Description:
Guided by the philosophical insights of Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, How to Talk to a Cat explores the possibility of dialogue beyond the boundaries of spoken language. Original and effective in its interdisciplinary scope, this book ventures into the complexities of engaging in meaningful dialogue with creatures that do not use verbal communication, focusing on unspeaking beings we encounter in the domestic sphere: cats, babies, plants, and tools, among others.
Author Dustin N. Atlas distinguishes between talking to entities in a direct, second-person dialogue, talking about them in a third-person analytical mode, and focusing on how the former is possible in the absence of speech. While many discussions of Buber's philosophy have focused on the I-You relationship, How to Talk to a Cat emphasizes the dynamic processes of dialogue that take place over time where attention, rather than presence, is central. Raising questions about the nature of understanding, cohabitation, and the possibility of connection across different beings, Atlas encourages readers to look more closely at their present life, to reconsider the scope of dialogue and extend it beyond the human to include the silent relationships we share with the world around us.
Bringing Jewish thought into conversation with contemporary philosophy, ethology, animal studies, and critical theory, How to Talk to a Cat challenges prevailing assumptions about the limitations of dialogue and expands on the nature of understanding, cohabitation, and the possibility of connection across types of beings.
Review Quotes:
"With disarming candor and clarity, How to Talk to a Cat brings Martin Buber into our homes. Atlas uses Buber's concept of dialogue to make sense of what we are doing when we talk to our pets or wonder how we have upset our houseplants. These are neither encounters of equals, nor solely our human projections, Atlas argues. They are reciprocal. His analysis of these relations and these reciprocities is not only a compelling new reading of Buber but also a deeply moving account of what it means to relate to those around us."--Sarah Imhoff, author of Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism
"What Atlas has succeeded doing in How to Talk to a Cat is to wed the issue of shelter to those who are sheltered, in all their imperfection, in order to give a phenomenological-esque account of how relationships between speaking beings and "unspeaking things" are actually encountered. It is a singular book on Buber written with a singular level of quality."--Jeffrey Bernstein, author of Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy and History
"Dustin Atlas's How to Talk to a Cat tackles one of the most important aspects of Buber's dialogical thinking, namely, how do human beings speak to beings that do not speak. . . . By focusing on the example of conversing with a cat, emblematic of the domestic dialogue, the reader is pulled into the dialogical situation through the gesture of indexing or pointing, identified as an essential feature of Buber's philosophical presentation. There is no question that How To Talk to a Cat is an important contribution that will be received well by Buber scholars and those interested more broadly in modern Jewish thought and its relationship to general philosophy in the twentieth century."--Elliot R. Wolfson, author of Apophasis and Envisioning the Invisible: Unveiling Veils of Infinity