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The Embers and the Stars: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Moral Sense of Nature
"It is hard to put this profound book into a category. Despite the author's criticisms of Thoreau, it is more like Walden than any other book I have read. . . . The book makes great strides toward bringing the best insights from medieval philosophy and from contemporary environmental ethics together. Anyone interested in both of these areas must read this book."—Daniel A. Dombrowski, The Thomist
"Those who share Kohák's concern to understand nature as other than a mere resource or matter in motion will find his temporally oriented interpretation of nature instructive. It is here in particular that Kohák turns moments of experience to account philosophically, turning what we habitually overlook or avoid into an opportunity and basis for self-knowledge. This is an impassioned attempt to see the vital order of nature and the moral order of our humanity as one."— Ethics
"Those who share Kohák's concern to understand nature as other than a mere resource or matter in motion will find his temporally oriented interpretation of nature instructive. It is here in particular that Kohák turns moments of experience to account philosophically, turning what we habitually overlook or avoid into an opportunity and basis for self-knowledge. This is an impassioned attempt to see the vital order of nature and the moral order of our humanity as one."— Ethics
284 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1984
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
August 9, 2020
This book is just about the closest thing to a mentor that I have. Three times through has not exhausted its meaning and insight, though after carrying it with me on nearly every foray into the woods (as a matter of principle) has left it tattered and worn. Kohak is a native of the Czech Republic and composed this while living in a small house he built himself in the New Hampshire woods, and teaching philosophy at Boston College. He has since returned to his home.
Though English is his second language, the prose is delicate and purposeful (Frost is one of his linguistic mentors)--there is no doubt he is a philosopher, however, and one who has spent many years deciphering that nasty continental stuff. The surprise comes as the really practical implications of his thinking become clear - this is no pie in the sky, no HD Thoreau, but a real, livable philosophy. There have been a number of times when I seriously considered the possibility of living this life, out beyond the powerline, where there still is night. Yet the beauty of this is that to profit from its insight, there is no need to do this; Kohak has hope that a recovery of the moral sense of nature is within the grasp of everyone willing to seek it, no matter their circumstances.
If you try it, skip the first section (entitled 'Theoria')if you find it difficult, and go right to 'Physis'. If the sections on the gift of the night, of solitude, and of pain do not hook you, you are a cold fish.
"For the truth, for all its complexity, is in a sense utterly simple, as simple as the embers and the stars. We fear unknowing, yet the greater danger may well be that of forgetting, of losing sight of the starry heaven and the moral law, dismissing the truth because it seems too naively simple. That is why it seems to me so urgent that philosophy should ever return down the long-abandoned wagon road amid the new growth, not to speculate but to see, hear, and know that there still is night, star-bright and all-reconciling, and that there is dawn, pale over Barrett Mountain, a world which still is God’s, not man’s, a world where the human can be a dweller at peace with himself, his world, and his God. Though it cannot remain there, philosophy must ever return down the wagon road, in the golden glow of the autumn. Not to find a new truth. The reason is far more modest: lest we forget."
Though English is his second language, the prose is delicate and purposeful (Frost is one of his linguistic mentors)--there is no doubt he is a philosopher, however, and one who has spent many years deciphering that nasty continental stuff. The surprise comes as the really practical implications of his thinking become clear - this is no pie in the sky, no HD Thoreau, but a real, livable philosophy. There have been a number of times when I seriously considered the possibility of living this life, out beyond the powerline, where there still is night. Yet the beauty of this is that to profit from its insight, there is no need to do this; Kohak has hope that a recovery of the moral sense of nature is within the grasp of everyone willing to seek it, no matter their circumstances.
If you try it, skip the first section (entitled 'Theoria')if you find it difficult, and go right to 'Physis'. If the sections on the gift of the night, of solitude, and of pain do not hook you, you are a cold fish.
