The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology [Hardcover]

Professor Max Oelschlaeger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 24, 1991

In this book Max Oelschlaeger argues that the idea of wilderness has reflected the evolving character of human existence from paleolithic times to the present day. An intellectual history, it draws together evidence from philosophy, anthropology, theology, literature, ecology, cultural geography, and archaeology to provide a scientifically and philosophically informed understanding of humankind's relationship to nature. Oelschlaeger begins by examining the culture of prehistoric hunter-gatherers, whose totems symbolized the idea of organic unity between humankind and wild nature, an idea that the author believes is essential to any attempt to define human potential. He next traces how the transformation of these hunter-gatherers into farmers led to a new awareness of distinctions between humankind and nature, and how Hellenism and Judeo-Christianity later introduced the concept that nature was valueless until humanized. Oelschlaeger discusses the concept of wilderness in relation to the rise of classical science and modernism, and shows that opposition to "modernism" arose almost immediately from scientific, literary, and philosophical communities. He provides studies of the seminal American figures Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold and he gives fresh readings of America's two prodigious wilderness poets Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder. He concludes with a look at the relationship of evolutionary thought to our postmodern effort to reconceptualize ourselves as civilized beings who remain, in some ways, natural animals.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior James Watt may have seemed only a passing nightmare in his day, but he acted out of a very old tradition of American attitudes toward the land and its proper use. So did Henry David Thoreau. So did Edward Abbey. Americans have been arguing about the environment since the first boats landed at Jamestown, and by all appearances they'll keep right on arguing into the next millennium. The Idea of Wilderness packs the centuries-old story into a lively narrative with its full complement of heroes--Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold--a few choice villains of the robber-baron and bureaucrat persuasion, and a few middling souls like Gifford Pinchot, founder of the United States Forest Service. Max Oelschlaeger writes persuasively on the philosophical and religious underpinnings of various environmental positions, showing that indeed there's nothing new under the sun. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

It is the Kantian idea of wilderness--its teleological meaning--that occupies the author here. From the minds of five "poetic thinkers and thinking poets," namely, Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder, Oelschlaeger, professor of philosophy at the University of North Texas, brings new dimension to such matters as the origin and uses of the natural world. Against a dubious reconstruction of the Paleolithic notion of a sacred, shared wilderness, the author deconstructs the modernists' concepts of wild nature as "matter in motion." The scientific revolution in particular is shown to have widened the fissure in our cultural idea of wilderness, between the idea of nature as our "magna mater"--an organic model of the cosmos--and modernist models in history, cosmology, philosophy, and even in the author's survey of today's ecology movement (from "resourcism" to eco-feminism). Oehlshlaeger is a cautious critic and reluctant prophet; nonetheless his proposed "postmodern idea of wilderness" swims against the currents of our intellectual history and invites criticism from members of many disciplines. But Joseph Campbell readers should be able to hear, underneath Oelschlaeger's academic style, the faint heartbeat of an older wilderness mythos in his thesis.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 492 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1ST edition (April 24, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300048513
• ISBN-13: 978-0300048513
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,313,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get yourself back to the garden, February 26, 2001

By 

R. Griffiths "bookchoice" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (Paperback)

'There are many things in western culture that are admirable. But a culture that alienates itself from the very ground of its own being - from the wilderness outside (that is to say wild nature, the wild, self-contained, self-informing ecosystems) and from that other wilderness, the wilderness within - is doomed to a very destructive behavior'.

This quotation from poet Gary Snyder sets the agenda for Max Oelschlaeger's important study of the idea of wilderness. His aim is to demonstrate the importance of the Darwinian idea of nature 'as the source of human existence, rather than a mere re-source to fuel the economy' (p.1) He approves strongly of a reaffirmation of the wilderness in the American consciousness, and along with Snyder he 'announces the opening of the frontier again and attempts to push it eastwards, to reverse America's historical process, to urge the wilderness to grow back into civilization, to release the stored energy from layers below us.' (L. Folson, quoted on p. 275).

