Wilderness in America

Philosophical Writings

Henry Bugbee, David W. Rodick

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780823275373
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The philosophy of Henry Bugbee defies traditional academic categorization. Though inspired by Heidegger and American Transcendentalism, he was also admired by the famous analytic philosopher Willard van Orman Quine, who described him as the ultimate exemplar of the examined life. Bugbee's writings are remarkably different in form and register from anything written in twentieth-century American Philosophy. The beautifully written essays collected here show Bugbee's continuing commitment that "anyone who throws his entire personality into his work must to some extent adopt an aesthetic attitude and medium." Together, the book reintroduces a major thinker of nature, an environmental philosopher avant la lettre who has much to contribute to American and continental thought.

PART I

Student Writings

In Demonstration of the Spirit (Selections)

Every time I retrace the course of my reflections since “their beginning” in my undergraduate years I discern as central this preoccupation with [the] “somewhat absolute” in experience.¹

Bugbee earned a bachelor’s degree with high honors in philosophy from Princeton University in 1936. His thesis, “In Demonstration of the Spirit,” was directed by Warner Fite. Regrettably, little attention is paid to Fite, but it was Fite who instructed the young Bugbee on the significance of the personal perspective.²

“In Demonstration of the Spirit” exhibits a striking religious tone. Three of the four chapters begin with biblical epigraphs and the epilogue concludes with a quote from Saint Paul: “To this effect I have not spoken ‘with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.’” The salutation “Amen,” immediately followed by Bugbee’s signature, leaves a sense of witnessing a “demonstration” of profound significance in terms of the author’s spiritual development.³

The thesis criticizes academic philosophy’s failure to address “the crying need of the whole man.” Bugbee’s “final word” indicates a degree of insight well beyond the ken of a twenty-one-year-old:

A final word—you will realize that my efforts, while wholly tentative and probably quite inadequate, represent a most serious and valuable attempt to think my way out of the particular situation in which I have become vitally involved. I hope to accomplish more than the fulfillment of certain requirements, for a good deal of my future depends upon what may be considered Philosophy. If it is the strictly limited pursuit—in regard to method—which it may possibly turn out to be, then I am afraid I will have to break the confines of the medium, for images and a full conscious life beckon me more than their purified reflection—ideas.

The thesis also appeals to the need to engage experience reflexively, questioning the dualism of “self” and “world.” The problem with “dualisms,” is that we simply don’t experience life that way:

When we place our ears close to the stream of life we do not hear a ticking of segmented consecutive instants but rather a constant hum, a mingling of harmonies interposed by epoch changes in key and imperceptible blends from one orchestral movement to another.

Reflective experience is interpenetrative—a logos, or unifying thread, pervades every act of comprehension. Experience is also compelling, rendering it possible to move beyond phenomenal knowledge to an experience of “things-in-themselves”—not as “bolts from the blue,” but as an experience of such degree that the numinous aspects of existence become recognized as something necessarily participated in by everyone. The British philosopher C.E.M. Joad⁴ helped Bugbee to appreciate intuition’s potential for yielding awareness of dimensions of reality recalcitrant to logical reasoning. Intuition is a personification of spirit:

This, then, is the unique character of consciousness, whereby many elements are combined within a unified personality . . . and thus the Spirit represents the supreme embodiment of both the one and the many, an integrally logical manifold of infinitely diverse particulars. Such is the logic of personality, and it must furnish the basis of any living philosophy.⁵