"For the truth, for all its complexity, is in a sense utterly simple, as simple as the embers and the stars. We fear unknowing, yet the greater danger may well be that of forgetting, of losing sight of the starry heaven and the moral law, dismissing the truth because it seems too naively simple. That is why it seems to me so urgent that philosophy should ever return down the long-abandoned wagon road amid the new growth, not to speculate but to see, hear, and know that there still is night, star-bright and all-reconciling, and that there is dawn, pale over Barrett Mountain, a world which still is God’s, not man’s, a world where the human can be a dweller at peace with himself, his world, and his God. Though it cannot remain there, philosophy must ever return down the wagon road, in the golden glow of the autumn. Not to find a new truth. The reason is far more modest: lest we forget."
June 30, 2017
Kohak's elegant, witty, and profoundly insightful meditation on the moral sense of the world that unfolds as we sit poised at dusk between the dying embers of our cooking fire and the shimmering majesty of the starscape captivated me. I've read good philosophy before, but rarely does philosophy tell a story so true and so arresting. I vastly prefer it to Thoreau's Walden, a book to which I think it could be easily (if superficially) compared. I loved this book, will reread it, and am going to start working through Kohak's other writings. It's that good. If there were six stars, I'd give him the extra one.
March 16, 2020
It’s rare to have a work of philosophical depth be written with such eloquence. However, the beauty of the written word is on full display in Kohák’s work. The main focus of the book is on human ability to see truth (and beauty, and the good) rather than arguments for/against it (them). This will undoubtedly frustrate many academic philosophers - especially those in the British-analytic tradition - but it is most certainly a breath of fresh air for those sympathetic to phenomenology. It deserves to be read and reread.
March 2, 2015
Love this book. This influenced me heavily. My love of the land and my growth as a person is connected strongly to Kohak.
March 12, 2024
This is a deeply beautiful book of philosophy, lucidly written for all its engagement with phenomenology and other strands of Continental thought. The Orthodox archpriest whose recommendation led me to purchase The Embers and the Stars rereads it every year, a habit I may well adopt.
March 10, 2025
This is one of my favorite books I’ve read. There isn’t a single page left unmarked. If Wendell Berry, Edmund Husserl, and Robert Frost wrote a book together I think it’d be like this one—Berry for his agrarian wisdom, Husserl for his phenomenology, and Frost for his nature-infused poetry. Multiple sections moved me to the point of tears. The chapter about what animals know of God was particularly stirring.
With each passing chapter, it felt like debris was being cleared from my vision. By the end, I couldn’t help but look at the nature I live with, animate and inanimate, as “person-al”; the squirrels that scamper across my roof, the mourning dove that tries to nest in my bird feeder, the northern red oak that sheds branches like fur—all of it is kin. Very grateful for this profound work.
With each passing chapter, it felt like debris was being cleared from my vision. By the end, I couldn’t help but look at the nature I live with, animate and inanimate, as “person-al”; the squirrels that scamper across my roof, the mourning dove that tries to nest in my bird feeder, the northern red oak that sheds branches like fur—all of it is kin. Very grateful for this profound work.
August 17, 2024
Vždy mě znovu překvapí, jak málo doceňovanou osobností české filosofie Erazim Kohák je. Český překlad (značně přepracovaný, rozšířený a doplněný) jeho americké prvotiny Embers and Stars je skvělou ukázkou jeho mistrovství: citu pro český jazyk, konverzačního tónu i schopnosti jasně a přístupně vyložit složité pojmy velmi různorodých autorů a vést s nimi živou polemiku. Ačkoliv byla kniha napsána v USA a jejími filosofickými hrdiny jsou především sv. Augustin, Kant, Husserl a Heidegger, nezapře v ní Kohák svou příslušnost k české tradici, v níž se přirozeně hlásí k odkazu autorů jako Komenský, Masaryk, Rádl a Patočka.
