by Christopher Tang
Abstract
The land ethic is a philosophical framework posited by Aldo Lepold that extends moral consideration to the land and all biotic creatures who inhabit it. This holistic approach designates the whole land as the overarching entity of moral concern. Interestingly, Leopold’s defining moral maxim includes beauty as a dimension to be preserved in order to properly pursue the land ethic. In this paper, I will first motivate why beauty is included in Leopold’s maxim for the land ethic, namely as a method to see oneself within the context of the land. Then, I will introduce the sublime through the work of Edmund Burke and Arthur Schopenhauer and posit it as a more fitting concept than beauty within the land ethic. To this end, I will develop how the sublime eliminates the individual and, therefore, eliminates individualism. Finally, I will re-define Leopold’s moral maxim with the sublime.
Leopold’s key maxim of the land ethic claims that “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community” (Lepold 2020, 211). Rather than to esteem traditionally attractive or scenic features within nature, I understand the inclusion of beauty in the land ethic to serve as a bridge between personal experience and Leopold’s desired communion with the whole biotic community. Put in other words, Leopold’s holism and community with the land is achieved through the recognition of its beauty. In recognizing the beauty within nature, one is forced to, at some level, acknowledge the powerful natural systems at work that support the beauty being experienced. This introspection may occur unconsciously but is nonetheless a brief revelation into the place and role of oneself in the grand scheme of Life. The culminating effect is a nod to ecological mechanisms whose sheer dominance and influence in Life illuminate a relationship between oneself and the Land.
Under this interpretation, it follows that manifestations of the land ethic’s beauty are not limited to grand scenes like the Smoky Mountains or Niagara Falls. Common and distressing phenomena like the slow maturation of an oak tree or the gory predation of deer have the power to broaden one’s perspective and induce an acknowledgement of larger-than-life mechanisms at work in the natural world. Leopold himself comes to grasp the land ethic through the strikingly beautiful green flame in a dying wolf’s eyes (Lepold 2020, 121-122). Thus, beauty is a necessary component in the land ethic not for denoting what elements of nature or land are deserving of attention but rather as a method of comprehending the Land and oneself within the Land.
A similar insight is evoked by the sublime, which is detailed in Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Burke describes the sublime as “the strongest emotion which the mind is possible of feeling” such that “the mind is so entirely filled with [the sublime] object that it cannot entertain any other” (Burke 1990, 111, 130). A similar experience was related through poets, artists, authors, and philosophers of the Romantic period where the sublime referred to experiences of mixed terror, awe, and exaltation from magnanimous beauty and greatness beyond compare. This profound feeling of majestic terror was often experienced in natural landscapes like the Swiss Alps and Mont Blanc but also from literature like John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”. It should be noted that while the sublime necessarily encompasses elements of beauty, usually power or vastness, beauty itself does not entail sublimity. If such a beauty does, however, then it would be more aptly characterized as sublime rather than beautiful.
This difference was well developed by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Representation. Schopenhauer posited beauty as inviting, a phenomenon that gently speaks to individuals and encourages them to enjoy its aesthetic pleasure and contemplate its attractiveness (Schopenhauer 1966, 201). Examples of this innocent beauty include flourishing flowers or peacefully flowing streams. The sublime, however, is far more transcendental in virtue of its immeasurable greatness and hostility; Schopenhauer claims that “[the sublime makes us feel] reduced to nothing; we feel ourselves as individuals . . . as transient phenomena of will, like drops in the ocean . . . [the result is] a consciousness, merely felt, that in some sense or other we are one with the world and are therefore not oppressed but exalted by its immensity” (Schopenhauer 1966, 205). The sublime is violently overpowering, a force so powerful and humbling that it forces a reconceptualization of our existence. Powerful thunderstorms with tumultuous winds and rugged mountain ranges embody elemental power and domination that inspire both exaltation and fear as well as underscore our interconnection with the world.
When considering the land ethic’s moral maxim and overall sentiments, the sublime appears to be a more appropriate idea than beauty is. Not only does the sublime create a potent relationship between individuals and the land, but it also emphasizes the holistic perspective towards the land that Leopold espoused. As stated earlier, beauty, as I understand it, in the land ethic is the gateway into understanding oneself within the context of the Land. Without beauty, the land ethic cannot be practiced, for one cannot bridge the divide between individual experience and the land. With it, however, the holism connecting together each and every living being can be perceived. Albeit more forcefully, the sublime too intertwines individuals with the land. Through evoking a profound sense of awe and reverence, the sublime induces a perspective shift that focuses on larger-than-life concepts. The majesty and power of the land becomes an entity that cannot be ignored, an untouchable system that one is a part of. In this way, from the perspective of the land ethic, the heightened awareness of the land induced by the sublime provides the same value that beauty does, namely enforcing holism with the land.
