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This article was downloaded by: [Memorial University of Newfoundland]On: 03 August 2014, At: 01:24Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
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Progress or return? InterpretingLeopold’s ‘land ethic’ as anevolutionary-ecological critiqueof modernityNathan Dinneena
a Department of Political Science, Rochester Instituteof Technology, New York, USAPublished online: 14 Apr 2014.
To cite this article: Nathan Dinneen (2014) Progress or return? Interpreting Leopold’s‘land ethic’ as an evolutionary-ecological critique of modernity, Environmental Politics,23:4, 688-703, DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2014.906535
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2014.906535
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Progress or return? Interpreting Leopold’s ‘land ethic’ as anevolutionary-ecological critique of modernity
Nathan Dinneen*
Department of Political Science, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, USA
This reflection upon the challenge of interpreting Aldo Leopold’s evolutionary-ecological outlook begins with a study of three distinct interpretations of his ASand County Almanac. One interprets him as a human-centred, Darwinianhuman ecologist (Larry Arnhart); another portrays him as an ecocentricDarwinian, dialectical educator (J. Baird Callicott); and the last argues that heis primarily a non-Darwinian civic educator who advocates a return toAmerica’s deeper values (Bob Pepperman Taylor). I seek to bring out the bestof all of these views by offering yet another version of Leopold, which holds thathis ‘land ethic’ is a social critique of modernity inspired by his evolutionary-ecological outlook. In other words, while he is an outspoken critic of modernity,he remains wedded to certain features of it, namely the scientific frame of mind
Keywords: Aldo Leopold; the land ethic; Larry Arnhart; J. Baird Callicott;Bob Pepperman Taylor
Introduction
It is obvious to the reader of A Sand County Almanac that Aldo Leopold is out ofsorts with modernity. In the most famous essay of the Almanac, ‘The LandEthic’, he says, ‘The case for a land ethic would appear hopeless but for theminority which is in obvious revolt against these “modern” trends’. The ‘truemodern’ lacks a meaningful connection to the land (Leopold 1949, pp. 223–224).Moreover, the possibilities for experiencing the land in an intimate, direct wayare next to none, as ‘middlemen’ and ‘innumerable physical gadgets’ interferewith our ‘vital relation to it’ (Leopold 1949, pp. 223–224). Yet, were the steps ofproduction made visible, from the beginning to the end, Leopold would none-theless still have his axe to grind, for the land would be treated simply as aresource. The task of the land ethic is thus to make visible that which is over-shadowed by ‘an immediate and visible economic gain’ (Leopold 1949, p. 208).
Towards the end of the essay, Leopold stages an imaginary, controlledexperiment where the ‘true modern’ is confined to a piece of land for a day.Moreover, this land does not contain golf links or what is commonly thought to
*Email: [email protected]
Environmental Politics, 2014Vol. 23, No. 4, 688–703, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2014.906535
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
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be ‘scenic’. How does the ‘true modern’ fare? Leopold concludes, ‘he is boredstiff’ (1949, p. 224); the ‘shallow-minded modern’ has ‘lost his rootage in theland’ (1949, p. 200). Blown over by the winds of progress, his shallow rootsprovide him with nothing to endure the process of mechanisation, and thus hebecomes ‘mechanized man’ and his vitalism is suffocated (1949, pp. viii, 46).One can infer, as Leopold surely intends, that had the ‘true modern’ neverexperienced the supermarket, had he never divorced recreation from his living,and had he never limited his enjoyment of the land to the picturesque, he wouldhave had plenty to do. The true modern, however, is concerned primarily withcomfortable self-preservation and self-gratification. In other words, what is‘scarcity’ of entertainment in the eyes of one who is truly modern is ‘plenty’of work, be it entertaining or no, to the premodern.
Heidegger eloquently grasps what is afoot here:
The earth now reveals itself as a coal mining district, the soil as a mineral deposit.The field that the peasant formerly cultivated and set in order appears differentlythan it did when to set in order still meant to take care of and maintain …Agriculture is now the mechanized food industry. Air is now set upon to yieldnitrogen, the earth to yield ore, ore to yield uranium, for example; uranium is setupon to yield atomic energy, which can be unleashed either for destructive or forpeaceful purposes. (1977, p. 320)
Heidegger, however, does not countenance the ‘absurd wish to revive what is past’(1977, p. 327, also pp. 330, 362). The bearer of the land ethic invites one to pause,asking has the science of ecology wrought a new opening in the modern mind, sothat we can move beyond simply viewing nature as a storehouse? Has modernscience, in other words, produced an heir in evolutionary-ecological science thathas hewn to a deeper ‘fact’? It is true that Leopold has wielded scientific ecology asa form of social critique against the economic cast of mind. But was his use ofscience as a form of social critique more the exception than the rule? Does Leopolddesire more progress of a different scientific sort or a return to a premodern world?
I begin with a study of three distinct interpretations of Leopold’s A SandCounty Almanac. One interprets him as a human-centred, Darwinian humanecologist (Larry Arnhart); another portrays him as an ecocentric Darwinian,dialectical educator (J. Baird Callicott); and the last argues that he is primarilya non-Darwinian civic educator who advocates a return to America’s deepervalues (Bob Pepperman Taylor). I offer yet another version of Leopold: that his‘land ethic’ is a social critique of modernity inspired by his evolutionary-ecological outlook; while he is an outspoken critic of modernity, he still remainswedded to certain features of it, namely the scientific frame of mind.
