‘Thinking like a Mystic’
The Unacknowledged Legacy of P.D. Ouspenksy’s Tertium Organum on the Development of Leopold’s ‘Thinking Like a Mountain’
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v5i4.465Keywords:
Leopold, mysticism, Ouspensky, Thinking Like a MountainAbstract
Most Aldo Leopold scholars acknowledge P.D. Ouspensky’s in?uence on both Leopold’s proto-Land Ethic of the early 1920s and insight that the earth is more than inert material and is itself a ‘living thing’. The possibility that Leopold’s later philosophical, ecological, and spiritual development were in?uenced by his reading of Ouspensky, however, has received little attention. A close reading of Leopold’s ‘Thinking Like a Mountain’, as well as key passages of A Sand County Almanac through the theoretical lens of Ouspensky’s analysis in Tertium Organum, suggests that Leopold’s frequent attribution of affective and psychical states, especially love, to nonhuman beings (and Leopold’s most curious and haunting suggestion that dead things too might listen) is consistent with Ouspensky’s theory if not a direct heir to it.
References
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———. 1987. ‘The Land Aesthetic’, in J. Baird Callicott (ed.), Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretative and Critical Essays (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press): 157-71.
Flader, Susan. 1974. Thinking Like a Mountain: Aldo Leopold and the Evolution of an Ecological Attitude toward Deer, Wolves and Forests (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press).
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———. 1933. Game Management (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons).
———. 1989 [1949]. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press).
———. 1993. ‘Goose Music’, in Luna Leopold (ed.), Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
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———. 1991 [1947]. ‘The Ecological Conscience’, in Leopold 1991: 338-46.
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Meine, Curt. 1988. Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).
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Newton, Julianne Lutz. 2006. Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey (Washington, DC: Shearwater Books, Island Press).
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Ouspensky, Pyotr D. 1925. Tertium Organum (New York: Knopf).
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Taylor, Bron. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature, Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Taylor, Bron (ed.). 2005. Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (New York: Continuum).
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———. 1987. ‘The Land Aesthetic’, in J. Baird Callicott (ed.), Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretative and Critical Essays (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press): 157-71.
Flader, Susan. 1974. Thinking Like a Mountain: Aldo Leopold and the Evolution of an Ecological Attitude toward Deer, Wolves and Forests (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press).
Hallowell, A. Irving. 1975 [1960]. ‘Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View’, in Dennis and Barbara Tedlock (eds.), Teachings from the American Earth (New York: Liveright): 141-79.
Hochbaum, Hans Albert. 1944a. Letter from Hochbaum to Leopold, 22 January. Aldo Leopold Papers, UW Archives (Madison, WI): 10-6, 5.
———. 1944b. Letter from Hochbaum to Leopold, 11 March. Aldo Leopold Papers, UW Archives (Madison, WI): 10-6, 5.
Inwood, Brad. 1991. The Poem of Empedocles: A Text and Translation with an Introduction by Brad Inwood (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, rev. edn).
Kant, Immanuel. 1929 [1787]. Critique of Pure Reason (trans. N.K. Smith; London: Macmillan).
Lachman, Gary. 2004. In Search of P.D. Ouspensky: The Genius in the Shadow of Gurdjieff (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books).
Leopold, Aldo. 1927. ‘Southwestern Game Fields’, typescript, Aldo Leopold Papers, UW Archives (Madison, WI): Chapter III, p. 1.
———. 1933. Game Management (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons).
———. 1989 [1949]. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press).
———. 1993. ‘Goose Music’, in Luna Leopold (ed.), Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
———. 1991 [1923]. ‘Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest’, in Leopold 1991: 86-97.
———. 1991 [1947]. ‘The Ecological Conscience’, in Leopold 1991: 338-46.
———. 1991. The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold (ed. Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott; Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).
Meine, Curt. 1988. Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).
———. 2005. ‘Leopold, Aldo’, in Taylor 2005: 1005-1008.
Nash, Roderick. 1987. ‘Aldo Leopold’s Intellectual Heritage’, in Callicott 1987: 63-88.
Newton, Julianne Lutz. 2006. Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey (Washington, DC: Shearwater Books, Island Press).
Norton, Bryan G. 1988. ‘The Constancy of Leopold’s Land Ethic’, Conservation Biology 2.1: 93-102. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.1988.tb00338.x.
Ouspensky, Pyotr D. 1925. Tertium Organum (New York: Knopf).
Palmquist, Stephen. 1995. Kant's System of Perspectives: An Architectonic Interpretation of the Critical Philosophy (Lanham, MD: University Press of America). Online: http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/%7Eppp/ksp1/toc.html.
Pecotic, David. 2005. ‘Ouspensky, Pyotr Demianovich’, in Taylor 2005: 1532-35.
Reyner, John H. 1981. Ouspensky: The Unsung Genius (London: George Allen & Unwin).
Taylor, Bron. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature, Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Taylor, Bron (ed.). 2005. Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (New York: Continuum).
Published
2011-12-28
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Pryor, A. (2011). ‘Thinking like a Mystic’: The Unacknowledged Legacy of P.D. Ouspenksy’s Tertium Organum on the Development of Leopold’s ‘Thinking Like a Mountain’. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 5(4), 465-490. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v5i4.465
