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.

Meow!

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

Cats teach me my folly

As a new cat “owner” and a human overthinker this book put it all together. I’ll never escape my mind but at least I can watch Bandit (“my” cat) do it. Will listen again and again. Cats have figured it out and they could care less.

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....