This book is full of observations about friendship—discerningly borrowed and observantly original; it is a credible descendant of those wonders of human perspicacity, Aristotle’s books on friendship. One of those borrowed observations is that “the point of being friends is to charm each other.”
Willing Dogs and Reluctant Masters: On Friendship and Dogs by Gary Borjesson (250 pages, Paul Dry Books, 2012)
I loved Gary Borjesson’s Willing Dogs and Reluctant Masters, but my credentials for reviewing it are even better than that: I don’t like dogs. They slobber, shed and speak not a word of English—none of which facts is denied in this account of friendship between dogs and humans. (In my defense: among the alogoi, the wordless, I do feel friendly toward dolphins, who luckily live in another element, and toward babies, who are both incarnations of potential rationality and cute—for which the animal ethologist’s term is “care-soliciting.”) Moreover, I have no idea whether Gary Borjesson’s fundamental claim is true: that real—not in-a-manner-of-speaking—friendship between dog and human is possible. My old friend Ray Coppinger, a dog evolutionist and breeder (he found the Jack Russell terrier that inhabits the Assistant Dean’s office at St. John’s College in Annapolis), whose expertise figures in this book, thinks otherwise. He once said to me that attributing friendly feelings rather than self-serving instincts to dogs is pure “anthropomorphizing.” So I’m starting out severely objective in several respects.
Yet I’m captivated by the author’s account of his life with the two dogs who are the principals in this story, Kestra and Aktis. His claims rest on acutely attuned and prolonged observation of his own dogs, and, peripherally other people’s dogs. This affectionate attention is at once trust-and doubt-inspiring. It makes an enchanting story, but it might also be self-confirming, producing the illusions of mutual love. For example, his dogs often smile at him, though I’ve read that animals with fangs don’t smile, that the evolutionary origin of the human smile is the wolfish snarl. So I’m one of the author’s acknowledged dog-skeptics—or rather, one half of me is. With the other half, I’m totally persuaded that the friendship view is the better hypothesis for dog, man, and world.
For not only is it a more coherent and a more friendly universe if the friendship hypothesis proves out, but it is also a more interesting world, since this position rests on postulates that modulate some current reductionist dogmas concerning beast and man, both in themselves and together. There are thought-provoking lessons here both for intra-species and inter-species relations.
Gary Borjesson’s philosophical reading continually underwrites and illuminates his meditations. Sometimes it’s almost as if this dog-and-man tale came into its own as a corroboration of Aristotle’s, Plato’s, and Hegel’s insights into animate nature—especially Aristotle’s. Thus the epigraph to the second chapter on the spirit of friendship is part of a passage taken from Aristotle’s Politics. Let me quote the whole, which I’ve always found puzzling, but which becomes very satisfactorily clear in this book:
Spirit (thumos) is what makes friendliness. For it is the very power of the soul by which we feel friendship. And here’s the sign: Spirit, when it feels slighted, is roused more against intimates and friends than strangers (Politics, 1327b 40-41).
And Aristotle mentions the Guardians, Plato’s warriors in the Republic, who are friendly to those they know and savage to those they don’t know and whose nature Socrates compares—here’s serendipity!—to that of a noble young dog (Republic, 375a-376b).
Spirit, spiritedness, passionate temperament, as a middle and mediating aspect of the human soul, is a Socratic discovery. Sometimes it is obedient to reason, sometimes it in turn masters lust; these latter are respectively the highest and lowest parts of our soul.
Why should spirit be the enabler of friendship? It is a working postulate of Borjesson’s book that Aristotle is simply right: spiritedness is the condition of friendship. The argumentation is of the best sort, the sort that starts in a variety of quarters, but from which all roads lead to Athens: The high road, however, connecting spiritedness to friendship, is the desire to be recognized, attended to, praised, and the corresponding recoil is the shame of being misconstrued, ignored, or disrespected.
By the intra-species hypothesis, dogs have spirit; it might even count as an oblique proof that some dogs have a lot and others but little, and even the latter have a sense of injury. One of the pleasures of this book is the interweaving of dog anecdotes and human reflection, and the principal subjects of the often poignant stories—never shaggy—are Gary Borjesson’s own two dogs. Kestra is sweet-tempered, a little passive, and, for all her lovableness, a little unkeen, but even she has an acute sense of her trust in her master being betrayed.
If, then, people and dogs have common ground of a higher order than animal needs, it must be in the territory of the spirit. For the author is far from committing the philosophical solecism of attributing reason to dogs. Spirit, however, is, just as Aristotle says, where friendship is at home. Now among us humans, this capability of the spirit is both an accomplishment and a work in progress, and so it is if one of the friends is a dog.
This book is full of observations about friendship—discerningly borrowed and observantly original; it is a credible descendant of those wonders of human perspicacity, Aristotle’s books on friendship (Nicomachean Ethics, Books 8-9). One of those borrowed observations is that “the point of being friends is to charm each other”; I love that, because I once long ago phrased it similarly to myself, sailing the Aegean with a friend: “The motor of friendship is mutual delight.” It doesn’t have Aristotle’s gravity, but he would not repudiate it. Applied to dogs, it does, however, imply that what Aristotle considers the highest kind of friendship—that of beings of intellect in increasingly deep, mutually satisfying conversation—is not a necessary option (and indeed not available) to a dog/man pair of friends.
