Bøker av Mark Rowlands

Charts the relationship between Mark Rowlands, a rootless philosopher, and Brenin, his extraordinarily well-travelled wolf. This life-affirming book can make you reappraise what it means to be human.

Mark Rowlands explores the intimate relationship between running and thinking, especially thoughts about the meaning of life, in this brilliant follow-up to The Philosopher and the Wolf

It is commonly held that our thoughts, beliefs, desires and feelings - the mental phenomena that we instantiate - are constituted by states and processes that occur inside our head. This book presents an introduction to the subject grounded in wider developments in the history of philosophy.

Fame was once associated with excellence or achievement in some or other field of endeavour. One of the most distinctive cultural phenomena over the years has been the rise and rise of fame. This book shows why this new fame is simultaneously fascinating and worthless.

Animal Rights is a big deal. From animal testing to vegetarianism, and hunting to preservation of fish stocks, it's a topic that's always in the news. Mark Rowlands, author of The Philosopher and the Wolf, is the world's best known philosopher of animal rights. In this, the first introduction he has written to the topic, he starts by asking whether there is anything about humans that makes us psychologically or physiologically distinctive - so that there might be a moral justification for treating animals in a different way to how we treat humans. From this foundation, he goes on to explore specific issues of eating animals, experimentation, pets, hunting, zoos, predation and engineering animals. He ends with a challenging argument of how an improved understanding of animal ethics can and should affect readers' choices.

In this 2nd edition the author has substantially revised his book throughout, updating the moral arguments and adding a chapter on animal minds. Importantly, rather than being a polemic on animal rights, this book is also a considered and imaginative evaluation of moral theory as explored through the issue of animal rights.

'It's Schopenhauer and the will. It's Plato, it's Hume, Baudrillard and the concept of the Nietzschean superman!' Keanu Reeves on The MatrixThe Philosopher at the End of the Universe allows anyone to understand basic philosophical concepts from the comfort of their armchair, through the plots and characters of spectacular blockbusting science-fiction movies. Learn about: The Nature of Reality from The Matrix; Good and Evil from Star Wars; Morality from Aliens; Personal Identity from Total Recall; The Mind-Body Dilemma from Terminator; Free Will from Minority Report; Death and the Meaning of Life from Blade Runner; and much more. As someone once said, things must be said and knowledge known, and the cast list assembled to tell us does not disappoint: Tom Cruise, Plato, Harrison Ford, Immanuel Kant, Sigourney Weaver, Friedrich Nietzsche, Keanu Reeves and Rene Descartes. From characters in the biggest films (with lots of explosions and bad language) to Ludwig Wittgenstein (no explosions and too much language in general), hear all the arguments. I think, therefore... I'll be back!