2025 Scott-Hawkins Lecture

If you have spent any part of your life with a dog, you may have found certain questions popping, unbidden, into your mind: Is my dog living a fulfilled life? Is my dog a good dog? Does my dog love me? Addressing these questions compels you to confront not just your dog’s life but yours as well―to think about what fulfillment, and meaning, in life really is.

​In this lecture, based on his book The Word of Dog, philosopher Mark Rowlands invites us to explore how dogs offer more than loyalty and affection—they offer a glimpse into a different, perhaps better, way of being. Through everyday moments and shared experiences, Rowlands reveals the faint but powerful lessons dogs hold for us about happiness, simplicity, and the ethical shape of a good life. While we may never achieve the kind of uncomplicated joy our dogs embody, this lecture challenges us to consider how much closer we might come simply by listening to what they show us.