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July 9, 2023“There is, though, something wrong when we use medicine to deaden our sensitivity, when we obliterate solitude with electronics and blind ourselves with the very lights we devised to help us see. There is nothing wrong with our artifacts; there is something wrong with us: we have lost sight of the sense, the purpose of our production and our products.”, p. xii
August 29, 2022
Now I know what I want to be when I grow up. This book is pure, humble wisdom.
December 7, 2020
pretty good book. a more philosophical walden. very spinozist
November 28, 2012
Today I came across an article about how during the Cold War the US gov't had plans to blow up the moon to display American military superiority. It was a severe blow to my faith in moral sanity. Carl Sagan was involved! Our leaders are lunatics. And so, with distraught hands, I turned back to Kohak's great work.
It'd be fairest to quote the entire book in full, but alas, I cannot. I can only highly, highly recommend this beautiful, generous, profound piece. Kohak stands back from the world and weighs its beauty and pain, reflects on the philosophies which have hurt men and their world as well as aided them, and evaluates the destructive pathologies which threaten our ability to exist. His enormous breadth of knowledge enables him to see clearly and explain connections which are oft overlooked. There's space for hope, though, just as importantly, there's a condemnation of all that prevents us from communion and stewardship with the world. It's very wonderful, and also, full of small moments where a man stands outside on a winter's night and gazes at the moon. Our poor, fragile moon.
It'd be fairest to quote the entire book in full, but alas, I cannot. I can only highly, highly recommend this beautiful, generous, profound piece. Kohak stands back from the world and weighs its beauty and pain, reflects on the philosophies which have hurt men and their world as well as aided them, and evaluates the destructive pathologies which threaten our ability to exist. His enormous breadth of knowledge enables him to see clearly and explain connections which are oft overlooked. There's space for hope, though, just as importantly, there's a condemnation of all that prevents us from communion and stewardship with the world. It's very wonderful, and also, full of small moments where a man stands outside on a winter's night and gazes at the moon. Our poor, fragile moon.
November 4, 2022
Quickly becoming one of the most important thinkers I have read
December 11, 2021
I love books like these. Kohak was just bursting with insights, all of which he meaningfully put toward his greater ideas. You don't have to agree with everything he says to appreciate the profundity and thoughtfulness of his vision. I think what I like most about this book is how deftly it maneuvers the nature paradox. That is, the question of, "how can we be disconnected with nature when everything we make IS nature?" His bracketing of the difference between the solipsistic self mirroring in artifacts made by us, for us, and with our own beliefs behind them, and things of a different DNA that have existed, do exist, and will continue to exist independent of us, endowed with purpose independent of our projection, is a stroke of brilliance. Our artifacts are indeed nature -- continual reflections of our own specific nature. This isn't bad in itself, but when it comes increasingly at the expense of interacting with nature that is not our creation, the great moral, purposive, and epistemological insights therein are naturally lost to us, because we can only perceive more mirror images of the things we already believed when we created our artifacts.
Another thing Kohak explores insightfully, among many many ideas really, is the difference between "inner" and solipsism. The assumption that the "objective" scientifically measurable world is the entirety of existence (which it obviously is not, since it cannot even measure consciousness) leads us to assume any moving "inward" is one of self-obsession and solipsism. And it can be. Often these days it is. But it might not mean moving into oneself... in the case of Augustine's call to move inward, he meant to move into seeing the person-ness of everything beneath the raw utility of its matter. It is not a closing off; it is in fact the only way to relate and empathize. I could go on and on and on. Kohak is awesome.
Criticisms
- I think he mischaracterizes Nietzsche's attitude as one of nihilism, when it clearly was not.
- Not sure how to feel about his musings on mental illness. He has a point, but it may be too oversimplified.