The thesis also captures the relationship between de facto and de jure dimensions of experience: “Moral Philosophy must start at the other pole, first of all with one’s own moral experience, and from a careful attempt to get at the meaning of this it will perhaps be possible to infer what that of others may mean.” Bugbee referred to this as “listening with a brotherly ear.”⁶ The problem with existing forms of ethical relativism is “I have yet to hear of a single solitary human who acted as if he believed this true of himself.” Moral experience reveals a constellation of issues oriented around my life. What at first glance may appear as a series of aporia, upon further examination indicates traces of enduring facticity. The perennial nature of moral questions offers a clue to the universality of moral experience. Each person irrevocably instantiates value while living in the world—valuation [estimato, ergo sum] precedes knowledge [cogito, ergo sum]: “The individual personality is in the widest sense the expression of morality . . . Hereby we identify the locus of moral value within the core of the human soul, and this constitutes the essence of consciousness in general.” If the self is wrested from the context of concrete moral action, it mortifies into abstract, lifeless existence—a formal agent or cipher divested of existential reality: “That the moral problem in general has remained relatively constant in the memory of man I will suggest is also corroborated by . . . every man not completely anesthetic to the central perplexities of life.”

. . .

Prologue

I sit down to rearrange my ideas in the form of a thesis with some reluctance and trepidation. It cannot fail to reflect the uncertainty and ambiguity with which I am at the present moment assailed. For this reason, then, it will primarily represent an attempt to clarify and evaluate certain aspects of experience about which I have always felt a predominant concern; it will embody a problem, a conflict confronting every attempt to analyze human nature, and one involving, to some extent, every kind of Philosophy, but particularly that part employed in value theory.

The first chapter will try to analyze the field of consciousness and determine how knowledge of the most significance to us as humans may possibly be attained; it will examine the approach of Philosophy and suggest what other approaches might be; whatever the method, however, it may be considered conceptually, and thus falls within our scrutiny. It is my general suggestion that such questions as this are of ultimate importance and must be brought to bear compellingly on the modern mind, which in a typical sense seems directed toward different ends. Specifically, I believe Culture to be of more philosophical importance than Science, and this does not seem the predominant opinion,—hence the additional timeliness of the question. To illuminate the nature and opposition of these traditions, it will be a primary necessity to deal directly with their respective sources to be found in the nature of consciousness itself. Here I find a dichotomy of experience, as have many others, which produces one of the most fundamental and evasive problems ever to persist. Many great Philosophers have been deeply troubled by it, and each of us in turn must cope with it in himself.

While the first chapter will outline various types of knowledge in general, the second will attempt to analyze moral experience, and taking this as a branch of value experience consider how it may be treated from the different standpoints already indicated . . .

Throughout these chapters a certain attitude will take on form; hitherto I have been wont to think of it as my general philosophical outlook even though perhaps it takes in a more complete acumen of reflective experience than formal Philosophy usually accepts. Now I have my doubts, and I see that my notion of what constitutes Philosophy may possibly undergo a change. Possibly it is not the all-inclusive subject I have cherished as my own. Then what is my attitude, perhaps more aesthetic than philosophical? If it is aesthetic to try and reflect ones’ spiritual growth and the full power of consciousness by the most imaginatively convincing means, a means most nearly reflecting the personality as it really exists for us, and if Philosophy would exclude this practice, than indeed I feel the limitations of the latter and set forth the former by preference as an interpretation of the universe. What I will develop, if indeed it may be deemed Philosophy in the last analysis, represents a sort of Personal Idealism, and I intend to expand this throughout, depending largely on the logic of my own personality for continuity. The first chapter will serve an introductory purpose in discussing method, which in turn will be adapted to the subject of our approach, namely consciousness . . .

A final word—you will realize that my efforts, while wholly tentative and probably quite inadequate, represent a most serious and valuable attempt to think my way out of the particular situation in which I have become vitally involved. I hope to accomplish more than the fulfillment of certain requirements, for a good deal of my future depends on what may be considered Philosophy. If it is the strictly limited pursuit—in regard to method—which it may possibly turn out to be, then I am afraid I will have to break the confines of the medium, for images and a full conscious life beckon me more than their purified reflections—ideas.

