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

I had this book sitting on my shelf for quite a while and when I started reading it, I was ready to put it away in any moment. But page after page it drew me into it's story, surprised me and at the end overwhelmed me. It is an absolutely, almost painful, confession of a man who has hardly been socialized, is boldly convinced of his macho-self, stuck in childish attitudes, refusing to become an adult person. One day he has the crazy idea to buy a wolf - and what then starts is a kind of education sentimental which at the end is so touching that I cried for two days after having finished the book. There's nothing else I've read in the past ten years about the condition humaine, about our relation to nature, about our arrogant errors in thinking ourselves as human beings that comes even close to "The Philosopher and the Wolf. It is my book of the first decade of the 21st century.

There have been enough books from Mark Rowlands now to recognize how much he strives to transcend the usual mundane observations upon life in the here and now. I like his ability to delineate ape brain and wolf brain thinking well enough to come up with some clear distinctions. My 40 years of recapitulation of my year in Vietnam make it easy for me to acknowledge that America was destined to support those in South Vietnam (many of whom the US Navy helped moved down from the north so Catholics could escape Communism in 1954) who were unrepresentative of godless Commies. One of the main things I can relate to in The Philosopher and the Wolf is the exuberance of fighting and dying, what Nietzsche called the squandering of a great soul in his advice "Die at the right time!" Mark Rowlands manages to work it out well in story form with the analysis: "The meaning of life is to be found precisely in those things that temporal creatures cannot possess: Moments. This is why it is so difficult for us to identify a plausible meaning for our lives. Moments are the one thing we apes cannot possess."

Rowlands dismisses mere happiness as an end unto itself, that purpose- especially self-purpose- has a greater place, and uses the example of Sisyphus to demonstrate, for even were the gods to avail Sisyphus of the balm of enjoying his futile task of rolling his stone up his hill, that joy would still not be a thing worthy, in and of itself. It would be an absurdity, and even a cruelty inflicted by the gods. Rowlands argues for measurable objective success, not subjective joy derived, as what determines if something is good or not. Then he gets to his rub, that once a purpose is chosen and completed, there is no further meaning, and this point is one that Rowlands has addressed in other venues, but never seems to have tackled fully. To me, the answer is clear: one must choose a purpose that perpetuates itself beyond yourself, and the only things that do this are things that serve not the self, but others: art, science, medicine, public service. Purpose, therefore, can only avoid Rowlands' logical meaningless dead end if it is directed away from the self. In this way, only in altruism can one selfishly gain a deeper sense of satisfaction. And this can only be achieved, as most things are, via personal volition, willing meaning from the ether, so to speak. Rowlands wraps up his book with the conclusion that one's own personal meaning thus comes from those few moments that one is at one's best. These are not those things that are `essentially' you, for stubbornness, stupidity, greed, duplicity or worse, can all be equally essential to a person, but the moments that are the de facto `reason' for one's existence, as determined via the formulations above, are those in which we are at our peak, in whatever sense of the term best suits one's fancy- when we are at our most generous, fittest, smartest, fastest, kindest, funniest, etc. As Rowlands puts it, in a pitch perfect diss of religion and blind faith: Hope is the used-car salesman of human existence: so friendly, so plausible. But you cannot rely on him. What is most important in your life is the you that remains when your hope runs out. Time will take everything from us in the end. Everything we have acquired through talent, industry and luck will be taken from us. Time takes our strength, our desires, our goals, our projects, our future, our happiness and even our hope. Anything we can have, anything we can possess, time will take from us. But what time can never take from us is who we were in our best moments. At the risk of sounding arrogant (but who cares?), I couldn't have said it better myself, and bravo! Mark Rowlands' book, The Philosopher And The Wolf, is not just a great read, a great memoir, nor even a great book. It is all of those things, but, if it can just get enough readers, I think it can take on a life of its own, and become a book of sustained and continued philosophic and personal influence. And I mean that of the positive sort, not the way The Prophet nor Jonathan Livingsto

This book has become my all-time favourite. An uplifting, loving, amusing and intelligently thought out work that is philosophical yet humane, and an absolute must-read for all animal lovers. I laughed and I cried throughout, and so did my husband. This book is what all my friends will be getting for Christmas this year.

There are few books which are just a pleasure to read on every page. This was one of them. The author instructively weaves episodes from his life with his wolf, Brenin, around philosophical arguments he makes to illustrate his insightful points about life. The book obviously isn't hardcore philosophy writing; but even as a philosophy major I found myself intrigued by many of the thought-provoking points the author made. I particularly liked his thoughts about time, and his hypothesis that dogs and wolves experience time as moments, rather than as future-oriented like we do. It is also refreshing to read someone who critically challenges humanity's smug claim to superiority over all else in the universe. Coincidentally, while I was in the middle of this book, my own dog of 8 years became suddenly ill and died a few days later. We were very close, but did not spend nearly enough time together (I was away at college most of the time). She might have been the most generous-hearted creature I've ever known. I identified very closely with the author's grief at loosing so magnanimous a friend as Brenin. It makes me wonder whether it is worth it to get to know creatures of this caliber when it hurts so much when they are gone. I don't ever cry reading books (or watching movies). But I cried when Brenin died.