This fascinating book charts the relationship between Mark Rowlands, a rootless philosopher, and Brenin, his extraordinarily well-travelled wolf. More than just an exotic pet, Brenin exerted an immense influence on Rowlands as both a person, and, strangely enough, as a philosopher, leading him to re-evaluate his attitude to love, happiness, nature and death. By turns funny (what do you do when your wolf eats your air-conditioning unit?) and poignant, this life-affirming book will make you ...

'It's Schopenhauer and the will. It's Plato, it's Hume, Baudrillard and the concept of the Nietzschean superman!' Keanu Reeves on The MatrixThe Philosopher at the End of the Universe allows anyone to understand basic philosophical concepts from the comfort of their armchair, through the plots and characters of spectacular blockbusting science-fiction movies. Learn about: The Nature of Reality from The Matrix; Good and Evil from Star Wars; Moralit...

'Most of the serious thinking I have done over the past twenty years has been done while running.' Mark Rowlands has run for most of his life. He has also been a professional philosopher. And for him the two - running and philosophising - are inextricably connected. In Running with the Pack he tells us about the most significant runs of his life - from the entire day he spent running as a boy in Wales, to the runs along French beaches and up Irish mountains with his beloved wolf Brenin, an...

Are humans really different at all?Animal Rights is a big deal. From animal testing to vegetarianism, and hunting to preservation of fish stocks, it's a topic that's always in the news.Mark Rowlands, author of The Philosopher and the Wolf, is the world's best known philosopher of animal rights. In this introduction to the topic, he starts by asking whether there is anything about humans that makes us psychologically or physiologically distinctive - ...

If a dog could write a book of philosophy, what would it contain?If you have spent part of your life with a dog, you may find certain questions popping, unbidden, into your mind. Is my dog living a fulfilled life? Is my dog a good dog? Does my dog love me? This, however only scratches the surface of a canine philosophy.Drawing on his life lived with dogs (two German shepherds, the amiable Hugo and his dark twin Shadow; Brenin, a wolf hybrid, and Tess his wo...

'The book of you is dominated by night-black seas, sprinkled with shining island sentences: tiny islets of remembrance, glimmering in the night.'Memory isn't all that we think it is. Each time we revisit even our most deeply ingrained memories, they can soften and consolidate, distorted. Yet they also carry within them the blueprint of each person's unique style. From episodic memories like shining islands in dark water, and forgotten memories that underpin our personaliti...

A fresh view of animals and what we owe them.Do animals have moral standing? Do they count, morally speaking? In Animal Rights, Mark Rowlands argues that they do and explores the implications of this idea. He identifies three different waves in animal rights writing. The first wave was defined by a traditional dispute between utilitarianism (represented by Peter Singer) and rights-based approaches (represented by Tom Regan) to ethics. The second wave was d...

Can animals be persons? To this question, scientific and philosophical consensus has taken the form of a resounding, 'No!' In this book, Mark Rowlands disagrees. Not only can animals be persons, many of them probably are. Taking, as his starting point, John Locke's classic definition of a person, as "a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself the same thinking thing, in different times and places," Rowlands argues that many animals can satisfy all...

Myshkin was born on a certain day and died on a certain day - and some things happened to him in between. These things presented him with ethical questions and this book is a record of his attempt to answer those questions. Discovered by his son after Myshkin's death, A Good Life is one man's reckoning with the life he has led and the choices he made. It is at once a philosophical handbook for living and a page-turning narrative.A Good Life is one man's life (birt...

The idea that our memories, in some sense, make us who we are, is a common one-and not at all implausible. After all, what could make us who we are if not the things we have experienced, thought, felt and desired on these idiosyncratic pathways through space and time that we call lives? And how can we retain these experiences, thoughts, feelings and desires if not through memory? On the other hand, most of what we have experienced has been forgotten. And there is now a considerable body of...

An investigation into the conceptual foundations of a new way of thinking about the mind that does not locate all cognition "in the head."There is a new way of thinking about the mind that does not locate mental processes exclusively "in the head." Some think that this expanded conception of the mind will be the basis of a new science of the mind. In this book, leading philosopher Mark Rowlands investigates the conceptual foundations of this new science of the mind...

One of the most distinctive cultural phenomena of recent years has been the rise and rise of fame. In this book, Mark Rowlands argues that our obsession with fame has transformed it. Fame was once associated with excellence or achievement in some or other field of endeavour. But today we are obsessed with something that is, in effect, quite different: fame unconnected with any discernible distinction, fame that allows a person to be famous simply for being famous. This book shows why this ...