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ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

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Book Review 

 

Why We Are in Need of Tails 
 
Maria daVenza Tillmanns with illustrations by Blair Thornley 
Iguana Books (Toronto) 
35 pages 
2019 
Hardcover: $12.49, Paper: $9.99, Kindle: $8.49 (US dollars) 

 
 

Review by Sergey Borisov  
 
 

 
  
wonderful philosophical book with a mysterious title "Why We are in Need Tails" lies 
before me. The book is a short story by the philosopher Maria daVenza Tillmanns, 

accompanied by illustrations by the artist Blair Thornley.  
 

Maria teaches philosophy with children in a program developed in collaboration with the 
University of California at San Diego. In 1980, she enrolled in a Teacher Trainer workshop in 
Philosophy for Children conducted by Matthew Lipman.  In 1998 she received her PhD in 
Philosophical Counseling and Teaching under the guidance of Maurice Friedman (a world-renowned 
Martin Buber scholar). Thus, the author of the book I am introducing is an accomplished professional 
philosopher with her own distinctive and unique style. For Maria, philosophy is an art form and she 
likes to "paint with ideas" (p. 35). A talented artist Blair Thornley embodied these ideas in her 
illustrations. Blair is an award-winning illustrator with publications in The New York Times, Boston 
Globe, Washington Post, and others. She has also illustrated the books of writers Peter De Vries and 
James Thurber. 

 
So, what's this book about? How did its author manage to put big philosophy into one small 

story? To understand this requires basic philosophical training, but even without it, it greatly appeals 
to the imagination. The characters of this amazing book—Huk and Tuk—are used to expressing their 
friendship through their tails. Friendship is a strong ties-tails that binds people together. These ties, 
though strong, enhance freedom. Besides, these ties should be organic; they should be natural, not 
artificial. It is a pity that we rarely have that magical "tail" that connects us to one another’s presence 
in our lives, even as we are busy with our daily activities. 

 
Over time, many artificial devices for the convenience of our lives made the tails unnecessary, 

and they gradually disappeared. And only then the scale of the catastrophe became clear, which was 

A 



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that people lost direct tail-contact with each other. Communication lost its intense subtlety and 
precision. People began to compensate for the lack of communication with the help of language. But 
if previously only the tail was enough to communicate, now it takes hundreds of words to convey or 
express something. However, we still cannot always achieve our goal. We can be heard, but we are not 
understood. 

 
Without tails, we cannot pass on to the Other the full depth of our feelings and thoughts. We 

can be there for each other, but there's something missing; we feel disconnected, distant from the 
Other somehow. But the author of the book knows the cure for this awkwardness. We are helped by 
metaphors, images, i.e., everything that is contained in wonderful fairy tales. And understanding 
becomes possible. An allegory, a metaphor, a figurative vision, connects us with our invisible tails and 
our invisible roots. Through this subtle subconscious connection we feel unity with each other, 
because through these tails-tales we are all rooted in culture. 

 
On the other hand, invisible connections are everywhere. For example, as the author of this 

beautiful story claims, string theory is a kind of tail-theory. Invisible strings permeate the Universe, 
forming space-time gravitational fields. Everything is connected with everything through this 
intertwining of tails-traces left by our physical interactions and the course of events. It's all about 
keeping the world in balance. Everything is intertwined and present to each other in different ways, 
much like Yin and Yang. Therefore, in everything there is its opposite—a condition of transition and 
change creating a dynamic and pulsating whole. 

 
By losing our tails and thus losing a direct connection with the world and with another person, 

we lose a connection with ourselves. The magic is that to feel connected to myself, I must be 
connected with the Other. Connecting means that I feel the Other as myself and I feel like the Other. 
If I don’t feel the Other in me, I may not see, let alone think about how my desires will affect others 
and the world at large. I end up living “in the void,” wishing for something that cannot be. This 
becomes the root of my forever-unfulfilled dissatisfaction. According to Protagoras, “man is the 
measure of all things.” Maybe we should include the Other in our “measure” of all things. 

 
The lack of connection to the Other makes me assertive and arrogant. Without feeling a real 

connection, I can consider my thoughts to be the thoughts of another, and project my desires onto 
the desires of another. Reality becomes vague and distorted, and the uncertainty this creates, makes 
me more assertive and arrogant. My knowledge of the world without my deeper connection to the 
world makes this knowledge not only arrogant, but foolish and essentially completely unnecessary. 
The only way to keep in touch is to be able to listen to the Other so that it is always on, as the author 
of the book writes, stereo listening mode. Unlike the mono mode, which implies only our agreement 
or disagreement with the speaker, stereo mode implies understanding the thoughts of others as the 
thoughts of the unique Other, in all their dissimilarity and identity. When several voices are present 
in our consciousness at the same time, this creates a more complete and richer sound of reality. 
Listening to these voices clearly means being able, through understanding, to transform the 
cacophony of individual sounds into a symphony of unified reality that resonates in people’s hearts 
and souls and becomes part of our individual and shared consciousness. 