Leopold(s)
Among the relatively recent essays on Leopold, Larry Arnhart’s ‘Aldo Leopold’sHuman Ecology’ (2000) is both useful and important, especially in that it
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conveys an understanding and familiarity with most of Leopold’s writings andfocuses on Leopold’s significance in grounding conservation in ‘human ecol-ogy’, which links the social and natural sciences (2000, p. 126). Like J. BairdCallicott, Arnhart does not dismiss sociobiological accounts of human nature butbelieves that such accounts help us to understand better how our desires arelinked to our biology. In linking Leopold’s conservation to human ecology,Arnhart cites Edward O. Wilson’s notion of ‘biophilia’ as providing an explana-tion and foundation for a conservation ethic. The biophilia argument holds thathuman beings evolved not within a humanised environment but a ‘living envir-onment’, and as a result, we have a ‘natural human love for living beings’ and ‘anatural instinct to explore and affiliate with living environments like those thatwere typical of human evolutionary history’ (2000, p. 127).
The biophilia hypothesis may help explain John Muir’s poetic defence of asaunter in the meadows as something that we desire and need: ‘Camp out amongthe grass and gentian of glacier meadows, in craggy garden nooks full ofNature’s darlings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows intotrees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms theirenergy, while care will drop off like autumn leaves’ (Muir 1997, p. 755).Elsewhere, Arnhart includes our biophilic desire within the category of ahuman desire for ‘aesthetic pleasure’, which is one general human desireamong twenty that he identifies: ‘[Human beings] also take pleasure in naturallandscapes that resemble the savanna where the human species evolved.Although human beings are flexible enough to live in urban environments,they try to recreate the natural environments of their evolutionary history ashunter-gatherers through parklike landscapes, gardening, and the company ofanimals’ (1998, p. 36).
Be that as it may, Arnhart’s disagreement with Callicott’s ecocentric readingof Leopold rests upon the distinction that Callicott makes between ethics‘humanly grounded’ and those ‘humanly centered’ (2000, p. 105). BothArnhart and Callicott recognise the intellectual pedigree of Leopold’s landethic as belonging to the moral-sense tradition beginning with the ScottishEnlightenment and adopted by Darwin in his The Descent of Man. Accordingto Arnhart’s interpretation of this tradition, our moral sentiments attach us moststrongly to our closest circle of friends and family members. Drawing severalcircles around this group, our moral sentiments will extend out to groups moredistant from us – tribe, nation, country – until we acquire some attachment tohumanity as a whole. As one crosses through these concentric circles of concern,our moral sentiments become weaker. The leap to include the whole non-humanbiotic community into the moral realm of concern would thus be based on arather tenuous extension of the sinews of sympathy. Arnhart concludes, ‘In thisimage of the ethical community, which Callicott draws from Leopold, the humanattachment to oneself and one’s own is literally at the “centre” of things, whilethe biotic community belongs to the “perimeter”. It is hard to imagine a moreanthropocentric view of ethics’ (2000, pp. 105–106). Both Arnhart and Callicott
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agree that values have their origins in human judgment but differ perhaps in theirunderstanding of moral priority (see Callicott 1989, pp. 151–152). Yet, thepassage in Callicott’s book that Arnhart interprets seems to be anthropocentric,not ecocentric (1989, pp. 93–94).
However that may be, it seems only fair to say that by using our ‘humanlygrounded’ intellectual and emotional faculties, we can extend moral concernbeyond the human realm and thus strictly speaking our moral realm is notconfined solely to human beings, as it is with ‘narrow anthropocentrism’ (seeNorton 1991, p. 59). While all ethical theory is humanly grounded, it need notimply that human beings are always at the centre of ethical action or even at thecentre in circumstances where human interests are in tension with the perceivedinterests of non-human nature, which of course require a human representativeand interpreter.
