The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness

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Overview

Mark Rowlands was a young philosophy professor, rootless and searching for life’s greater meaning. Shortly after arriving at the University of Alabama, he noticed a classified ad in the local paper advertising wolf cubs for sale, and decided he had to investigate, if only out of curiosity. It was love at first sight, and the bond that grew between philosopher and wolf reaffirms for us the incredible relationships that exist between man and animal.

When Mark welcomed his new companion, Brenin, into his home, but more than just an exotic pet, Brenin exerted an immense influence on Rowlands both as a person, and, strangely enough, as a philosopher, leading him to reevaluate his attitude toward love, happiness, nature, death, and the true meaning of companionship.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Animal lovers or not, Nietzsche-lovers or not, readers will admire how Rowlands, a philosophy professor at the University of Miami, interweaves essential philosophical questions with charming anecdotes of raising his pet wolf, Brenin. An alcoholic and self-described misanthrope with a penchant for fierce dogs and rough sports, Rowlands is eminently likable and even laugh-out-loud funny. He describes the isolation he eventually acquired in order to write and be with his (eventually three) dogs as follows: "There were girlfriends, but they came into my life and left it again with a regularity by which you could set your watch and an inevitability on which you could bet your bottom dollar." Of Brenin's escapades, he writes: "We discovered him... in flagrante delicto with a white German shepherd." But as funny as these passages are, they are a preamble for a meditation on happiness-for both man and animal. Rowlands's gruff humor, erudition, honest assessments of himself and the world around him, and his all-out affection for his "pack" result in a book that is surprisingly thoughtful and frequently poignant. (Apr.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Library Journal

In this remarkable book, Rowlands (Sci-Phi: Philosophy from Socrates to Schwarzenegger) describes his life with Brenin, a wolf he purchased as a cub more than a decade ago, from Brenin's initial training and growth to maturity and death. Using this experience to make philosophical claims, Rowland argues that human beings have an apelike intelligence based on viewing the world, including other people, as a means to attain one's goals, which, when carried into practice, involves duplicity and cunning. Wolves don't see the world in this way, and Rowlands believes we can learn valuable lessons from their alternative style of intelligence. Rowlands also contends that accounts of evil often overstress motive. We too often ignore "epistemic evil," the failure to think about the consequences of what we do. Cruel experiments on animals, for example, stem from a refusal to think about the pain the animals undergo, not sadistic impulses toward them. Rowlands writes with a beautiful simplicity; a moving and insightful book, highly recommended for all collections.
—David Gordon

Kirkus Reviews
A unique human-animal friendship becomes the springboard and locus for exploring issues in metaphysics, ethics, existentialism, theodicy and human emotion. Through philosophical reflections combined with a personal narrative of the ten-plus year period he lived with a wolf named Brenin, Rowlands (Philosophy/Univ. of Miami, Body Language, 2006, etc.) constructs both a memoir and a philosophical journal. Each chapter is packed with personal anecdotes-for example, the author and friends picking up girls at rugby parties with Brenin's "help"-and with philosophical explorations ranging from notions of time, consciousness and freedom to ideas regarding malice, evil and death. Rowlands also investigates humankind's supposed obsession with feelings and sets out to redefine, or at least re-envision, such emotions as happiness, love and pleasure. His knowledge of the Western philosophical tradition is rich, ranging from Aristotle through Hobbes, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Sartre. The author's presentation of difficult philosophical concepts and of more general human experience is keen and readable, though his insights are often profoundly misanthropic. The narrative is alternately humorous and affecting, even self-deprecating at times, but the tone can also be arrogant, self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing. This creates an odd and largely duplicitous kind of irony, since Rowlands' primary impulse seems to be an attempt to reveal the depravity of human nature. Wolf and canine qualities are privileged throughout the text, albeit in compelling and convincing ways. The author learns from Brenin, for example, that "in happiness, pleasant and unpleasant aspects form an indissoluble whole."The wolf is the real teacher in this relationship. Supercilious at times and misanthropic throughout, but Rowlands offers an accessible, intriguing way to engage complex philosophical ideas. Agent: Liz Puttick/Elizabeth Puttick Literary Agency
The Barnes & Noble Review
What distinguishes friendship between two people from friendship between a human and an animal? There are the drinking games, of course. And human friends also offer each other more complex reciprocal qualities (humor, shared experience, perspective) than humans and animals do (patience, dependability, loyalty). But more than that, admiration seems to be a subtly important difference. We unabashedly admire the physical qualities of our animal friends -- the horse's quiet majesty, the sprinting dog's limitless capacity, the kitten's cuddliness. By contrast, while we admire beautiful people, we tend to befriend those whom we esteem for other reasons, like talent or wit; if we're too dazzled by their looks, we're probably in love.