 



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We need to be able to properly connect the sounds you hear. If you don't have this skill, you will 
only know music, but not be able to perform it. It's knowledge without understanding. It becomes 
technical knowledge without reaching the soul. What does our lovely book say about that? For 
example, we may know a tree as a source of wood (building material) or as an object that creates a 
shady spot in a park. But understanding wood is a different thing. A tree can give us an understanding 
of the many connections that make everything around us "from small to great,” an understanding of 
the visible and invisible, the essential and the secondary, the living and the inanimate. To understand 
a tree is to understand many things that make it possible to be a tree itself, which makes it unique, 
firmly rooted in reality; its branched root system with its tails-roots provides a connection to the earth, 
and its crown with its tails-branches, connecting it with the atmosphere. “And so it is with everything 
else that was once connected and now so often lies fragmented and forlorn, not able to be part of the 
warp and woof of life” (p. 17). Polyphonic listening provides an opportunity to penetrate deep into 
things that are inaccessible to superficial knowledge, which provides little understanding of reality. 

 
Often we know that there is something, but we don't understand how or why it is. We may 

know phenomena, but we don't understand how they are interconnected. We may know the patterns, 
but we don't understand where they are and where they are not. We may know something about the 
world or about people, but we don't understand what that knowledge is for. Only understanding 
makes us wise and receptive, able to be perceptive, i.e., to see the essence of things. Understanding 
makes me rich in what I will never lose. It is a wealth of meaning that is immense and inexhaustible. 
And most importantly, the acquisition of this wealth depends only on us and no vicissitudes of fate 
can take it away from us. Understanding is an opportunity to reach out to everything with your tail-
reason, and to establish a connection. 

 
The vast body of the Earth is entwined with numerous roads and paths. All these winding paths, 

from wide highways to narrow footpaths in the forest, are like the tails that people have left trying to 
meet each other. These people are no longer there, and their tails are left behind. On the scale of the 
earth (or maybe the universe), all paths, wandering and crossing, will lead you sooner or later to the 
same place—back home, home in this universe. So on a cosmic scale, it is not so important what road 
to take. 

 
Another beautiful philosophical discovery that awaits the readers of the book are the tails which 

create the possibility of meeting in the "in-between".  Since, according to Martin Buber, being is a 
relationship, tails are a wonderful way to establish and maintain that relationship. Thus, it is not 
language, as Heidegger thought, but the tail that is the "home of being". Huk and Tuk don't have to 
explain this; they always knew. You have to enter into a dialogue with reality and through a tail-
relationship the true nature of things is revealed. The tail-relationship brings the “I” and “You” to life 
in all things. 

 
According to Buber, as the author of the book claims, it is possible to establish a relationship 

"in-between" only in your whole being. Again, the metaphor of the tail makes it clear, because the tail 
is inseparable from us. Of course, the loss of the tail will not endanger life, just as the loss of memory 
does not take away a person's consciousness. But there is an acute sense of disconnection from the 
world, of lack of reliance, of separation. This feeling cannot be compensated for by artificial means. 



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The thirst for a new, modern, advanced way of being in this world has led us to lose our tails. But did 
the Age of "Post-Tail" make us happier? Have people become kinder? Has society become fairer? Have 
people gained the desired freedom? I'm afraid that each of these proposals is followed by a question 
mark's tail.  “We become just beings to be used for the sake of another being’s utility. We have to 
imagine we have tails in order to become whole again.” (p. 29) 

 
Huk and Tuk give us good advice on how to reestablish the lost connection in today's world. 

Huk and Tuk point to a love of the miracle of life, a love so deep it transforms into a deep trust, 
knowing that you belong to this world and that you are already home! (р. 34) 

 
What else can I say here ... After this tail-multipoint it remains only to thank the author of the 

book for an unusual and exciting journey into the world of big philosophy. 
 
 

Address Correspondences to:  
Dr. Sergey Borisov, Doctor of Philosophy 
Head of Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies of the South Ural State 
Humanitarian Pedagogical University (Chelyabinsk)  
Director of the Scientific and Educational Center for Practical and Applied Philosophy of the 
South Ural State University (National Research University) (Chelyabinsk)  
Email: borisovsv69@mail.ru 
 

mailto:borisovsv69@mail.ru