- I am actually all for his kicking the shit out of Marx and his ilk for their hopelessly reductionist, and consumerist, "historicity." He rightly points out that it is as pie in the sky as all the things it criticizes, because, in the absence of transcendental metaphysics, it always places meaning as something to be had in the literal chronological future. Nevertheless, I wish he would have explored the capitalism side of consumerism more, as it is so obviously relevant to the US, in which he lived and wrote his book. But considering his background and his probable annoyance with the myopia of academia, I can understand his hesitance. And to be fair, as a philosopher, he is more interested in criticizing "Marxism" as a way of thinking than he is of communism, the economical/political ideology. That being said, consumer capitalism, in various forms, is absolutely a way of thinking as well.
- I think he is wise to say that technology is not evil in itself, but I think his view could have more nuance. Of course the phone itself is not immoral, but as a creation which is a reflection of modern humankind's state, it is not endowed neutrally morally. It contains reflections of our values and civilizations, which are moral. So while the phone is amoral, the things it amounts to will necessarily reflect more immorality or less, unless specifically used otherwise. In this respect, technology has a very moral dimension. More obviously, the A-bomb is unable to be used for any purpose other than reflecting the immorality of the society that created it.
Another thing Kohak explores insightfully, among many many ideas really, is the difference between "inner" and solipsism. The assumption that the "objective" scientifically measurable world is the entirety of existence (which it obviously is not, since it cannot even measure consciousness) leads us to assume any moving "inward" is one of self-obsession and solipsism. And it can be. Often these days it is. But it might not mean moving into oneself... in the case of Augustine's call to move inward, he meant to move into seeing the person-ness of everything beneath the raw utility of its matter. It is not a closing off; it is in fact the only way to relate and empathize. I could go on and on and on. Kohak is awesome.
Criticisms
- I think he mischaracterizes Nietzsche's attitude as one of nihilism, when it clearly was not.
- Not sure how to feel about his musings on mental illness. He has a point, but it may be too oversimplified.
- I am actually all for his kicking the shit out of Marx and his ilk for their hopelessly reductionist, and consumerist, "historicity." He rightly points out that it is as pie in the sky as all the things it criticizes, because, in the absence of transcendental metaphysics, it always places meaning as something to be had in the literal chronological future. Nevertheless, I wish he would have explored the capitalism side of consumerism more, as it is so obviously relevant to the US, in which he lived and wrote his book. But considering his background and his probable annoyance with the myopia of academia, I can understand his hesitance. And to be fair, as a philosopher, he is more interested in criticizing "Marxism" as a way of thinking than he is of communism, the economical/political ideology. That being said, consumer capitalism, in various forms, is absolutely a way of thinking as well.
- I think he is wise to say that technology is not evil in itself, but I think his view could have more nuance. Of course the phone itself is not immoral, but as a creation which is a reflection of modern humankind's state, it is not endowed neutrally morally. It contains reflections of our values and civilizations, which are moral. So while the phone is amoral, the things it amounts to will necessarily reflect more immorality or less, unless specifically used otherwise. In this respect, technology has a very moral dimension. More obviously, the A-bomb is unable to be used for any purpose other than reflecting the immorality of the society that created it.
July 20, 2024
Haiku review:
Come to the forest
When (the) maples are radiant
And listen for God.
I second all of the reviews on the back of this book. It is hard to categorize this text because it is so much more than just a text, begun one mind then transferred onto a page for another mind to receive. To me, this text belongs at a kitchen table for all to read. This text invites the reader in, as if they were an old friend, into a warmly lit home (not a house, but a home). This text both picks the herbs and boils the water for the tea of content-comfortable with discussing the uncomfortable topics of where this world is headed if we continue to drown out the night sky with neon lights; your hands burn momentarily as you hold the hot, steeping cup, but the steam rising from the water to your nose beckons you to sip slowly, gently, and thoughtfully. This text kindly, humbly, and boldly converses with the reader while providing ample margins for the reader to respond-for “wide margins are critical to a book as dense notes, for it is the reader, who, in the last instance, must write their own marginalia” (223). It is a work of communicating deep insights and articulating the need for understanding that we live at the valuable intersection of time and eternity. We have the blessed possibility to “cherish beauty, know truth, do good, and worship the Holy” (xii). This life is meant to be lived, and this text is meant to be read.
