Re-reading The Philosopher and the Wolf

 The Philosopher & the Wolf

The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death and Happiness (Granta, London, 2008)

These two books complement one another

Mark Rowlands (professor of philosophy at Miami University) writes clearly and with an almost incredible lightness of style for a philosopher.  However, the format of the book as a memoir explains this observation. There is nothing heavy, whatsoever, in this account of the ten years he spent with a huge wolf as a pet.  Rowlands’ theme here is life lived with a wolf as a pet and what he learned from that relationship on the meaning of life and death; love and hate; happiness and pain – all topics which have graced the works of literati, artists, theologians and philosophers over hundreds of years. What struck this reader was the author’s honesty of intention and style and his often-strong self-questioning. Indeed, one would not have expected anything less from any philosopher.  Rowlands generally takes a more materialistic/animalistic view of life and is certainly not spiritual.  As a reader interested in spiritual/psychological topics among many others, I believe it is important to read widely on all related subjects and especially to examine ideas that may run counter to my own.

Over the years, we have all noticed the difference in children raised with animals from those who are not so raised.  Children raised with animals seem to appreciate life more and begin to learn about life and death all the more quickly through having pets. Who has not noticed, either, how different dogs have different personalities and that they can be sad and lonely as well as happy and convivial?  I have always believed that we have much to learn from our animal friends. Jeffrey Masson, author of Dogs Never Lie About Love describes this book as a “profound and beautiful book” that made him think deeply about life and death.  Julian Baggini, philosopher and co-founder of The Philosopher’s Magazine, declared it to be that year’s “most original and instructive work of popular philosophy.”  What better recommendation can the general reader with an interest in philosophical issues get?

I mentioned in the last post my respect for and admiration of the writings of the philosopher Dr John Gray who wrote the wonderful little classic, Straw Dogs.  I have long thought that we human beings have suffered for generations immemorial from a huge ego problem, both at personal and group or nation level, and that central to most crises to hit this planet has been that same ego.  Professor Gray was the first modern philosopher I read to have put serious thought and reflection into these gut feelings. Gray’s argument is that humankind has indeed over-rated itself.  It appears to me that Rowlands has a lot in common with Gray on this issue of humankind’s gross self-inflation.  I really appreciated Gray’s disabusing my mind of the careless use of the term “human being,” which over-ontologises the very nature of our existence as such.  “Being” is a loaded word in that sense.  We never speak of canine beings (dogs) or feline beings (cats) because we reserve “being” in the ordinary and ontological senses to the higher species alone, that of Homo Sapiens or even God if we happen to believe in a deity.  I have always loved the Dalai Lama’s use of the wonderful phrase “all sentient beings.” And so, Professor Gray humbled me with his term “human animal” and Rowlands sustains that humility in me.  It comes as no surprise to us, then, that John Gray should endorse The Philosopher and the Wolf once on the cover and once on the flyleaf.

As we grow older and our bodies begin to fail us in little, but unfortunately accumulative, ways we learn from lived experience that we are human animals as well as human beings. “Human animal” as a term brings with it an appreciation of all the sufferings that go with the animal body, as well as the good points too, of course, like its achievements in sport and so on. That the body grows old and dies is a central lesson that pets can teach us, and, goodness, if we are willing learners, they teach us much. Mark Rowlands is a dog-lover, vegetarian and philosopher. But, more than that, he is a humble and willing learner.  He gives a one-sentence definition of human beings: “Humans are the animals that believe the stories they tell about themselves. Humans are credulous animals.” (p. 2)

Our Peculiar Stories

I use the adjective ‘peculiar’ in the sense of ‘particular to’ in the above subheading.  Rowlands argues that we humans have a simian or ape-like soul.  He continues thus:

“I am going to try and show you that, for the most part, each one of us has the soul of an ape.  I’m not investing too much in the word ‘soul.’ By ‘soul’ I don’t necessarily mean some immortal or incorruptible part of us that survives the death of our body.  The soul may be like this, but I doubt it.  Or it may be that the soul is simply the mind, and the mind is simply the brain.  But again, I doubt it.  As I am using the word, the soul of human beings is revealed in the stories they tell about themselves: stories about why they are unique; stories we humans can actually get ourselves to believe, despite all the evidence against them. These, I am going to argue, are stories told by apes: they have a structure, theme and content that is (sic) recognizably simian.”  (p. 5)

