The Philosopher and the Wolf

Author: Mark Rowlands
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 163936112X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
The charming and poignant story of the relationship between a philosophy professor and his pet wolf. 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. Mark welcomed his new companion, Brenin, into his home. 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.

Running with the Pack

Author: Mark Rowlan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1639360719
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
“Most of the serious thinking I have done over the past twenty years has been done while running,” says philosophy professor Mark Rowlands, who has run for most of his life. And for him, running and philosophizing, are inextricably connected.In Running with the Pack, he reveals the most significant runs of his life—from the entire day he spent running as a boy in Wales, to the runs along French beaches and up Irish mountains with his beloved wolf, Brenin, and through Florida swamps with his husky-mix, Nina. Intertwined with this honest, passionate and witty memoir are the fascinating meditations that those runs triggered, from mortality, midlife, and the meaning of life. A highly original and moving book that will make the philosophically inclined want to run, and those who love running become intoxicated by the beauty of philosophy.

Can Animals Be Moral?

Author: Mark Rowlands
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019024030X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
Can animals act morally? Philosophical tradition answers "no," and has apparently convincing arguments on its side. Cognitive ethology supplies a growing body of empirical evidence that suggests these arguments are wrong. This groundbreaking book assimilates both philosophical and ethological frameworks into a unified whole and argues for a qualified "yes."

The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE

Author: Bruno Latour
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1780990030
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 155

Book Description
The Prince and the Wolf contains the transcript of a debate which took place on 5th February 2008 at the London School of Economics (LSE) between the prominent French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher Bruno Latour and the Cairo-based American philosopher Graham Harman.

Meaning in Life and Why It Matters

Author: Susan Wolf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691154503
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
A fresh reflection on what makes life meaningful Most people, including philosophers, tend to classify human motives as falling into one of two categories: the egoistic or the altruistic, the self-interested or the moral. According to Susan Wolf, however, much of what motivates us does not comfortably fit into this scheme. Often we act neither for our own sake nor out of duty or an impersonal concern for the world. Rather, we act out of love for objects that we rightly perceive as worthy of love—and it is these actions that give meaning to our lives. Wolf makes a compelling case that, along with happiness and morality, this kind of meaningfulness constitutes a distinctive dimension of a good life. Written in a lively and engaging style, and full of provocative examples, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters is a profound and original reflection on a subject of permanent human concern.

A Wolf in the City

Author: Cinzia Arruzza
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190678860
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
The problem of tyranny preoccupied Plato, and its discussion both begins and ends his famous Republic. Though philosophers have mined the Republic for millennia, Cinzia Arruzza is the first to devote a full book to the study of tyranny and of the tyrant's soul in Plato's Republic. In A Wolf in the City, Arruzza argues that Plato's critique of tyranny intervenes in an ancient debate concerning the sources of the crisis of Athenian democracy and the relation between political leaders and demos in the last decades of the fifth century BCE. Arruzza shows that Plato's critique of tyranny should not be taken as veiled criticism of the Syracusan tyrannical regime, but rather of Athenian democracy. In parsing Plato's discussion of the soul of the tyrant, Arruzza will also offer new and innovative insights into his moral psychology, addressing much-debated problems such as the nature of eros and of the spirited part of the soul, the unity or disunity of the soul, and the relation between the non-rational parts of the soul and reason.

A Good Life

Author: Mark Rowlands
Publisher: Granta Publications
ISBN: 1847089518
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
Framed by the story of a son finding his late father’s journal, a meditation on love, meaning, and morality by the author of The Philosopher and the Wolf. Myshkin was born on a certain day and died on a certain day—and some things happened to him in between. These things presented him with ethical questions, and this book is a record of his attempt to answer those questions. Discovered in 2054 by his son after Myshkin's death in the Florida Keys, A Good Life is one man's reckoning with the life he has led and the choices he made. It is at once a philosophical handbook for living and a page-turning narrative, following one man's life (birth, death, education, religion, morality, illness, and so on) told through a philosophical lens. It is a riveting examination of the ethical questions we face, and the decisions we must make, and a defense of the idea that at the beating heart of morality we find love. Sometimes profoundly funny, sometimes deeply serious, A Good Life is as readable as a novel and as provocative as the best philosophy. It is the finest work to date by a charming and brilliant thinker. “A lovely writer, funny and moving.”—Observer

Can Animals Be Persons?

Author: Mark Rowlands
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190846046
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
Can animals be persons? To this question, scientific and philosophical consensus has taken the form of a resounding, 'No!' In this book, Mark Rowlands disagrees. Not only can animals be persons, many of them probably are. Taking, as his starting point, John Locke's classic definition of a person, as "a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself the same thinking thing, in different times and places," Rowlands argues that many animals can satisfy all of these conditions. A person is an individual in which four features coalesce: consciousness, rationality, self-awareness and other-awareness, and many animals are such individuals. Consciousness--something that is like to have an experience--is widely distributed through the animal kingdom. Many animals are capable of both causal and logical reasoning. Many animals are also self-aware, since a form of self-awareness is essentially built into the possession of conscious experience. And some animals are capable of a kind of awareness of the minds of others, quite independently of whether they possess a theory of mind. This is not just a book about animals, however. As well as being fascinating in their own right, animals, as Claude Levi-Strauss once put it, are "good to think." In this seamless interweaving of the empirical study of animal minds with philosophy and its history, this book makes a powerful case for the idea that reflection on animals allows us to better understand each of these four pillars of personhood, and so illuminates what means for any individual--animal or human--to be conscious, rational, self- and other-aware.

Freedom within Reason

Author: Susan Wolf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019535897X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 175

Book Description
Philosophers typically see the issue of free will and determinism in terms of a debate between two standard positions. Incompatibilism holds that freedom and responsibility require causal and metaphysical independence from the impersonal forces of nature. According to compatibilism, people are free and responsible as long as their actions are governed by their desires. In Freedom Within Reason, Susan Wolf charts a path between these traditional positions: We are not free and responsible, she argues, for actions that are governed by desires that we cannot help having. But the wish to form our own desires from nothing is both futile and arbitrary. Some of the forces beyond our control are friends to freedom rather than enemies of it: they endow us with faculties of reason, perception, and imagination, and provide us with the data by which we come to see and appreciate the world for what it is. The independence we want, Wolf argues, is not independence from the world, but independence from forces that prevent or preclude us from choosing how to live in light of a sufficient appreciation of the world. The freedom we want is a freedom within reason and the world.

The Wolves in the Walls

Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0380810956
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 60

Book Description
Lucy hears sneaking, creeping, crumpling noises coming from inside the walls. She is sure there are wolves living in the walls of her house.