With this in mind, one should consider the debate that Callicott engages inwith Ernest Partridge, who attempted, according to Callicott, to turn ‘anAmerican Indian land ethic … against the historicity of the biosocial theoreticalfoundations of the land ethic’. Partridge’s critique of Leopold’s land ethicsuggests that:
The anthropologist will point out that in many primitive cultures, far greater moralconcern may be given to animals or even to trees, rocks, and mountains, than aregiven to persons in other tribes … Thus we find not an ‘extension of ethics,’ but a‘leapfrogging’ of ethics, over and beyond persons to natural beings and objects.Worse still for Leopold’s view, a primitive culture’s moral concern for nature oftenappears to ‘draw back’ to a human centered perspective as that culture evolvestoward a civilized condition. (Cited in Callicott 1989, p. 95)
Callicott’s response is worth citing in full, as it points to a major problem ininterpreting both Leopold and an evolutionary understanding of the moral-sensetradition:
Actually, the apparent historical anomalies, which Partridge points out, confirm,rather than confute, Leopold’s ethical sequence. At the tribal state of human socialevolution, a member of another tribe was a member of a separate and independentsocial organization, and hence of a separate and alien moral community; thus‘[human] persons in other tribes’ were not extended moral consideration, just asthe biosocial model predicts. However, at least among those tribal people whoseworld view I have studied in detail, the animals, trees, rocks, and mountains of atribe’s territory were portrayed as working members and trading partners of thelocal community. Totem representation of clan units within tribal communitiesfacilitated this view. Groups of people were identified as cranes, bears, turtles,and so on; similarly, populations of deer, beaver, fox, etc., were clans of ‘people’ –people who liked going about in outlandish get-ups. Frequent episodes in tribalmythologies of ‘metamorphosis’ – the change from animal to human form and viceversa – further cemented the tribal integration of local nonhuman natural entities. Itwould be interesting to know if the flora and fauna living in another tribe’s territory
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would be regarded, like its human members, as beyond the moral pale. (Callicott1989, p. 95)
In one sense, Callicott is wrong when he asserts that Partridge’s exampleconfirms ‘Leopold’s ethical sequence’. If Callicott is alluding to the section of‘The Land Ethic’ subtitled ‘The Ethical Sequence’, what we read is basicallyLeopold’s evolutionary-ecological interpretation of the Western moral tradition, aseverely truncated one at that (1949, pp. 201–203), which is also not withouterror (see Yaffe 2001, pp. 2–6). While Adam Smith, one of the most prominentmoral-sense philosophers, seems to praise all men belonging to ‘barbaroussocieties’ as being statesmen as he works through the ‘savage’ state of humansociety and to lament the mental degradation that comes with an excessivedivision of labour in later industrial societies (1981, pp. 783, 787–788), hedoes not pay attention to the role of the non-human in discussing the moralsentiments in the ‘savage’ state of human society.
Unless Leopold is attempting to work within and to develop the Westernmoral tradition, it is curious that he does not, save for one passing remark (1949,p. 177), discuss in ‘The Land Ethic’ how a Native American land ethic couldarticulate much of what an ecological-evolutionary land ethic seeks to accom-plish. Why does Leopold pass up the opportunity to wax poetically on how areturn to a land ethic comparable to the Native Americans is what he isencouraging? Perhaps he does not want to be accused of romanticism, andthus wishes to give his land ethic a solid footing in the emerging evolutionary-ecological world view that he helped to establish. The question remains as towhether the moral-sense tradition has adequately observed how non-humanintimates existed in the tribal state of human society. Rather than correcting theinterpretation of this state, Leopold continues this line, and thus Arnhart is rightwhen he says that his moral extensionism proceeds outwardly from the humancentre to the land community.
But to return to Callicott’s response, even if Callicott is wrong when he saysthat Partridge’s example confirms Leopold’s ethical sequence, he is more or lessright if what he meant to say is Partridge’s example is a confirmation of themoral-sense theory that shapes Leopold’s land ethic. As a result, Callicott, notLeopold, seems to be the moral-sense theorist who is responsible for carving outa new space for non-humans in the most immediate sphere of moral concernduring the tribal stage, despite the fact that he humbly, if incorrectly, credits thisdiscovery to Leopold. Leopold’s land ethic, however, ignores it and oddly pointsto the possibility of modern man finding a place for non-humans within themoral realm of concern, especially in that a flourishing evolutionary-ecologicalperspective would surely enable its theorists to recognise how most moral-sensetheorists have confined themselves to expressing the theory only within human-to-human relations.
Connected to the strategy of extending moral concern beyond human beingsis how Leopold seeks to educate his readers through the art of writing. Callicott
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persuasively argues that Leopold in A Sand County Almanac ‘delicately andsubtly’ presents his argument so as not to offend his readers’ sensibilities at thebeginning but instead to slowly open their minds or turn their souls, in a Platonicfashion, to ‘an alternative evolutionary-ecological worldview’ (2005, p. 370).Callicott aptly traces the dialectical sequence of the three parts of A Sand CountyAlmanac, arguing that there is a movement from the sensuousness of Part I to thecognitive constitution of Part II, and in Part III, to the ethical aspect (2005,p. 376). In Part III, we witness the ‘denouement of the whole book’ – ‘The LandEthic’ – to which he hopes to convert us. ‘Fittingly, the foundations of the landethic are borrowed straight from Darwin’s second great work, The Descent ofMan’ (Callicott 2005, p. 377). The moral sense, as in the theory of moralsentiments, is that foundation, and it is Leopold’s task to extend it beyond theconcern simply for other human beings. In order to traverse the ‘royal road to aland ethic’, Leopold relies upon his readers’ encounters with nature, which, inPart I, he helps them recall or imagine through his own experience, and thus‘delicately and subtly’ encourages them to reflect upon such encounters with theinsights into nature coming from an evolutionary-ecological world view that heprovides in due time (2005, p. 378). With this in mind, as I will argue, Leopold’sprogressivism comes to light. Before explicitly addressing the nature of hisprogressivism, we should entertain the question of whether or not his critiqueof modernity entails a return to better times.
