Feline Philosophy
Cats and the Meaning of Life
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
'Why can't a human be more like a cat? That is the question threaded through this vivid patchwork of philosophy, fiction, history and memoir ... a wonderful mixture of flippancy and profundity, astringency and tenderness, wit and lament' Jane O'Grady, Daily Telegraph
'When I play with my cat, how do I know she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?' Montaigne
There is no real evidence that humans ever 'domesticated' cats. Rather, it seems that at some point cats saw the potential value to themselves of humans. John Gray's wonderful new book is an attempt to get to grips with the philosophical and moral issues around the uniquely strange relationship between ourselves and these remarkable animals.
Feline Philosophy draws on centuries of philosophy, from Montaigne to Schopenhauer, to explore the complex and intimate links that have defined how we react to and behave with this most unlikely 'pet'.
At the heart of the book is a sense of gratitude towards cats as perhaps the species that more than any other - in the essential loneliness of our position in the world - gives us a sense of our own animal nature.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former academic Gray (Straw Dogs) takes an unconventional, not entirely successful, feline-focused work to exploring a wide array of philosophical concepts, from morality to death and the afterlife. Gray writes that he believes cats have more to teach humans about life than most modern philosophers (whose work Gray memorably describes as "the practice of elucidating the prejudices of middle-class academics"). This intriguing premise falls flat, though, as Gray spends considerable space on such philosophical heavyweights as Montaigne and Spinoza rather than on elucidating "the nature of cats, and what we can learn from it." Gray does entertain with his anecdotes of cat-inspired thinkers, such as Samuel Johnson, who, tormented by lifelong depression, admired cats' capacity to "spend much of their lives in contented solitude." Elsewhere, Gray describes novelist Patricia Highsmith's great sympathy for animals, which extended to once declaring that "if she could discover who docked the tail of a local black cat she would not hesitate to shoot them and to kill.' " However, this intermittently witty and intriguing work likely won't be enough to keep cat-loving readers from prowling elsewhere for more satisfying insight into their four-legged companions.
