William Ophuls remains among the most rewarding, insightful, accurate, and illuminating authors I've encountered in my study of Big Problems. His books, most especially Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity and Plato's Revenge in particular, though I recommend his full catalog (Also via Worldcat search).

In particular, his research and bibliographic notes are works of art on their own.

I've taken the liberty here of presenting the bibliographic note from Plato's Revenge, with authors referenced presented in bold and linked to Wikipedia, whilst works are in italics and linked to their respective Worldcat entries. I've generated the links, and in some cases you may find a name lands on a disambiguation page or that there is no page (yet!) for the author in question. I'll try to note these and provide an alternate linkage in further updates.

The list of names here (and from Ecology) has guided much of my research over the past few years, with individual references often pointing to further works. This is not the full bibliography, which includes many more references, and is also useful. But it's a good start.

William Ophuls' Bibliographic Note from Plato's Revenge

From the text and the notes, it should be obvious what I owe to Plato, Aristotle, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Burke, Jefferson, Thoreau, Le Bon, and Jung. For the most part, there is nothing more to be said. However, Jefferson and Jung require amplification because they did not write systematically about politics.

Jefferson's political career consumed much of his time and energy, and the bent of his mind was more practical than theoretical -- instead of tomes on architecture and education, he produced Monticello and the University of Virginia -- so he never wrote a political treatise. Instead, he scattered his political thought in a vast quantity of letters and other papers. Adrienne Koch paints a coherent picture of his philosophy, but Richard K. Matthews gets closer to Jefferson's radical spirit, and Leo Marx locates him in the larger context of a struggle between two competing visions of the American future. Jefferson is an empty political symbol today. Only a few eccentrics, like the farmer-poet Wendell Berry, take his ideas seriously, and only the Amish follow a simple, convivial agrarian way of life -- as described by Berry (in The Gift of Good Land), John A. Hostetler, David Kline, Donald B. Kraybill and Marc A. Olshan, and Gene Logsdon. Finally, William Morris's all-but-forgotten utopia provides an inkling of what a future Jeffersonian society might be like -- a technologically sophisticated agrarian civilization animated by beauty.

Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections is a classic memoir that is also the best entry into a vast and sometimes abstruse oeuvre. For going deeper, Psychological Reflections is a compilation of brief excerpts that covers most aspects of Jung's thought. Then try two books written for the general public -- Modern Man in Search of a Soul and Man and His Symbols -- as well as C. G. Jung Speaking, which contains his speeches, articles, and interviews, along with remembrances by friends and associates. The Undiscovered Self is Jung's most political book (but see also George Czuczka and Volodymyr Odajnyk for summaries of his social and political ideas). Finally, The Earth Has a Soul, a collection of Jung's writings on nature, reveals him to be a more experienced and wiser savage. He was a learned, scientifically trained modern intellectual and, at the same time, an instinctive ecologist-shaman who drew his inspiration from the wildness of the natural world without and the autonomous psyche within.

Another approach to Jung is through Anthony Stevens, who both explicates and justifies him in the light of later discoveries. Jung should always be read in conjunction with Freud (especially Bruno Bettelheim's Freud). Among Jung's many followers, James Hillman is noteworthy for the way in which he locates the source of individual sickness in modern civilization's lack of either a sense of beauty or a "healing fiction." In addition, the historical works of Erich Neumann and the mythological studies of Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Georgio di Santillana and Hertha von Dechand, and Elizabeth Sewell both support and complement Jung's approach to the psyche.