This is more than a history of ecological ideas and more than a primer on 'wilderness philosophy'. It is a significant contribution to the question of civilisation and its purpose - in many respects a philosophical, ethical and religious challenge to the twenty-first century.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Insights and Perspective, July 13, 2004

By 

Sarah Edwards (Pine Mountain Club, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (Paperback)

This is the most comprehensive and insightful book I've read on the history of our relationship with nature. Beginning from 20,000 BCE to today, Oelschleager takes the reader on a journey through to the perceptions of wilderness from what can be gleaned about how Paleolithic man might have seen nature on through the myths, poetry and philosophies of ancient, modern and postmodern times, including the perspectives of philosophers from Heraclitus to Descartes and Thoreau, Muir and Leopold. He has masterfully accomplished his goal to write a universal history of "the idea of wilderness, and its ever-changing yet constant relationship between humankind and nature,"
This has been a seminal book in my life and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is seeking an objective and clear understanding of how in the midst of such affluence our culture has evolved to the current state of confusion, conflict and concern about our health and the health of the envirnoment and why we don't seem to be able to address these concerns effectively as of yet. When my son got this book as a gift, I began reading it and couldn't put it down. Soon I bought him another copy. It has provided me with answers to questions and concerns I've had from the time I was a child through college and into adulthood as to why so much of what I was being taught didn't jibe with my own experiences in nature and in life. The book is extensively researched and documented, yet even the end notes are engaging to read.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Impressive review of (too many) wilderness thinkers from philosophical stance, July 26, 2006

By 

Arthur Digbee (Indianapolis, IN, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (Paperback)

There is a lot to like in this book. As I'll discuss later in this review, some sections provide valuable summaries and critiques of various thinkers and streams of thought. Oelschlaeger is at his best when he examines individuals at depth, but the overall structure of the book is less satisfactory.

The first two chapters summarizes vastly: paleolithic man, early agricultural man, ancient and Judeo-Christian views of nature, and medieval views. Obviously the texts available to Oelschlager improve with time; as a result, so does the degree to which one can take his summaries seriously. His reconstruction of Paleolithic and archaic views of nature are just erudite speculation - - after all, how can he, or anyone else, really know how paleolithic man *thought* about nature?

Oelschlager never makes clear why this review is important: should our views of wilderness be conditioned by how early man thought about nature? Do we need to recapture "primitive" understandings simply because they are more natural? Later on he briefly praises John Muir and ecofeminists - - amusing bedfellows, that - - for recapturing part of the Paleolithic, but it's not clear why that should be a Good Thing. Elsewhere he drops similar thoughts. Clearly Oelschlager sometimes seems to think something along the lines of needing to recover the Paleolithic, but he never says this, I don't think he really means it, and in any case he never confronts the issue directly.

The next two chapters review modernism and its critics. Both kinds of summaries are fine. Oelschlager's strategy is to summarize a large number of thinkers, each of whom get 2-5 pages. More synthesis, and a more thematic development would have been better here. This book isn't really a philosophical text that is trying to understand the unity of (say) Spinoza's thought, but rather a critical overview of how people have viewed nature and wilderness. Themes, not individual thinkers, would have better made the points that he wants.

The best chapters come in the middle of the book - - reviews of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold. Here Oelschlager finally has both enough text to work with, and enough space to develop each writer's overall thought. For me, these chapters also highlighted Oelschlager's failure to develop greater unity throughout the book. These three authors explore themes that we saw in the Paleolithic and ancient worlds, or in modernism and its critics, but Oelschlager doesn't draw out many of the connections. That said, these are wonderful chapters on their own, taken simply for their own purposes.

The chapter on Muir was the most impressive, making a case that Muir should be taken seriously as a developer of wilderness philosophy and not merely as a popularizer of others' ideas.

The final pair of chapters explores wilderness poetry of Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder, and then summarizes contemporary philosophies of wilderness. The poetry chapter doesn't reach the quality of the Thoreau, Muir and Leopold chapters, perhaps because of the ways in which poetry differs from prose style. Or maybe it's just me.

Oelschlaeger clearly seeks to contribute to contemporary philosophies of wilderness, as he does in chapter ten, which makes his review in chapter nine more important. Once again, however, he tends to move too fast - discussing authors and philosophical movements in 4-8 pages each. His own position consists more of allusions, and a la carte selections from the thoughts of others, not really a coherent alternative.

Potential readers should be aware that this is very much an academic book, and most of it is not easy reading. He does define the jargon that he uses (say, resourcism) but there is rather a lot of it. Chapters on modernism or contemporary wilderness philosophy are denser than the chapters on Muir or the Paleolithic. Oelschlager does summarize key elements of each body of thought in a convenient table, so he's *trying* to make it easier on us.