Man and Wolf.

A review of a book, The Philosopher and the Wolf, by Mark Rowlands might not seem worthy of your time to read, but this one is fascinating.

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.

I have posted before [don't have time to find it now] somewhat disparagingly on people who treat their pets as substitute children, and others who clothe their pets, but this is a different thing altogether. There is something special about the way we humans have both domesticated and befriended animals as well as the many benefits of doing so. I promise you won’t regret the time it takes to read this review.

H/T Arts and Letters Daily.

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