Dear editor,
I’ve lost a cherished pet. My cat passed away earlier this year and this has felt like one of the most devastating losses I have ever experienced in my life. We spent every waking hour around the house together; he loved me unconditionally and he felt like an extension of my soul.
As a materialist, I am conflicted. On principle, I do not believe in the afterlife. But in moments of grief I find comfort in the idea of heaven, the idea that I will meet my loved ones again on the other side. How should I think about this philosophically?
Regards,
Beatrix.
Dear Beatrix,
I am very sorry for your loss. People and their pets can forge deep bonds because these relationships are free of the complicated dramas and personal judgements that often pockmark our interpersonal relations.
It is important to understand that the realm of materialism includes both matter and energy. Matter is easy to comprehend because it is visible and something that we can physically interact with. Energy accounts for motion but it is not something that we can see directly. We do not interact with it so much as we feel it. When Marx likens social relations to a “law of gravity” or makes reference to the “life force,” he is affirming a notion of energy being like the glue which binds material objects together.
If a star loses a planet in its orbit, it wobbles. Though it has lost the gravitational energy of this planet, its former presence can be observed thousands, even millions of years later. This is because the gravity between two objects will make permanent changes that persist long after the relationship ends.
Likewise with our cherished pets. We may wobble with grief when they are gone and we will be permanently changed after they do. The realm of energy is mysterious and the existence of an afterlife cannot be confirmed or denied by current understanding. But your heart is beating and let Abraham Lincoln remind you that “the memory” of your loved one, “instead of agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.”1
In sols,
Your editor.
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Footnotes:
Abraham Lincoln quoted in Edith Hall, Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life (Penguin Books, 2020), 230. ↩︎