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1 Chapter 1 : Ideas--Philosophy of Nature Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Other important transcendentalists were Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, Frederic Henry Hedge, and Theodore Parker. Daguerreotype by Benjamin D. Maxham, Introduction Henry David Thoreau - was an American philosopher, naturalist, writer and political activist of the early Modern period. He was involved with the 19th Century American Transcendentalism movement of his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. Although relatively unknown to the general public during his own lifetime, the influence of his philosophy of civil disobedience and non-violent resistance has been specifically credited by such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He adhered to no recognizable political position, but his work to some extent influenced later generations of Anarchists, Marxists and Existentialists. Likewise, it was only many years after his death that he came to be regarded as one of the foremost American writers, both for the modern clarity of his prose style and for his prescient of his views on nature and politics. His writings on natural history anticipated the methods and findings of modern ecology and environmentalism. He had two older siblings, Helen and John Jr. He was usually described as plain to the point of ugly, with a long nose, misshapen mouth and wild neck-beard, and with "uncouth and rustic, though courteous" manners. He studied at Concord Academy from to, and then at Harvard University from to, taking courses in rhetoric, classics, philosophy, mathematics and science. During a leave of absence from Harvard in, he taught at a school in Canton, Massachusetts, awakening an interest in education. After graduating in, he briefly joined the faculty of Concord Academy, but the school board soon dismissed him when he refused to administer corporal punishment. He and his brother John then opened a grammar school in Concord in, where they introduced several progressive concepts, including nature walks and visits to local shops and businesses. The school closed when John became fatally ill from tetanus in He also worked as a land surveyor for a time. Emerson took a paternal and at times patronizing interest in Thoreau, advising the young man and introducing him to a circle of local writers and thinkers, including Ellery Channing -, Margaret Fuller -, Bronson Alcott -, Nathaniel Hawthorne - and Julian Hawthorne - He went through a restless period in the mids, and often talked of buying or leasing a farm to give him the means of support and the solitude to write a book. He finally embarked on his two-year experiment in simple living in July of, when he moved to a small self-built house on land owned by Emerson in a second-growth forest around the shores of Walden Pond, just a couple of miles from his family home. In, seven years after moving out of his Walden Pond house and after seven full drafts and re-writes, he published "Walden, or Life in the Woods", his famous account of the two years, two months and two days he had spent at Walden Pond. Part memoir and part spiritual quest, "Walden" which includes his famous lines, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" and "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer" among many other well-known quotations at first won few admirers, but today critics regard it as a classic American book that explores natural simplicity, harmony and beauty as models for just social and cultural conditions. Soon after moving to Walden Pond in, he was arrested on account of six years of unpaid tax, spending a night in jail before his aunt paid his arrears for him. He used the tax issue to protest his opposition to the Mexican-American War and to slavery, and his small first act of civil disobedience had a profound effect on him. He began to lecture on the relation of the individual to the State, and produced an influential essay entitled "Resistance to Civil Government" also known as "Civil Disobedience", which was eventually published in The book failed badly, and put Thoreau into a debt that took years to pay off. In the s, Thoreau became increasingly fascinated with natural history and travel narratives. He kept increasingly detailed natural history observations on his local area in a huge continuous journal covering many years. He also traveled widely in eastern and mid-western America, writing all the while. Thoreau had first contracted tuberculosis in and suffered from it sporadically throughout his life. In, following a late night excursion during a rain storm, he became ill with bronchitis, and his health declined over the next three years with brief periods of remission, until he eventually became Page 1

2 bedridden. Although he seemed to accept his imminent death with tranquillity, he nevertheless spent his final months frantically editing his travel books including "The Maine Woods" and "Excursions" for publication. He died in Concord on 6 May at age It was only many years later that he came to be regarded as one of the foremost American writers, both for the modern clarity of his prose style and the prescience of his views on nature and politics, and his memory is now honored by the international Thoreau Society among other institutions. Work Back to Top Although Thoreau never managed to earn a living by his writings, his works fill 20 volumes. By far the most famous is "Walden" subtitled "Life in the Woods", published in, his account of the two years he spent living the simple life in the woods at Walden Pond. His travel books, "The Maine Woods" and "Excursions", were published after his death. His most influential essay was the "Resistance to Civil Government" often reprinted with the title "Civil Disobedience", in which he recommended disobeying unjust laws. His