In his book The Philosopher and the Wolf, Mark Rowlands presents a mixture of popular philosophy and personal memoir from a time when he shared his life with a wolf. This leads him to speculate on the different ways that simians and lupines experience time. He concludes that while humans and, he asserts, other apes think in a linear way and experience time as something passing, so that they live as much in the past and in the future as they do in the present, his wolf, and he suggests other dogs, look at rather than through the moment.

He concludes that we have much to learn from the wolf in this respect, that our superiority in being able to think about the past and plan for the future is bought at the cost of our inferiority in not being able to fully inhabit significant moments of the present. The moment of the present, as he points out in one of his philosophical asides, is an abstract concept that can never be captured as it is always passing. We may follow Husserl and see the present as an experience composed of the immediate past and the anticipated future (if I raise a glass of wine to my lips, I remember what was poured into the glass and anticipate the taste before beginning to drink). Even a wolf must experience the present in this way, but the wolf is better equipped than humans to take such moments for what they are rather than looking past them and so never seeing them clearly.

It struck me that what Rowlands defines as a quality that makes wolves superior to humans is pretty much what religious thinkers and poets such as R.S. Thomas and Waldo Williams have defined as the supreme transcendent experience of humans, though he does not mention these writers. R.S Thomas’ “we have no business here but to disprove certainties the clock knows” is a major theme in his work:

….. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, not hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to the brightness
that seemed as transistory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

This theme recurs again and again in his poems as well as his occasional prose. But of course he has to worry about it (or at it) as the wolf never would. And Rowland’s point is that, for the wolf, ‘eternity’ is now. It is also Thomas’s point in some expressions of the idea, but framing it in the context of the Christian expectation of eternal life rather takes it into the realm of what Rowlands calls the human tendency to live on hope rather than immediate experience.

What might come nearer to Rowlands’ living in, and looking at, the moment is Waldo Williams’ poem in Welsh ‘Yr Eiliad’:

Gwyddom gan ddyfod yr Eiliad
Ein geni i’r Awr

We know when the moment comes
We are born to the hour

If the book is a vehicle for such musings on the meaning of life for different species, its main attraction has undoubtedly been the account of a relationship between a man and a wolf. This is interesting in itself and at times quite moving, though I didn’t always share the total identification with Rowlands’ narrative that it has elicited from some reviewers. Clearly, developing a relationship with a wolf takes some commitment (he used to take it into the lecture room with him when on the staff of the Philosophy departments of Alabama and Cork universities) and he claims that it was the intensity of his relationship with his ‘brother’ that led him to various philosophical conclusions about animals and humans (he also wrote Animal Rights : A Philosophical Defence). Could he have come to the same conclusions by owning an ordinary dog or even a cat? Probably. But he wouldn’t have sold so many books.

Well-written, well-paced, not always wise, but interesting as a fast read...The relationship with the wolf is the great thing here, and some may also enjoy a rapid overview of philosophical ideas concerning the meaning of life.
A weak ending, like a Hollywood movie, even if true to life. ( )

Rowlands is a lecturer in philosophy, and author of several books of popular philosophy.

In this gem of a book, he discusses his life with a wolf, while in his twenties. Rowlands admits to being fonder of the wolf than of other humans. Indeed he explores, quite provocatively, the meaning of being human; deciding that he doesn’t like his own simian nature very much at all.

Being high on the evolutionary scale, humans have had to compromise in big ways to rise to the top. Rowlands portrays the human as having ape soul, with his main premise that, as apes, human beings are deceptive and always trying to think of ways to outwit each other. In his struggle to overcome his inherent disgust with his simian self, he searches to find a lupine self within and to develop it more. This results in his withdrawal from the human side of intimacy and increasing reliance on the pack mentality of the wolf and dog.

Rowlands explains it thus:

“The augmentation of intelligence that we find in apes and monkeys, but apparently not in other social creatures, is the result of twin imperatives: to scheme more than you are being schemed against and to lie more than you are being lied to. The nature of simian intelligence is irredeemable shaped by these imperatives”.

Hmm. Perhaps out of context this sounds like harsh condemnation of the ‘ape’, but Rowlands had me convinced.

I also admired Rowlands for his application of philosophical argument to his everyday life and his profound commitment to animal rights. Despite enjoying eating meat, he explains his conversion to vegetarianism with the theory of ‘original position’. This is a theory of a 'fair society' put forward by Rawls of Harvard University and discusses the moral position of humans in the world order.

“How do you ensure that the society you live in is a far one? Just as we ensure a fair slicing of the pizza by making sure that the person slicing it does not know which piece he is getting, so we could ensure a fair society by allowing a person to choose how it is to be organized, but by making sure that this person did not know who they were going to be in this society.”

Therefore, if you don’t know if you are going to be a cow or a duck or a disabled person or a King, you could only consider being a vegetarian. The only fair endpoint.

He has some cogent philosophical points, such as: “I always judge a person by how they treat those who are weaker than them.” Or “Humans are the animals that engineer the possibilities of their own evil,” or “What is most important is the person you are when your lucks runs out.”

His writing is accessible and his anecdotal illustration of various philosophical points often amusing and instructional. With humour and sensitivity he touches on life lessons learnt by his life with his lupine friend.

While I do have a cautious skepticism about living and bonding with wild animals, anthropomorphizing their behaviours and attributing meanings and mystical reverence to such creatures, this book just worked for me. Indeed, to some, it may seem like to very epitome of exploitive simian behaviour. It might grate on the sensibilities of some purists, but not mine. I really enjoyed his musings – and now will strive to be more lupine and less simian in my relationships and dealing. ( )

Heavier on the philosophy, lighter on the amusing antecdotes, but somehow reminded me of "Marley and Me". Mr. Rowlands tells a brief story of his life with a full-blooded wolf. Along the way he engages in a number of philosophical arguments. I have to admit, I wanted more wolf, less philosophy, though I found the book very readable. ( )