However, by overpowering individuals with vast greatness, the sublime more adequately affirms the holism of the land ethic, one that relegates man from conqueror to citizen, than beauty does. J. Baird Calicott, a disciple of Leopold, notes that a significant goal of the land ethic is to “invite one, much more than does the community paradigm, to hypostatize, to reify the whole, and to subordinate its individual members” (Calicott 2010, 202). If unification with the Land and elimination of the individual is the goal of the land ethic, then beauty fails to achieve it. Deep recognition of beauty may produce communion with nature, but such communion has no certainty of prioritizing the whole, the entire land, over individuals. This is evidenced by events like destination weddings that are selected for their stunning natural beauty but also entail environmentally hurtful practices that exhibit indifference towards Land.
This is not the case for the sublime. Such parochial endeavors are infeasible under the sublime because the sublime effectively eliminates the individual and, by extension, individualism. Individuals and individualism persists because individualistic boundaries like identity give rise to narrow-minded inclinations and behavior that hinder the recognition of oneself as a component part of the whole. By exuding awesome amounts of power and showcasing incredible grandeur, the sublime reconceptualizes one’s existence by dissolving individual boundaries: “[the beholder] forcibly tears himself from his will and its relations . . . giving himself up entirely to knowledge” (Schopenhauer 1966, 201). Without personal attachments to ground one’s perspective, individuals not only elevate to a higher plane of understanding and perceive the unity connecting all components of the Land but become a part of the Land. For this reason, the dissolution of the individual and subsequent melding into the Land such that all biota are deserving of consideration as fellow component entities is foundational to Leopold’s vision for the land ethic.
When this barrier is dissolved by the sublime, the detachment of oneself from personal concerns allows one to perceive the larger whole, the Land, and its role in the well-being of all biota. In fact, by reducing humans to “transient phenomena of will . . . dwindling and dissolving into nothing”, the sublime succeeds in glorifying the land, the impressive and towering whole, and humbling individuals (Schopenhauer 1966, 201). The sublime inherently relegates humans to members of nature by exposing how small and powerless they are in the face of Nature’s grandeur. Such humility, which is organic and lasting, does not necessarily follow from beauty. Thus, because it eliminates individualism through the dissolution of the individual into the Land, the sublime appears more fitting for the land ethic than does beauty.
The substitution of the sublime for beauty in the land ethic’s moral maxim implies that preserving the sanctity of the land, which exudes the sublime, makes a thing right. To recognize one’s place in the land is to submit to the sublime, respect it, and to consider its matters one’s own matters. It follows that being wrong is to, within reason and feasibility, engage in an endeavor that fails to acknowledge the sublime qualities of the land and, in doing so, prioritize other entities. Viewing oneself as separate from the land mistakenly places the one truly relevant entity, the land, below what are, in comparison, insignificant and component entities.
While this re-definition with the sublime is overall very similar to the sentiments alluded to by beauty, its commitment to human relegation represents a significant difference. Leopold is disappointed with American education and attitudes towards nature because they are void of and non-referential to sublime experiences, which would make humans’ powerlessness a clear reality. The connotation of beauty bestows on humans the privilege of deriving or recognizing beauty from the natural world. While one person could find a flower beautiful, another could find it dull. Thus, the conqueror mentality, one where humans have the power to characterize, persists within beauty. The option to choose is itself arrogant and erroneous. The truth of the sublime is that there is no choice: the sheer vastness, greatness, and terror of the land overwhelmingly strips individuals of their misguided perspective and replaces it with a holistic one. The sublime is a brainwashing that forces the recognition that humans are small and powerless in the face of the land; this humility is at the core of the land ethic and motivates the unity felt throughout the whole land.
References
Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Edited by James T. Boulton. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Callicott, J. Baird. “The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic.” in Technology and Values: Essential Readings. Edited by Craig Hanks. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation. Translated by E. F. J. Payne. New York: Dover Publications Inc, 1966.