H-d thoreau biography
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Indeed, Thoreau would argue that the person who is seldom moved by the beauty of things is the one with an inadequate conception of reality, since it is the neutral observer who is less well aware of the world as it is. In his essay on “Civil Disobedience,” originally published as “Resistance to Civil Government,” Thoreau defends the validity of conscientious objection to unjust laws, which he claims ought to be transgressed at once.
. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.”
As a philosopher and Transcendentalist, Thoreau found a pantheistic sense of spirit and God: “I do not prefer one religion or philosophy to another. He could have been a notable leader, given all of those qualities, but, Emerson remarked sadly, Thoreau chose a different path.
Thoreau's retreat to Walden is often seen as a rejection of civilization. 8-16.
External links
All links retrieved June 25, 2024. Emerson delighted in advising the young man and introducing him into his social circle, which consisted of some of the most important American writers and thinkers of the period including William Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne and his son Julian who was just a boy at the time.
It is outrageous that he is often stereotyped as a recluse and hermit. In his journal, Thoreau reports that his goal is to “state facts” in such a way that “they shall be significant,” rather than allowing himself to be blind to “the significance of phenomena” (Journal, 11/9/51 & 8/5/51). Because of its influence on later political leaders and civil activists, he was better known for his Civil Disobedience. Thoreau, however, developed his own unique philosophical perspective during his life at Walden.
Richard Eldridge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 172–189.
He became a self taught land surveyor in the 1840s, "traveling a good deal in Concord." He wrote natural history observations about the 26 mile² (67 km²) township in his Journal, a two-million word document he kept for 24 years.
Nature and Culture
In his "experimental" life at Walden Pond, Thoreau lived austerely, limiting his possessions to bare necessities.
He is best known for Walden and Civil Disobedience, but wrote many other articles and essays. And perhaps this is not a regrettable fact: “At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable” (Walden, XVII).
Originally buried in the Dunbar family plot, he and members of his immediate family were eventually moved to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Even if it is a sign of Thoreau’s peculiar greatness that subsequent American philosophy has not known what to make of him, it is a shame if his exclusion from the mainstream philosophical canon has kept his voice from being heard by some of those who might be in a position to appreciate it.
Walter Harding and Carl Bode, New York: New York University Press, 1958.