huge "Journal", accumulated over 24 years, was published in 14 volumes in Along with his friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others in the group of American Transcendentalists who formed around Emerson, Thoreau dedicated his life, skills and classical learning to the call for the creation of an original American literature and philosophy, in an era when "writer" was not yet a specialized profession. Thoreau and the Transcendentalists believed that there was more to reality than what a person could experience with their senses, and more knowledge than what a person could discover through human reason. They encouraged intuition, self-examination, individualism and exploration of the beauty of nature and humankind. Contrary to popular opinion, Thoreau neither rejected civilization nor fully embraced wilderness. Instead, he sought a middle ground, the pastoral realm that integrates both nature and culture. He dedicated much of his life to the exploration of nature, not just as a backdrop to human activity but as a living, integrated system of which humanity is simply a part. His "nature writing" progressed from the poetic symbolism of "Walden" to the scientific method in his later journals involving observation and information-gathering, the stating of a hypothesis, and the verification of the hypothesis by testing, anticipating many of the methods and findings of modern ecology and environmentalism. His essay "Civil Disobedience" of has been perhaps the most influential of his works because of its overt political implications. He boldly asserted that "the only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right". He believed that radical social reforms such as the abolition of slavery, for example could be effected only when each right-minded individual takes direct action on his own part. This form of "peaceful revolution" could be achieved by an individual withdrawing his allegiance "in person and property" from the government that supports or permits the abuse in question such as, for example, refusing to pay taxes. This philosophy of civil disobedience and non-violent resistance has been specifically credited by such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Thoreau was a committed anti-slavery activist and, despite his deep-rooted Individualism, he was readily moved to activism against injustice. Like Karl Marx, he sought to some extent to dismantle existing institutions in an attempt to provide full human satisfaction. Thus, he did not advocate revolution, but he was an influence on Marxism ; he would not have claimed to be an Existentialism had such a concept even been known in his day, but his insistence on Individualism carried weight with later Existentialists ; he was not an out-and-out Anarchist, but he opposed the strictures of government and influenced later figures with Anarchist sympathies. Henry David Thoreau Books. Page 2

3 Chapter 2 : Transcendentalism Philosophy: theinnatdunvilla.com Henry David Thoreau ( - ) was an American philosopher, naturalist, writer and political activist of the early Modern period. He was involved with the 19th Century American Transcendentalism movement of his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. John moved his family to Chelmsford and Boston, following business opportunities. In the family moved back to Concord where John established a pencil-making concern that eventually brought financial stability to the family. Harvard put heavy emphasis on the classics--thoreau studied Latin and Greek grammar or composition for three of his four years. He also took courses in mathematics, English, history, and mental, natural, and intellectual philosophy. He was never happy about the teaching methods used at Harvard-- Ralph Waldo Emerson is supposed to have remarked that most of the branches of learning were taught at Harvard, and Thoreau to have replied, "Yes, indeed, all the branches and none of the roots" Walter Harding, The Days of Henry Thoreau [New York: Knopf, ], 51 --but he did appreciate the lifelong borrowing privileges at Harvard College Library for which his degree qualified him. Thoreau knew himself to be a writer from the time he graduated from Harvard. He had begun keeping a journal in and had probably started writing poetry earlier than that; he also wrote and published essays and reviews. He soon found, however, that he would have to earn his living in some other way. The Thoreau family became involved in manufacturing pencils in the s, and Thoreau used his talent as an engineer to improve the product. He invented a machine that ground the plumbago for the leads into a very fine powder and developed a combination of the finely ground plumbago and clay that resulted in a pencil that produced a smooth, regular line. He also improved the method of assembling the casing and the lead. Thoreau pencils were the first produced in America that equaled those made by the German company, Faber, whose pencils set the standard for quality. In the s, when the electrotyping process of printing began to be used widely, the Thoreaus shifted from pencil-making to supplying large quantities of their finely ground plumbago to printing companies. Characteristically, Thoreau put the business letters and invoices associated with the company to a second use as scrap paper for lists and notes, and drafts of his late unfinished natural history essays. Thoreau taught himself to survey; he had, as Emerson noted in his eulogy, "a natural skill for mensuration," and he was very good at the work. In addition to working for the town of Concord, he surveyed house and wood lots around Concord for landowners who were having property assessed and those wanting to settle boundary disputes with their neighbors. To help support the claim, Thoreau collected evidence from many sources. He recorded his findings in a large chart and transferred