THE WORD OF DOG

An inquiry into the moral and philosophical minds of our best friends.

Does the dog have Buddha nature? So runs the Zen koan. Philosophy professor Rowlands takes a slightly different tack, wondering of Canis lupus familiaris, “If a dog could write a book of philosophy, what would it look like?” It might argue that happiness is a warm bone, might assert that “I bark, therefore I am.” By Rowlands’ reckoning—and he’s not afraid to stretch possibilities into propositions that at first glance might seem absurd—a dog runs free of invidious distinctions, living in a moral universe governed by love, and in all this comes Rowlands’s kicker: “As a general rule, I think, dogs lead more meaningful lives than we do.” To defend the thesis, Rowlands enlists much heavyweight help, although, given Jean-Paul Sartre’s rather dour assessment of the human condition, one wonders if that’s not stacking the deck. Life being tragic, Rowlands supplies a sadly tragic hero with a pet German shepherd that is “deeply paranoid” and “distinctly dangerous” and for that reason is not allowed entry into polite society: His Sisyphean task, as Rowlands notes, is to chase invasive iguanas into the canal that affords him safe room to roam. Is Shadow, the dog, happy? Is his life meaningful? Well, borrowing again from Sartre, Rowlands ponders what the situation might have been if Sisyphus, rolling that rock endlessly uphill, actually took pleasure in the task. Examined life, meaningful life, mirror neurons, and “the groundlessness of our existence and the anguished realization of our groundlessness”: All come into play in his account. Although the book is rewarding in that it sparks a few synapses, before tackling this one, readers will benefit from learning a bit about modern philosophy to be able to decipher dense philosophical prose. Being a dog lover helps, too.

Occasionally tangled, but with plenty of juicy existential problems to gnaw on.