Animal Metaphors

Because language fails us miserably in its literal designations we have long been forced to forge metaphors to carry the weight of meaning we wish our words to carry. More often than not they are strong enough to carry this weight.  Professor Rowlands uses the metaphor “ape,” and indeed, the corresponding adjective “simian” to refer to our tendency to understand the world in “instrumental terms.” For us humans the value of everything is judged by what it can do for us, that is, we are creatures prone to “instrumental reasoning” as the Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor so neatly puts it. We see the world, quite literally as a collection of resources to be exploited for our own benefit, and more often than not for our own selfish purposes and aggrandisement. Once again, instrumental reasoning can be summed up nicely in Oscar Wilde’s witty dictum that its possessors “know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” According to Rowlands, the ape has the tendency to think that everything can be summed up, including the most important things in life, by a cost-benefit analysis.

    However, over against the metaphor of the ape in us, Rowlands suggests rather obviously the metaphor of the wolf to balance things out for us. In every story told by the ape, our professor argues, we shall find a subplot or sub-story told by the wolf – that is if we train ourselves to look carefully enough for this story. The wolf is howling away if only we could learn to be alert to messages from our gut and our unconscious instincts, to remind us that the values of the ape are rather “worthless.” (p. 7) Our author argues that it is at our peril that we allow the wolf to die in us. Or to put it in more poetic terms as Professor Rowlands is wont to do:

“But the most important you is not the one who schemes: it is the one who remains when the scheming fails. The most important you is not the one who delights in your cunning; it’s what’s left behind when the cunning leaves you for dead. The most important you is the one who rides your luck; it is the you who remains when the luck has run out. In the end the ape will always fail you. The most important question you can ask yourself is: when this happens, who will be left behind?” (p. 8)

The lessons that Mark Rowlands learned over his eleven years spent with his pet wolf were visceral or gut-level ones, lessons which were essentially non-cognitive, lessons one might say of the heart, or even beneath the heart, lessons from the gut.  However, in general, while I may have some reservations here and there with what our author contends, I am in broad agreement with him. I agree readily that life is indeed far “too slippery” for “premises and conclusions.”

A Timely Lesson

As well as philosophical insights, Mark Rowlands offers us insights into how to train dogs and, indeed, how to remain safe in their company.  The most typical reason for a dog to bite, he informs us, is when they lose track of your hand.  People reach around to pat the back of the dog’s head or neck.  When it loses sight of your hand, the dog becomes nervous, suspects you might be attacking it and consequently bites.  Also, he tells us to never pick the alpha male in any litter of dogs as one could expect trouble taming him.  We also learn that wolves have yellow eyes.  Rowlands also informs us about the laws concerning owning wolves – purebred wolves are illegal to own while you can buy, sell and own wolf-dog hybrids, and the highest ratio of wolf to dog allowed is 96%.

Battle of Wills

Our author goes on to inform us that good dog training is never a battle of wills, as it simply has nothing to do with the ego. Training a dog can never be seen as anything too personal – indeed, it is not personal at all, and he recommends the animal training manuals of the expert William Koehler. His key piece of advice was always to get the animal to watch you, the trainer.

Canine Intelligence

Dogs, as man’s best friends, are often seen as highly intelligent, and indeed they are. Psychological tests show that wolves do better than dogs on problem tasks while the latter beat the wolves on training tasks.  The reason for this difference is that wolves need to be quick and sharp at problem-solving as they must learn swiftly to avoid trouble and danger on an hourly basis in their lives in the woodland, mountains and forests.  Therefore, the environment of the wolf selects for mechanical intelligence.

Rowlands’ Contribution to Philosophy

Our author informs us that he is professionally probably most known for being one of the architects of a view of the mind that sees it as essentially embodied and embedded in the world around it (p. 30ff.). As he explains lucidly himself:

“Mental activities do not just take place inside our heads – they are not just brain processes.  Rather, they also involve activities we do in the world: in particular, the manipulation, transformation and exploitation of relevant environmental structures... The forerunner of this view was the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who, with his colleague Anton Luria demonstrated just how much processes of remembering and other mental activities had changed with the development of the external device for storing information. The outstanding natural memory of primitive cultures gradually withers away as we rely more and more on written language as ways of storing our memories.” (p. 30)

