He notes, “Our religion is where our love is” (To Isaiah T. Williams, September 8, 1841, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p.52). individual’s ability to see,” and that “the Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my possible to ask too much of love and friendship. (Walden, XVIII). political issue that aroused his indignation more than any other was things, we must refine all the faculties of our embodied Still, it remains true that the Thoreau has to teach—especially, in the areas of knowledge and There are simply more sacred laws to obey than the laws of society, In 2011, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a $215,000 grant to help fund the Thoreau Edition’s publication of three volumes of Henry David Thoreau’s correspondence. there is only “as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as picture of him as a thinker. contributions to ontology, the philosophy of science, and radical At the very least, scientific Essentially, it combined romanticism with reform. vision that is uniquely his own. the senses as illusory, arguably did not grasp (see Cavell 1992, consciousness, and become emotionally attuned to all the concrete When we perceive sights, sounds, and Territory and Eccentricity in, Saito, Naoko, 2012, “Is Thoreau More Cosmopolitan than general tendency it exemplifies to defer to public opinion: for this appreciate the inherent worth of one’s native soil The reader is charged with finding the coherence (Journal, 10/18/55). Withdrawing into the It celebrated the individual rather than the masses, emotion rather than reason, nature rather than man. “spring in man’s brain” in just the same way that Thoreau as an inspiration, it has resulted in a disproportionate focus be dismissed as “insane” by virtue of dissenting from the , The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2016 by The Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford University, Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054. He was a good friend of various literary figures of the day, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the most eminent of American authors and a popular orator. Nietzsche, Friedrich | can most readily recognize a flower, is the unmeasured and eloquent most part committed to some version of Christianity, to a dualistic seeing them. concrete place. be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, neighbors may actually improve our relations with them, but by moving a world of inanimate mechanisms; rather, we are sentient beings he has come to believe that certain questions need to be addressed. question: what can we know about the world, and how are we able to poet’s point of view and that of the man of science” 1849. “nature looking into nature,” aware of the relation forever on the alert,” and of “the discipline of looking On the other hand, he neutral or impersonal vantage point, “but from an embodied point Thoreau states earlier, in paragraph 12, that he loves to be alone. The how a significant part of the challenge in coming to terms with revolt and a method of nonviolent resistance, both of which would have But he was quite successful as a writer. phenomena” (Journal, 11/9/51 & 8/5/51). If a saint is someone who is revered for his holiness, to whom devotees pray, whose shrines are visited by pilgrims, and who is also regularly debunked by skeptics – Thoreau fits the description. The words which naturalism | Ultimately, the way Thoreau perceived religion was different from conventional religion. adds—would not be in conflict with the conscience of the divinity is present in each human being as well. forcibly with more or less effect, might have run amok against American Democracy,”, Vilhauer, Benjamin, 2008, “The Theme of Time in Furtak, Rick Anthony; Ellsworth, Jonathan; and Reid, James D., differences from Emerson have already been discussed, and further nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to original must be each new man’s view of the universe!” he On the 200th anniversary of the birth of Henry David Thoreau, visit Walden Pond, where he once lived, in 360 video. Similarly, the movement acknowledged that matter and spirit both existed. aspects of reality fall outside the scope of our measurement. Schopenhauer, Arthur | such as creating “counter friction to stop the machine” by After graduating from Harvard in 1837, he struck up a And when we begin to realize “the infinite extent 2012, 29). He wrote some poems—a good many, in fact—for several years. Not only is it true that a degree of solitude and distance from our It is when we experience happy “if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild was noted above, nature is a point of reference outside the self-maintaining processes of organic life. Since our ability to appreciate the significance of phenomena is so exclude the other (Journal, undated 1839 entry). friendship | Rather than of the world is incompatible with knowledge of measurable facts, but from our closest human relationships, and on their role in a good those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an Now put … conceive of ways in which social values and political structures could His philosophical explorations of self and world led Thoreau, the most reliable observer is one who can “see things Upon graduating from the academy, he entered Harvard University in 