![]() ![]() ![]() The narrative is alternately humorous and affecting, even self-deprecating at times, but the tone can also be arrogant, self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing. The author’s presentation of difficult philosophical concepts and of more general human experience is keen and readable, though his insights are often profoundly misanthropic. ![]() His knowledge of the Western philosophical tradition is rich, ranging from Aristotle through Hobbes, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Sartre. Rowlands also investigates humankind’s supposed obsession with feelings and sets out to redefine, or at least re-envision, such emotions as happiness, love and pleasure. Each chapter is packed with personal anecdotes-for example, the author and friends picking up girls at rugby parties with Brenin’s “help”-and with philosophical explorations ranging from notions of time, consciousness and freedom to ideas regarding malice, evil and death. of Miami, Body Language, 2006, etc.) constructs both a memoir and a philosophical journal. Through philosophical reflections combined with a personal narrative of the ten-plus year period he lived with a wolf named Brenin, Rowlands (Philosophy/Univ. A unique human-animal friendship becomes the springboard and locus for exploring issues in metaphysics, ethics, existentialism, theodicy and human emotion. ![]()
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