    Unlike the wolf, the dog, who is a close relative and descendant of the wolf, has learnt to rely on the human animal. More than that, still, the dog has developed the ability to use us to get his needs met. In short, we are the information-storing and processing devices that the dog has. In other words, we humans are part of the dog’s extended mind.   When a dog wants to go out to the garden it will stand by the closed door till we open it, or bark if we are not looking in that direction.  Rowland also regales us with stories of emotions displayed by animals and quite rightly contends that “all social mammals are capable of deep feelings of affection towards each other.” (See p. 64 – 66) He also makes an important point at the end of these examples of animal emotions: “Once you have enough anecdotes, they become data.”

    Rowlands every now and again sounds a dark and pessimistic note, rather like John Gray, and both these authors echo a sombre note similar to that of Arthur Schopenhauer.  The Simian or Ape in us, according to Rowlands, evolved socially through “scheming and deception that lie at the core of the form of social intelligence possessed by apes and monkeys.” (p. 62) It is extremely difficult for any decently-minded liberal, given the state the geopolitical world is in with the murder of innocents the by-product of the human animal’s greed and hubris, to negate Rowland’s contention that “machination and mendacity lie at the core of our superior intelligence, like worms coiled at the core of an apple.” (p. 64) The Ape or Simian is “driven by malice aforethought and is not easily mollified.” (p. 78) Furthermore, the ape is merciless to its peers in a way the wolf is not and could never be.

    The author also presents us with an excellent if brief discussion of the problem of evil (p. 94 – 105) which I won’t discuss in detail here.  However, there were some insights into this question I had never come across before.  One such insight was the concept of “epistemic duty,” which is the obligation that lies upon all our shoulders to subject our beliefs to appropriate and critical scrutiny.   (p. 98) This results often in the failure to see evil right under our noses.  In the case of sexual and physical abuse of women and children, many institutions of both Church and State have failed blithely in this epistemic duty as well as in their moral duty to behave in a just manner.  Quite appropriately, Rowlands also discusses Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil,” as presented in Eichmann’s seemingly disembodied crimes in his office of death.  With him, sheer evil had resulted through strokes of pen, levers of manual typewriters and piles of paper.  It was commonplace and banal work by creepy individuals in hidden rooms that resulted in the murder of millions.  In short, how many of us fail to do (i) our moral duty and (ii) our epistemic duty any day of the week? (see p. 100) As a little boy I was taught the catechism of the Catholic Church by my teachers and Rowlands two categories of duties were described as “sins of omission,” our failure to do what is morally right in a given situation. 

    There are many more points of philosophical interest in this book but I will leave those to the reader to explore further.

These two books complement one another.  

A Note on Training a Dog

Training dogs, even wolves, is never cruel, Rowlands argues, in the hands of qualified and humane trainers. Animals need to be disciplined if they are to live somewhat freely with us humans. Indeed young, and sometimes not so young, humans need to be disciplined if they, too, are to live in human society. After all, that’s why we have prisons – to incarcerate those who cannot live in society without wreaking havoc on themselves and others through their crimes. However, we would all be at one with Professor Rowlands who argues that we must discipline our animals, but never ever break their spirit.  The same applies to our human offspring.  To really appreciate our freedom, we have to have learnt good discipline in our lives. The exercise of real freedom requires real discipline.  As Nietzsche aptly put it, “Those who cannot discipline themselves will quickly find someone else doing it for them.”

Answering His Critics

Professor Rowlands does answer his critics well – that is, those critics who accuse him of taking a wild creature out of its habitat. Firstly, he tells us that his wolf, whom he named Brenin, was not born in the wild, but rather in captivity.  Also, he is quite adamant that he gave the creature far better care and attention than he had had heretofore. Also, as a passionate animal and dog lover, having been reared in a family that owned two great Danes, he knew that he was more than capable of training the young wolf and rearing him effectively and sympathetically. This memoir, The Philosopher and the Wolf, testifies more than adequately to his success in this matter.

    I am quite at one with Rowlands where he criticizes his would-be critics as being for the most part “middle-class liberal academics with green pretensions.” (p.36) Better to “walk the walk than talk the talk” as the cliché rightly puts it. This memoir is primarily about “walking the walk,” with the philosophical musings coming by way of reflection on those lived experiences.

