PHIL 316: Studies in the History of Philosophy
American Philosophers of Nature: Emerson, Thoreau, Bugbee, Cavell
Dr. James Hatley
Office: Philosophy House, 1st Floor
Phone: (67)7-5072
Office Hours: MTuW 4:15-5:15 pm
This course will examine how the thought of Emerson and Thoreau provides a unique American voice in regard to the philosophical vocation and to the significance of nature. In these two 19th-century thinkers we find a mixture of poetic, philosophical and religious insight that allows for a very broad and rich interrogation both of ourselves and the world surrounding us. Particularly important notions in this interrogation include: the importance of witnessing, of participating in truth; the founding of theory, which is to say, the attempt to illuminate what is real, on experience; the slipperiness and subtlety of the role of language in whatever we come to understand as true; the precedence of practice over theory; the inseparability of faith and reason; the incessant call to renewing and so rereading one’s traditions; the centrality of wildness and nature in our pursuit of wisdom. We will take up with two twentieth-century American philosophers—Henry Bugbee and Stanley Cavell—in working out the legacy of Emerson and Thoreau. We will attempt in our own writings to find ourselves as American philosophers inheriting the legacy of these thinkers.
GRADING
10 Weekly Questions 25%
2 Response Papers 40%
Philosophical Journal 20%
Class Presentation 10%
Class Participation 05%
ASSIGNMENTS
Weekly Questions—2 sets on Emerson, 3 on Thoreau, 3 on Bugbee and 2 on Cavell. For each week’s reading I will assign the week before two to three questions. Students are to write paragraph essays on each question and turn these in at the beginning of class on Monday. Students should bring an additional copy to refer to for discussion purposes.
Response Papers—Two
response paper will be assigned; the first asking the student to contrast and
compare the thought of Thoreau with that of Emerson; the second asking the student to evaluate either
the thought of Bugbee or that of Cavell in regard to their notions of nature
and experience.
Philosophical Journal—During the semester, the student will keep a philosophical journal, in which she or he will use the ideas and practices of the philosophers we are studying to interrogate the student’s own conceptions about nature. The student will adopt a particular practice—whether it be caring for a garden, taking regular walks, learning to identify birds, collecting natural materials to make some sort of thing, etc. Engagement in this practice will then become the provocation for the student’s own reflections on what she or he has been reading. The journal takes up with a central theme of the course—that philosophical reflection comes out of practice as much (if not more so!) as out of theorizing. The journal can also include drawing, songs, photographs, etc.
Class Presentation—Once
during the semester students will lead the class discussion on a Monday. They will compose and respond to in writing
an additional two questions addressing the reading. This assignment is also to be turned in on a
Monday.
At the
HONOR CODE: Each
written assignment should be accompanied by the following statement, dated and
signed by the student: “This assignment was written entirely by me
in my own words, except for quotations from and references to another person’s
work, which I have been careful to point out.
I have in no way made use of the words or ideas of other persons without
attribution.”
Required Texts:
Essays and Poems, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
The Inward Morning, Henry Bugbee
The Senses of Walden, Stanley Cavell
Texts on Reserve:
Wilderness and
the Heart: Henry Bugbee's Philosophy of Place, Presence, and Memory, Edward Mooney, editor
The City of
The Practice of
the Wild, Gary Snyder
Wild Fruits, Henry David Thoreau
Websites:
Emerson http://www.emersoncentral.com/texts.htm http://www.transcendentalists.com/1emerson.html http://www.transcendentalists.com/ http://www.rwe.org/comm/
Thoreau: http://thoreau.eserver.org/, http://www.thoreausociety.org/, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thoreau/, http://www.calliope.org/thoreau/
Bugbee: http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~jdhatley/Bugbeeconference.htm
Cavell: http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Cavell/cavell-con0.html
WEEKLY THEMES,
A) INTRODUCTION
Week 1 (8/28, 30):
Emily Dickinson and Diana Wagner—Poets of Nature and Experience Dickinson’s
Poems Creel
Limit
B) EMERSON: Nature as Analogy for
and Initiation into Spirit
Week 2 (9/6):
Emerson’s “Nature,” pp. 7-32 (chps. I-V)
Focus
Questions: 1) How does Emerson define nature?
Do you agree with his definition—why or why not? 2 Why is one’s
“chamber” insufficient for solitude? 3) Discuss the different modes of beauty
Emerson sets out in nature. Which
strikes you as the most compelling and why?
Week 3 (9/11, 13): Emerson’s “Nature,” pp. 32-49 (chps. VI-VII); “An Address,” pp. 67-82.
Focus Questions: 1) Why must reason turn to nature to make sense of itself, which is to say, why must reason become poetic? 2) How does Emerson answer the question “Whereto is matter?”? 3) For Emerson, in what way might prayer become part of one’s search for truth? Do you agree?
Week 4 (9/18, 20): Emerson’s “Self Reliance,” pp. 113-135.
Focus Questions: 1) What does Emerson mean by “self-reliance”? 2) Do you agree with Emerson’s emphasis upon self reliance? Why or why not? 3) Discuss the following quote (p. 120): “Your genuine actions will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.” Do you agree or disagree with Emerson’s sentiments here? Why or why not?
4/20:
C) THOREAU: Nature as the Invitation to Witness Embodied Existence
Week 5 (9/25, 27): Thoreau’s “Walking,” pp. 592-630
Focus Questions: 1) What could Thoreau possibly mean by “absolute freedom and wildness”? How might this be distinguished from “freedom and culture merely civil”? 2) What do you think is involved in Thoreau’s claim that “in wildness is the preservation of the world”? 3) For what sort of walking is Thoreau an advocate? In what way does walking prepare us to know nature?
