Feline Philosophy

Cats and the Meaning of Life

By: John Gray

Narrated by: Simon Vance

The history of philosophy has been a predictably tragic or comical succession of palliatives for human disquiet. Thinkers from Spinoza to Berdyaev have pursued the perennial questions of how to be happy, how to be good, how to be loved, and how to live in a world of change and loss. But perhaps we can learn more from cats - the animal that has most captured our imagination - than from the great thinkers of the world.

In Feline Philosophy, the philosopher John Gray discovers in cats a way of living that is unburdened by anxiety and self-consciousness, showing how they embody answers to the big questions of love and attachment, mortality, morality, and the Self: Montaigne's house cat, whose unexamined life may have been the one worth living; Meo, the Vietnam War survivor with an unshakable capacity for "fearless joy"; and Colette's Saha, the feline heroine of her subversive short story "The Cat", a parable about the pitfalls of human jealousy.

Exploring the nature of cats, and what we can learn from it, Gray offers a profound, thought-provoking meditation on the follies of human exceptionalism and our fundamentally vulnerable and lonely condition. He charts a path toward a life without illusions and delusions, revealing how we can endure both crisis and transformation, and adapt to a changed scene, as cats have always done.

©2020 John Gray (P)2020 Tantor

A Tour de Force

John Gray is a Modern Day Heraclitus.
Mankind's inclination for pathological memory lapses is amply illustrated by the fact that brilliance such as Gray's [or Heraclutus'] only rises to the surface once every three millenia.
(Of the 100+ books consumed per annum this is The [only] One well worthy of a hard copy - so far!)
"Progress is an illusion with a future." - John Gray
Truer words were never spoken.
Gray is as good as it gets! Bravo

Unexpectedly Good

Surprisingly deep on the history of philosophy and ethics... Everything is presented in a very approachable style and well cited.

Great book on philosophy

This book was very deep in its treatment of philosophy and very charming and entertaining in its stories about cats. It tells of the history of cats, cats in cultures, and stories of real cats.

Meow!

Oh that I could live like a cat, but I am what I am, an anxious, diversion-seeking human.

Absolutely fantastic

Everybody wants to be a cat! If you love cats and their zen wisdom, this book is certainly for you!

Meow this is worth listening to thrice....

I had planned to read this from my library but decided to listen to it at work. Well done and insightful. Probably going to buy the book just to have the physical copy as well....

highly philosophical and literary book about cats

i'll say that this is not a book for you if you "just like cats" and want to hear about how great they are in direct ways with touches of philosophy. this is very much a book on philosophy, with literary examples, discussing the topics how with an eye for how cats are. it's a book in praise of cats by a thinking person, although if what we're led to believe about the cat way of living by the author himself, not thinking about cats and just turning around from your book and loving your cat instead has a higher virtue. he says (paraphrasing) that role of philosophy is to undo itself, to revert what we've learned through civilization back to our true nature. so i would say, if you're choosing to get into philosophy through this cat book, you might be better off without the practice in the first place, and cherish a native simplicity and ease as the cat might have. the book touches on various philosophies such as stoicism, epicureanism, buddhism, aristotelianism, daoism, humanism, spinoza, and more. i'll vouch for this mix of ideas by saying i basically independently arrived at most of what this book was saying in my own learning, which took me along a road paved with all these ideas. my one complaint is that there was not a single word on the cynics, who seem like an obvious candidate for a "feline philosopher", despite being called "doglike" themselves. one could have drawn out a similar etymological path as the word cynic and call the catlike philosophy "aeluricism", but i guess that will have to be my coinage

Cattastic! Full of Mewsdome!

Sleep for the joy of it. Yes indeed! What a lovely book. Short too. Become one with your inner cat.

Philosophy that matters

I came for the cats and stayed for the philosophy. The concepts were not new to me but the spin is unique. Learning philosophy is complicated and filled with contradictions but applying one perspective helps cut through the murky parts. This book is both entertaining and enlightening and is well matched to the narrator.

Outstanding ! NOT a "silly cat book" !

this is an outstanding short exploration of philosophy and literature as it relates to cats and their nature, particularly in contrast to humans and their nature, and the lessons that humans can learn for themselves about living a better life from observing and understanding cap nature... as my artist wife says about cats & otger animals in her paintings, "Cats know what they are and do not struggle to be something else or to deny their reality..... humans do little else".