WHY ANIMALS ARE SPIRITUAL BEINGS?

This essay analyzes the different meanings of the notions of<br />the “soul” and the “spirit,” which were changing direction at the same<br />time that man has developed his intellectual capacity and his dominion<br />over nature. Next, it will be shown that using the notion of spirit,<br />while distinguishing characteristic of men in relation to other living<br />things, a speciesist ideology was being built and that this ideology lies<br />behind the ethics that excludes animals from the sphere of moral consideration.<br />Finally, we aim to demonstrate that although this way of<br />thinking of Greek philosophy still exerts a great influence in the Western<br />tradition, it presents a series of contradictions and inconsistencies<br />that point to its exhaustion as an ethical and epistemological model,<br />which announces the birth of a new ethic, divorced from this tradition<br />of the domination of nature by men, that priorize the subjective and<br />emotional instead of objective and scientific, thus indicating, among<br />other things, the recognize of the intrinsic value of animals, in a paradigm<br />based on compassion , sympathy, reciprocity and exchange.