Week 6 (10/2, 4): Thoreau’s Walden, from “Economy,” pp. 258-295, “Where I lived and What I
Lived For,” pp. 334-351; “Solitude” pp.380-89 and “Higher Laws” (pp. 456-468)
Focus
Questions: 1) Choose a passage from your
reading that you consider particularly salient and analyze what you think it is
saying. 2) What do you make of the Veda’s saying, “All
intelligence awakes in the morning” (342)?
3) Defend and criticize Thoreau’s
solitude.
Weeek 7 (10/9, 11): Thoreau’s Ktaadn
Focus
Questions: 1) Why should Thoreau spirit
be in awe of his and nature’s body? Is
this the way the notion of awe is usually introduced? 2) How
is nature being defined in this selection?
3) Why might a museum signal a
failure to appreciate what is truly nature?
Week 8
(10/18): Thoreau’s Walden, from
“Winter Animals” through “Conclusion,” pp. 513-573
NO
CLASS ON MONDAY 10/16—Paper in Philadelphia for
the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (“A Herbraic
Inflection of Derrida’s ‘Animots’”)—Frampton
Room of the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel 10:30-11:15 AM.
Focus
Questions: Consider the following passage from “Spring”:
“There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature was my compensation for this. I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp — tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped.”
1) In what
way is Nature characterized in this passage?
2) What would Emerson make of
this passage, particularly its claim, “compassion is a very untenable
ground”? 3) What other ways is nature characterized by
Thoreau in his descriptions of the lake?
D) BUGBEE: Nature as the Call to Wilderness and Inexplicable Faith
Week 9 (10/23,
25): Bugbee’s Inward Morning, pp. 33-101
Focus Questions: 1) What does Bugbee mean by “concrete philosophy”?; 2) Discuss how one of the three stories he tells might be an example of concrete philosophy; 3) Discuss the distinction between “knowing in order to believe” and “believing in order to know.” What about the latter claim causes problems for philosophical thinking? How does Bugbee develop this latter claim?
Week 10 (10/ 30, 11/1): Bugbee’s Inward Morning, pp. 150-198
Focus Questions: 1) Discuss what Bugbee means by “unconditional concern.” How does it encompass both moral and aesthetic and even metaphysical considerations? 2) Using an experience as your guide, try to make sense of Bugbee’s notion of “leaving things be” (which is, by the way, derived from Meister Eckhart’s notion of “Gelassenheit”). 3) What do you think Bugbee means by the term “wilderness”? 4) Discuss simplicity as a mode of mystery for Bugbee.
Assignment due: First Response Paper on Emerson and Thoreau.
Week 11 (11/6, 8): Bugbee’s A Way of Reading
the Book of Job 1979 Seminar: Bugbee on Job
Focus Questions: 1) What does Bugbee mean exactly by claiming nature is “impersonal”?; 2) How is nature’s impersonality a good for Bugbee? Do you agree with his argument on this issue?; 3) For Bugbee, what is the meaning of “divine justice”?
11/8:
Week
12 (11/13, 15): Bugbee’s Wilderness
in America
Focus Questions: 1) What is, according to Bugbee, “the dilemma concerning wilderness in our time”? How does he propose to resolve this dilemma? 2) What do you make of Bugbee’s claim that wilderness is a mode of listening? 3) What do you think Bugbee means by “the propertied life”? How does wilderness provide an alternative to such a life?
E)
CAVELL:
Week 13 (11/20):
Cavell’s The Senses of Walden,
Chapter I: “Words”
Focus Questions: 1) Why did Cavell
title this chapter “Words”?; 2) Why does
he claim
Week
14 (11/27, 29): Cavell’s The Senses of Walden, Chapter II:
“Sentences”
Focus
Questions: 1) Why did Cavell title this chapter “Sentences”?; 2) Discuss Cavell’s reading of the significance
of the self and self-emergence in Walden.;
3) Discuss how Cavell sees Walden as setting out to rescue
language. Does language need rescuing in your estimation? How does nature fit into this rescue?
Week 15 (12/4, 6): Cavell’s The Senses of Walden, Chapter III: “Portions”
Focus Questions: 1) Why did Cavell title this
chapter “Portions”?; 2) How does Walden respond to despair? Do you think its response is a good one?; 3)
Cavell sees Thoreau as rejecting the notion of disinterestedness in favor of
interest. Do you agree with this rejection? Why or why not?
Week 16: Finals Week
1)
Completed
journal—15 or more pages. Due Thursday
afternoon, December 14th at 5 pm.
2)
2nd
Response Paper on Bugbee or Cavell: Starting with a significant passage
from either Cavell or Bugbee, explicate that passage by way of your journal
entries and the practice in regard to nature that was the focus of those
entries. Keep in mind the essay we read
early in the semester by Diana Wagner who worked out her feelings about her
father and his death by way of her
reading of Emily Dickinson’s poems in regard to the practice of fly
fishing. A crucial question that should
be at the core of your discussion: In what way has nature “befriended” you (a
concept we find in both Cavell’s account of Thoreau and in Bugbee’s writings)
such that you were made capable of seeing the full extend of your involvement
in reality? An allied question: In what
way have you been called upon in that befriendment not only to become
critically aware of but also to affirm reality?
Likely, it would be best for you to pick a particular theme from your
own life—be it mourning a loss, taking on a vocation, responding to a love,
embracing a religious commitment—that gives substance to how the befriendment
of nature orients your life. In working
out the explication of your selected passage, please refer to other moments in
either Bugbee’s or Cavell’s writings (as well as those of Thoreau or Emerson,
if necessary) to illuminate further its meaning. At
least five typewritten pages. Due
Thursday afternoon, December 14th at 5 pm.