December 16, 2014 / Leave a comment
John Donne d. 1631 (An earthy, imaginative, thoughtful soul reveals his view of love, steeped in metaphor and emotion.) Crop of Francesca da Rimini with her lover Paolo, by the Scottish painter William Dyce (1837). This painting can be seen in the National Galleries of Scotland. Though not quite as scandalous as Paolo, who is here courting his brother’s […]
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July 9, 2014 / 3 Comments on A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold 1948 (An ecologist contemplates and celebrates the land, and recommends an expansion of our moral world.) In today’s courses on ecology, forestry, conservation, environmental philosophy or land use, three personalities are routinely introduced as the fathers of modern concern for nature, the three who first and most strongly urged us to enlarge our […]
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June 19, 2014 / Leave a comment
William Wordsworth 1785-1799 (A poetic sage takes lessons on goodness and beauty from nature.) A man of wisdom, a poet of nature, is Wordsworth. These are the goals to which he aspires, goals that are discernable in his work from a very early age. He wrote many of his greatest poems in the years covered […]
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June 4, 2014 / Leave a comment
Henry Fielding 1749 (Tom really wants to be good for the sake of his love Sophia, but his nature keeps getting in the way!) It is prudent to be morally pure– there can be weighty unseen consequences to any moral failure. Fielding’s signature novel has this ponderous theme, and yet manages not to be at […]
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A Sand County Almanac
July 9, 2014 / 3 Comments on A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold 1948 (An ecologist contemplates and celebrates the land, and recommends an expansion of our moral world.) In today’s courses on ecology, forestry, conservation, environmental philosophy or land use, three personalities are routinely introduced as the fathers of modern concern for nature, the three who first and most strongly urged us to enlarge our […]
Continue Reading →