appropriate information to an existing survey of the river that he had traced. The dispute was a bitter one, arousing ill-feeling in the town: Thoreau reported in his February 17,, journal entry that one of those he interviewed testified in court that the river was "dammed at both ends and cursed in the middle. He lectured several times a year at lyceums and private homes from Maine to New Jersey. These lectures were important in his process of composition--most of the ideas and themes in his essays and books were first presented to the public in lectures--but they were not lucrative. In, responding to a request from the secretary of his Harvard class, he described his various employments: New York University Press, ], He generalized about the advantage of making just enough money to supply his limited needs in the essay "Life without Principle": Thoreau was nineteen years old when Emerson published Nature, an essay that articulates the philosophical underpinnings of the movement. Transcendentalism began as a radical religious movement, opposed to the rationalist, conservative institution that Unitarianism had become. They had found Unitarianism wanting both spiritually and emotionally, and, beginning in the late s, had expressed the need for and conviction of a more personal and intuitive experience of the divine, one available to every person. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Emerson defined the soul by defining nature: As a reflection of God, nature expressed symbolically the spiritual world that worked beyond the physical one. Transcendentalism can be seen as the religious and intellectual expression of American democracy: Margaret Fuller visited Emerson often, and Franklin Sanborn Page 3

4 boarded with the Thoreau family in the s. Thoreau was respected within this circle, but he was always a prickly individualist. He cared little for group activities, whether political or religious, and even avoided organized reform movements until the moral imperative of abolition commanded his attention. In eulogizing Thoreau, Emerson said, "There was somewhat military in his nature, not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition. While many of his contemporaries espoused this view, few practiced it in their own lives as consistently as Thoreau. Thoreau exercised his right to dissent from the prevailing views in many ways, large and small. Thoreau encouraged others to assert their individuality, each in his or her own way. When neighbors talked of emulating his lifestyle at the pond, he was dismayed rather than flattered. The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course. Walden, 71 If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. Walden, Thoreau also believed that independent, well-considered action arose naturally from a questing attitude of mind. He was first and foremost an explorer, of both the world around him and the world within him. His neighbors frequently saw him heading out for his regular afternoon walk which took him to every stream and meadow in Concord and the surrounding towns. Contemporaries attest that Thoreau was gregarious, and he left an extensive correspondence which demonstrates the depth and perseverance of his friendships. And although he had many visitors at Walden, much of the time he was alone, a condition he savored. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. Walden, the man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready Walden, 72 MATERIALISM Allying himself with an ancient tradition of asceticism, Thoreau considered the ownership of material possessions beyond the basic necessities of life to be an obstacle, rather than an advantage. He saw that most people measured their worth in terms of what they owned, and stood this common assumption on its head. I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Walden, 5 a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. Walden, 82 Thoreau proposed to determine what was basic to human survival, and then to live as simply as possible. By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. Walden, 12 Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind Walden, 14 my greatest skill has been to want but little. Walden, 69 He grew some of his own food, including beans, potatoes, peas, and turnips. He ate wild berries and apples, and occasionally a fish that he had caught, and once killed and cooked a woodchuck that had ravaged his bean-field. He so arranged his affairs that he had to work only a little at a time for his upkeep, and he kept a broad margin to his life for reading, thinking, walking, observing, and writing. For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. Walden, 69 It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do. But these inventions were products of a larger movement, the industrial revolution, in which Thoreau saw the potential for the destruction of nature for the ends of commerce. Walden, 21 Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Walden, 52 The railroad was made the symbol of technology, and the language Thoreau uses to describe it expressed his ambivalence. I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do the rising of the sun, Page 4

