THE KOINOS PROJECT is an online educational platform building community through studying community: a place for the intellectually curious, but educatedly stunted searching for something more—for a true mythos. Subscribe now to stay up to date on all our offerings.
Study guide to The Inward Morning by Henry Bugbee pg. 129-157
“Philosophy is not a making of a home for the mind out of reality. It is more like learning to leave things be: restoration in the wilderness, here and now.” (155)
Bugbee is a very subtle philosopher. This trait is exhibited nowhere better than in the opening question of this episode in his invoking of Ralph Waldo Emerson and there being a “somewhat absolute” in our experience. I think this has not a little to do with the fact that Bugbee is not writing for us—for an audience. What we are reading are his private thoughts, intended for no other and nothing other than his own edification.
This, I believe, makes his critique of where we find ourselves today—experientially, metaphysically, educationally, culturally—extremely valuable. They are the thoughts of a man highly sensitized to the world he inhabits, rendered naked, in an earnest search for a way beyond that world and its limitations. And because these thoughts are jotted down as a journal, there is no “looking over his shoulder” as to how they might be perceived by, and thus affect, anyone else. There is no rhetorical camouflage, no need to flatter or exaggerate, to lead toward or astray.
What we experience in these pages is a mind of the highest caliber at work on the deepest questions of life—and above all, a man trying to find a place to take a stand against the encroaching wasteland in which we now find ourselves. His intention in writing down these thoughts was not to save anyone but himself. He did not wish to start a political movement or cultural revolution. These “solutions” to the problems he addresses have never gone very well when attempted in the past.
Perhaps all we can do is save ourselves—to take a stand and lead by example. But as Bugbee elaborates, a genuine standing on our own two feet must be a standing shoulder to shoulder with everyone and everything. We must stop being simply passive observers and critics—gawking mindlessly or telling everyone else what they ought to do with their lives. Ultimately, all critics are really talking to themselves. Thus, all we can do is try and fail and try again.
We must learn to act while leaving things be: subtly at its most refined.
