The author of Straw Dogs, famous for his provocative critiques of scientific hubris and the delusions of progress and humanism, turns his attention to cats—and what they reveal about humans' torturous relationship to the world and to themselves. 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 un-examined 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.

'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.

"Eighteen essays investigate philosophical aspects of the feline mind and the world of cats, illustrated by anecdotes about cats the authors have known"--Provided by publisher.

This gift book is a collection of photos and quotes from Henri, the existential cat whose ennui has captivated people all over the world. Through his series of short films and interactions with an enthusiastic online community, Henri's contemplation and disillusion with the world has struck a chord with millions of fans. Now, finally, we have a collection of Henri's musings in his own words featuring never-before-seen photos and quotes. This book is a window into the tortured soul of the world's first feline philosopher.

"An exploration of the failures of reason in human life and the enduring role of myth in science, politics, and morality"--

A great philosopher will change the way you think about your life. For most of human history, religion provided a clear explanation of life and death. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries new ideas — from psychiatry to evolution to Communist — seemed to suggest that our fate was now in our own hands. We would ourselves become God. This is the theme of a remarkable new book by one of the world's greatest lving philosophers. It is a brilliant and frightening look at the problems and opportunities of a world coming to grips with humankind's now solitary, unaided place in the universe. Gray takes two major examples: the belief that the science-backed Communism of the new USSR could reshape the planet, and the belief among a group of Edwardian intellectuals — popularized through mediums and automatic writing — that there was a non-religious form of life after death. Gray presents an extraordinary cast of philosophers, journalists, politicians, charlatans and mass murderers, all of whom felt driven by a specifically scientific and modern world view. He raises a host of fascinating questions about what it means to be human. The implications of Gray's book will haunt its readers for the rest of their lives.