5 which is hardly more regular. Their train of clouds stretching far behind and rising higher and higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to Boston, conceals the sun for a minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a celestial train beside which the petty train of cars which hugs the earth is but the barb of the spear. The stabler of the iron horse was up early this winter morning by the light of the stars amid the mountains, to fodder and harness his steed. Fire, too, was awakened thus early to put the vital heat in him and get him off. If the enterprise were as innocent as it is early! If the snow lies deep, they strap on his snow-shoes, and with the giant plow, plow a furrow from the mountains to the seaboard, in which the cars, like a following drill-barrow, sprinkle all the restless men and floating merchandise in the country for seed. All day the fire-steed flies over the country, stopping only that his master may rest, and I am awakened by his tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when in some remote glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice and snow; and he will reach his stall only with the morning star, to start once more on his travels without rest or slumber. Or perchance, at evening, I hear him in his stable blowing off the superfluous energy of the day, that he may calm his nerves and cool his liver and brain for a few hours of iron slumber. If the enterprise were as heroic and commanding as it is protracted and unwearied! Walden, NATURE Thoreau was a dedicated, self-taught naturalist, who disciplined himself to observe the natural phenomena around Concord systematically and to record his observations almost daily in his Journal. Images and comparisons based on his studies of animal behavior, of the life cycles of plants, and of the features of the changing seasons illustrate and enliven the ideas he puts forth in Walden. All day long the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me much entertainment by their manoeuvres. So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity. It was a lake of rainbow light, in which, for a short while, I lived like a dolphin. If it had lasted longer it might have tinged my employments and life. The environmental movement of the past thirty years has embraced Thoreau as a guiding spirit, and he is valued for his early understanding of the idea that nature is made up of interrelated parts. He is considered by many to be the father of the environmental movement. All of his writing except his poetry is expository--he wrote no fiction--and much of it is built on the framework of the journey, short or long, external or interior. Other essays take the reader on different kinds of journeys--through the foliage of autumn "Autumnal Tints", through the cultivated and wild orchards of history "Wild Apples", through the life-cycle of a plot of land as one species of tree gives way to another "The Succession of Forest Trees". One series of his essays deals with issues of personal exploration and renewal. In the s and s a wave of reform movements of all kinds swept New England. Although he wrote in Walden, I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Such a one has no idea of gain but in this worldly sense. If it does not lead to a "surprise" party, if he does not get a new pair of boots, or a vote of thanks, it must be a failure. No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to. Coming into town to have a pair of shoes repaired, he was arrested for non-payment of the poll tax assessed against every voter, and spent a night in jail. Page 5

6 Chapter 3 : Henry David Thoreau > By Individual Philosopher > Philosophy Henry David Thoreau () was an American philosopher, poet, and environmental scientist whose major work, Walden, draws upon each of these identities in meditating on the concrete problems of living in the world as a human being. He sought to revive a conception of philosophy as a way of. The University Press of Virginia, Mercer University Press, University of Georgia Press, Volatile Truths New York: Borst, The Thoreau Log: Vanderbilt University Press, Richard Bridgman, Dark Thoreau Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination: Harvard University Press, University of Pennsylvania Press, Oxford University Press, Sharon Cameron, Writing Nature: Charles Capper and Conrad Edick Wright, eds. Massachusetts Historical Society, Peter Carafiol, The American Ideal: University of Delaware Press, Locust Hill Press, University Press of America, Princeton University Press, John Dolis, Tracking Thoreau: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Dombrowski, Thoreau the Platonist New York: University of North Carolina Press, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University Press, Edwards and Elizabeth A. University Press of New England, Steven Fink, Prophet in the Marketplace: Robert Lawrence France, ed. Mariner Books-Houghton Mifflin, Richard Francis, Transcendental Utopias: Cornell University Press, Wayne Franklin and Michael Steiner, eds. University of Iowa Press, Kris Fresonke, West of Emerson: University of California Press, Adam Gamble, In the Footsteps of Thoreau: On Cape Publications, New Dimensions Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, eds. New York University Press, The Edwin Mellen Press, Duke University Press, Pennsylvania State University Press, Wesleyan University Press, University of Missouri Press, North Point Press, Edwin Mellen Press, Jason Haslam, Fitting Sentences: University of Toronto Press, Howarth, The Book of Concord: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, An Inaugural Lecture Oxford: Johnson, What Thoreau Said: Walden and the Unsayable Moscow, ID: University of Idaho Press, Jennet Kirkpatrick, Uncivil Disobedience: Studies in Violence and Democratic Politics Princeton: Walking with Thoreau Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, The Sage from Carlyle to Mailer Ithaca: University of Massachusetts Press, University of New Hampshire Press, Barksdale Maynard, Walden Pond: A History New York: University of Illinois Press, His Shifting Stance toward Nature Ithaca: Robert Milder, Reimagining Thoreau Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Miller, Henry David Thoreau: Facts on File, Jeffrey Myers, Converging Stories: The Contemporary Reviews Cambridge: Deak Nabers, Victory of Law: Johns Hopkins University Press, University of Wisconsin Press, Leonard Neufeldt, The Economist: Henry Thoreau and Enterprise New York: Lance Newman, Our Common Dwelling: University of Utah Press, Payne, Voices in the Wilderness: Yale University Press, Joel Porte, Consciousness and Culture: A Life of the Mind Berkeley: David Robinson, Natural Life: Sayre, New Essays on Walden Cambridge: Gary Scharnhorst, Henry David Thoreau: Modern Language Association of America, Schofield and Robert C. North American Press, University Press of Kentucky, Milette Shamir, Inexpressible Privacy: Milette Shamir and Jennifer Travis, ed. Rethinking Narratives of Masculinity and Emotion in the U. Columbia University Press, George Shulman, American Prophecy: University of Minnesota Press, Smith, The Transcendental Saunterer: Page 6