I must acknowledge those who have preceded me in trying to find a solution to the problematique of industrial civilization. Many of them reach a similar conclusion about the required answer, although they arrive at that answer by different routes. For example, Willis W. Harman sees science as an instrument for discovering what is wholesome for human-kind -- not just prudentially but also morally and spiritually. Along the same lines, Edward O. Wilson's Consilience seeks the morality implicit in our biological nature, and Roger D. Masters argues that taking biology seriously leads us back to a more naturalistic, classical conception of politics not far from that of Aristotle. Fritjof Capra is also close in spirit to my own work: he synthesizes the latest developments in physics, ecology, and systems and urges a corresponding paradigm shift, but he does not really deal with the politics of that shift. On a more practical level, Herman E. Daly and John Cobb follow Schumacher in proposing a simpler, smaller, decentralized economy built to human scale. Similarly, Wendell Berry (in The Unsettling of America), Gandhi (for whom see also Raghavan Iyer), Václav Havel, Ivan Illich, Leopold Kohr, and Kirkpatrick Sale all want to cut down the scale, simplify the means, and limit the speed of civilization, with the aim of making it more sane and humane. Theodore Roszak also urges a life of material simplicity and visionary abundance, and William Irwin Thompson foresees a future of metaindustrial villages -- that is Bali with electronics by another name. ( Huxley's Island and Morris's utopia are also relevant here.) Bill McKibben offers a path to a more frugal, local, and durable future, and Warren A. Johnson describes how we can muddle our way toward it.

Turning to ecology proper, Daniel Botkin, Paul A. Colinvaux, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, Mahlon Hoagland and Bert Dodson, Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Thomas M. Smith and Robert Leo Smith, and Edward O. Wilson (in The Diversity of Life) cover the scientific bases. James Lovelock supplies the scientific ground for Gaia, and Lewis Thomas's poetic essays convey the understanding that mother earth is not a dead metaphor. Aldo Leopold's essays, published in 1949, are the classic expression of an environmental ethic. For ecological philosophy, see Bill Devall and George Sessions, Neil Evernden, John M. Meyer, George Sessions, and Donald Worster. Finally, Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy prefigured the ecological worldview.

With regard to the human challenge of ecology, Harrison Brown was among the first to warn that industrial civilization was threatened by material limits. Donella Meadows et al.'s Limits to Growth and my own Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity established the case for ecological scarcity. William R. Catton Jr., David Ehrenfeld, Garrett Hardin, J. R. McNeill, and Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees have solidified and extended the argument. James Lovelock and William F. Ruddiman elucidate the history, science, and risk of climate change.

Fred Cottrell establishes, and Howard T. Odum and Elisabeth C. Odum describe in scientific terms, the energetic basis of life and civilization. From this basis, the latter offer a solution to the impending energy crisis in A Prosperous Way Down.

Along the same lines, Herman E. Daly and Joshua Farley follow Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen in grounding economic theory on thermodynamics to make economic practice compatible with natural limits. John R. Ehrenfeld and James Gustave Speth criticize a flawed environmentalism and try to find a viable alternative. Stewart Brand also believes that old-style environmentalism is passé and proposes a radical hair-of-the-dog cure for our ecological ills -- geoengineering. Since this is unlikely to succeed (and might well make our problems worse), a more likely scenario for the immediate future is to be found in Julia Wright's case study of how Cuba coped with an energy shock. It suggests the magnitude of the challenge for a developed economy that has much farther to fall once fossil fuels are no longer cheap and abundant. ( B. H. King's description of traditional horticultural agriculture in East Asia is also apropos.)

On physics, I have included a representative selection of works by the philosophical physicists -- A. S. Eddington, Werner Heisenberg, James Jeans, and Erwin Schrödinger -- as well as a useful reader by Ken Wilber. From the many popular treatments, I have selected a number -- Paul Davies, Freeman J. Dyson, Amit Goswami, Edward Harrison, Roger S. Jones, Michio Kaku, Eric J. Lerner, Lawrence Leshan and Henry Margenau, David Lindley, Heinz R. Pagels, Roger Penrose, and Steven Weinberg -- that emphasize mostly the metaphorical, Platonic, and increasingly speculative (or even mystical) character of modern physics. On self-organization and the wisdom of systems, Gregory Bateson and Erich Jantsch are the pioneers at the macro level, and Ilya Prigogine at the micro level. Systems dynamics is clearly explained by Donella H. Meadows's Thinking in Systems and beautifully exemplified by Meadows et al.'s updated Limits to Growth. Charles J. Ryan's papers are excellent complements to Meadows, albeit somewhat more technical. On chaos and complexity, James Gleick does an outstanding job of explaining an abstruse subject in clear language, but Mark Buchanan, Jeremy Campbell, John Gribben, Stuart A. Kauffman, Roger Lewin, and M. Mitchell Waldrop all make an important contribution to our understanding of this genuine revolution in scientific thought.