And that indefeasible fact means that friendship as a work in progress takes on a very different shape for this inter-species pair. Here the work of friendship is obedience training, where man is master, dog subject! As the title of the book declares, dogs, the good ones, are willing. Not that they are called good because they like to obey, but they obey because they are good. They have in them that which can listen—”obey,” from the Latin ob-audire means “to listen and really to hear.” That is just what Socrates thinks of spiritedness: It is pride able to listen to reason. They are, one might say, a-rationally rational. They understand, and so they accept the superiority of their masters.
Here is where Gary Borjesson’s book becomes topical and controversial. The second part of his title is “Reluctant Masters.” He analyzes out this component of our modernity: the reluctance to act with authority, to accept the charge of mastery, be it in child-rearing or dog-training. The result of this abashment often moralizing—in the face of asserting the control of superior reason is spoilage: spoiled children, ruined dogs. The book is full of funny and sad examples; some are reports of outrage expressed by spectators watching the book’s author at work being a master.
One result of the failure of rational mastery is loss of dignity on both sides, and with it, of equality. For, at its best, friendship is mutual and is a relation of peers. Some of the most poignant passages of the book are about mutuality, the balanced equality of dog and human in the territory of spiritedness. Indeed, in the controlled competition that characterizes the play between these two spirited animals from different species, the dog often wins—to the man’s delight. The result of mastery accepted is an equality at once properly delimited and invaluable.
Aristotle, one last time, says that happiness is the soul fulfillingly at work in accordance with its own goodness (Nichomachean Ethics, 1098a I 3-16). The willing master of this book really means to train his dog to happiness. He (or she—the author’s favorite dog trainer is Vicki Hearne) teaches the young dog to obey, first as parents habituate a child, by gentle and consistent compulsion, even fear. That training produces the inner control that in us is called self-determination, freedom. Within these bounds the dog has scope to fulfill his dog-nature as a competitive pursuer and predator of minor wild life and as a cooperative playfellow of humans and dogs. The descriptions of these play-episodes induce sympathetic joy.
I’ll now take it on faith, the writer’s faith, that dogs, domesticated wolves, may be happy under—no, may be made happy by—human mastery. But that humans, uncircumventably the masters of domesticated nature, can be exhilaratingly happy, and also better, more thoughtful, and more just in their friendly companionship with dogs—that’s proven beyond doubt by this lovely book.
This essay first appeared here in July 2013. This essay originally appeared in the St. John’s Review (Volume 54, No. 2, 2013) and appears here by permission of the author.
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“He once said to me that attributing friendly feelings rather than self-serving instincts to dogs is pure “anthropomorphizing.””
Why does anyone ever listen to this rubbish? There is absolutely no conflict between having “self-serving instincts” AND “friendly feelings.” In fact, the “friendly feelings” would in this case, be the very best way to get the “self-serving instincts” activated!
In more primitive times, humans lived in the wild and were vulnerable to predators and rival groups. Sleeping required a few to stay awake during the night, otherwise the whole group would be vulnerable. Dogs are nocturnal animals, sleeping in the day, alert at night, and very light sleepers. The original bond between humans and dogs was created by giving the dogs the bones and tough parts of animal kills like Buffalo. The dogs learned to stay close to the human camps for the food opportunity, and in turn were the burglar alarm. Humans could sleep, as long as the dogs were close by.
I would say most dog-human relations are self-serving, but there are occasional real friendships. But they can be fragile, not “undying” as so many animal advocates proclaim. And dogs definitely do smile.
I have yet to read Borjesson’s book, but probably also fall into the 50-50 camp. I’ve shared most of my 77 years with dogs of many different breeds. Some were bred as working dogs, intelligent creatures that strived to please and with whom a kind of friendship formed easily. They were also very protective of all family members — the pack — something that deepened the friendships. Our current dog, a 14-year-old Bichon Frise, came to us as a rescue at age 5. She arrived with a well-established set of canine neuroses, assuming such things exist. But she, too, has become a friend, although of a different kind. Stubborn, more self-centered, and yet remarkably attuned to our family life, she has given us much joy and seems to enjoy being a source of entertainment. Anway, I’ve always believed God infused dogs with something special — a gift of Spirit perhaps? — as gift to us.
I also have not read the book so my comment is on the review. The review and presumably the book itself ignores all the research into canine cognition and emotion that is the subject of significant progress. For example, we have The Canine Cognition Center at Yale University as one research site. And there’s an excellent review article “Decoding the Canine Mind” which mentions the use of brain scans to decode canine emotions.
The findings of this research are, of course, subject to debate among researchers about the conclusions drawn, but to me they are indications that dogs thoughts and feelings are similar to humans albeit not as developed.
I do have one specific comment on the review and that is for the note about compulsion and even fear-based training. This is an obsolete idea with modern reward-based approaches being not only more humane but also more effective when properly done.
Just a personal example: we trained our dog to come when she’s called with a combination of happy words and a good treat. There was zero fear involved. Now when we call her, she comes racing for both the cookie and the praise she receives. I won’t speculate about which is more important to her, but there is some research showing praise is more rewarding for some dogs and food for others.