The Philosopher and the Wolf

The writing from time to time hits an enjoyable kind of stride, but it is always hobbled by what it is – a lame ventriloquist act full of false wisdom and faked naturalism. We have a terrible habit of trying to make animals what we want them to be, which always seems to be something in relation

to us, rather than something in and of themselves. And so the story of the wolf continues, and remains little more than a story about man, and how he envies the strength and silence of the inscrutable hunter.

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BlogCritics

Philosopher Mark Rowlands is not what one would classically think of as a great writer, in that his prose is not supernally poetic like Loren Eiseley’s, he does not use easily understood but well-targeted metaphors like Stephen Jay Gould, nor does he have the raw power that Friedrich Nietszche

did. But he manages to convey highly nuanced and deep concepts in remarkably simple sentences and constructs as he grounds each seemingly pedestrian sentence with its neighbor in ways that crescendo.

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The Guardian Newspaper

It's an unusual little book: not quite an autobiography (a lot of the time its subject cedes the limelight to his four-legged companion), nor straightforwardly a work of philosophy (as Rowlands acknowledges, it smells a bit too much of real life to pass muster with his professional colleagues). It

is perhaps best described as the autobiography of an idea, or rather a set of related ideas, about the relationship between human and non-human animals.

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Literary Review UK

The Philosopher and the Wolf is a powerfully subversive critique of the unexamined assumptions that shape the way most philosophers - along with most people - think about animals and themselves

User reviews

LibraryThing member djalchemi

There are some profound ideas in this book. Right near the beginning, Rowlands sets out his central distinction between us apes who can't help but weigh and balance, and see things in instrumental terms towards longer term goals. The wolf, he says, doesn't count the cost. The weaker passages are

when we get more philosopher and less wolf. Then it all gets a bit School of Life (you know: morals and codes adumbrated with a bit of choice name dropping). Rowlands says he's a big fan of Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being, but the former's treatment of Nietzsche's ideas of eternal return is not woven into his story with anything like the elegance of the latter. When Rowland is reflecting (on) his own career he gets a bit boring and boorish. But the bits where he follows the animal, to use Harold Garfinkel's phrase, make the book worth reading.

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LibraryThing member michalsuz

Well-written, well-paced, not always wise, but interesting as a fast read...The relationship with the wolf is the great thing here, and some may also enjoy a rapid overview of philosophical ideas concerning the meaning of life.
A weak ending, like a Hollywood movie, even if true to life.

LibraryThing member GregsBookCell

In his book The Philosopher and the Wolf, Mark Rowlands presents a mixture of popular philosophy and personal memoir from a time when he shared his life with a wolf. This leads him to speculate on the different ways that simians and lupines experience time. He concludes that while humans and, he

asserts, other apes think in a linear way and experience time as something passing, so that they live as much in the past and in the future as they do in the present, his wolf, and he suggests other dogs, look at rather than through the moment.

He concludes that we have much to learn from the wolf in this respect, that our superiority in being able to think about the past and plan for the future is bought at the cost of our inferiority in not being able to fully inhabit significant moments of the present. The moment of the present, as he points out in one of his philosophical asides, is an abstract concept that can never be captured as it is always passing. We may follow Husserl and see the present as an experience composed of the immediate past and the anticipated future (if I raise a glass of wine to my lips, I remember what was poured into the glass and anticipate the taste before beginning to drink). Even a wolf must experience the present in this way, but the wolf is better equipped than humans to take such moments for what they are rather than looking past them and so never seeing them clearly.

It struck me that what Rowlands defines as a quality that makes wolves superior to humans is pretty much what religious thinkers and poets such as R.S. Thomas and Waldo Williams have defined as the supreme transcendent experience of humans, though he does not mention these writers. R.S Thomas’ “we have no business here but to disprove certainties the clock knows” is a major theme in his work:

….. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, not hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to the brightness
that seemed as transistory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

This theme recurs again and again in his poems as well as his occasional prose. But of course he has to worry about it (or at it) as the wolf never would. And Rowland’s point is that, for the wolf, ‘eternity’ is now. It is also Thomas’s point in some expressions of the idea, but framing it in the context of the Christian expectation of eternal life rather takes it into the realm of what Rowlands calls the human tendency to live on hope rather than immediate experience.

What might come nearer to Rowlands’ living in, and looking at, the moment is Waldo Williams’ poem in Welsh ‘Yr Eiliad’:

Gwyddom gan ddyfod yr Eiliad
Ein geni i’r Awr

We know when the moment comes
We are born to the hour

If the book is a vehicle for such musings on the meaning of life for different species, its main attraction has undoubtedly been the account of a relationship between a man and a wolf. This is interesting in itself and at times quite moving, though I didn’t always share the total identification with Rowlands’ narrative that it has elicited from some reviewers. Clearly, developing a relationship with a wolf takes some commitment (he used to take it into the lecture room with him when on the staff of the Philosophy departments of Alabama and Cork universities) and he claims that it was the intensity of his relationship with his ‘brother’ that led him to various philosophical conclusions about animals and humans (he also wrote Animal Rights : A Philosophical Defence). Could he have come to the same conclusions by owning an ordinary dog or even a cat? Probably. But he wouldn’t have sold so many books.

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LibraryThing member haled

A disturbing book in ruthlessly stripping away one's assumptions about oneself, the meaning of our lives and what we think of as happiness. The final two chapters struck home particularly and were very affecting. At times it reminded me of less reverential approaches such as Douglas Adams and the

meaning of the Universe being 64. Philosophy is difficult but it can also be very simple. The moments when one sees what he is saying are well worth then effort. Having come to this because of an interest in wolves I have ended with a renewed interest in philosophy.

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LibraryThing member Erica_W

A thought-provoking book that is part memoir, part science writing, and part philosophical discussion. Mark writes about his life spent with a wolf named Brenin and the amazing things he learns from his wolf brother. A very interesting consideration of moral and epistemic duty, and where evil is

located in not only the human world, but the non-human animal world. The anecdotes about Brenin and Mark's other canine companions are delightful, and his discussions of philosophy are accessible to the layman.

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LibraryThing member la_spalmatrice

It was the first time I read a philosophy book. I must say I enjoyed it very much. It’s well written, it made me think about a lot of things, and I agree with the author on most of them. I like the way the author explains his thinkings through the wolf’s behaviour. His relationship with his

wolf has been very important to him, and I can understand why, I love animals. This is also a book for animals lovers and for all the people who wants to read something different from novels and thrillers (at least that’s what I usually read!).
I think it would be a good present for a reader-friend, and I’ll read more from this writer.

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LibraryThing member diovival

The best thing about this book had nothing to do with the author's contribution. I was visiting with a friend's family in Ireland and her stepdad was nice enough to let me borrow his copy. I could see all the red scribbles, circles, underlines, and notations he made throughout the book as I read.

It can be fun to follow the leave-behinds of a previous reader. He clearly enjoyed the book more than I did. It wasn't a bad book per se...I just found it really difficult to relate to the author.

To sum up the book: People bad. Wolves great.

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LibraryThing member Ma_Washigeri

A clear mind and an inspiring life. I'm glad there are people (and wolves) out there like that and I wish he had been one of my philosophy tutors..... even while I wonder if I would have been happy to be one of his neighbours while my kids were small. Thanks for sharing - life and philosophy - and

for writing so well.

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LibraryThing member Ma_Washigeri

for writing so well.

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