A Preliminary Account of Consciousness

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. (Cor.—I. I, 9-10)

Philosophy has always claimed a close acquaintance and judicial relations with the various kinds of experience, its purpose being to examine fundamental relations of these and fit them into a whole. To what branch of experience does it bear the closest resemblance? Well, at one time certainly religion at least furnished the subject matter. But with Modern Philosophy the major concern has persistently and increasingly been directed upon our knowledge of the external world; I do not forget men whose scope was broad enough to include an examination of practically every branch of experience, particularly Spinoza, or Kant, or Hegel. Nevertheless the problem of knowledge has been ever more narrowly focused to bear upon the world of Science. The object of knowledge is the ‘material’ object, and the other ‘objects’ external to subject which come within the ken of the latter are obscured to this extent; I will not say forgotten.

It is the same with a large preponderance of value theory these days, and I will illustrate the point. On the highroad the other day I noticed a series of advertisements assuring the reader, and the advertiser, that “Posters show the news of America’s values.” These would be chiefly economic, and next hedonistic values. This seems to symbolize a situation which is rapidly becoming acute. To cite a striking instance of the tendency, look around even in the broad cultural center like Princeton and note the majority interest in specialized education among the practical and abstract sciences; I think an explanation may be found for this in the wider demands of an industrialized, even mechanized civilization. This is probably more true of some European countries where cultural interests are treated as secondary, if not really superfluous. Those things which actually should come first in a man’s purpose and plan of life are relegated to moments of luxury snatched from ‘the serious business of modern life.’ Certainly you will agree that we are held closer by economic fetters today than ever before. Men live and die under continuous fear for their practical security, and it is small wonder that in their struggle they should grasp hopefully at Science to subdue adversity. To the extent that Science fulfills such expectations it commands the reverence once extended even toward deity itself. As I intimated at the outset a great deal of this spirit has likewise crept into the ‘critical sanctum’ of formal Philosophy. I discern much the same predicament in both contemporary life and Philosophy which led Rudolph Eucken to exclaim, “In the face of the starry firmament without what has become of the moral law within!” Moreover, “beneath the comfort and splendor of our modern life runs an undercurrent of pessimism regarding the value of life itself.”

That Science virtually sets the type and topic for an alarming amount of Anglo-Saxon, if not other current Philosophy as well, I will indicate by referring to a few such movements which appear typical.

First of all Psychology, which up until a relatively few years ago was a branch of Philosophy, has now become identified with Physiology and Pathology. I do not deny that the brain is concomitantly correlated with whatever else consciousness may be; but if any experience is to be trusted, perhaps it is that of self-consciousness, and manifestly we do not find physico-chemical processes upon introspection. Consciousness is essentially unique in that it cannot be represented in the Spatio-Temporal dimensions of Science, nor can we understand it by an exclusively behavioristic approach, if for no other reason than that such observation fails to take account of a tremendous amount of data rendered inaccessible by the very nature of the case. There is more than idle humor in the saying that upon entering the Psychology Laboratory you check your soul at the door. The tests administered therein rely largely for their accuracy upon a steady and uninterrupted chain of stimuli and reactions; if the subject stops to conjecture or think and lets his consciousness function intelligently upon what he is doing, then what can this mean for the recorder? It is the same with aptitude tests, if time is consumed in reflection, then the student is indeed to be tabulated among the stupid. I find fault not only with the human Psychology, but also the animal division of the Science, for it fails to see the animals’ consciousness as he sees it. Mr. Fite has suggested that a parallel experiment be practiced on the psychologists themselves. Like dogs, they will be singled out and exposed to an unprecedented and unpremeditated situation; the dogs will conduct the investigation, and it will attempt to see how long it takes the human to discover that the scent of, say, aloes leads to the goal. If the man stops in bewilderment, or out of weariness, hunger, fatigue, or for any other reason, then the dogs will nip at his limbs, nor shall he have time to think. Such a caricature may be used to score a good deal of modern Psychology in general, in so far as it considers its experiments as measurements of consciousness; I do not deny that physiological data are the very important results to be obtained, and that they have a bearing upon psychological data, but to identify the latter with the former,—well, it is significant of the scientific trend flowing into Philosophy.