Come to the forest
When (the) maples are radiant
And listen for God.
I second all of the reviews on the back of this book. It is hard to categorize this text because it is so much more than just a text, begun one mind then transferred onto a page for another mind to receive. To me, this text belongs at a kitchen table for all to read. This text invites the reader in, as if they were an old friend, into a warmly lit home (not a house, but a home). This text both picks the herbs and boils the water for the tea of content-comfortable with discussing the uncomfortable topics of where this world is headed if we continue to drown out the night sky with neon lights; your hands burn momentarily as you hold the hot, steeping cup, but the steam rising from the water to your nose beckons you to sip slowly, gently, and thoughtfully. This text kindly, humbly, and boldly converses with the reader while providing ample margins for the reader to respond-for “wide margins are critical to a book as dense notes, for it is the reader, who, in the last instance, must write their own marginalia” (223). It is a work of communicating deep insights and articulating the need for understanding that we live at the valuable intersection of time and eternity. We have the blessed possibility to “cherish beauty, know truth, do good, and worship the Holy” (xii). This life is meant to be lived, and this text is meant to be read.
June 28, 2022
"The golden leaves line the river bottom, setting the water aglow in the autumn sun. The forest dies and is renewed in the order of time; the sparkling river bears away grief. In the pained cherishing of that transient world, the human, a dweller between the embers and the stars, can raise it up to eternity. That is the task of humans. The moral sense of nature is that it can teach us to cherish time and to look to eternity within it."
July 11, 2023
A profound and profoundly heartening bit of philosophy, surely even more urgent today than when it was published 40 years ago.
Kohák helps us see how the "death of God" in the West eventuated in a conceptual death of nature—and how recovering nature's "moral sense" might nurse us back to reality, ourselves, animals, each other, and God.
I hope to return to this book frequently.
Kohák helps us see how the "death of God" in the West eventuated in a conceptual death of nature—and how recovering nature's "moral sense" might nurse us back to reality, ourselves, animals, each other, and God.
I hope to return to this book frequently.
October 16, 2025
I was supposed to read this one for a class towards my MES degree. I didn't read it then because I could not get into it - and I NEVER fail to read class-reading books. I have had it on my TBR since I joined GR. I graduated that degree in 2003 and still have no desire to read this book. I give up. I am removing it from my TBR list and continuing to move on with my life.
October 25, 2025
“Beyond the world of artifacts and constructs, the speculative question fades, hopelessly artificial, displaced by an overwhelming sense of God’s presence, by a realization of the utter impossibility of God not being. It is not that the mind considers and rejects possibility: rather, between the embers and the stars, the possibility is unthinkable. One global awareness remains: God is.”
August 8, 2021
One of the more unique books I’ve read. Eco-phenomenology at its best. The Theoria and Credo chapters alone make this a worthy read. I’ve read and thought about the sacredness of nature before but not with this depth. Highly recommended!
February 9, 2022
It's not easy to put this book into a category. It explores what it means to be living, the nature of universe and everything else too.
Would require atleast 3 reads to understand this book. You need to be well rested and have an open heart to understand even a single paragraph of this book.
Would require atleast 3 reads to understand this book. You need to be well rested and have an open heart to understand even a single paragraph of this book.
January 14, 2021
Third time through this book. What a delightful thought provoking book with philosophical depth and a kindred spirit in the woods.
June 28, 2023
I read this slowly, savoring the sentences, and stopping frequently to read a section aloud to whoever was nearby. Loved it!
November 12, 2023
Imaginative, worshipful, lyrical.
May 13, 2025
There are things so much besides the point to explain!
September 11, 2016
One of the best pieces of contemporary philosophy.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews