Wilderness in America: Philosophical Writings

Wilderness in America

gROUNDWORKS |

ECOLOGICAL ISSUES IN PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

Forrest Clingerman and Brian Treanor, series editors

Series Board:

Harvey Jacobs

Richard Kearney

Catherine Keller

Mark Wallace

Norman Wirzba

David Wood

Wilderness in America

Philosophical Writings

Henry Bugbee

EDITED BY

David W. Rodick

Fordham University Press

New York 2017

Frontispiece: Henry G. Bugbee. Photo courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, University of Montana Library, Missoula, MT.

Copyright © 2017 Fordham University Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bugbee, Henry Greenwood, Jr., author. | Rodick, David W., editor.

Title: Wilderness in America : philosophical writings / Henry Bugbee ; edited by David W. Rodick.

Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Fordham University Press, 2017. | Series: Groundworks : ecological issues in philosophy and theology | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016050641 | ISBN 9780823275359 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780823275366 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, American.

Classification: LCC B945 .B761 2017 | DDC 191—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016050641

Printed in the United States of America

19 18 17    5 4 3 2 1

First edition

to

Bruce Bugbee

Sally Moore

Ray Lanfear

Ed Mooney

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction. Being in Nature: The Experiential Naturalism of Henry G. Bugbee Jr.

Part I: Student Writings

In Demonstration of the Spirit (Selections)

The Sense and the Conception of Being (Selections)

Part II: Published Writings

A Venture in the Open

Thoughts on Creation

Wilderness in America

Part III: Unpublished Writings

The Revolution in Western Thought: Another Step (1962)

Nature and a True Artist (n.d.)

A Way of Reading the Book of Job (1963)

Notes on Objectivity and Reality (n.d.)

Part IV: Experience, Memory, Reflection: An Interview with Henry Bugbee

Appendixes

Curriculum Vitae: The Course of Life

Letter from C. I. Lewis (n.d. ca 1951)

Letter from John M. Anderson (August 9, 1950)

Journal Entry (February 11, 1957)

Albert Borgmann, Henry—A Tribute

The Splendor of Rock Creek

Upper Clark Fork: Rock Creek Fishing

The Bugbee Nature Preserve

Bugbee Nature Preserve—Named for Henry Greenwood Bugbee, M. D. (1879–1945)

Philosopher—A Poem by Gary Whited

Bruce Bugbee, For Henry

Bugbee Annual Lectures

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

The editor expresses thanks to the following:

Eldon H. Smith: For permission to reprint photograph Bear Trap Canyon, Madison River, Montana;

The University of Montana: For permission to reprint photograph of Henry Bugbee;

Andrew K. Lewis: For permission to reprint letter from C.I. Lewis;

Gary Whited and Homebound Publications: For permission to reprint Philosopher;

Oxford University Press: For permission to reprint Wilderness in America;

University of Georgia Press: For permission to reprint excerpts from The Inward Morning;

The Estate of Henry G. Bugbee, Jr.: For permission to reprint The Bugbee Nature Preserve, For Henry, A Way of Reading the Book of Job, The Revolution in Western Thought: Another Step, Nature and the True Artist, Notes on Objectivity and Reality, The Splendor of Rock Creek, Letter from John M. Anderson, An Interview with Henry Bugbee, A Venture in the Open, and Thoughts on Creation.

The Hotchkiss School: For permission to reprint from the Hotchkiss Record;

Albert Borgmann: For permission to reprint Henry: A Tribute.

It takes many, many days to learn of what may and may not be in the river.

Let us wade right in and keep fishing where we are, with our fingertips

touching the trembling line. It is just in the moment of the leap we both

feel and see, when the trout is instantly born, entire, from the flowing river,

that reality is knowingly defined.

Now the river is the unborn, and the sudden fish is just the newborn—whole, entire, complete, individual, and universal. The fisherman may learn that each instant is pregnant with the miracle of the new-born fish, and fishing in the river may become a knowing of each fish even before it is born . . . just in so far as this alert fishing involves abiding in no-abode, or the unattached mind. If one is steeped in the flowing river and sensitized through the trembling line, one anticipates the new-born fish at every moment. The line tautens and with all swiftness, the fish is there, sure enough! And now, in the leaping of the fish, how wonderfully, laughingly clear, everything becomes! If eventually one lands it, and kneels beside its silvery form at the water’s edge, on the fringe of the gravel bar, if one receives the fish as purely as the river flows, everything is momently given, and the very trees become eloquent where they stand.

—The Inward Morning

Introduction

Being in Nature: The Experiential Naturalism of Henry G. Bugbee Jr.

On January 21, 1953, the Hotchkiss Recorder—newspaper of the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut—reported:

On January 14 with the temperature 10 degrees below zero, a foot of powdered snow, perfect for skiing, and with all three rinks open for skating, the Headmaster surprised the student body by declaring a holiday. Conditions were ideal and the day was enjoyed by every-one. The morning was sunny and clear, with the temperature rising gradually. Clouds appeared by mid afternoon and another three inches of snow began to fall. Many boys then went indoors to begin preparation for the mid-year examinations, ten days in the future.

The holiday was in honor of Henry Greenwood Bugbee, Jr., ’32, who has been awarded the first George Santayana Fellowship in Philosophy at Harvard University for the year 1953–54. Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Harvard since 1948, Dr. Bugbee is interested in the metaphysics of responsibility. During his fellowship he will be pursuing this interest at book length in journal form.

In announcing the holiday the Headmaster regretted the fact that Henry Bugbee, an ardent outdoorsman, could not be in Lakeville to enjoy the ideal winter sports conditions.¹

I first heard the name Henry Bugbee in 1986 during a graduate seminar on Martin Heidegger. Following a discussion of the mystical-poetic aspects of Heidegger’s later thought, one student posed a question concerning what possibilities, if any, remained for the discipline of philosophy as traditionally conceived. Silence fell over the classroom. The professor responded by offering an example of a philosopher who moved to Montana and took up fly fishing. I approached my professor after class in order to learn more. At that moment I became acquainted with the name Henry Bugbee.

Bugbee’s philosophy defies traditional academic categorization. Calvin O. Schrag, professor emeritus of Purdue University, once lamented that Bugbee was one of the more marginalized philosophers of the twentieth century, while the late Willard van Orman Quine of Harvard University, world-renowned analytic philosopher and logician, described him as the ultimate exemplar of the examined life. Bugbee’s most recognized work, The Inward Morning: A Philosophical Exploration in Journal Form, consists of a series of journal entries. Bugbee’s writings are remarkably different from anything written in twentieth-century American philosophy. Albert Borgmann, longtime colleague at the University of Montana, has remarked on more than one occasion that the two greatest books in American philosophy are Henry Bugbee’s The Inward Morning and John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice.² As an undergraduate, and already aware of the need to overcome the limitations of formal philosophical writing, Bugbee acknowledged: Certainly anyone who throws his entire personality into his work must to some extent adopt an aesthetic attitude and medium.³

The purpose of this book is to remove Bugbee’s thought from relative obscurity, making it more accessible to the wider public. Beginning with an introductory account of Bugbee’s experiential naturalism, the development of his thought is traced from student writings in Part I to select published writings in Part II, followed by heretofore unpublished writings in Part III. Part IV consists of an in-depth interview conducted during the twilight years of his life. The book concludes with a rich collection of appendixes that are intended to shed light upon the unique person Bugbee in fact was. The end-in-view throughout has been to allow Bugbee the opportunity to speak in his own words and, when appropriate, through the words of others: those both familiar with the man as well as with his philosophy.

Who Was Henry Bugbee?

Outside of a small cadre of American philosophers, little is known about Bugbee. Henry Greenwood Bugbee Jr. was born in New York City in 1915. He attended the Browning School and Hotchkiss before enrolling at Princeton in 1932 where he graduated with high honors in philosophy while competing at the varsity level in crew. His undergraduate thesis, entitled In Demonstration of the Spirit, bespeaks a life-long concern with understanding the depth and contour of everyday experience. As Bugbee notes in the Prologue:

Throughout these chapters a certain attitude will take on form; hitherto I have been wont to think about it as my general philosophical outlook even though perhaps it takes in a more complete acumen of philosophical experience than formal Philosophy usually accepts. [I]ndeed I feel the limitations of the latter and set forth the former by preference as an interpretation of the universe.⁴

Bugbee headed west to pursue graduate study in philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His studies were interrupted for a period of approximately four years from 1942 to 1945 while serving as commander of a 137-foot navy minesweeper in the South Pacific during World War II—an experience significantly affecting his philosophical development. His doctoral degree was awarded in 1947, following the defense of his dissertation The Sense and the Conception of Being. Bugbee taught for a short time at the University of Nevada at Reno and Stanford University until 1948 when he accepted a position at Harvard University as assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy. Bugbee accepted the position knowing full well that the Harvard approach to philosophy would chafe against some of his deepest philosophical commitments.⁵ However, when reflecting years later upon the Harvard experience he noted: [My time at Harvard] was wonderful. I think it is one of the greatest breaks I’ve had.⁶

Given his preference for experiential reflection over formal writing, Bugbee was denied tenure at Harvard for reason of insufficient publication. This fateful event helped to contribute to the publication of The Inward Morning: A Philosophical Exploration in Journal Form in 1958.⁷ Like Thoreau’s Walden, The Inward Morning is a reflective meditation upon what it means to live and to be in the world, day-to-day, in such a way as to reflect integrity of meaning and purpose. The preface reflects upon the process of the book’s composition:

As I would put it now, the guidance of meditation, of the themes received in meditation, is the fundamental feature of the work; and the themes of meditation live a life of their own. . . . It was my work to attend upon such themes, in the very rhythm of daily life; to follow them where they might lead.⁸

Bugbee accepted a teaching position at the University of Montana in 1958. He retired in 1979, remaining active in the Missoula community for as long as his health permitted. It is important to note that Bugbee published only nine or ten journal articles over the entire course of his academic career. While this might appear to be a paltry sum according to today’s hyperaccentuated standards of professionalization, one must remember that from the time he was an undergraduate Bugbee sought to maintain as much transparency as possible between the life we lead and the philosophy we believe in our hearts.⁹ His approach was radically peripatetic: one must move about in the world within which we live, think, and act while remaining alert that there is no surer criterion of truth . . . than the utter clarity and delight in the commonplace, just in its matter of factness.¹⁰ To make his case, Bugbee drew upon the distinction Paul Tillich made between experimental and experiential verification:

[I]t is not permissible to make the experimental method of verification the exclusive pattern of all verification. Verification can occur within the life process itself. [Experiential] verification has the advantage that it need not halt and disrupt the totality of a life process. . . . The verifying experiences of a non-experimental character are truer to life, though less exact and definite.¹¹

Situating Bugbee within the American Tradition

Situating Bugbee’s philosophy is no easy task insofar as his approach to philosophical reflection is deeply experiential and resistant to summarization. Reflecting upon the course of his philosophical education, he acknowledged:

Since [my] earliest days of philosophic study, I have remained concerned with the works of philosophers . . . as helps to the understanding of experience. I study the works of philosophers out of an interest which subordinates theory to understanding. . . . It will be ever important to me to give attention to technical philosophy but I will never be able to take technical philosophy as the ultimate phase of a reflective life.¹²

This is not to say that technical matters were never a concern. Bugbee’s doctoral thesis, The Sense and the Conception of Being, despite its intent to offer an experiential metaphysics, remained, in the end, an abstract affair and, from the perspective of the author, somewhat of a failure. After roughly a decade of reflection, Bugbee reconsidered his doctoral thesis in the following terms:

[The Sense and the Conception of Being] left man out of account, and, in so doing, falling short of a philosophy of action. . . . Those days give me the courage now to continue this endeavor in terminal reflection, not as a termination of anything, but as a renewed endeavor in understanding finality more maturely, in rounded human terms.¹³

Philosophical reflection need not begin with technical jargon, indubitable foundations, metaphysical abstractions, or any meta-level order of discourse; philosophical reflection must begin with a consideration of things themselves: [L]et the sense of being reaffirm its significance in human experience.¹⁴ Leaping trout in Montana, the chapel bell ringing in Harvard Yard, a kamikaze pilot crashing into the South Pacific now become intensive indices of the extensive panorama of being. The question remained whether the profession of philosophy—what William James so aptly referred to as the Ph.D. Octopus¹⁵—would be willing to tolerate an experiential approach of this magnitude?

The publication of Bugbee’s book by the defunct Bald Eagle Press in 1958 did more to champion the experiential possibilities of meditative reflection for American philosophy than anything heretofore written in the American philosophical idiom. For this reason The Inward Morning remains an underground classic in philosophical circles. Gabriel Marcel in his introduction to The Inward Morning points out the spiritual topography with which the book is concerned:

Henry Bugbee and I inhabit the same land . . . illuminated by a light of its own. . . . Since this is a spiritual light, however . . . we do not occupy fixed and distinct positions which might be plotted on a well-defined map . . . [W]hat we have to deal with here is a spiritual itinerary.¹⁶

Bugbee’s Experiential Naturalism

Referring to Bugbee’s thought as experiential naturalism will undoubtedly raise some objections. I agree whole-heartedly with Thomas M. Alexander when he writes:

I am tempted, like Dewey, to use the familiar—too familiar—term naturalism, except that it, too, has probably been poisoned beyond redemption. As noted, it commonly is taken to mean that nature is whatever science says it is . . . Those who proclaim [this] sort of naturalism tend to exhibit what John Herman Randall, Jr. once called nothing-but-er philosophies . . . If the term naturalism could be rescued from its reductionist associations, it could be used.¹⁷

A nonreductive naturalism:

[R]aises the question of the being of Nature. Now this inquiry may remain focused on what there is. . . . The result is a metaphysics of things thought of as an aggregate of determinate objects of cognition. . . . An ontology of Nature must be open to the variety of modalities and the mysterious depths of Nature lest it lose itself in a thing-metaphysics.¹⁸

Bugbee’s philosophical approach may be viewed as a kind of experiential naturalism insofar as it recognizes the need to address beings experientially on their own terms, within the natural context out of which they emerge, in an effort to see what can be revealed once beings are beheld in their own light: The theme [is] simple enough, indeed it [is] the theme of simplicity: Things say themselves, univocally, unisonously, formulating a tautology of infinite significance.¹⁹ This is no mere armchair exercise or any kind of action-at-a-distance. Experiential reflection is a demanding peripatetic activity occurring only to the extent one is, to use a nautical term, underway:

[M]y philosophy took place mainly on foot. It was truly peripatetic, engendered not merely while walking, but through walking that was essentially a meditation of the place. I weighed everything by the silent presence of things, clarified in the racing clouds, clarified by the sound of hawks, solidified in the presence of rocks, spelled syllable by syllable by waters of manifold voice, and consolidated by the act of taking steps, each step a meditation steeped in reality.²⁰

One of the unfortunate consequences of modern philosophy, including naturalisms of the reductive type, is the tendency to balkanize "ought from is. Given this separation, how is it possible for the acting agent to inhabit any stance in the world other than one of sheer contingency? Philosophical solutions that attempt to reconcile ought and is range from claiming that ought cannot be derived from is (logical empiricism), to claiming that ought" must be located at a level other than the empirical (deontology).²¹ The value of Bugbee’s experiential naturalism lies in its ability to circumvent these academic distinctions, allowing the possibility of discerning the eternal amid the temporal.

For example, events occurring at critical junctures in life oftentimes take on universal significance, indicating a once-for-allness about them. Events of birth, marriage, and death call "attention to the being of the self and life as a whole . . . away from the parts and details of life."²² At such moments "life as such and the purpose of living come into view at points where decision affects the direction and destiny of life in its entire cycle and not just in one aspect or part.²³ Bugbee refers to such profound experiences as moments of obligation. Obligation indicates a deep interest and absorption . . . from a spirit by which [we are] invaded from within."²⁴ The experience of being-obligated points to an objective referent through which a light dawns upon us in the light of which we become enlightened in our relationship with [beings], as they dawn on us as given-in-that-light.²⁵ The fact that we often find the strength to face adversity with a sense of courage and resolve far outstripping physical capacity implies a basis in [our]selves deeper than anything we can muster and confer upon us by decree . . . that moment in which we may find immediate incentive and confirmation from within [our]self for complete commitment in action.²⁶ These crucial moments of destinate decision²⁷ make it clear that there are not only problems in life but also problems of life; namely, the problem of seeking and finding the basis upon which we depend for our being and purpose.

Authentic experiences of obligation demand [of us] to be and to act consonantly with the felt universe.²⁸ The moment of obligation is a reflexive, double-barrelled experience—as William James and John Dewey liked to say—of centripetally awakening to one’s centrifugal immersion in a world of being. Things previously seen per speculum et in aenigmate become encountered face-to-face—sub specie aeternitatis—within purview of the eternal, beholding things anew as if for the first time:

We become reflexively mindful of ourselves as rooted in a source of life wherein we become decisively animated—sponsored evocatively in a way underlying our very responsiveness. Our awareness of this is essentially reflexive. . . . [L]ight dawns upon us in the light of which we become enlightened in our relationship with them. . . . And in that Johannine light one may come to meet them anew.²⁹

The Being of Nature

Experiential naturalism of the Bugbeean kind, or any other kind of naturalism for that matter, remains abstract without nature: the creatures, mountains, air, waters, and land that we absolutely depend upon for our being and existence.³⁰ The fact that nature is considered not only the source of existence but being as well may strike some as anthropocentric puffery. I hope it is by now obvious that our natural habitat is essential for physical survival—both individually and as a species. What is not so obvious is whether mere perpetuation of life-function through physical survival, even under the most luxurious conditions, should provide the be-all-and-the-end-all according to which the goals and purposes of humankind are oriented and shaped. We must approach the natural world appreciatively, outside the lens of utilitarian calculation. As Bugbee indicated, nature houses the potential to be instructive—as connoted by the Latin verb in-struo, meaning to be in the process of formation.³¹ Instruction in this sense does not refer to any type of programing or social engineering. Experience is rich in disclosive potential, leading to an awareness of things exceeding parameters of material causality. When a person is experientially impacted, a mental response of some kind occurs—an image, a sensation, an idea, or a thought. Qua mental (Geistigheit), cognitive responses elevate the subject into the realm of spirit (Geist), revealing a centrifugal reservoir of possibility. At the spiritual level, life gives birth to something more than itself.³² When a quickening of consciousness occurs, a new idea is engendered, offering potential for both transition and transfiguration. The human capacity for increasing the scope of reflection is the cognitive side of mystical experience—a grafting of flesh onto spirit. Polyphonic perspectives stand to be revealed. As Emerson indicated, Let a man fall into his divine circuits, and he is enlarged. Obedience to his genius is the only liberating influence.³³ Spirit reveals itself reflexively through limited acts of self-disclosure, leading to a heightened consciousness of self. Similar to the way in which Bergson likened the self to an uncoiling of a coil, self-realization is an experience of burgeoning unity, as we become implicated within larger unities and synthetic wholes. Our cognitive capacity for increasing the scope of reflection is similar to what Aristotle referred to as contemplation, an intellectual activity allowing one to become theómorphos or more godlike. In Bugbee’s words,

We become authentically ourselves in the image of the divine and on the strength of the divine. This implies that we come to know ourselves in being ourselves and I think in a very precise sense: We are strictly as nothing in and of ourselves. Of all creatures, we must know our creatureliness and accept it in order to be as the creatures we really are. . . . Now this means two things: It means that considered in and of ourselves we are of no account and impotent. It also means that we are able to be in the image of being, which is no thing at all.³⁴

The Sublime as Our Daily Bread—Thoughts on Finality

Give us this day our daily bread. . . .

The experience of the sublime conveys a mysterious sense of the wittingness of ourselves and things—together—in the mode of finality.³⁵ Bugbee’s conception of finality is best captured through concrete events of witness and testimony. When Job cried out for understanding from the depths of anguish, he asked one of the perennial questions: "Why hast God forsaken me?" A compelling silence ensues—the why-and-where-to-fore of divine justice resists anthropomorphic reckoning. It is interesting to note