Cats have no need of philosophy. Obeying their nature, they are content with the life it gives them. Their caring is direct and unmediated — they do not need data or explanation to navigate reality, which is why caring-and-reality names them as the natural exemplar of compass-over-map. In humans, on the other hand, discontent with their nature seems to be natural. The human animal never ceases striving to be something it is not. Cats make no such effort.
The source of philosophy is anxiety, and cats do not suffer from anxiety unless they are threatened or find themselves in a strange place.
Simple Picture
ELI5: cats default to happiness when practical threats are removed. Humans default to restless searching. That may be the chief reason we love cats — they possess as their birthright a felicity humans regularly fail to attain.
Much of human life is a struggle for happiness. Among cats, happiness is the state to which they return when nothing is wrong. The difference is not intelligence. It is self-consciousness. Cats do not construct stories about their lives, do not fear the ending of those stories, and do not need philosophy to cope with the anxiety that stories produce.
Philosophy as Symptom
Philosophy testifies to the frailty of the human mind. Humans philosophize for the same reason they pray — they know the meaning they have fashioned is fragile and live in dread of its breaking down. Death is the ultimate breakdown, since it marks the end of any story they have told themselves.
Posing as a cure, philosophy is a symptom of the disorder it pretends to remedy.
All three main schools of ancient philosophy — Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism — had tranquility as their goal. But Montaigne, more skeptical than the most radical Pyrrhonist, did not believe philosophizing could cure human disquiet. Philosophy was useful chiefly in curing people of philosophy.
The common failing of all these systems: they imagine life can be ordered by human reason. Either the mind can devise a way of life secure from loss, or it can control the emotions to withstand any loss. In fact, neither how we live nor the emotions we feel can be controlled this way. Our lives are shaped by chance and our emotions by the body. Much of human life — and much of philosophy — is an attempt to divert ourselves from this fact.
The Examined Life May Not Be Worth Living
When turned in on itself, consciousness stands in the way of a good life. Self-consciousness has divided the human mind in an unceasing attempt to force painful experiences into a sealed-off part of awareness. Suppressed pain festers in questions about the meaning of life.
In contrast, the feline mind is one and undivided. Pain is suffered and forgotten, and the joy of life returns. Cats do not need to examine their lives because they do not doubt that life is worth living.
This maps onto the depression framework: the psyche’s defensive shutdown is a uniquely self-conscious phenomenon. A cat cannot depress itself by avoiding its own self-knowledge, because it has no self-image to protect. The entire architecture of locally-optimal defensive strategies — numbness over confrontation, performance over authenticity — requires a self-consciousness that cats simply lack.
Selfless Egoism
Cats are egoists in that they care only for themselves and those they love. They are selfless in that they have no image of themselves they seek to preserve and augment. Cats live not by being selfish but by selflessly being themselves.
This resolves the neediness paradox. Neediness requires a self-image that depends on external validation. Non-neediness requires enough internal security to not care about external perception. Cats have no self-image at all — which means they are the purest possible exemplars of non-neediness. They do not need to achieve non-neediness because they were never needy in the first place.
Their love lacks the distortions of human love. Cats do not love to divert themselves from loneliness, boredom, or despair. They love when the impulse takes them. If they do not enjoy your company, they leave. If they stay, it is because they want to be with you. There is no wound-chasing, no dopamine-driven intensity mistaken for connection. What they want from humans is a place where they can return to their normal state of contentment.
The Good Life Is Found, Not Chosen
Spinoza’s conatus — the drive of every living thing to persist as the particular organism it is — aligns with the Taoist belief that we must follow the way within us. A good life does not mean being ever more conscious. The best life for any living thing means being itself.
This diverges from the Romantic view that each of us should fashion a unique individuality. A Spinozist-Taoist ethic says: a good life is not shaped by your feelings. Your feelings are shaped by how well you have realized your nature. The good life is not the life you want but one in which you are fulfilled.
The truth in the fiction of individual nature is that the good life for each of us is not chosen but found. There is no cosmic scale of value, no external standard by which a life’s worth is judged.
Death, Meaning, and Diversion
To identify yourself with an idea is to feel protected against death. Humans are unique in dying for ideas — and alone in killing for them. Killing and dying for nonsensical ideas is how many human beings have made sense of their lives.
The need for diversion is essentially human. Beavers build homes, apes form cultures, whales speak to each other. But only humans need to be distracted from themselves. Boredom is fear of being alone with yourself.
Cats, knowing only their lives as they live them, are mortal immortals that think of death only when it is nearly upon them. They do not need another life in which the story continues because they never made their life into a story in the first place.
Ten Feline Hints
- Never try to persuade human beings to be reasonable — they use reason to bolster what they already believe
- If you think you do not have enough time, you do not know how to pass your time
- Do not look for meaning in your suffering — you risk making misery the meaning of your life
- Better cultivate indifference than force yourself to love universally — indifference may turn into kindness
- Forget about pursuing happiness and you may find it
- Life is not a story — the unwritten life is more worth living than any script
- Do not fear the dark — much that is precious is found in the night
- Sleep for the joy of sleeping, not for profit
- Beware anyone who offers to make you happy — your suffering is necessary to them
- If you cannot live without consolation, lose yourself in common life rather than struggle against it
Common Misread
The dimwit take is “cats are simple creatures and we should be more simple.”
The midwit take is “this is anti-intellectual nihilism dressed up as wisdom.”
The better take is that the cat serves as a mirror for a specific human dysfunction: the belief that life must be justified by a story, a meaning, or a philosophy in order to be good. The cat does not prove that meaning is worthless. It proves that the frantic pursuit of meaning is often the thing preventing the contentment it promises to deliver. If you crave tranquility, you will be forever in turmoil.
Main Payoff
Eternity is not another order of things but the world seen without anxiety. Contemplation — seeing things without wanting to change them — gives a glimpse of this. For humans, contemplation is a break from living. For cats, it is the sensation of life itself.
The meaning of life is a touch, a scent, which comes by chance and is gone before you know it. Cats do not miss the lives they have not lived. That may be the deepest thing they have to teach.
References:
- John Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life