7 Chapter 4 : Ralph Waldo Emerson > By Individual Philosopher > Philosophy Books Emerson & Thoreau: Figures of Friendship Scott F. Parker gets friendly with Emerson & Thoreau.. Emerson and Thoreau are lumped together in the American cultural memory for their leading roles in American transcendentalism, and also for their personal relationship. Facebook Twitter Most of the time, successful modern life involves lots of technology, constantly being connected with other people, working very hard for as much money as possible, and doing what we are told. These elements are almost a conventional prescription for success. So it may come as a surprise that some of the best advice about modern life comes from an unemployed writer who lived alone in the woods and refused to pay his taxes. Henry David Thoreau originally David Thoreau, reminds us about the importance of simplicity, authenticity, and downright disobedience. Thoreau in his 30s He was born in, in Concord, an unassuming town west of Boston. His father was a pencil-maker and his mother took in boarders. He attended Harvard College in and graduated in with good marks. Yet he rejected the ordinary career paths like law, medicine, or the church. He was, in short, dissatisfied with every obvious trajectory. Then Thoreau struck up a remarkable friendship with the American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson Emerson believed in transcendentalism, an outlook that holds that the world is divided into two realities: Transcendentalists emphasise the importance of the spiritual over the material when it comes to leading a fulfilling life. Emerson and his transcendentalism had a huge influence on Thoreau. Moreover, Emerson inspired Thoreau to work seriously towards becoming a writer. But Emerson owned a plot of land in the woods surrounding the nearby Walden Pond, and in he allowed Thoreau to build a small cabin 3 by 4. It had three chairs, one bed, a table, a desk, and a lamp. In his two years in the cabin, Thoreau penned his most notable work: Walden; or, Life in the Woods, which was eventually published in It was a modest commercial and literary success at the time, but it would become an inspirational text about self-discovery. Thoreau argued that his escape to Walden Pond was not simply a relaxing retreat to the forest. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. To begin with, Thoreau concluded that we actually need very few things. He suggested that we think about our belongings in terms of how little we can get by with, rather than how much we can get. Money, he believed, is largely superfluous, for it does not help us to develop our soul. Work, in the traditional sense, is also unnecessary: He pointed out that walking the distance of a mile train journey took a day, but working to earn the money to pay for the same journey would take more than a day. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. Thoreau turned this commercially-made chair into a rocking-chair himself during his time at Walden Pond. Like his friend Emerson, Thoreau deeply valued what he called self-reliance. The task of learning to live alone was, for Thoreau, not so much about carrying out daily chores as it was about becoming a good companion for oneself, relying first and foremost on oneself for companionship and moral guidance: Thoreau also saw technology as an often unnecessary distraction. He saw the practical benefits of new inventions, but he also warned that these innovations could not address the real challenge of personal happiness: Thoreau also believed we should look to nature, which is full of deep spiritual significance. Thoreau believed that with the right kind of consciousness, human beings could transcend their previous limitations and ideas. This mental stateâ and not money or technologyâ would provide real progress. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. He believed that people should behave in a way that would make their governments more moral, prioritising their moral conscience over the dictates of law. Despite his time as a hermit, Thoreau teaches us how to approach our frighteningly vast, highly interconnected and morally-troubling modern society. He challenges us to be authentic not just by avoiding material life and its distractions, but by engaging with the world, and withdrawing our support for the government when we believe it is acting unjustly. This might make us feel uncomfortable: Thoreau remains highly relevant, for we are not far from the problems he sought to address. Indeed, interest in Thoreau peaks around economic crises: Yetâ as Thoreau would probably argueâ it should not take a severe crisis for us to question a materialistic Page 7

8 life. We can also continue to learn from his appreciation for nature and the psychological possibilities it offers. After he left Walden, Thoreau travelled widely, spent time working as a surveyor, and published many more essays, especially about the environment. He had struggled with tuberculosis since his college years, and fell ill with it yet again after an outing to count tree rings. He died three years later in, aged only Page 8

