An originative perspective of wildness and its implications for dwelling in nearness to grizzly bears in the Yellowstone: A phenomenological case for a primordial ethic
Leon Arthur Chartrand (2008)
directed by Professor Stephen Dunn

This thesis calls for saving Yellowstone’s grizzlies at a time when there no longer seems to be a widely recognized need to save them. In fact, given the dramatic rise in human-bear conflicts over the past decade due to the very success of their recovery, it is reasonable to suspect that the real threat to the bear’s viability has never really been addressed. For, upon closer scrutiny, this trend is not due to poor management techniques or insufficient research, but rather to our loss of rootedness, which is something that cannot be tended to by science and technology. Arguably, this trend stems from a failure to see the bear as a meaningful presence. If anything, the rise of conflicts beckons the question of how we are to live alongside bears and dwell in Yellowstone in a meaningful way. As such, this inquiry aspires to awaken within us a primordial ethic, which is comprised of both originative thinking and poetic dwelling. Originative thinking strives “to see” things anew and to bring-to-light what is most thought-provoking about the bear. Poetic dwelling aims to preserve what is most thought-provoking by keeping it meaningfully (not physically) close to us. In turn, this thesis will reveal wildness as the phenomenon of hiddenness and power that holds sway over the primordial relation between the mountain and the bear. We shall also argue that, in the final analysis, we cannot save the bear without preserving the hidden depths of these mountains, and the key to restoring our rootedness rests in saving this relation—in saving the bear’s revelatory power and the mystique of this landscape—for the two belong -together.