With regard to psychology, Otto Rank joins Jung in ruthlessly exposing the irrationality of an overly rational civilization, and both join Erich Fromm in urging the necessity of remaining connected to the instinctual realm, to Eros. Euripides, one of the ancient poets who inspired Freud, also speaks to this point. The Bacchae is as much political philosophy as psychological drama. It shows why any attempt to construct a purely rational social order is doomed to failure. For the nature of human nature, I have relied on Melvin Konner's superb summary of a vast literature, but Ernest Becker, Robin Fox, Anthony Stevens, Frans B. M. de Waal, Edward O. Wilson (in On Human Nature), James Q. Wilson, and Robert Wright round out the picture. (See also many of the writers on savagery cited below, as well as Stephen Budiansky, Vicki Hearne, Mary Midgley, and Irene M. Pepperberg on animal nature.) On the constitution of the human mind, William H. Calvin, Antonio R. Damasio, Howard Gardner, Daniel Goleman, R. L. Gregory, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Claude Lévi-Strauss (in The Savage Mind), Robert Ornstein, A. T. W. Simeons, and Paul Watzlawick are all useful, with Goleman's popularizations being an excellent entry point. Julian Jaynes is illuminating and important, but he needs to be read with caution and with the understanding that the ancient world was still essentially shamanic (see the commentators on Plato mentioned below).

On paideia, Werner Jaeger is definitive but daunting; Robert M. Hutchins may therefore be a better point of entry. Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens is a useful reminder that paideia should not be a grim quest for answers but rather a higher form of play. If you want to know what paideia is not, John Taylor Gatto's short, sardonic essay on the horrors of modern-day, assembly-line "education" is both enlightening and heartbreaking. Morris Berman and Stephen E. Toulmin chronicle the development of the modern mindset: Berman sees revived participation as the necessary response to the disenchantment of the world; Toulmin's revisionist history suggests that we would have done better to ground modern science on Montaigne rather than Descartes, for this would have lead us earlier to an ecological worldview. Frederick Turner calls for a revival of the classic spirit, and O. B. Hardison Jr., argues for aesthetic education. Howard Gardner and Charles Murray propose educational reforms that take into account the different ways of being intelligent. Thomas S. Kuhn shows the critical importance of paradigms for organizing thought, and Donella H. Meadows (in Thinking in Systems) makes paradigms the key leverage point for changing system behavior. James Hillman's Healing Fiction underlines the psychological indispensability of a story that orients us in the world; Ernest Becker, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Walter Lippmann (in Public Opinion) agree; and Daniel Quinn uses story to show how different stories lead to radically different outcomes.

The writers I have cited as the necessary background for Plato -- Francis M. Cornford, Robert Earle Cushman, E. R. Dodds, Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, Eric A. Havelock, and Walter J. Ong -- are worth reading for another reason. They reveal a very different mode of understanding and thus provide an avenue for thinking about a more experienced and wiser savagery. Likewise, Ann-ping Chin, Trevor Ling, Joseph Needham, and Alan W. Watts -- and Lao Tzu -- show us the more ecological mode of thought prevalent in the East.