In his thoughtful and original essay, Bob Pepperman Taylor (2002) chal-lenges Callicott’s and Arnhart’s, along with Bryan Norton’s and LewisHinchman’s, interpretations of Leopold as being ‘primarily a Darwinian ethicist’.Taylor’s main argument is that the evolutionary logic employed in the essay ‘TheLand Ethic’ is more the exception than the rule. Instead, A Sand County Almanacas a whole, according to Taylor, demonstrates Leopold’s sustained attack on theeconomic cast of mind and behaviour in service of ‘an older set of political andethical values’ (2002, p. 180). He claims
Leopold’s conservation aims at more than teaching us to respect and live inharmony with nature. It aims for this in the name of restoring and reinvigoratingAmerican political culture by appealing to a cultural inheritance deeply at oddswith contemporary social and political life. As Leopold tell us in the foreword to ASand County Almanac, it is at the sand farm that he and his family ‘try to rebuild,with shovel and axe, what we are losing elsewhere. It is here that we seek – and stillfind – our meat from God’. His foremost aim is to inspire other citizens, as hehimself has been inspired, to resist ‘too much modernity’. When he suggests thatsuch a ‘shift in values’ can be best achieved by ‘reappraising things unnatural,tame, and confined in terms of things natural, wild, and free,’ he is indicating thatconservation is less an end in itself than a means to his broader political project.(Taylor 2002, pp. 180–181, italics added)
As we see when discussing Leopold’s thought, we discover, or perhaps invent,Leopolds. Similarities notwithstanding, the differences between the various
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accounts of Leopold point to key problems in understanding what is fundamentalto his perspective. Is he anthropocentric or ecocentric? Is he a ‘Pragmatist’in philosophic outlook or a revolutionary proponent of a new evolutionary-ecological world view (see the exchange between Bryan Norton and Callicott– Callicott et al. 2009, 2011, Norton 2011)? With Taylor, a new Leopold entersthe scene, and he too will receive his challenger.
Taylor argues that Leopold’s appeal to the evolutionary-ecological perspec-tive as embodied in ‘The Land Ethic’ is the exception, not the rule. Moreover, heasserts that ‘conservation is less an end in itself than a means to his [Leopold’s]broader political project’. Taylor argues that Leopold’s educational task is‘fundamentally civic in nature’, as opposed to being ‘primarily ethical’. Thismight help explain why Leopold does not speak of a Native American land ethicbut instead draws upon examples within Anglo-American culture, including itspolitical tradition. Taylor rightly points out Leopold’s ‘commitment to democ-racy and private property’ (2002, p. 178), and, I might add, the wisdom oflimited government while not neglecting the need for prudent governmentintervention (Leopold 1949, pp. 115, 213, 214).
With this in mind, one might be encouraged to ask why Leopold doesnot consider, as many environmental political theorists have concluded, thepossibility that America’s liberal democracy cannot make peace with the more-than-human world. Why does he work within the American political tradition?Perhaps he was a dedicated citizen who cherished American political idealswhile not being blinded by American misdeeds. In support of Taylor’sLeopold, Leopold argues, ‘The Government, which essays to substitute publicfor private operation of recreational lands, is unwittingly giving away to its fieldofficers a large share of what it seeks to offer its citizens. We foresters and gamemanagers might logically pay for, instead of being paid for, our job as husband-men of wild crops’ (1949, p. 175). Clearly, this statement is a powerful expres-sion of Leopold as civic educator, and should be considered in light of an earliercomment that ‘land yields a cultural harvest is a fact long known, but latterlyoften forgotten’ (1949, p. ix). Leopold seems to be pointing to America’sagrarian past. However, in pointing to that past, he nonetheless wishes toimprove upon it through his promotion of a new agrarian republicanism basedon Americans being ‘husbandmen of wild crops’ (cf. Minteer 2006, Cannavò2012). Given that agrarian republicanism has a long history within the Americanpolitical tradition, not to mention Western civilisation (see Adair 2000 andHanson 1999, 2000), Leopold’s strategy of developing a new husbandman byimproving the old one seems prudent.
Taylor’s Leopold was thus a man with the ‘ambition … to educate and shapethe very structure of American political culture’ (2002, p. 178). He sounds ratherBurkean, especially in his dedication to American traditional values and simul-taneous acknowledgement of a standard that transcends an American under-standing of political matters. Taylor claims that Leopold recognised,nonetheless, that it was impossible to recreate wholly the pioneer world that
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manifested respect for founding political institutions and ideals such as‘self-sufficiency and personal independence, moderation and self-restraint, and astrong sense of the duties we owe to others, located in our cultural and politicalinheritance’ (2002, p. 178). According to Taylor, Leopold’s ‘emphasis throughoutis on the way the land can remind us of this earlier political culture, and the need tokeep the land before us for the sake of this reminder’ (2002, pp. 178–179). Such areminder is deemed necessary for someone of a democratic persuasion, since thepresent political economy threatens not only our natural heritage but our culturalone as well (2002, p. 178). But was his embrace of the best within America’spolitical tradition a means to conserving the land rather than the other way around,as Taylor believes (2002, pp. 180–181)?