Probably the most complete adaptation of Philosophy to scientific method is represented in the movement known as Logical Positivism. For exponents of this view the criteria of all Reality are founded in Symbolic Logic, and this in turn is based on mathematics. Thus the ideal of philosophical dialectic would eventually be formulated in terms of mathematical equation; but furthermore this is the only way according to the position in which the philosophical situation can be interpreted. In addition to these fundamental principles the determination of meaning in every field of practice is based on the scientific method, so that Ethics is to Moral Philosophy as abstract is to applied mathematics, and this parallel might be drawn in all the branches of Philosophy. Like the mathematician the Positivist is essentially monistic, and like the practical scientist he is a pluralist. In any case he is above all scientific and nothing means anything to him that cannot be verified in a public field of reference. I don’t deny that any of these views have a particular significance, but the trouble is they can’t get beyond the mechanical affairs in which they are involved; they are dealing with only a part of reality from a single point of view, and this aspect, as I shall try to show, is not even the most important consideration of human beings. But as to the departmentalization of consciousness, in particular for philosophical purposes, this seems to me a grave error, for we don’t experience life that way, as I will eventually try to show.

I have enumerated several views which I consider typical of a tendency in philosophical and public opinion, and my own attitude is more or less diametrically opposed to it. Would I, then, recommend that the data of Science be cast aside as irrelevant to Philosophy? Not at all—Science serves its purpose to an undeniable degree of effectiveness, and it must bear out a certain correlation with Reality to predict and achieve such verifying results. But surely you will begin by agreeing that significant experience is not confined to the categories of Science. Before I get through I want to suggest that the more an experience transcends or interpenetrates categories in general the more significant it may be. This will be made a point of contrast between the broader type of aesthetic experience and the more restricted scientific type. In this respect I will suggest that the former offers more valuable data for Philosophy than the latter; it would be a mistake, however, to hypostatize either aspect of Reality to a position of exclusive importance over the other; it is the business of Philosophy to supplement if possible such varied aspects and approaches to what may be real, for the chances are that any persistent interpretation of the situation is in some sense or other true.⁷

Of almost equal demand upon the attention of Philosophy, along with the general acquisition of knowledge, is the function of evaluation; that is, we reflect particularly upon what is of significance to man; whether there may be any ultimate goal which shall culminate this existence; and while on the road what is worth while picking up and cultivating, what shall be cast aside or ignored; supposedly, in so far as a man is able, he governs his life and at least his thought by his choice or preference in such distinctions as these. Such questions I deem of ultimate consequence, and so they are defined ipso facto; on what kind of experience may such an understanding of life be based? Not, I maintain, on scientific experience, but rather on a generally moral, religious, or aesthetic appreciation of Reality. The crying need of a man is a faith fostered in the latter spheres of human nature, for herein the soul is perpetuated beyond the chains of Time and Space, thereby achieving such salvation as is humanly possible. This type of experience is, moreover, more intensely real and empirically verified than any other conscious visitation upon human existence. Having definitely placed our subject matter within this problem of ultimate significance, the problem of value experience, I now propose that we examine how an understanding of such experience is possible.

That understanding is possible rests on certain remarkable unique characteristics of consciousness perhaps most adequately symbolized under the faculties of memory and imagination. In the function of these powers we may begin to see what differentiates the forms of consciousness from mechanical Reality; compare ideas for instance with mechanical facts: the latter by themselves remain haphazard, opaque, and thus meaningless; but of ideas we must say th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Frontispiece
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Epigraph
• Introduction. Being in Nature: The Experiential Naturalism of Henry G. Bugbee Jr.
• Part I: Student Writings
• Part II: Published Writings
• Part III: Unpublished Writings
• Part IV: Experience, Memory, Reflection: An Interview with Henry Bugbee
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Series List