9 Chapter 5 : Emerson and Thoreau's Ideas of Transcendentalism by Alex Gates on Prezi In what way did John Brown embody the Transcendentalist philosophy of Emerson and Thoreau? He died for a cause he believed in. He put family and religion above all else. Origin[ edit ] Transcendentalism is closely related to Unitarianism, the dominant religious movement in Boston in the early nineteenth century. Transcendentalism was not a rejection of Unitarianism; rather, it developed as an organic consequence of the Unitarian emphasis on free conscience and the value of intellectual reason. The transcendentalists were not content with the sobriety, mildness, and calm rationalism of Unitarianism. Instead, they longed for a more intense spiritual experience. Thus, transcendentalism was not born as a counter-movement to Unitarianism, but as a parallel movement to the very ideas introduced by the Unitarians. From, the group frequently published in their journal The Dial, along with other venues. Second wave of transcendentalists[ edit ] By the late s, Emerson believed that the movement was dying out, and even more so after the death of Margaret Fuller in This is the underlying theme in the majority of transcendentalist essays and papersâ all of which are centered on subjects which assert a love for individual expression. It focuses primarily on personal freedom. Their beliefs are closely linked with those of the Romantics, but differ by an attempt to embrace or, at least, to not oppose the empiricism of science. Transcendental knowledge[ edit ] Transcendentalists desire to ground their religion and philosophy in principles based upon the German Romanticism of Herder and Schleiermacher. The transcendental movement can be described as an American outgrowth of English Romanticism. Individualism[ edit ] Transcendentalists believe that society and its institutionsâ particularly organized religion and political partiesâ corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community can form. Even with this necessary individuality, transcendentalists also believe that all people are outlets for the " Over-soul. Indian religions[ edit ] Transcendentalism has been directly influenced by Indian religions. Henry David Thoreau In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. Some adherents link it with utopian social change; Brownson, for example, connected it with early socialism, but others consider it an exclusively individualist and idealist project. Emerson believed the latter; in his lecture " The Transcendentalist ", he suggested that the goal of a purely transcendental outlook on life was impossible to attain in practice: You will see by this sketch that there is no such thing as a transcendental party; that there is no pure transcendentalist; that we know of no one but prophets and heralds of such a philosophy; that all who by strong bias of nature have leaned to the spiritual side in doctrine, have stopped short of their goal. We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. Shall we say, then, that transcendentalism is the Saturnalia or excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders the satisfaction of his wish. Influence on other movements[ edit ]. Page 9

10 Chapter 6 : Henry David Thoreau (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Emerson and Thoreau both acknowledged the importance, beauty, and inherent goodness of nature. Nature provided a pure, spiritual, and beautiful setting for one to "find" themself. Making it a vital element of transcendentalist thought. Life and Writings Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in and died there in, at the age of forty-four. Although the two American thinkers had a turbulent relationship due to serious philosophical and personal differences, they had a profound and lasting effect upon one another. It was in the fall of that Thoreau, aged twenty, made his first entries in the multivolume journal he would keep for the rest of his life. Most of his published writings were developed from notes that first appeared on these pages, and Thoreau subsequently revised many entries, so his journal can be considered a finished work in itself. During his lifetime he published only two books, along with numerous shorter essays that were first delivered as lectures. He lived a simple and relatively quiet life, making his living briefly as a teacher and pencil maker but mostly as a land surveyor. Thoreau had intimate bonds with his family and friends, and remained unmarried although he was deeply in love at least twice. His first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, was still a work in progress in, when he went to live in the woods by Walden Pond for two years and two months. Thoreau viewed his existential quest as a venture in philosophy, in the ancient Greek sense of the word, because it was motivated by an urgent need to find a reflective understanding of reality that could inform a life of wisdom. His experience bore fruit in the publication of his literary masterpiece Walden, a work that almost defies categorization: Walden has been admired by a larger world audience than any other book written by an American author, andâ whether or not it ought to be called a work of philosophyâ it contains a substantial amount of philosophical content, which deserves to be better appreciated than it has been. Yet, as Cavell also notes, philosophical authors have more than one way to go about their business, and Thoreauâ like Descartes in the Meditationsâ begins his argument by accounting for how he has come to believe that certain questions need to be addressed. In other words, his method is predicated on the belief that it is philosophically worthwhile to clarify the basis of your own perplexity and unrest see Reid, Evidently, he does not accept that whatever we register through our aesthetic and emotional responses ought to be viewed as unreal. 