Taylor’s Leopold is mainly vested in offering a critique of the negativetendencies within modernity by returning to the ‘deeper values’ of theAmerican political tradition (2002, p. 178), despite the fact that this attemptcompels him to recast these old principles in new occupations, which of courseare accompanied by new principles, gleaned from the study of ecology, thatguide older ones. Against Arnhart and Callicott (as well as Norton andHinchman), Taylor thus believes that Leopold is not ‘primarily a Darwinianethicist’. According to Taylor, Leopold’s turn to a Darwinian ‘Land Ethic’ isan example of ‘moments of deep frustration’ with America’s moral traditions(2002, p. 180), which counters Callicott’s argument that this section is the‘denouement of the whole book’ (2005, p. 377). Note that these are only‘moments’ and thus exceptions that should be considered more delicately inrelation to his overall project.
Yet, the frustration is real. Taylor concedes that the first approach of appeal-ing to America’s political tradition can be problematic, since the pioneer spirit isassociated with transforming, even destroying, the environment in countlessways (2002, p. 181), which suggests that Leopold does not wish for a simplereturn. With this acknowledgment, Taylor believes that Leopold finds himself ina ‘very tough position, and one can see him throwing up his hands in despair ofthe whole project in “Wilderness” when he writes, “I suppose some will debatewhether it is important to keep these primitive arts [of wilderness travel] alive. Ishall not debate it. Either you know it in your bones, or you are very, very old”’(Taylor 2002, p. 181; quoting Leopold 1949, p. 193).
In the end, Taylor wonders if Leopold thinks that science can better preparethe heart than philosophy and religion to receive an aesthetic and ethical appre-ciation of the land. He concludes, ‘Leopold’s Darwinian rhetoric fails to solve theproblem he has set for himself’ (Taylor 2002, p. 182), believing that placing ‘TheLand Ethic’ within a more comprehensive reading of A Sand County Almanacwould moderate the potential negative effects for democracy associated with thepolitics of science: ‘The broader political spirit of A Sand County Almanac,however, leads us to a more modest, and potentially more widely acceptable,environmentalism, built upon the invocation of shared democratic experienceand traditions’ (Taylor 2002, p. 183). Taylor’s interpretation is comparable to the
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subtle argument that Rousseau puts forth in the ‘First Discourse’, whereadvances in the sciences are not in themselves bad, but it is the popularising ofthem that is corrupting (Rousseau 1964, especially pp. 56–64). Taylor does noteven go this far, as he has persuaded himself, incorrectly, that Leopold favours acivic education over a scientific one. Moreover, he says, ‘I think it is moreconceptually defensible and democratically respectful’ (Taylor 2002, p. 182). ForTaylor, an appeal to a Darwinian scientific understanding of nature, as opposedan appeal to a ‘cultural inheritance’ and its corresponding understanding ofnature, lacks the ability to ‘settle our moral problems and concerns’, and runsthe risk of fooling us into believing that science can discern what the politicalgood is in a democratic society. That the popularity of Leopold’s essay ‘TheLand Ethic’ encourages such an approach, according to Taylor, points to adangerous tendency within modern environmentalism: ‘The attractiveness forenvironmental ethics of building on science rather than moral and politicaltraditions grows out of the seduction of scientific certainty, a certainty thatwould put an end to the very need for democratic politics’ (2002, p. 183).
Taylor thus calls on educators and readers of Leopold to recognise thetension which he presents to us, noting that we should not entirely succumb,as Leopold sometimes did, to ‘moments of frustration’ but should embrace theimage of Leopold as the civic educator who seeks a return to the deeper values ofAmerica’s not so distant past. Shouldn’t we, however, entertain the idea thatperhaps Leopold does not wish for a simple return?
I like Taylor’s Leopold, but find several obstacles to accepting it. First,Leopold’s indebtedness to a Darwinian understanding of the world places himwithin the moral-sense tradition, in which Leopold seems to rely solely uponDarwin as guide, where he could have referenced Jefferson’s use of the theory ofmoral sentiments had he wanted to embrace fully the American political tradi-tion. Moreover, he could have returned to Jefferson, as has Wendell Berry, inextolling the agrarianism of early America. That he foregoes this opportunity issuggestive. Second, by claiming that Leopold has two distinct strategies, one thatappeals to political tradition and another that appeals to science, Taylor fails tosee how America’s pioneer past and subsequent need for wilderness experiencesthat approximate the former pioneer spirit are described within an evolutionaryframework:
For example: a boy scout has tanned a coonskin cap, and goes Daniel-Booneing inthe willow thicket below the tracks. He is reenacting American history. He is, tothat extent, culturally prepared to face the dark and bloody realities of the present.Again: a farmer boy arrives in the schoolroom reeking of muskrat; he has tended tohis traps before breakfast. He is reenacting the romance of the fur trade. Ontologyrepeats phylogeny in society as well as in the individual. (1949, pp. 177–178)
Had Leopold left off this last sentence, Taylor might have a point. That he didnot suggests that the ‘deeper values’ of the American political tradition or of the
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‘split-rail American’ (Taylor 2002, pp. 178, 181) are interpreted within whatCallicott calls Leopold’s ‘biosocial theoretical foundations of the land ethic’(Callicott 1989, p. 95) or rather through the lens of cultural evolution. It isworth noting also that Leopold’s remark does not occur within ‘The Land Ethic’.This is not to say that Leopold’s evolutionary interpretation of American historyis the correct or even the best way to approach America’s past. Rather, it simplyshows that Taylor has to confront why Leopold either alludes to a Darwinianunderstanding of nature or explicitly invokes it within all three sections of thebook (Leopold 1949, pp. 7, 30, 96, 97, 109, 153, 173, 194, 199, 202, 203, 215,216, 217, 224). For this reason, Callicott’s thoughts on Leopold’s art of writingare instructive.