Turning now to the savage and what he might have to offer to civilization, Claude Lévi-Strauss Tristes Tropiques -- part memoir, part ethnography -- is philosophical anthropology at its best. Pierre Clastres is also exceptional on the character of primitive politics. Paul Shepard devoted a long and productive life to arguing for the superiority of the Pleistocene, a case also made by Daniel Quinn in story form. But Robin Clark and Geoffrey Hindley, Mark Nathan Cohen and George J. Armelagos, Jared Diamond, Stanley Diamond, Robin Fox, Jamake Highwater, Lewis Hyde, Theodora Kroeber, Dorothy Lee, Calvin Luther Martin, David Maybury-Lewis, Alan McGlashan, Lewis Henry Morgan, Marshall Sahlins, and Gordon R. Taylor all offer valuable perspectives on who the savage is and what he might have to teach us. For balance, see the more jaundiced views of Robert B. Edgerton and Lawrence H. Keeley. Participation is urged by David Abram, Owen Barfield, and Giambattista Vico (in the form of "poetic wisdom ") as well a number of others cited above. Jean Liedloff focuses on the critical issue of childcare. She argues that because our young are no longer consistently held, as is typical in primal societies, they tend to grow up as unhappy quasi-orphans driven by a sense of inner deprivation. Finally, Tim Flannery shows how our primal ancestors adapted to an ecological challenge similar to our own. (Julia Wright is relevant here as well.)

On Bali, from an immense literature I have culled a very few works -- the still useful ethnography by Miguel Covarrubias, as well as more recent studies by Fredrik Barth, Clifford Geertz, and Stephen J. Lansing. To avoid being accused of an excessively utopian view, I also include Geoffrey B. Robinson's description of Bali's darker side (and see also Geertz's famous essay "Deep Play" in The Interpretation of Cultures).

Concerning the problematique of civilization in general, the reflections and analyses of Patricia Crone, Will and Ariel Durant, Johan Huizinga (in The Waning of the Middle Ages), William H. McNeill, Pitirim A. Sorokin, and Arnold J. Toynbee illuminate the past in ways that portend the future. For example, Crone sees us reverting to preindustrial times, Toynbee foresees small village-republics within a world-state, McNeill a neo-Confucian empire, and Sorokin a religious revival. Karl Polanyi's description of modern political economy's painful birth warns of the difficulty ahead as we try to create an ecological civilization. Joseph A. Tainter's theory of diminishing returns on investment in complexity suggests why all past civilizations have collapsed, while Thomas Homer-Dixon and Geoffrey Vickers discuss the particular problems, costs, and contradictions that now menace industrial civilization. ( Harrison Brown and the others mentioned under ecological scarcity above are also relevant here.)

To conclude with politics, as noted in the preface I have relied on the so-called classics rather than contemporary authors to make my case because I believe these older works offer deeper insights and better answers to the challenge of ecological scarcity. However, Hannah Arendt, Walter Lippmann, Alastair MacIntyre, Wilson Carey McWilliams, Michael J. Sandel, and Sheldon S. Wolin are excellent complements to my own argument. Each finds American liberalism to be philosophically incoherent and morally lacking. Along the same lines, Jacques Ellul and Langdon Winner show how untrammeled technology has captured the political process. Louis Dumont is a useful corrective to our instinctive democratic aversion to hierarchy. The idea that human beings may need benign conditioning also inspires deep resistance, but as B. F. Skinner points out, we are already thoroughly conditioned -- just not in ways conducive to individual happiness or social peace. Daniel J. Boorstin and Marshall McLuhan make the same point with respect to media. They exist to brainwash us (and inevitably so, says McLuhan) -- hence the necessity for a liberating paideia.

To close on a note of political realism, I am aware that my vision of a politics of consciousness is not the only possible outcome. Indeed, it may not even be the most likely. For all the reasons spelled out in Barrington Moore, Jr., Reinhold Niebuhr, George Orwell, John Robb, and Barbara W. Tuchman (not to mention Thucydides, Tacitus, Machiavelli, and Hobbes), history may take a very different and perhaps much less benign course. It will take exceptional vision, enormous courage, and extraordinary "wit" to make a transition from the Titanic to a smaller, simpler, humbler vessel.