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. To say that nature is inherently significant is to say that natural facts are neither inert nor value-free. Thoreau does not introduce an artificial distinction between facts and values, or between primary and secondary qualities, since he understands the universe as an organic whole in which mind and matter are inseparable. The philosopher who seeks knowledge through experience should therefore not be surprised to discover beauty and order in natural phenomena. However, these properties are not projected onto nature from an external perspectiveâ rather, they emerge from within the self-maintaining processes of organic life. It is when we are not guilty of imposing our own purposes onto the world that we are able to view it on its own terms. One of the things we then discover is that we are involved in a pluralistic universe, containing many different points of view other than our own. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. Our limited view often keeps us from appreciating the harmonious interdependence of all parts of the natural world: In nature we have access to real value, which can be used as a standard against which to measure our conventional evaluations. There are reasons for classifying Thoreau as both a naturalist and a romantic, although both of these categories are perhaps too broad to be very helpful. His conception of nature is informed by a syncretic appropriation of Greek, Roman, Indian, and other sources, and the result is an eclectic vision that is uniquely his own. For this reason it is difficult to situate Thoreau within the history of modern philosophy, but one plausible way of doing so would be to describe him as articulating a version of transcendental idealism. This exercise may enable one to create remarkably minute descriptions of a sunset, a battle between red and black ants, or the shapes taken by thawing clay on a sand bank: Awareness cannot be classified as exclusively a moral or an intellectual virtue, either, since knowing is an inescapably practical and evaluative activityâ not to mention, an embodied practice. In order to attain a clear and truthful view of Page 10

11 things, we must refine all the faculties of our embodied consciousness, and become emotionally attuned to all the concrete features of the place in which we are located. In this way, Thoreau outlines an epistemological task that will occupy him for the rest of his life; namely, to cultivate a way of attending to things that will allow them to be experienced as elements of a meaningful world. Since our ability to appreciate the significance of phenomena is so easily dulled, it requires a certain discipline in order to become and remain a reliable knower of the world. Beauty, like color, does not lie only in the eye of the beholder: Because all perception of objects has a subjective aspect, the world can be defined as a sphere centered around each conscious perceiver: This does not mean that we are trapped inside of our own consciousness; rather, the point is that it is only through the lens of our own subjectivity that we have access to the external world. What we are able to perceive, then, depends not only upon where we are physically situated: Your observation, to be interesting, i. Subjectivity is not an obstacle to truth, according to Thoreau. A true account of the world must do justice to all the familiar properties of objects that the human mind is capable of perceiving. Whether this could be done by a scientific description is a vexing question for Thoreau, and one about which he shows considerable ambivalence. He accuses the naturalist of failing to understand color, much less beauty, and asks: We can easily fail to perceive the value of being if we do not approach the world with the appropriate kind of emotional comportment. Thoreau sometimes characterizes science as an ideal discipline that will enrich our knowledge and experience: He observes that scientific terminology can provide the means of apprehending something that we had utterly missed until we had a name for it see Walls, Yet he also gives voice to the fear that by weighing and measuring things and collecting quantitative data he may actually be narrowing his vision. Overall, his position is not that a mystical or imaginative awareness of the world is incompatible with knowledge of measurable facts, but that an exclusive focus on the latter would blind us to whatever aspects of reality fall outside the scope of our measurement. In that case, the best we can do is try to convey our intimations of the truth about the universe, even if this means venturing far beyond claims that are positivistically verifiable: We should not arbitrarily limit our awareness to that which can be described with mathematical exactitude: And perhaps this is not a regrettable fact: By acknowledging the limits of what we can know with certainty, we open ourselves up to a wider horizon of experience. Truth is radically perspective-dependent, which means that insofar as we are different people we can only be expected to perceive different worlds Walls, It is an admirable goal, and one that remains quite relevant in the philosophical climate of the present day. What was enthusiasm in the youth, he argues, must become temperament in the mature person: Hence, we need to cherish and nurture our capability to discern the difference between the idea and the reality, between what is and what ought to be. It is when we experience dissatisfaction with ourselves or with external circumstances that we are stimulated to act in the interest of making things better. It follows that the greatest compliment we can pay to another person is to say that he or she enhances our life by inciting us to realize our highest aspirations. In his ethical writings, the notion of wishing good on behalf of another person is often taken to a severe extreme, as if he does not think it possible to