More importantly, the evolutionary-ecological world view is implicit in the‘Foreword’, where Leopold states that the essays in the book are his attempt to‘weld’ the concepts of ecology, ethics, and culture (1949, p. ix). They are weldedtogether by a Darwinian understanding of all three (see especially Leopold 1949,pp. 109–110; again, this explicit reference to Darwin does not occur within ‘TheLand Ethic’). In other words, Taylor would have to overcome the mountingevidence cited here to give his argument a better foundation.
My aim, however, is not to disprove radically any of the accounts that I havementioned above. They all have merits and are helpful in filling in what othershad left out. For instance, Arnhart does not mention Leopold as a critic ofmodernity, but Taylor does. In turn, Taylor fails to recognise in his depictionof Leopold as a critic of modernity that Leopold’s frustration is not due to hislonging for America’s agrarian past. It is closer to the truth to argue thatLeopold’s implicit appeal to America’s previous agrarian republicanism is ameans to encourage better land conservation and not the other way around.
To understand how Leopold employs agrarianism in the service of conserva-tion, we must take our cue from Callicott and pay close attention to the mannerin which Leopold writes. Leopold’s foremost frustration stems from what hedescribes in one of his ecological revelations:
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world ofwounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. Anecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences ofscience are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks ofdeath in a community that believes itself well, and does not want to be toldotherwise. One sometimes envies the ignorance of those who rhapsodize about alovely countryside in process of losing its topsoil, or afflicted with some degen-erative disease of its water system, fauna, or flora. (Leopold 1987, p. 286, from theoriginal, although rejected, 1947 ‘Foreword’ of A Sand County Almanac).
The Leopold that I now wish to turn to is the critic of modernity who at the sametime employs the scientific evolutionary-ecological world view as a form ofsocial critique.
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Leopold’s use of evolutionary-ecological theory as social criticism
If one understands that a Darwinian world view is the thread that weaves thethree concepts of ‘ecology’, ‘ethics’, and ‘cultural harvest’ together, it becomeseasier to understand how when Leopold seems to go outside the evolutionaryperspective, he nonetheless remains within it. The references to Daniel Booneand others depict America’s cultural evolution, whereby selective aspects of thepast are retained or encouraged because they enable, or would enable, Americansto evolve an ethic that pertains to ‘man’s relation to land and to the animals andplants which grow upon it’ (1949, p. 203). Given how ‘the true modern’ isthoroughly disconnected from the land, the references to Boone and others aremeant to help the modern realise the ‘evolutionary possibility and ecologicalnecessity’ of the land ethic (Leopold 1949, p. 203).
It would be worth reading Leopold after having studied recent literature onDarwinian theories of cultural evolution, especially Richerson and Boyd (2005),where at times it is easy to see how evolutionary theory could be used as a socialcritique of modernity while nonetheless remaining indebted to modernity (ibid.,pp. 169–190). One should also keep in mind that for Leopold ‘the extension ofethics … is actually a process in ecological evolution … Politics and economicsare advanced symbioses in which the free-for-all competition has been replaced, inpart, by co-operative mechanisms with an ethical content’ (1949, p. 202). Thisevolutionary approach is not mere rhetoric but is, for Leopold, his argumentexpressed in ‘logical terms’. He cautions, ‘Only the very sympathetic reader willwish to wrestle with the philosophic questions of Part III’ (1949, p. viii).Sympathetic or not, the reader will discover how ‘The Land Ethic’ is the key tounlocking A Sand County Almanac as a whole and by no means a mere exception.
In the only section that mentions Darwin by name, Leopold looks to him inorder to claim ‘that men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in theodyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, asense of kinship with fellow-creatures; a wish to live and let live, a sense ofwonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise’ (Leopold 1949,p. 109). Moreover, Leopold argues, ‘Above all we should, in the century sinceDarwin, have come to know that man, while now captain of the adventuringship, is hardly the sole object of its quest…’ (1949, p. 110). Boldly disregardingthe fact–value distinction, especially in a time when it was arguably at its peak,Leopold makes the case that the evolutionary ‘fact’ of human nature enables usto both recognise our superiority over and kinship with ‘other creatures in theodyssey of evolution’. The ‘new knowledge’ of evolution supplies us with‘gentler and more objective criteria’ (1949, p. 226), enabling us to ‘listenobjectively’, as does the mountain, ‘to the howl of a wolf’ (1949, p. 129).According to Leopold, ‘[Science’s] great moral contribution is objectivity, orthe scientific point of view’ (1949, pp.153–154).