You'll find no better description of a man's admiration for an animal than this one, from Mark Rowlands's extraordinary and wise book, The Philosopher and the Wolf, in which the author recounts the eleven years he lived in the company of a pet wolf named Brenin:

On our runs together, I realized something both humbling and profound: I was in the presence of a creature that was, in most important respects, unquestionably, demonstrably, irredeemably and categorically superior to me. This was a watershed moment in my life. I can't ever remember feeling this way in the presence of a human being. That's not me at all. But now I realized that I wanted to be less like me and more like Brenin. My realization was fundamentally an aesthetic one. When we were running, Brenin would glide across the ground with an elegance and economy of movement I have never seen in a dog. From a distance it looked as if he was floating an inch or two above the ground.

Rowlands's unusual book -- part autobiography, part philosophical discourse; harshly cynical yet somehow also inspirational -- is above all a meditation on the nature of friendship, and on the human/animal bond, which is a remarkable but precarious and overlooked thing. This is not the sole province of the philosopher (Rowlands's profession); but philosophers, from Jeremy Bentham to Peter Singer to Tom Regan, have a long and uncommon history of treating animals as a subject worthy of serious intellectual consideration. Rowlands's own method is to intersperse autobiographical chapters with philosophical explorations of subjects like happiness, grief, and time, especially insofar as his life with Brenin helped him find answers. The book has much to teach us about our relationship to animals, and even more to teach us about ourselves.

The story begins when Rowlands buys Brenin as a wolf cub in Alabama, for $500. Coming from a family of intrepid big dog owners, Rowlands had casually gone to investigate a newspaper ad and ended up running off to the ATM to empty his bank account. He and Brenin lived in lockstep from then on. Rowlands was a drifter of a young academic, living now in Ireland, now in France -- a misanthropic loner who found himself increasingly preferring Brenin's company to that of other people. Brenin, a giant of 150 pounds, standing 35 inches at the shoulder on paws the size of baseball mitts, accompanied Rowlands everywhere, even napping under a desk as Rowlands delivered his philosophy lectures to rooms full of nervous students whose unzipped bookbags were occasionally invaded by a wandering nose in search of snacks.

For some, the first question to ask about this uncommon arrangement concerns the ethics and wisdom of taking a wild animal as a pet. Rowlands deals with this issue brusquely, arguing that we demean a wolf's adaptability, its "intelligence and resourcefulness," by adopting a restrictive and simplistic view of its proper place in the natural world. His argument is persuasive, although it stretches a bit when one considers the improvident readers who will follow his example rather than his warnings and buy pet wolves. Still, this line of questioning rather misses the point, like complaining that the boys in Dead Poets Society ought to have been studying for finals instead of reading Whitman. Rowlands gave Brenin a very good life, providing him much more attention and consideration than most people give their pets. There is something deeply moving about a man referring to an animal, plainly and unsentimentally, as his best friend. Toward the end of the book, as Rowlands whispers his last words to Brenin -- "We'll meet again in dreams" -- the reader, through tears, contemplates not the appropriateness of this extraordinary friendship but the blessing of it.

