Susana Monsó

Susana Monsó is a Spanish philosopher who is based at the National University of Distance Education in Madrid. She is an authority on the philosophy of animal minds, and on animal ethics. She is best known for her writings on comparative thanatology.

Monsó was born in Madrid in 1988. She studied Philosophy at Complutense University of Madrid, then received an MA in Global Ethics and Human Values from King’s College London, where her MA thesis was supervised by Leif Wenar. She wrote her PhD in Philosophy at UNED in Madrid, although it was externally co-supervised by Mark Rowlands at the University of Miami. Monsó's thesis addressed the question of whether animals could be moral agents given their limited understanding of others' minds. It argued that moral agency is possible for creatures who possess empathy, which does not require an understanding of mental states.

Monsó has written extensively on the question of whether animals understand death. Her book on this subject, La zarigüeya de Schrödinger: Cómo viven y entienden la muerte los animales, was published in Spanish in 2021 (Plaza y Valdés). The Boston Globe, The Observer, Der Spiegel, Der Zeit, and El País, among others newspapers. In 2024 Playing Possum was featured in books of the year lists published by The Guardian, the New Statesman, and The New Yorker.

Selected publications

Melis, G. & Monsó, S. (2024): ‘Are humans the only rational animals?’ The Philosophical Quarterly, 74 (3), 844–864. Monsó, S. (2024): Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death (updated and revised translation). Princeton University Press. Monsó, S. (2022): ‘How to tell if animals can understand death.’ Erkenntnis, 87, 117–136. Monsó, S. (2021): La zarigüeya de Schrödinger: Cómo viven y entienden la muerte los animales. Madrid: Plaza y Valdés. Monsó, S. (2017): ‘Morality without mindreading.’ Mind & Language, 32 (3), 338–57. Monsó, S. (2015): ‘Empathy and morality in behaviour readers.’ Biology & Philosophy, 30 (5), 671-690.