Yet, following this quote, Leopold recognises that ‘the good life’ asunderstood by modern science has yet to entertain the perception that
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evolutionary-ecological theory fosters, whereby we can question the progressi-vism of contemporary science that views the good life as the need for ‘moreinventions’ (1949, p. 154). For Leopold, methodical doubt (‘doubting everythingexcept facts’) has not been applied by scientists to their ‘own design for living’(1949, p. 154). One might infer that Leopold’s land ethic aspires to place the‘good life’ on more objective, scientific grounds than those which modernscience has offered. It is evidence that his critique of modernity is not a returnto a premodern world but a deepening of the perception of modern science.Leopold’s ‘hewing to the facts’ (or use of the ‘scientific point of view … [whichagain] means doubting everything except the facts’) with the ‘new knowledge’ ofevolution and ecology is meant to show how
ecological science has wrought a change in the mental eye. It has disclosed originsand functions for what Boone were only facts. It disclosed mechanisms for what toBoone were only attributes. We have no yardsticks to measure this change, but wemay safely say that, as compared with the competent ecologist of the present day,Boone saw only the surface of things. The incredible intricacies of the plant andanimal community – the intrinsic beauty of the organism called America, then inthe full bloom of her maidenhood – were as invisible and incomprehensible toDaniel Boone as they are today to Mr. Babbit. The only true development inAmerican recreational resources is the development of the perceptive faculty inAmericans. All of the other acts we grace by that name are, at best, attempts toretard or mask the process of dilution. (Leopold 1949, p. 174, italics added)
Seeing beyond ‘the surface of things’, or rather understanding truly ‘the surfaceof things’, ecology enables us to develop the ‘potential power for bettering “thegood life”’ (Leopold 1949, p. 173). What are we to make, however, of Leopold’suse and, some might say, abuse of ecology here in seeking to create the noblemyth of America as an organism? Is this not a myth, along with the notion ofAmerica’s intrinsic beauty (Leopold 1949, p. 174)? Norton claims that Leopold’shope was ‘that our culture would one day embrace organicism as its rulingmetaphor’ (1991, p. 59). Could it be that Leopold intended ‘the organism calledAmerica’ to be a myth for America as a whole, whereas ‘Thinking like aMountain’ is said to have been a ‘myth of self-education’ (Finch 1987,p. xxii)? If so, has not Leopold moved beyond being a mere scientist, wieldingboth the activity of poetry and science, and thus becoming a creator of newworlds, a builder of ‘receptivity into the still unlovely human mind’ (Leopold1949, pp. 153, 177)? While some might say this places him more within thePlatonic or premodern camp, it should be noted that the moderns were not aboveusing fables to justify scientific endeavours (Davis 1988).
That we also find Leopold the civic educator and the critic of modernity in‘The Land Ethic’ is no mere coincidence, since the cultivation of civic virtueentails that liberal education must adopt the evolutionary-ecological worldview, where we see ourselves as fellow voyagers with the land’s creatures, notconquerors of them. As Homer and Hesiod gave the Greeks their gods, Leopold
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seeks to re-enchant the world through this new form of liberal education. Withoutit, Leopold jokingly states, ‘Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of hisprogress in cleaning up the landscape of which, willy-nilly, he must live out hisdays. It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and realhistory, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his goodlife’ (1949, p. 46). Yet, suffering qualms is what Leopold seeks to achieve amonghis readers, so that they gain the perception that an ecological education will givethem and realise how the modern, mechanised lifestyle delivers to us a ‘world ofwounds’.
Unfortunately, modern liberal education, rather than freeing, enables theeducated to be oblivious to seasonal changes, leaving Leopold to wonder, ‘Iseducation possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth?’(1949, p. 18). It is not simply the educated, as Leopold also notes, ‘It is apparentthat the backward farmer’s eye is nearly twice as well fed as the eye of theuniversity student or businessman. Of course neither sees his flora as yet, so weare confronted by the two alternatives already mentioned: either insure thecontinued blindness of the populace, or examine the question whether we cannothave both progress and plants’ (Leopold 1949, p. 47). Thus, Leopold neitherwishes for a return to the ‘backward farmer’s eye’ nor to continue under theillusion that the progress embodied in the ‘university student or businessman’ isenough. In a nutshell, A Sand County Almanac seeks to offer a blueprint for howwe can have both ‘progress and plants’.
Leopold’s critique of modernity, furthermore, seeks to supply us with a newform of liberal education. As he notes, ‘Every farm woodland, in addition toyielding lumber, fuel, and posts, should provide its owner a liberal education.This crop of wisdom never fails, but it is not always harvested. I here recordsome of the many lessons I have learned in my own woods’ (Leopold 1949,p. 73; see also pp. 44, 81, 158). Only under the tutelage of the evolutionary-ecological world view can liberal education be deepened: ‘Ecological science haswrought a change in the mental eye. It has disclosed origins and functions forwhat to Boone were only facts’ (Leopold 1949, p. 174). One must wonder,however, why Leopold flippantly puts forth the relativistic claim that ‘No onecan weigh or measure culture, hence I shall waste no time trying to do so’ (1949,p. 77). The only answer is that he is not saying what he truly believes. Forinstance, Taylor might argue that Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac is primarilyabout cultivating a form of civic-mindedness that is better than economic self-interestedness. Others might argue that he wishes to establish a new ethic, onethat is better than all that had preceded it. I wonder, in turn, if A Sand CountyAlmanac has a higher aim that transcends both the realm of politics and morality,ultimately seeing both politics and morality as the means by which ‘the world ofwounds’ can be healed.
