Dogs have had a bad rap in Western philosophy and religion. The ancient Cynics got their name from promoting a life of dog-like (Greek: kynikos) simplicity. The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians, warning against legalism, urges them to “beware of the dogs” (Phil 3:2). Today, we say people are cynics when they are deeply distrustful. And not even the most hidebound conservative wants to be called a legalist.

Yet dogs are neither cynical nor legalistic, certainly not the dogs Joyce and I have known and loved. Rosa Luxemburg Parks, our first dog, had a generous and trusting spirit. So did our second dog, Hannah Estelle. Her very name said she brought gracious starlight into our lives. And I cannot imagine a more affectionate and loyal companion than Ruby, the beautiful reddish Golden Retriever who currently blesses our home. Despite what “cynic” means in Greek, and contrary to Paul’s warning, our dogs have not been cynical legalists.

In fact, dogs can teach us to be better people. Dog-Kissed Tears, the memoir I wrote to remember Rosa, tells of a tension I felt between being assertive and showing affection. Life with Rosa helped transform this tension “into a gracious and vigorous openness for all.” It gave me permission to “do philosophy with a human heart” (p. 64). So too, as I show in my second memoir, our dog Hannah, during a time of loss and sorrow, helped me learn To Sing Once More.

These dog-taught lessons are neither easy nor insignificant. Like the training of a canine companion, they take years of practice, and they point toward unfamiliar paths not yet trod. Nearly two decades after Rosa died, I am still learning to do philosophy with a human heart. Every week, both in choirs I have joined and in my own life, I rediscover how to sing once more.

The world of professional philosophy makes all of this both more difficult and more important. Even though I officially retired in 2016, that remains my world. The publications I read, the books and articles I write, the lectures I give, and the conferences I attend are by and for professional philosophers. In that world, standards of rigor and respectability guide and limit what one can do. That’s what it means to pursue an academic discipline, which I have gladly done.

Still, there’s more to doing philosophy than simply interacting with professional peers. The best philosophy will hear and address a wider public, with a passion for what in human life and society matters most. That’s what I mean by philosophy with a human heart. It does not ignore what professional philosophy has to offer. But it also does not let academic strictures limit its audience or suppress its passion. Instead, it knows, as Blaise Pascal’s Pensées famously said more than three centuries ago, the heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of. For, in his words, “we know the truth not only by reason, but by the heart.” Or, as I put it in the epigraph to this website’s blog page: “The love of wisdom needs the wisdom of love” (Shattering Silos, 20).

The temptation for professional philosophers, and for other academics too, is to become either cynical or legalistic. We are trained to think critically and not to accept superficial opinions. We also try to argue well for our positions and refuse to let facile feelings sway us. So we are professionally predisposed toward unrelenting suspicion and logical legalism. And this puts us at odds with the different sorts of cynicism and legalism running rampant in contemporary culture: populist cynicism that dismisses intellectual expertise, and moral legalism that would impose irrational ideologies on everyone else.

That’s why, perhaps more than ever before, we need a philosophy of the heart. We need a philosophy that passionately attunes its criticisms and arguments to what matters most in life and society, even as it resists the sordid suspicions and desperate machinations of those who neither love wisdom nor listen to the wisdom of love. I’ll explore what such a philosophy comes to in future blog posts.

For now, let me leave you with a photo of the least cynical and most affectionate dog I know, taken on the day we adopted her in January 2020. The photo shows Ruby with her paw cradled on my arm. I call it “Ruby bonding.” It reminds me that cynicism and legalism, whether professional or populist, cannot have the final word. For the love of wisdom needs the wisdom of love.