\/what-we-give\/","title":{"rendered":"What We Give"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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What We Give<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Animals can provide valuable companionship for humans\u2014but can we actually call them our friends?<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Drea Jenkins
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In June of 2020 I graduated from college and moved to Nashville with a carload of clothes, dorm-room decor, and a six-foot cat tree. I moved into one of those soulless young professional apartment complexes with new white walls, new appliances, and new vinyl floors. I had a new job in an office five minutes away, but I never went to the office. The country was thinking about returning to normal, but over the next several months everything stayed locked down. For most of my year in Nashville I was unable to make many new friends because, once people did start coming out again, they really only came out to resume their existing friendships. Instead of making new friends, I spent a lot of time with my cat, Phoebe.<\/p>

Phoebe is an eccentric calico. She has been peculiar her whole life, ever since my family adopted her off the streets when she was a month old. From the beginning she liked to attack moving objects on television screens, and she loved to be carried partially upside down. She would destroy paper and boxes and bite people who were touching her too much. In Nashville I stayed home most of the time and she slept with me and sat with me. When I returned from one of my infrequent trips to the store or church, Phoebe would meow at me until I picked her up so she could lick my face. When I talked on the phone, people would comment on how loud she was, and I realized how quiet my apartment would be if I didn\u2019t have her. I learned more about her, the different pitches in her meows, the way she bites when she needs more food, and how she\u2019s more likely to knead me with her claws out if she wants attention. She became a better cat, too\u2014besides keeping me sane, she also stopped destroying things (as much; my office chair is not looking good) and I think I\u2019ve finally trained her to stop biting me. I found her a worthy companion, and, even though I\u2019m no longer living alone, I feel very close to her.<\/p>

A few years ago, I would have said that animals don\u2019t care about us, they aren\u2019t really our friends, and projecting our own emotions and thoughts on them is a crutch that we use to stomach our desperation for connection. I never believed this wholeheartedly (someone who truly feels that way about pets probably doesn\u2019t have any), but I felt like I should. Animals are known to have emotions and feel pain, but they are also very different from us. Even after my experience with Phoebe during lockdown, I still struggle to understand what it means to have a relationship with an animal\u2014can I call Phoebe my friend, or is that corny and unrealistic? Is our friendship just me trying in vain to feel connected?<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Raven claims that she had a real friendship with Fox because the friendship changed her.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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These questions were in the back of my mind when I picked up Catherine Raven\u2019s memoir Fox and I<\/em>. By her own account, Raven felt her duty as a biologist was to treat nature and all creatures with a distant, academic air. She, and more importantly the other biologists and students in her sphere, had a strong distaste for anthropomorphizing animals, which is attributing human emotions and beliefs to non-humans. When Raven unintentionally befriended a local fox, she felt self-conscious and ashamed, especially around those peers. That relationship begins with voles.<\/p>

Raven, who has a doctorate in biology, also had a vole problem. She noticed a population of voles settling in around her cottage. Instead of getting rid of the rodents, she kept a field of weeds for them to burrow in, because she hoped they would gather a particular wildflower seed and plant them around their dens (something voles are known to do). Eventually, she ended up with a lot of voles who, instead of stacking liatris seeds, stacked thistle seeds. With a field full of thistle, Raven stopped cultivating the voles\u2019 weed forest, but the vole population had boomed already. Hunting these rodents, the fox, whom she calls Fox, started to visit the cottage daily. He behaved strangely, coming every day at almost exactly four fifteen in the afternoon, sitting down within a few feet of Raven, and staying for about eighteen minutes.<\/p>

In those eighteen-minute windows, Raven becomes fond of Fox. She treats his mange by feeding him egg yolks and starts reading The Little Prince<\/em> to him. She first disapproves of her own connection to Fox, feeling that it goes against her biologist\u2019s training. People in her life are skeptical of her relationship with him\u2014one friend asks her if she has a pet, while another flatly asks her if she is anthropomorphizing him.<\/p>

As time goes on, though, her connection with Fox changes her. Before Fox, she is awkward around other people and lonely in her cottage\u2014she feels trapped, pushed to live in the woods because of her awkwardness and only lonelier and more awkward because she\u2019s living in the woods. She breaks that cycle by becoming companions with Fox, and then she starts to communicate more with her human friends, calling them regularly, going on trips. She even fixes an issue with her teeth and gets a full-time job at a university. Raven gives Fox credit for these improvements in her. She claims that she had a real friendship with Fox because the friendship changed her\u2014she thinks that humans are never really friends with their pets because they aren\u2019t really impacted by them. The memoir is dedicated to Fox as a legacy of the friendship. I don\u2019t think that Raven is correct that people are never impacted by their pets, but I see her point. My friendship with Phoebe wouldn\u2019t be a friendship if I didn\u2019t give Phoebe much respect and attention.<\/p>