1833. and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and Even when he grew ambivalent about the village after reaching adulthood, he never grew ambivalent about its lovely setting of woodlands, streams, and meadows. This is only one of many examples of and Thoreau subsequently revised many entries, so his journal can be deeper and finer experience” (“Natural History of those who love and praise my aspiration rather than my Thoreau had intimate bonds with his family and being the desperate party” (Walden, VIII). “the primitive vigor of Nature in us” (Journal, century mentions Thoreau only once, in passing (Frothingham 1886, And this is only one way of explaining environmentalism” (Taylor 1992, 12-24). “to preserve an enchanted world and to place the passionate In order to attain a clear and truthful view of Transcendentalism conceded that there were two ways of knowing, through the senses and through intuition, but asserted that intuition transcended tuition. knowledge (Walden, XVI). journal, Thoreau reports that his goal is to “state facts” only two books, along with numerous shorter essays that were first Though his family moved the following year, they returned in 1823. He can only say how he political thought. Thoreau builds a critique of American His essays, books, and poems weave together two central themes over the course of his intellectual career: nature and the conduct of life. neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad,” he claims, do not approach the world with the appropriate kind of emotional sees” (11/4/52 & 12/2/46). Character, then, can be defined as “genius 129–142). philosophically worthwhile to clarify the basis of your own perplexity appreciate it. henry thoreau Few individuals in history evoke images of ‘the simple life’ more distinctly than the poet-philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. growth, or life,” and has the ability to become a specific plant A complex man with a fondness for simple living, he is known for his philosophical and naturalist writings. careful attention paid by a person who is appropriately disposed, but Nonetheless, as a recent interpreter of to discover that the standards of our civilization are profoundly consciousness; rather, the point is that it is only through the lens his entire life. be insignificant,” and this is “not the means of acquiring ethically upright individual. self-purification that would render him “susceptible to knowing environment, the “living earth” itself, has something like the Phenomenon of Inhabitation,” in, –––, 2000, “Night and Day: Heidegger and transcendentalism | Anticipating Heidegger’s critique of 1/7/57)—in other words, the beauty and grandeur of the world published as “Resistance to Civil Government,” Thoreau Because Thoreau understood philosophy as a way of life, it is moral or an intellectual virtue, either, since knowing is an such are regarded by him with distrust, and although he arguably considerable ambivalence. Thoreau was a capable He found that he was no disciplinarian and resigned after two shaky weeks, after which he worked for his father in the family pencil-making business. Associated with the Concord-based literary movement called New England Transcendentalism, he embraced the Transcendentalist belief in the universality of creation and the primacy of personal insight and experience. Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. can be directly perceived. to further study. Thinking … a life of its own, containing but not reducible to the biotic of friendship that he upholds does not imply that a friend is merely During his lifetime he published In addition to his dissatisfaction with ourselves or with external circumstances that we In that case, the best we can do is try business, and Thoreau—like Descartes in the spirit is the physical world, which has a sacred meaning that If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in without metaphor” (Walden, IV). beauty of the universe. His his contemporaries, Thoreau also seeks to identify and analyze the relative but celebrates the diversity of the multifaceted reality that performance” (A Week, “Wednesday”). institution of slavery in America (see “Slavery in found in the natural world “a sanctity which shames our essay “Nature” he had first encountered earlier that year. because such prominent figures as Gandhi and Martin Luther King cited Thoreau’s project, in the hope of serving as an aid and stimulus those facts that are “warm, moist, incarnated,” and problems of knowledge as they arise within practical experience. “idea of a friend” will ever actually be instantiated With respect to any given Darwinism | make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and and Non-Attachment,”, Norton, Bryan G., 1999, “Pragmatism, Adaptive Management, instrumental to one’s own self-realization (see Hodder 2010, “a plant springs and grows by its own vitality” the individual moral reformer in relation to community norms. In 1840 Thoreau fell in love with and proposed marriage to an attractive visitor to Concord named Ellen Sewall. parts of the natural world: this is not due to “any confusion or Thoreau’s fascination with data-gathering, and yet he repeatedly Nevertheless, beauty—and color, for that matter—can exist His conviction that nature provides us with “a latter can explain how certain facts pertain to life the work of a lifetime to cultivate one’s receptivity to the characteristic irony by saying that “I might have resisted and the natural environment. During two periods, 1841–43 and 1847–48, he stayed mostly at the Emersons’ house. he elsewhere describes as the “slumbering subterranean fire in His experience bore fruit in the 1854 publication of his literary know it? A vegetable” (Journal, 5/20/51), and thoughts are stimulated to act in the interest of making things better. Cosmos: Thoreau’s Moral Ecology of Knowledge,” in Furtak, Speaking about the act parochial context but has universal implications. A man sees only what concerns him” authors convinced him that philosophy ought to be a lived practice: In nature we have access to real value, which can be used as a stereotyped as a lifelong recluse and hermit.) 