Aedificium

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• 1. Ken  |  5 March 2008 at 9:52 am

  I was so glad to see two new postings this morning and especially to see this one about nature.

  It is a beautiful poem and does sound like Leopold because it uses religious imagery to express the grandeur of wild nature and at the same time is critical of religious imagery.

  I had not seen Orion before, but will spend some time reading it. I glanced at the “about” page at Orion and read that it is founded on the idea that humans have a “moral responsibility” for the earth. That does sound like the stewardship idea that many Christians have. I think that idea is not the same as Aldo Leopold’s land ethic. The stewardship ethic is anthropocentric. Leopold was striving to avoid thinking that way. He tried to think like a mountain, as he put it. It is hard to do.

  I have noticed that many interpreters of Leopold think of him as a moralist. I don’t. I think of him as a lover of nature, not moral but rather fiercely protective of the one he loved. I think it was the paradigm of evolution rather than any moral paradigm that formed his thinking.

  Do you read him the same way I do?

• 2. Benedict  |  5 March 2008 at 9:26 pm

  I’ve only recently discovered Leopold, and I agree with your assessment of his take on stewardship. I do know that he was critical of what he called the Abrahamic conception of land, which he argues is based on land as a commodic possesion. I’m really wrestling with this, because I can’t decide if I agree with him.

  I had not made the connection with the evolutionary paradigm with Leopold. He does, of course, take it for granted, as I would expect, but I don’t personally see love for land and country (which he famously and brilliantly distinguishes) can be nurtured by evolutionary processes. Here I guess I’m too much of a “Berry-ian”, in that the love for land comes simply from being part of it in a specific place. My sense is Leopold would have agreed with this, even while disagreeing with Berry over humanity’s moral obligation to stewardship.

• 3. Ken  |  5 March 2008 at 11:56 pm

  It will be interesting to think about this together, through our blogs and responses.

  What Leopold wrote about the Abrahamic conception of land bothered me too. I think he was a little far afield when he made that judgment.

  I am still wrestling with how to think like a mountain too.

  I am also Berry-ian in the way you describe.

  I think that evolution fits in that it gives us a sense of how connected we are with all of the rest of life. I think Loren Eiseley does a really good job of developing this connection.

  Hopefully we can find a way to synthesize all of this.

• 4. Craig  |  24 March 2008 at 1:05 pm

  Fascinating exchange here. I’m a student of Leopold and also Wendell Berry, though not of the old testament.

  A couple of things I’m interested to hear your ideas on (in the interest of intellectual exchange, not attack… just to be clear on my tone here):

  Ken - What is your concept of an Abrahamic idea of land, and how does it differ from what you see in Leopold’s concept? (”Abraham knew exactly what the land was for: it was to drip milk and honey into Abraham’s mouth.” A Sand County Almanac, p. 205, Oxford University Press paperback)

  Benedict - regarding the disconnect between an evolutionary outlook and a love of land and country, my understanding of Leopold is that he saw great drama in how evolution played out, and especially in the interaction between people and land. From that same section of “The Land Ethic” I quoted above (in “The Community Concept” if we’re looking at different versions of ASCA here), Leopold writes, “That man is, in fact, only a member of a biotic community is shown by an ecological interpretation of history. Many historical events, hitherto only explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land. The characteristics of land determined the facts quite as potently as the characteristics of the men who lived in.” Leopold also saw an evolutionary-ecological understanding of land as the foundation of a new aesthetic in cultural evolution, in which an intact biotic community and the integrity of ecological processes played a part in determing the beauty and rightness of human interactions with land. Love of land can come from understanding a place’s ecology and the sweep of its history. Do we agree that “land” is not simply a sweep of scenery or a place where history began with human occupation? From the foreword, “That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics. That land yields a cultural harvest is a fact long known but latterly often forgotten.”

  One last comment for this post:

  Ken, you say that you think of Leopold “a lover of nature, not moral but rather fiercely protective of the one he loved;” Benedict, you state that, “My sense is Leopold would have agreed with this, even while disagreeing with Berry over humanity’s moral obligation to stewardship.” My sense from reading Leopold is that he was articulating that we have a moral obligation to live in harmony with the land (Conservation), but I admit to not having a background in ethics and may be misunderstanding what you mean by moral.

  Three quotes to think about:

  “An ethic to supplement and guide the economic relation to land presupposes the existence of some mental image of land as a biotic mechanism. We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.” (p. 214, intro to “The Land Pyramid”

  “All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for). The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.”

  There are many examples of people who “love nature” or “wilderness” but are willing to exploit and abuse certain pieces of land for personal gain or profit. Leopold also stated, “The ”key-log’ which must be moved to release the evolutionary process for an ethic is simply this: quit thinking about decent land-use solely as an economic profit. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

  I look forward to your comments.

• 5. Benedict  |  24 March 2008 at 3:39 pm

  Craig, welcome! This is a wonderful comment, and I would actually like to post it as it’s own post on this site. Ken is undoubtedly much more qualified to address the questions and comments you raise here; I’m a newcomer Leopold, having only read ASCA about a month ago, in an effort to expand my scope of reading in environmental ethics beyond Berry. It pleases me to have such an informed contributor here.