ask too much of love and friendship. It is, for example, his understanding of wild nature that informs his sociopolitical ideas. As was noted above, nature is a point of reference outside the polis which can provide valuable moral guidance, reminding us that society is not the measure of all things. Withdrawing into the natural world allows us to view the state in a broader context and to conceive of ways in which social values and political structures could be improved radically. This includes unjust laws that ought to be reformed, about which more will be said in a moment, as well as the unwritten rules embodied in prevailing expectations about how one ought to live and what matters. In denouncing a specific pernicious attitude that is widespread among his contemporaries, Thoreau also seeks to identify and analyze the general tendency it exemplifies to defer to public opinion: He is acutely conscious of the threat that shared modes of discourse can pose to authentic intersubjectivity. Not only is it true that a degree of solitude and distance from our neighbors may actually improve our relations with them, but by moving away from the center of town we liberate ourselves from a slavish adherence to prevailing attitudes. It is outrageous that he is often stereotyped as a lifelong recluse and hermit. Above all, the political issue that aroused his indignation more than any other was slavery. Because Thoreau understood philosophy as a way of life, it is only fitting that philosophical ideals would lead him into Page 11

12 political action. He was an activist involved in the abolitionist movement on many fronts: Most importantly perhaps, he provides a justification for principled revolt and a method of nonviolent resistance, both of which would have a considerable influence on revolutionary movements in the twentieth century. Political institutions as such are regarded by him with distrust, and although he arguably overestimates the extent to which it is possible to disassociate oneself from them, he convincingly insists that social consensus is not a guarantee of rectitude or truth. Passively and quietly allowing an unjust practice to continue is tantamount to collaborating with evil, he claims, articulating a principle of noncompliance that would inspire the philosophically informed nonviolent resistance of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, among others. His essay in this respect has a more general pertinence to debates about the individual moral reformer in relation to community norms. It also raises the issue of whether political violence can be justified as the lesser of evils, or in cases where it may be the only available way of ending injustice. Although at times it sounds as though Thoreau is advocating anarchy, what he demands is a better government, and what he refuses to acknowledge is the authority of one that has become so morally corrupt as to lose the consent of those governed. There are simply more sacred laws to obey than the laws of society, and a just governmentâ should there ever be such a thing, he addsâ would not be in conflict with the conscience of the ethically upright individual. Locating Thoreau Thoreau has somewhat misleadingly been classified as a New England transcendentalist, andâ even though he never rejected this labelâ it does not fit in many ways. Some of his major differences from Emerson have already been discussed, and further differences appear when Thoreau is compared to such figures as Orestes Brownson, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott. A history of transcendentalism in New England which appeared in the late nineteenth century mentions Thoreau only once, in passing Frothingham, It was suggested above that a better way of situating Thoreau within the Western philosophical tradition is to consider him a kind of transcendental idealist, in the spirit of Kant. For reasons that ought to be obvious by now, he should be of interest to students of Kant, Fichte, and Schellingâ all of whom he studied at first or second handâ and possibly Schopenhauer. Thoreau was a capable and enthusiastic classicist, whose study of ancient Greek and Roman authors convinced him that philosophy ought to be a lived practice: Yet he also has the distinction of being among the first Western philosophers to be significantly influenced by ancient Chinese and Indian thought. He anticipates Bergson and Merleau-Ponty in his attention to the dynamics of the embodied mind, and shares with Peirce and James a concern for problems of knowledge as they arise within practical experience. Contemporary philosophers are increasingly discovering how much Thoreau has to teachâ especially, in the areas of knowledge and perception, and in ethical debates about the value of land and life. His affinities with the pragmatic and phenomenological traditions, and the enormous resources he offers for environmental philosophy, have also started to receive more attentionâ and Walden itself continues to be encountered by readers as a remarkable provocation to philosophical thought. Then again, as Thoreau himself notes, it is never too late to give up our prejudices. Others have observed see Slicer, â that, based on the amount of prominent work on Thoreau as a philosopher which has recently appeared, his profile seems to be ever so gradually rising on the American philosophical landscape. Jeffrey Cramer, New Haven: Yale University Press, Originally published in The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, 14 volumes, ed. Parenthetical citations give the date of each entry. The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, ed. New York University Press, Citations give the date of the letter quoted. Citations give the date of each entry. The Indians of Thoreau: Selections from the Indian Notebooks, ed. Page 12

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