According to Leopold, conservation is not the ultimate end, as it is still both amoral and political movement. According to Leopold, the activity that is of the‘highest cultural value’ is ‘wildlife research’. He says, ‘Do not let anyone tell you
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that these people made work out of play. They simply realised that the most funlies in seeing and studying the unknown’ (Leopold 1949, pp. 184–185). Perhapsthis last statement sheds light on an earlier claim, where he states, ‘Wildliferesearch started as a professional priest craft’. While the tougher problems willremain with the professional ecological priests, like Leopold himself, amateursare encouraged to participate in a Lutheresque manner as lay priests of wildness(Leopold 1949, p. 185), and thus sanctifying ‘Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness isthe salvation of the world’ (cited in Leopold 1949, p. 133, which is differentfrom the original, see Thoreau 2002, p. 162). Were Leopold right about thecultural value of wildlife research, who would care that ‘wilderness policy isundemocratic’, save for the diehard democrat and the base ‘local Chamber ofCommerce’ (Leopold 1949, pp. 172, 193–194)?
Leopold also thinks that wildlife research could be useful to philosophy,history, and political science (1949, pp. 186–187), seeming to suggest that thecontemplative life of the naturalist is the best life, pursued for its own sake,which gives new meaning to the notion of a natural aristoi. Nonetheless, usefulknowledge, he offhandedly notes, can be gleaned from such a pursuit for otherlesser activities, such as creating a new science of politics or deepening philo-sophic inquiry. So much for Leopold not wasting time measuring or weighingcultures!
It should be apparent that Leopold favours progress over a return to any pointin the past. Leopold is a progressive who wishes to advance progressivismbeyond the utilitarianism enshrined in conservationism or progressivism. Heseeks to be one of the ‘high priests of progress’ (1949, cf. p. 100 with p. 185),within the Enlightenment tradition that seeks popular enlightenment throughadvancing scientific understanding of the world, albeit in the form of ecologicalconscience, not the mechanistic world view characteristic of the modern philo-sophers or their desire to conquer nature (Leopold 1949, p. 223). This wouldentail that Leopold is not a critic of modernity who eschews its fundamentaloutlook, where the voice of science, or the ‘most recent’ science, is privilegedover other world views, such as religion or premodern philosophy. Rather, he is acritic of modernity who seeks ‘a refuge from too much modernity’ (1949, p. viii).All progress is not simply good. The distinction between the modern world viewand its material consequences is best expressed in: ‘To sum up, wildlife once fedus and shaped our culture. It still yields us pleasure for leisure hours, but we tryto reap that pleasure by modern machinery and thus destroy part of its value.Reaping it by modern mentality would yield not only pleasure, but wisdom aswell’ (1949, p. 187). What needs to be cultivated is not modern technology butthe ‘modern mentality’ of ‘hewing to the facts’; methodical doubt must beextended to the idea of progress as synonymous with a ‘plethora of materialblessings’ and ‘bigger-and-better society’ (1949, p. xi). Modern man need not bemechanised; he can also be ecologised.
Leopold would appear to be in agreement with Rousseau, another critic ofmodernity, that modern philosophy is perhaps an advancement over the ancients,
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while the political consequences it inspires lead to moral corruption. The maindifference between Rousseau and Leopold would be the latter’s attempt to wieldscience for the sake of popular enlightenment. What Taylor perceives to beLeopold’s return to the deeper values of America’s past actually forms part ofthe next stage in cultural evolution, as he seeks to ‘select for’ elements of pastcivic virtue while ‘selecting against’ the narrow anthropocentrism of the pioneersin favour of the notion that human beings are biotic citizens of the land com-munity, where we seem to be on a par with other species, despite our positions ascaptains of the ‘adventuring ship’ of evolution and our moral superiority in ourability to grieve (1949, p. 110).
Conclusion
In A Sand County Almanac, Leopold invites the reader to glimpse his scientificand poetic ambitions. We are front row, watching his effort in playing that‘whimsical fellow called Evolution’ (Leopold 1949, p. 90) in the making of‘The Land Ethic’ and the ensuing hope it will foster cultural evolution. Leopold’s‘The Land Ethic’ is an overt critique of the consequences of ‘too much moder-nity’ while nonetheless continuing the modern task of popular enlightenment.This balancing act masks how, when he seems to go outside the evolutionary-ecological world view, he nonetheless remains within it. Thus, while he selectsfor characteristics of the past that he wants to foster, he also selects against otheraspects of it that seem to have led to the need for a new ethic. In the end, his landethic is progressive and meant to be an advancement on the cultural ladder ofevolution.
Nietzsche, a more well-known critic of modernity, once said, ‘a reversion, areturn in any sense or degree is simply not possible … Nothing avails: one mustgo forward’ (1968, pp. 546–547). Despite obvious disagreements on how to goforward, Leopold would share the general sentiment. Thus, for Leopold, likeRousseau, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, there can be no absolute return to aprevious world view.
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