  For your specific question to me (I’ll let Ken speak for himself, and if I know Ken, he’ll be thrilled to), thanks for bringing that quote into the discussion. I have it highlighted in my book. My discomfort with Leopold on this is that it strikes me as being too reductionist. I don’t disagree with him insofar as his general argument goes; we do live in a symbiotic relationship with the land on which we stand, and in fact, we are indeed at the mercy of the constraints our land puts on us, whether we admit it or not, and no matter how much our technology tries to tell us otherwise. And so i think we do agree that “land” is not something to be reduced to human convenience or for its pleasing aesthetic qualities (especially for those of us who live in or near cities). I’m with Leopold (and Berry) here.

  It’s the way Leopold interprets Abraham that gives me pause, and so here my concern is the same as Ken’s. Is Leopold fairly representing the ancient Abrahamic tradition here? It strikes me as being too utilitarian, too Freudian, too “enlightenment.” I realize that if, indeed, Leopold is right about Abraham, than we are right to react negatively towards this conception of land and community and the biotic relationship. But I’ve never read these texts this way. I locate Abraham and the Hebraic tradition of the Land the tradition of what little I know of ancient agrarianism, which is of utter dependence on the land and its bounty for survival of the community, and of preservation of that land in the interest of community survival.

  This barely scratches the surface of where we could go with this, I think. Ken, any thoughts?

• 6. Ken  |  24 March 2008 at 4:57 pm

  I don’t think there is such a thing as an Abrahamic idea of land in the Bible. The land God promised to Abraham was a place to live for him and his descendants. I don’t know where Leopold got his idea, but I agree with Benedict and would say that it is rooted more in modernity than in antiquity.

  When I wrote that Leopold was far afield I just meant that I did not think he would have used the metaphor he did if he had studied the Hebrew Bible at a university, for example. He thought he knew something about the Bible that he really did not know.

  Leopold certainly did write about an ethic, a way of life. I don’t mean to argue that he did not. My overall sense is only that he was more of a lover of the land than a moralist. He bought the dusty land and restored it to wilderness out of love. Most of his prose is the language of love rather than the language of morality.

  My perspective on morality and ethics are like those of Foucault - moral and ethical claims are assertions of power over other people. We must resist them. I don’t think that Leopold’s interests were in morality or ethics and I don’t think what he wrote about these topics reflects a deep understanding of or interest in the history of ethics and morality. He just loved the land.

  Ultimately, I think Loren Eiseley did a better job of describing what matters here and why it matters than did Leopold, although I think they shared the same sentiment and sought the same relationship with the land and life.

• 7. Craig  |  25 March 2008 at 5:37 pm

  Benedict, thanks for the welcome, and I appreciate the direct responses from both you and Ken.

  These are interesting thoughts on Leopold’s use of “Abrahamic” view of land. Essentially what I got from your posts is that Leopold was responding to modern, bad land use–land users who were either misleading themselves or others by trying to justify their bad land use by relating it to Biblical text or teachings. Can you give me an idea of which books and chapters in the old or new testament I should read to get a sense of the Abrahamic understanding of land?

  Ken - I haven’t read Loren Eisely since my first introduction to him in college seven or eight years ago now, and I’ve ordered a few books through the library to revisit his writing. My feeling is that Leopold and Eisely shared a profound understanding of the great rolling of time and evolution.

  My view of Leopold is that, because of his great love for land, he was intensely interested in ethics because he saw ethical codes as a mechanism to slowly evolve a society that was in harmony with the land. Government ownership, regulations and economic subsidies weren’t going to truly help people reach the same ends. I think a telling quote from Leopold is, “There are two things that interest me, the relationships of people to each other, and the relationship of people to land.”

  I am really intrigued by your statement that “My perspective on morality and ethics are like those of Foucault - moral and ethical claims are assertions of power over other people,” and I need to do some more digging…

• 8. Ken  |  26 March 2008 at 9:32 am

  I don’t think the Bible provides an “Abrahamic” conception of land. Genesis, beginning with Chapter 12, describes the promises God made to Abraham and to his descendants through Isaac and Jacob. Genesis is about the relationship between God and Israel, and about the origins of the people Israel, and not about any conception of land. I think Craig’s impression of our posts here is correct: “Leopold was responding to modern, bad land use.”

  It seems in retrospect that agriculture has always been bad land use, as has industry. James Lovelock’s view is that nature can absorb human use of land as long as our population is not too high. A few years ago someone named our current age, “anthropocene.” He said it began in the 18th or 19th century. Others say it began with agriculture, which is when we started to degrade the natural environment and to interfere with natural selection.

  Some scholars looking deep into the past see the Bible as justifying agriculture and the empires that came with it. At the same time, the Bible is critical of empires and maybe even critical of agriculture. The Cane and Abel story is an example, perhaps, of such criticism. Cane was an agriculturalist - a murderer.