Raven\u2019s relationship with nature is heartwarming, but it doesn\u2019t answer all my questions. Her dislike of keeping pets did affirm my relationship with Phoebe, in a way\u2014Phoebe and I do change each other, and I carry a respect for Phoebe that is similar to Raven\u2019s respect for Fox. But mutual change is not a full definition of friendship, and Raven\u2019s main focus in writing her memoir is to leave a legacy for Fox and to generate respect for nature, not to define animal friendship.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I feel a much deeper affection for Phoebe than I do for some humans in my life that Aristotle would call my friends, but then I would probably call fewer people in my life friends than Aristotle would.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In the Nicomachean Ethics<\/em>, Aristotle outlines three main causes for friendship: pleasure, usefulness, and good will. People are considered to be friends when they have mutual affections for one another in at least one of those respects. A friendship based on pleasure may exist between two drinking buddies, or a friendship based on usefulness may exist between two people who help each other equally in their careers. Aristotle believes that, in friendships based on usefulness or pleasure, the friends may derive happiness from the use or pleasure they get from the other, while friendships based on good will require friends to be happy for the good of the other. Between Fox and Raven, Fox has a use in his friendship with Raven since her existence provides him voles, and Raven has a use in her friendship with Fox since his companionship cures her loneliness.<\/p>

We can call the relationship between humans and animals \u201cfriendships based on usefulness or pleasure\u201d according to Aristotle\u2014as drinking buddies benefit from each other, Raven and Fox also benefit each other. But this answer\u2014that we can be friends with animals for our pleasure or utility\u2014seems to fall short of what I feel for my cat and is more like how I would describe an acquaintance. In Aristotle\u2019s view, two coworkers may be friends just as well as two drinking buddies. I feel a much deeper affection for Phoebe than I do for some humans in my life that Aristotle would call my friends, but then I would probably call fewer people in my life friends than Aristotle would. There is the third basis of friendship, good will, which Aristotle considers the grounds of truer friendships among humans, but can humans have friendships based on good will with animals?<\/p>

Good will, Aristotle says, is defined as wanting good for another person for their own sake. To will good for another person, one must have some excellence or moral virtue so that they desire some good for that person\u2019s benefit instead of only their own. When one person wants good for another and the other person also wants good for them, then they have a mutual good will on which they can base friendship. Aristotle also stipulates that, on top of having mutual good will, the two people must know of the other\u2019s good will for them and both act on their feelings of good will. If all of this is followed\u2014there is reciprocal good will that is acted on and known by both parties\u2014then the two are friends in a true sense. This means morality, good will, reciprocity, and action are the necessary requirements in a good will-based friendship.<\/p>

In addition to those requirements, Aristotle believes equality is important in a friendship\u2014friends must receive and want the same thing from one another. If the friends are unequal, the friendship can be balanced by balancing the gains of the friendship in the favor of the friend who is greater than the other. When one friend has higher status than the other, that friend should also receive a greater reward, and if friends are unequal in different ways, they should each give what they can. So if one friend gains honor and status from the other, they should give as much as they can of something else in return.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Perhaps Aristotle, in making reciprocal feelings necessary for a friendship, underestimates the influence of one party\u2019s good will on the other.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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There are a few reasons Aristotle would object to a human and an animal being friends. First, he would object to animals being able to have good will for humans since they have no morality to base that good will on. Morality, according to Aristotle, is acting with reason. Aristotle claims that humans are animals with reason, so humans are capable of morality and other animals are not. This would mean that humans and animals cannot have friendship based on good will since, even if the human has good will for the animal, the animal cannot reciprocate by having good will for the human. On top of this, Aristotle would point out that humans and animals are not equal. If we could argue that that inequality is made up for (which would be difficult, because Aristotle would probably believe that the gap between animals and humans is far too large to overcome), Aristotle might admit that we are able to have friendships of pleasure and utility with animals but nothing more.<\/p>

But I still wonder whether this understanding of our relationship with animals leaves something out. While Phoebe is not rational, I do believe there is something good in our friendship other than the pleasure and usefulness we have in each other. Like Fox and Raven, I think there is significant mutual change in Phoebe and I that is based in some moral virtue. Perhaps Aristotle, in making reciprocal feelings necessary for a friendship, underestimates the influence of one party\u2019s good will on the other. In my relationship with Phoebe, I believe Phoebe, lacking in reason, has come to reflect my rationality in her reactions when she changes her behavior to follow my guidance.<\/p>

Throughout history when humans domesticate animals, we have imparted our reason to them: a trained hunting dog, for example, acts within the reason of the human who trained it by following their commands, even though it might not fully understand and doesn\u2019t obey out of moral virtue. As an animal is domesticated, it is brought into the fold of human reason. They begin to mirror our behavior, similarly to how we often mirror the behaviors of our friends, as if we are \u201cdomesticating\u201d each other. Even without being fully domesticated, Fox is imprinted with Raven\u2019s reason, both in his socializing with her and perhaps in a heroic act. In a dramatic twist near the end of Raven\u2019s memoir, Raven is not home during a wildfire, and she believes that Fox, whose mate and kits survive the wildfire, was killed in it because he stayed behind looking for Raven.<\/p>

When an animal takes on human reason through domestication\u2014even slight domestication for Fox\u2014the human and the animal are closer to true friendship than they would be if the friendship existed purely on the basis of utility or pleasure. While true, good will-based friendship is only possible between people, we can acknowledge and appreciate friendship between humans and animals. We make them better for their sake by bringing them into our rationality and they make us better by being our companions\u2014even if they don\u2019t realize it.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Drea Jenkins<\/strong> is a software developer in Lebanon, NH. She graduated from Dartmouth in 2020 and loves to spend her free time reading, writing, and coding.<\/em>
<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Animals can provide valuable companionship for humans\u2014but can we actually call them our friends? By Drea 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