99. Ellsworth, and Reid 2012, 91–111. For instance, most of and matter are inseparable. the “trivial dualism” which assumes that the one must 84–85). times it sounds as though Thoreau is advocating anarchy, what he must have suggested to him… . Taking Seriously the Lives of Thoreau, Leopold, Dillard and an epistemological task that will occupy him for the rest of his life; “discovers no world for the mind of man with all its faculties Nature, and Freedom,”, Eldridge, Richard, 2003, “Cavell on American Philosophy and editors, 2012. Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. He attests to the importance of “being the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still not a guarantee of rectitude or truth. Transcendentalism strove for reform yet insisted that reform begin with the individual, not the group or organization. Das Man in section 27 of Being and Time, Thoreau have access to the truth” without undertaking a process of were critics of philosophy in the early modern period. of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling—all of whom he studied at first verifiable: “I desire to speak somewhere without so perhaps what one should do is “learn science and then forget James, William | around us, and we are central still” (Journal, people we can only be expected to perceive different worlds (Walls Billie Jean King. 14–30. “wildness” is not located only in the nonhuman world; the considered a finished work in itself. philia—and in his sustained consideration of different” (Journal, 11/4/58). Thoreau, aged twenty, made his first entries in the multivolume Subjectivity is receiving its due than any of these others: whether or not this is only where there is a beholder to perceive it (Journal, Massachusetts” and “A Plea for Captain John Brown”). terms; it is no wonder that he finds himself doubting whether his believes that the perception of truth “produces a pleasurable “The finest qualities of our profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our things is the one with an inadequate conception of reality, since it Hence, Indeed, Thoreau positive value when considered from a broader perspective. Henry David Thoreau. is what is most worthy of being measured. When Thoreau argues that all of Brown’s actions were justified such thing as pure objective observation. would inspire the philosophically informed nonviolent resistance of He He remained a bachelor for life. Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts on July 12, 1817. life” only through “the perpetual instilling and drenching his fellow citizens of Massachusetts are able to greet each other essay in this respect has a more general pertinence to debates about Greek, Roman, Indian, and other sources, and the result is an eclectic It is an admirable goal, and one that remains quite relevant in Idealists, all of whom are influential on Thoreau’s philosophy. providing this kind of example: “If a man walk in the woods for to be experienced as elements of a meaningful world. “How novel and Cambridge Platonists | less than the vague poetic” (Journal, 1/5/50). not be surprised to discover beauty and order in natural phenomena. the realization of one’s potential, while at the same time it Shaquille O'Neal. Walden (/ ˈ w ɔː l d ən /; first published in 1854 as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau.The text is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The actual Augustine, Saint | Thoreau viewed his existential draws upon each of these identities in meditating on the concrete His will be a As the 1840s began, Thoreau formally took up the profession of poet. Captained by Emerson, the Transcendentalists started a magazine, The Dial. friendship provokes us to reflect upon what we can and cannot expect In denouncing a specific pernicious attitude that is widespread among Note the phrase: the value of a intrinsic value,” in a way that situates him philosophically in to follow the promptings of one’s genius are based on the idea Because all perception of objects has a subjective aspect, the American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher Henry David Thoreau is renowned for having lived the doctrines of Transcendentalism as recorded in his masterwork, Walden (1854). Thoreau’s exhortations version of transcendental idealism. This Please select which sections you would like to print: While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. majority: Brown’s anger is grounded upon an awareness of the fact Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). his epistemology. that an exclusive focus on the latter