  Abraham and the ancient Israelites were agriculturalists, but they were certainly not the first, and the Bible was not the first document to record the ancient justification.

• 9. Benedict  |  27 March 2008 at 10:20 pm

  I think Ken is spot on in his first paragraph to this most recent comment. We’re not opposed to Leopold’s point about commodified exploitative land (ab)use. What we’re not crazy about is the blame game Leopold plays by invoking an Abrahamic land ethic that doesn’t really exist.

  Having said that, Ken, I think your comment about agriculture having always been bad land use is probably a bit extreme, and runs counter to Berry’s central argument about agrarian ecology and economy. The problem isn’t agriculture; the problem is specifically modern agriculture (Berry would refine further to industrial, mechanized agriculture). Berry’s point is that agriculture that is truly sustainable is the best land use possible, insofar as we have to “use” it at all, which of course we do.

  On the other hand, I agree that the Bible is absolutely critical of empires (a point which sent me to seminary and to a doctoral program in Abrahamic religions in the first place!) and also of cities. I don’t think it is critical of agriculture per se, but it certainly is of the historical effects that agriculture gave rise to. But I have serious doubts that ancient Biblical theorists looked at the devastation and desolations that caused abominations via Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Roman Empires and said “Blame the farmers.” Instead, the Deuteronomist blamed the community’s failure to exist as a community of Yhwh in favor of whoring after the powers of the empires, as the prophets would put it. The Land Ethic of the Deuteronomist, such as it is, is simply “be a community for the LORD, and you will live long in the land.” The negative is the historical result; displacement, destruction, and “bad land use,” which, in Berryian terms, begins the spiral into destruction not only of land, but of community itself.

• 10. Ken  |  29 March 2008 at 7:49 pm

  I agree that the Bible is mostly supportive of agriculture and would add monarchy, but I have read some scholarship that suggests the narratives in Genesis imply a consciousness that something was lost with the shift to agriculture, for example, the Adam and Eve story and Cain and Abel. (And, with agriculture came cities, empire and monarchy.)

  In addition, I suppose I have come to see some destructiveness of agriculture (all agriculture) through writings such as those of Bill McKibben and James Lovelock. I don’t mean that they advocate abandoning agriculture now. I think both believe that agriculture in a small world population is harmless, but that with our large population even organic farming is harmful - it takes so much land to feed us.

  I have also been reading that anthropologists and archeologists are not really sure why we adopted agriculture. They are finding, I think, that hunting and gathering life was a good life and that wars, disease and poverty came with agriculture.

  I wonder if Berry has discussed these things in his work.

  BTW, I have not yet decided to become a hunter-gatherer, nor to give up industry - how did we ever live without blogging?

• 11. Benedict  |  29 March 2008 at 9:00 pm

  I hear what you’re saying, and the river cultivation - agriculture-city-monarchy-empire pattern is a mainstay (although now being challenged) in the scholarship. I can see the suggestion in Genesis that “something was lost with the shift to agriculture,” but I think that pushing this beyond the point of “suggestion” to actually saying that the Cain/Abel narratives in particular are criticizing agriculture is something different. I’m not ready to go that far myself. (I think Alan Dershowitz is one of the more vocal exponents of this thesis, but he emphasizes an implicit criticism of civilization, not agriculture per se, if I remember right.)

  I am a bit surprised by your note that the Bible is, in your reading of it, at least, generally supportive of monarchy. Even if we grant the possibility that the Bible is latently critical of agriculture, I think that one of the most obvious and strongest criticisms of Scripture of an institution is, in fact, monarchy. The Deuteronomistic History is unrelenting in its criticism, and in fact only 3 of the entire panoply of kings in Judah or Israel come off relatively OK in the DH; David (of course, and this has little to do with his actual ability to rule well), Hezekiah, and Josiah. Some might include Solomon in this list as well, but the jury is - and has ever been - out on him. The Prophetic corpus continues in the same vein.

  I don’t anticipate returning to a hunter-gathering lifestyle either; the game is scrawny these days, and the fields polluted…

• 12. Ken  |  30 March 2008 at 10:03 am

  I think we mostly agree here - I am seeing convergence.

  On the monarchy thing I guess I have been influenced by the notion that the Bible was first written to support the Davidic monarchy. But I certainly agree with you that monarchy turns out to look quite bad in the Bible. I wonder, though, how much of that bad appearance is related to our protestant, democratic perspective. I have been thinking that the Bible is not so much critical of monarchy as it is critical of the kings of Israel and Judah who were unfaithful to God and that the priests who compiled the Bible after the exile emphasized this to say, for their own political reasons, that faithfulness could restore the people of Israel to the paradise they sensed they had lost.

  I guess that I have been interested in scholarship that has suggested links between Bible narratives and the shift to agrarian culture because of my interest in wilderness. That scholarship also seems to shed some light on the tension between the Bible and modern industrial culture. I guess I have been rooting for that scholarship because of my concerns about wilderness and the alienation that accompanies modernity.

  And let me add this: Personally, like you, I don’t want monarchy or empire.

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