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Henry David Thoreau as a philosopher
Henry David Thoreau is considered to be a complex man possessing various talents. He worked hard enough to shape his artworks and his life, observing the small difference between them.
For several years, the reputation of Thoreau has been strong. He was often believed to play two roles: the anchorite in the wilderness, the prophet of passive resistance, so much approved by Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. Perhaps he saw somewhat alien in those two personifications. His artworks are so rich, full of the complicated oppositions that he explored to his readers were able to keep reshaping his ideas to adjust their own needs and desires. Probably he would have appreciated that. He seems to have aimed most to use literally words to make his readers reconsider their own lives ingeniously, in quite a different than they may be. It may be evident that he lived his life rethinking his, demanding something, always looking to nature for greater brightness and sense for his life.
Walden: content and philosophical ideas
Bradford Torrey in the introduction to Walden says “the world likes eccentric people” (Thoreau, IX). Then he adds more detailed criticism.
A naturalist against science; an idealist with all the “faculty” of a whittling Yankee; a free-thinking Puritan; a Stoic who sucked sweetness out of all his sensations; a paradox from beginning to end: such was the author of “Walden”; and the world, which is itself a paradox without knowing it, will not soon be done with puzzling itself about him (Thoreau, XII).
For me, it seems reasonable to call Thoreau a philosopher preaching nature essence and its dependence on the human condition. Walden, firstly published as Walden or Life in the Woods, is part of the personal proclamation of independence and freedom, spiritual search and find social experiment, and handbook for self-confidence.
Thoreau did not imply to be an anchorite. He had guests and visited them as well. We can say that he hoped to separate himself from society to achieve a more important objective: to understand it. Thoreau’s other goals consisted of a simple way of life and independence. As Thoreau pointed out in Walden, his hut was not in a wild place but located not far from his family home in a town.
In my opinion, Walden highlights the importance of solitude, meditation, the condition of being close to nature using transcending the miserable human existence that, as the author argues, is the problem of most people. The book cannot be considered a traditional autobiography. It combines facts from the author’s life with a strict criticism of consumerists and materialists of those times. It clarifies their attitudes and behavior facing the destruction of nature. I should say, this book is not simply a social critique, but also an endeavor to fascinate creatively the better moments of contemporary culture. There are signs of uncertainty or a simple try to see a different side of something common and so familiar.
Thoreau regarded his temporal living at Walden as an experiment with a triple aim. First of all, he tried to run away from the dehumanization caused by Industrial Revolution. He did it using returning to a simple lifestyle in a land. The second point is that he was facilitating his life and reducing his expenses through increasing the quantity of free time when he was able to devote his life to work on his writings.
As Salt notices, “it was a time of self-probation rather than an attempt to influence others, a trial rather than an expression of his transcendental ideas” (52). The main part of the book is dedicated to worrying about how life can be lived, practically and otherwise. How people might choose to spend it more intentionally. The third point is that he embodied the Transcendentalist belief consisting in the doctrine that the best way to experience the divine essence is only through nature.
Civil Disobedience: content and social appeal
Civil Disobedience is an essay by Henry David Thoreau that argues that people should not allow the government to countermand or degenerate its conscience.
Civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying power, without resorting to physical violence. It is one of the primary tactics of nonviolent resistance. In its most nonviolent form, it is compassion in the form of respectful disagreement (Thoreau, VII).
Thoreau declares that because the government is more injurious by its nature than helpful, it cannot be justified. Democracy is not a treatment for this. Majorities just being majorities do not possess the power of justice and wisdom. The judgment of human conscience is not obligatory or even likely subordinate to the decisions of a political party.
I understand why the author convinces people not just stay inactive waiting for an opportunity to vote for justice. Voting for justice is ineffective. It is like wishing for justice and nothing more. This does not mean one must devote his/her life to struggle for justice, but one has an obligation not to commit a crime and not to give crime and delinquency one’s practical support.
It was clear that Thoreau’s essay proclaimed spirituality to be a political act with external consequences. He argued that the proper place for a just person was a prison, and he pitted the state and the masses on one side against the principled individual on the other. If, according to his Transcendental faith, nature stood outside human society as an authoritative voice, within each lay a corresponding source of authority in conscience and intuition. Thus, the command that Thoreau heard was a command to follow an organic instead of mechanistic life – to act as a “counter friction to stop the machine” (Albanese, 301).
Role of Henry David Thoreau in history
In conclusion, I would like to say that Thoreau gave food for philosophers’ stomachs posing a lot of questions about character, the basis of moral agency, the nature of knowledge. Though he did not belong to a postmodern society, he faced almost the same life challenges we can cope with nowadays. For me, Thoreau is an outstanding person dwelling between declining Romanticism and ascending positivism.
Thoreau’s content and ecstasy in living were, we may say, like a plant that he had watered and tended with womanish solicitude; for there is apt to be something unmanly, something almost dastardly, in a life that does not move with dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing contact of the world. In one word, Thoreau was a skulker. He did not wish virtue to go out of him among his fellow men but slunk into a corner to hoard it for himself. He left all for the sake of certain virtuous self-indulgences (Stevenson, 90).
Thoreau neither refused civilization nor fully accepted wild nature. Walden and Civil Disobedience prove this fact very convincingly. He was seeking a golden middle, the unique realm that could combine nature and culture as well. Such a philosophic approach required being a didactic judge between the wild nature and the increasing mass humanity in North America. He blamed the latter all the time but felt those willing to hear what he wanted to inform. In my opinion, he may be considered a visible saint in many ways. I consider him to be an unacknowledged genius who remained a hermit.
Bibliography
Albanese, Catherine L. American Spiritualities: a Reader. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Salt, Henry S. et al. Life of Henry David Thoreau. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Familiar Studies of Men and Books. New York: READ BOOKS, 2007.
Thoreau, David Henry. Civil Disobedience. New York: Forgotten Books, 1964.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1854.
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