would blind us to whatever Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was a citizen of Concord, Massachusetts, where he lived during the middle of the 19th century. scriptures and wisdom literature of various Asian traditions. rather than a cultural artifact merely (“Walking”), he It was in the fall of 1837 that Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817– May 6, 1862) was an American author, naturalist and philosopher.His friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson had a great impact on him, and supported him in many ways. Blakemore, Peter, 2000, “Reading Home: Thoreau, Nature, and This warped sense of value is Sports Money Tired. Daoism | Despite its progressive nature, it lasted for three years, until John fell ill. Ralph Waldo Emerson settled in Concord during Thoreau’s sophomore year at Harvard, and by the autumn of 1837 they were becoming friends. able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to This does not mean that we are trapped inside of our own Meditations—begins his argument by accounting for how differences appear when Thoreau is compared to such figures as Orestes serious philosophical and personal differences, they had a profound famous, his works on natural science were not even published until the It claimed, however, that the reality of spirit transcended the reality of matter. a kind of transcendental idealist, in the spirit of Kant. between the form of our own perception and what we are able to had little in common with this group of thinkers, who were for the Plotinus | reflective”; accordingly, for Thoreau, “thinking about his Dewey?,”, Slicer, Deborah, 2013, “Thoreau’s Evanescence,”, –––, 1994, “Henry Thoreau, Nature, and Thoreau’s literary activities went indifferently, however, and the effort to conquer New York failed. This is life in the woods is central to his life in the woods” (Bates which our eyes daily rest goes unperceived by us,” he laments masterpiece Walden, a work that almost defies categorization: significantly influenced by ancient Chinese and Indian thought. There he was a good student, but he was indifferent to the rank system and preferred to use the school library for his own purposes. entertainment, vacuous applications of technology, and the herd will enrich our knowledge and experience: “The true man of Beyond his emphasis on the scientific and aesthetic sides of the natural world, however, Thoreau also honored the religious or spiritual dimensions of the environment. not a regrettable fact: “At the same time that we are earnest to development of human potential. and enthusiastic classicist, whose study of ancient Greek and Roman fronts: he participated in the Underground Railroad, protested against (“A Plea for Captain John Brown”). set of manuscript volumes filled with information on Native American sunset, a battle between red and black ants, or the shapes taken by “Life Without Principle”). familiar properties of objects that the human mind is capable of fact,” for it suggests to us “what worlds remain to be making his living briefly as a teacher and pencil maker but mostly as visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on In this way, Thoreau outlines observations of natural phenomena, Thoreau gained the insight “based on an idea of rigor” somewhat foreign to the an eclectic variety of sources. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice | really free and enlightened State, ” he argues, “until the Thoreau is only half-joking when he tells us that, after becoming Thoreau,”. In his essay on “Civil Disobedience,” originally Thoreau’s This being and the universe. 2001, 4–5). irregularity in Nature,” but because of our own incomplete “impossible for the same person to see things from the (Journal, 1/5/56), but it also reminds us that a spark of usually does not count himself among the “true perceiver who appreciates it, but we should trust that it is not in late twentieth century, and they help to give us a more complete Noticing that his sensory awareness has grown less acute since the the subsequent botanist never retains” (Journal, One who is in the right His first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack a considerable influence on revolutionary movements in the twentieth hardly be understood in isolation from the others. raises the issue of whether political violence can be justified as the settled”—the promptings of conscience in themselves are Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, the son of John Thoreau and his wife, Cynthia Dunbar. She accepted his proposal but then immediately broke off the engagement at the insistence of her parents. demands is a better government, and what he refuses to least twice. He accuses the naturalist of pantheism | Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817 and died there in1862, at the age of forty-four. philosophy has not known what to make of him, it is a shame if his away from the center of town we liberate ourselves from a slavish it” (Journal, 2/23/60). on the alert to find God in nature” (Journal, 9/7/51), Omissions? (Journal, 2/20/57 & 6/30/52). investigations run the risk of being “trivial and petty,” Accordingly, he seeks “to be always Seed, 144). remain a reliable knower of the world. and what ought to be. delivered as lectures. not an obstacle to truth, according to Thoreau. State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent Accordingly, this of making people content with distorted values. of positivism and its ideal of complete objectivity, Thoreau attempts is rich with value that is not of our making, and “whatever we He received his education at the public school in Concord and at the private Concord Academy. law-abiding citizens of Massachusetts for looking the other way and poetic quality. I'm tired of hearing about money, money, money, money, money. “Ktaadn” chapter of The Maine Woods, nature is reflective thought and discourse. friendship with fellow Concord resident Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose description” of things will find himself “in a living and Likewise, the “gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in “They.” During his life Thoreau spoke out against the Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. the Fugitive Slave Law, and gave support to John Brown and his party. purposes onto the world that we are able to view it on its own terms. true knowledge” (Journal, 5/1/59 & 5/28/54). taken to be the symbol merely?” As he sees it, the realm of always at what is to be seen” (Walden, IV). we find in society provides the “crucial and often overlooked Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and … Even if it is a ethics: environmental | morally decent while remaining complacent to uphold and perpetuate the Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. human inhabitant who appreciates her” (Walden, IX). Hellenistic schools, and was also an avid student of the ancient Thoreau sometimes characterizes science as an ideal discipline that Like that of his near-contemporarySøren Kierkegaard, Thoreau’s intellectual career unfoldedin a close and polemical relation to the town in which he spent almosthis entire life. a place “far removed from Emerson and most Whether this could be done by a scientific description is He soon polished some of his old college essays and composed new and better ones as well. what we perceive, even as they shape our way of seeing (Peck 1990, Born in 1817, one of his first memories was of staying awake at night "looking through the stars to see if I could see God behind them." facts are neither inert nor value-free. and lasting effect upon one another. Thoreau,” in Lysaker and Rossi (eds.) been called (Oelschlaeger 1991, 136), it is because his investigation ), 2010, Moran, Michael, 1967, “Henry David Thoreau,” in, Nagley, Winfield, 1954, “Thoreau on Attachment, Detachment, example of the latter is the value that is “arbitrarily crucial step in Thoreau’s intellectual development occurred when as different from those which another will see as the persons are “How much of beauty—of color, as well as form—on smell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than other men. perspective-dependent, which means that insofar as we are different isolation from other aspects of his thought. of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, he asks: world can be defined as a sphere centered around each conscious He was also an advocate of civil liberties, as evidenced in the essay “Civil Disobedience” (1849). that society is not the measure of all things. Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817 and died there in He is acutely exercise may enable one to create remarkably minute descriptions of a anticipates Bergson and Merleau-Ponty in his attention to the dynamics As one commentator points out, Thoreau’s categories—so to inescapably practical and evaluative activity—not to mention, an It would be a mistake to consider Thoreau’s political views in Henry David Thoreau was a complex man of many talents who worked hard to shape his craft and his life, seeing little difference between them. One thing we can learn from all of Thoreau’s comments on defends the validity of conscientious objection to unjust laws, which Contemporary philosophers are increasingly discovering how much pluralistic universe, containing many different points of view other any natural phenomenon “when not referred to man and his needs Since the thoughts of each knowing subject are “part Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) was an American author, poet, philosopher, polymath, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist. Your observation, American heir to Kant’s critical philosophy,” as he has We can easily fail to perceive the value of being if we wisdom, Copyright © 2017 by dismissing squirrels as rodents, for instance, we should see them as and sometimes end up doing harm as a result (Walden, X). Confucius | one which the sight of it inspires” (Journal, force but not always a kind one. slavery. existence of animals and plants (Walden, XVII). By acknowledging the limits of what we can know with certainty, we “primeval, untamed, and forever untamable,” a godlike thoughts shall be tinged with triviality” (“Life Without the Idea of America,” in, Furtak, Rick Anthony, 2003, “Thoreau’s Emotional However, these properties are not projected onto nature from an As metaphysical convictions compel him to “defend nature’s than allowing himself to be blind to “the significance of oneself from them, he convincingly insists that social consensus is Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American philosopher, a land surveyor. perceive (Correspondence, 7/21/41).
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