What makes human beings so special? Aren’t animals also able to love and care, display intelligent behavior and even learn how to speak?
(top) Animals are capable of some emotional and intellectual maturation. They are able to have relationships, feel pain and learn simple aspects of language. They can problem solve up to a degree and adapt to new environments. But animals are totally divorced from the moral and spiritual realm. They have no spiritual aspirations, they never suffer from existential crises and they never show any sense of any higher purpose in life. Those animals that show certain types of moral behavior, like loyalty in dogs, or modesty in cats are genetically programmed to be so. So is any apparent evil we see in animals pre-programmed. Only man has the moral autonomy to be truly good or evil. Only human beings ever seem to show any sense of a higher purpose in life and therefore only human beings can invest themselves and the world around them with meaning. Animals do indeed possess some basic life-force which is actually considered, in Judaism, the lowest level of the soul the נפש. But they lack the
