My cats eat, sleep, play, and sleep some more. They have no views. But the value of being adoxastos is lost on them. I do not envy them. I am glad that I am a man. Man alone among the animals is more than an animal. Man's distinction consists both in his having views and in his ability to examine them like Socrates, to suspend them like the Pyrrhonian skeptic and to transcend them like the mystic.
Man is also distinguished by his wretchedness. No mere animal, strictly speaking, is wretched. Animal suffering never gets the length of wretchedness. Man is wretched because he is great. Therein lies the Pascalian paradox of the human predicament.