title: [The human being from the point of view of animals or, "Who knows whether the breath of men goes upwards?" (Ecclesiastes 3:21)].
abstract: The question of whether animals have souls has been asked since as early as the Old Testament. Where this is believed to be true, fiction has provided interesting models in literature: The human being as seen by animals has been a popular subject since Apuleius' 'Asinus aureus' and how man appears from the perspective of a donkey or a beetle, that is to say the perspective from below, becomes controversial. Examples may be found in all languages and centuries in Jonathan Swift, Miguel Cervantes, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Ludwig Tieck, Heinrich Heine, Viktor von Scheffel, Franz Kafka and others. Résumé at the end: How does man answer this question or his own self-questioning?
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Arendt
mesh_terms: D000828:Animal Population Groups / Q000523:psychology*; D000818:Animals; D001633:Bible; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D012070:Religion and Science
vernacular_title: Der Mensch in animalischer Perspektive oder "Wer weiss, ob der Odem des Menschen aufwärts fahre?" (Koh. 3,21).