Rowlands's admiration for Brenin eventually transcends the aesthetic to encompass the metaphysical. "We stand in the shadow of the wolf," Rowlands writes, "not the shadow cast by the wolf itself, but the shadows we cast from the light of the wolf." He contrasts the deceptive, scheming nature of simian intelligence with the guilelessness of the lupine. Like all predators, wolves of course exploit weakness, but humans go a step further and manufacture it, as in animal experimentation (a topic on which Rowlands briefly but ferociously expounds). These highly evolved abilities, we tend to think, set us above other animals, but Rowlands thinks they merely set us apart from them, for "superiority in one respect is likely to show up as a deficiency elsewhere." The same holds true for our ceaseless pursuit of happiness. Brenin, by contrast, was limited, or perhaps freed, to live each moment as it happened, full of wonder and delight, without constantly focusing on the way he was feeling.

Not everyone has the capacity or indeed the inclination to befriend an animal as intimately as Rowlands has done. Animals cannot play Scrabble or pay compliments; they don't have exciting news and won't discuss yesterday's game. What they do offer, to those who open themselves to it, is a powerful constancy, an uncomplicated friendship that simplifies and heals as it reminds us of our ancestral life before we struck the fraught bargain of great resourcefulness and ingenuity in return for a greater capacity for malevolence and deceit. It is a rare writer indeed who is able not only to capture and celebrate this communion, but also to live it, forcefully. Reading this book, like living in kinship with an animal, offers a chance for something very fine to rub off on us -- like brushing against a monarch's cape and being sprinkled with gold powder. The name Brenin, after all, is Welsh for "king." --Michael O'Donnell

Michael O'Donnell has written for Bookforum, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. He recently completed a clerkship for a federal judge and is now an attorney in private practice in Chicago.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781605980331
  • Publisher: Pegasus
  • Publication date: 4/7/2009
  • Pages: 256
  • Sales rank: 724,323
  • Product dimensions: 5.90 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 3.10 (d)

Meet the Author

Mark Rowlands is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

1 The Clearing 1

2 Brotherwolf 12

3 Distinctly Uncivilized 47

4 Beauty and the Beast 81

5 The Deceiver 111

6 The Pursuit of Happiness and Rabbits 136

7 A Season in Hell 163

8 Time's Arrow 184

9 The Religion of the Wolf 216

Index 245

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5
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Sort by: Showing all of 4 Customer Reviews
  • Anonymous

    Posted October 27, 2009

    Life Long Lesson Book

    I loved this book!!!! It helped me bring some peace to my life with the death of my grandma, whom I was very close to. We did everything together. This boook was the healing piece I needed to start to put my life back together again.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted June 13, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Intellectually stimulating book on philosophy and wolves

    The author, a philosophy professor and quite successful at the time he writes this, has given a retrospective story of his life with a wolf, Brenin. The story begins when he is still a young beginning assistant professor and goes forward during the life of Brenin as the author becomes more successful. The focus is on the difference between the wolf and the man and reflection on how various philosophers' thought applies to these differences. I was charmed by the author's willingness to look frankly at his own foibles and to write humorously about himself as well as Brenin. This short book manages to cover Brenin's entire 10 year lifespan without unnecessary detail. The authors does a wonderful job of picking out what is important to convey meaning.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 17, 2012

    Balcony/flower garden

    Wolf

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  • Posted July 24, 2009

    I Also Recommend:

    kind of disappointing...

    I have to admit that I had expected more from the book, having read many nonfiction stories about owners and their animals. Throughout the novel, or the half that I was able to complete, the author, being the philosopher, merely stated all of his ideas in his majoring in philosophy, which I did expect, but, rather than bring in new ideas into the picture, stated the same ideas continuously, without changing the subject at all, really. There were only tiny paragraphs at the beginning of the chapters about the wolf and him, of their companionship as man and wolf, and these facts and stories of Brendon's life were out of order. I could not finish this novel, and I do not recommend it, though every person has their own personal taste, I do not recommend it to animal lovers.

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