What Nature Intends

I am also singularly at one with Professor Rowlands where he states that “what nature intends” is extremely far from a closed question. In fact, it is so open that it admits of many possible answers.  Therefore, those who throw off opinions as to what nature intends need to be wary and to question what they mean by this statement in the first place.  Now, that is true philosophy – the heart of which is a radical questioning of assumptions, presumptions and presuppositions.

Demeaning Animals

Many years ago, I attended a debate between liberal theologians and scientists (biologists, geneticists and physicists) on the topic of evolution. One of the theologians was personally known to me and a brilliant liberal theologian he was and is. However, on this occasion, the biologist got the better of him in a certain argument about whether apes can love or not.  This theologian had fallen captive to the categories of his own discipline and his lack of experience of working with animals.  As an animal lover, I know “on my pulses,” as the Romantic poet John Keats so aptly put it, that animals can love not only one another but us as well. Every farmer knows that. However, on this occasion, the theologian was simply wrong when he averred that quite obviously apes are incapable of love. In other words, I completely concur with Professors John Gray and Mark Rowlands that we have overestimated our human worth to the sheer disadvantage of our brother and sister animals. That foxes, wolves, dogs, horses and dolphins are both clever and capable of love virtually goes without saying today. As Rowlands wittily puts it: “Try telling the urban fox that it should be engaged in its natural behaviour of hunting mice. Try telling the fox that its essence precedes its existence, and that, unlike me, it doesn’t have its being to be.” (p. 39) [Rowlands is here referring to existential categories, especially those invented by Jean-Paul Sartre, that ultimate existentialist, who described that particular philosophical view as the contention that existence precedes essence for all humans and that essence precedes existence for everything else including animals].

    Furthermore, I’m totally in agreement with Rowlands here that this is the height of human arrogance. It is interesting for this writer to note the almost totally unconscious acceptance by these so-called modern philosophers of many of the presuppositions made by more orthodox Christian philosophers before them, e.g., that humankind stands at the pinnacle of creation and can lord it over other creatures as a result. Sartre argued that humans were beings-for-themselves or pour-soi, while lowly animals were mere beings in themselves or en-soi.  In other words, the human being can define himself or herself, create their own project in life or choose a particular path or vocation of their own. In other words, humankind is essentially free – or condemned to be free as Sartre would put it – while the mere animal is anything but free. Once again this is a very arrogant and condescending view of animal life by humankind.

The Hand of Cards

I remember reading a biography of Stephen Hawking written by two of his early PhD candidates and later collaborators where the world-renowned theoretical physicist uses the “hand of cards” for life. He told his interlocutors that he never felt a shred of self-pity because he was burdened with such a catastrophic disease that left him wheelchair-bound and voiceless relatively early in life, quite simply because as a physicist he understood the sheer chance that is nature. He simply believed that there was no use in getting upset by something which he could do absolutely nothing about.  He also spoke about playing whatever hand of cards fate dealt you in life to the best of your ability. That is all we can do, all that is humanly possible.  Rowlands is in agreement with this and uses the very same metaphor for the parts we ourselves can play in life. It is the same, our philosopher argues for dogs, wolves, foxes and more intelligent animals.  In short, our esteemed Professor writes, and I am in agreement here: “A wolf, no less than a human, can play the hand it has been dealt. And what is more, you can help it to do this.  As it becomes better at playing this hand, it becomes more confident.  It enjoys what it’s learnt and wants to learn more. It becomes stronger and consequently happier.” (p. 41) That Rowlands is using a metaphor, and using it in its anthropomorphic sense to boot, goes without saying.

    It is about time I brought this review to an end as I find I am writing far too much here.  Let me finish by quoting a little Heidegger whose thought Rowlands discusses on occasion.  Heidegger always stressed that we are beings-towards-death and that reflecting on and contemplating this fact led us to appreciate life more fully.  I learned a little more about Heidegger from the man who befriended the wolf where he informed me that the German philosopher also spoke of persons as beings-towards-a-future.  The book ends on an equally sad and happy note with the death of the wolf called Brenin and the birth of Rowland’s first son whom he tells us he just might call by the wolf’s name.  Tearfully addressing the dead wolf, the author says “I miss you, and I miss seeing your stone ghost every morning… Sleep well, my wolf brother.  We’ll meet again in dreams.” (p. 224)