The Psychology of Why We Love Dogs
Schopenhauer, Sartre, and the Science of Why Dogs Are Humanity’s Best Friends
We love dogs. Just about all of us do. Big dogs, small dogs, yappy dogs, fluffy dogs, all of them are loveable dogs — we call them pups and puppers, woofers and boofers, pupperinos and cutie-booties, and we adore our closest companions like no other.
If you were to ask a dog owner why they love their dogs so much, they’d probably tell you that they have a close and enduring bond with their dogs, they care about them on a deep level, and know their dogs care about them in return, offering company, love, and an undeniable loyalty.
One of the other things they’ll tell you, is that they have a relationship with dogs that they simply can’t have with human beings. This is part of what makes dogs so loveable, their differences from humans.
Their exchanges and dynamics with their dogs are different than those with their human counterparts in various ways that make dogs an indispensible creature in our modern lives (for dog-lovers, that is). But still the question remains, why do we love dogs so much?
After a brief history of the dog (to help us understand them), this story seeks to answer that question by drawing upon the thoughts of science and philosophers, in…
