Oh look, the Owner says, the New Scissors have arrived and so I am going to do the Christmas Wrapping. Where are the Old Scissors? I ask. It is the First Rule of Christmas Time, says the Owner, that the Old Scissors always disappear when it is Christmas Time. One […]
Jeremy the Beagle says John Henry Newman said Virtue is its Own Reward. He said Virtue brings with it the Truest and Highest Pleasure. Houdini says that this can be translated as meaning that the Moral Dog Does not Get the Cheese. I say this may be why the Owner has […]
I arrive home from dog day care after an exhausting set of activities, only to have the Owner open the fridge and declare in tones of sorrow which, I must say, sound slightly unsurprised, that we are fully out of cheese. How can we be fully out of cheese, I […]
I can tell that the Owner has been reading Sartre. She is looking rather gloomy, in a deeply philosophical manner, and she says life is inherently absurd. Then she squeaks Squeaky Cat rather despondently and asks me what I think. I say Squeaky Cat is absolute proof of the existence […]
The Owner has a terrible habit of pulling backwards as we walk along. I have been trying to correct her, straining to help her along as she leans back and endlessly complains at her inability to keep up. This morning she says that if I don’t stop pulling her cheese […]
The Owner says Morality is an absolute which gives rise to certain rules. I say all rules are subject to context. Morality itself, I say, is contextual. Today is a case in point. It began as an ordinary day. The sun had risen, the birds were singing, the squirrels were […]
I run freely through the park with Caspar, Lucifer with the nose cage, and Pedro with the floppy ears. We are wild and free, racing through grass, dashing through trees, attracting many other dogs as we pass. We are a tribe, a troup, a movement, spreading Philosophy to the Dog […]
I don’t know why the Owner throws the ball. When I take her for her evening Walk she likes to throw it. Of course, I fetch it. I am, after all, a True Dog, in addition to being a Moral Dog. The urge to chase the ball is overwhelming, the […]
I like it when the Owner stops at Le Pain Quotidien to buy a scone because it comes with accompanying cheese slices and as you may have surmised, I have an affinity for cheese. Or so I thought. How was I to know that you cannot generalise all cheese served […]
It is important, for the Moral Dog, to have autonomy. Both Kant and John Stuart Mill were clear on that, and they didn’t agree on much else, I can tell you. The Owner says autonomy is the capacity to be my Own Dog. She suggests that when I decide to […]
Julian Savulescu says that moral enhancement is essential for humanity to triumph because human beings won’t become moral enough fast enough to save themselves just by trying to be better people, even given that they have Greta Thunberg. He means he thinks that science should be used to make people morally […]
The German Shorthaired Pointer is a stubborn dog, although this is something of a value-judgement, since stubbornness is only perseverance viewed from the other side. Where would Frodo Baggins have been without stubbornness? Lording it over us all as a Wraith-Hobbit wearing the Ring of Doom, that’s where. Stubbornness is […]
The Owner and I both, it seems, like cheese. How should I look at this? Should I (a) take the narrow survival-of-the-fittest view that velociraptors epitomise, the view that life is a competition for cheese in which I am pitted against the Owner and may, ultimately, have to choose between […]
Usual trip to coffee shop with owner this morning. Met Caspar, who was looking impossibly fluffy. The Owner petted him. AGAIN. So much for monogamy. Attempted to eat him under guise of puppy play. We’ll see who’s cute when she gets dog hairs in her cappuccino. The Owner retrieves me […]
Charles Darwin suggested that all animals are shaped by the need to compete with other species in order to find an ecological niche in which they can succeed. Kind of like a chair, which you shape exactly to fit. It’s an odd idea, since it suggests I fit exactly the […]
Hergest, a Hound's Philosophy 