Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts on July 12, 1817. He was an essayist, poet, and practical philosopher. He has two older siblings John and Helen and a younger sister Sophia. His father operated a local pencil factory. His mother rented out parts of the family’s home to boarders. Thoreau was a very smart kid which explains how he got enrolled in Harvard College. In college, he studied Greek, Latin, and German. Most smart kids back then became lawyers, doctors, and priests but Thoreau was not interested in any of these pathways. After college, he and his brother John set up a school in 1838. The school later failed when John became ill, so Thoreau went to work for his father. Thoreau befriended Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson was a mentor and supporter of Thoreau’s. Emerson was the one who introduced Thoreau to the thought of Transcendentalism. In additionally, Emerson inspired Thoreau’s greatest work, Walden.
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism emphasized the importance of the spiritual world by giving us a more fulfilling life than the material world. Transcendentalists believed in a universe that is divided into two parts: the soul and nature. Nature is everything but oneself. Inspired by Emerson essay Nature highlighting the core values of the transcendentalist thoughts and beliefs, Thoreau became an active transcendentalist philosopher. At this time, Concord was filled with philosophers who questioned the real meaning of life. Thoreau was a strong individualist, so he hated the group activities within his philosophy circle.
Walden
Thoreau spent two years at Walden Pond on a land owned by Emerson. Thoreau wrote Walden which documented his experiences at Walden Pond. In the first chapter called the economy, Thoreau calculated all of his expenses that he would need in order to survive in the woods alone. With the help of Emerson, friends, and family, Thoreau got the supplies he needed to start a life of solitude. Thoreau made little earnings from helping Emerson with miscellaneous tasks and from his job he attended to one day a week. From there he built a cabin and started his own self-sufficient garden. He wanted to see how little materialistic goods he needed in order to survive. He explained that life isn’t about how much things you can survive on but how little things you can survive on.
“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.”
Thoreau idea of self-discovery is the idea of finding life among Nature and learning from it. Thoreau thinks the trees, the animals, and everything in nature lived the most basic life. Nature just lives simply and survive on what is given to them by their environment. Because Nature is free from all materialistic goods, they have less stress and live a better life.
Next is the idea of self-reliance, which is the idea of relying on oneself for survival. One example he used was the invention of a carriage. He explained that the invention of the carriage disabled humans ability to use to their legs to get them places.
Civil Disobedience
Civil disobedience is peacefully protesting the government if we think they are being unfair or immoral. In July 1846, Thoreau refused to pay taxes to the government in an effort to stop the Mexican-American war and slavery. In Thoreau’s case, he believed that slavery was immoral, and he didn’t want his tax dollars to support slavery.
“I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.”
Quiz Questions
- Where was Thoreau born?
- What college did he attend?
- How many siblings does he have?
- What did Thoreau emphasize during his stay at Walden Pond?
- Under what circumstances did Thoreau believe that is was okay to disobey the government?
Discussion Questions
- Do you think Martin Luther King Jr. was somehow influenced by Thoreau’s philosophy of civil disobedience?
- Do you agree with Thoreau’s stance on civil disobedience?
- How do you think individualism can make a person wiser?
http://thoreau.library.ucsb.edu/thoreau_life.html
Midterm Report
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Thoreau would be thoroughly disgusted with the more opulent Tiny Houses, and with the mindset behind them-the opposite, really, of his "simplify simplify" message.
ReplyDeleteAlso: it's pretty clear to me what HDT meant when he said you can't kill time without injuring eternity, it's the same thing Seneca said: STOP WASTING TIME. (And maybe stop wasting Mom's time by bringing her your laundry, Henry!)
DeleteWeekly essay 200+:
ReplyDeleteBack when I was in high school, in my junior year we did a big unit on transcendentalism. We studied Henry David Thoreau for a few months. We talked about leaving and going into nature for quite awhile. We learned about a man named Chris McCandless who went to Alaska in search of inner peace, basically. He did actually end up dying from the cold and sickness while alone in Alaska.
To me transcendentalism is a little far fetched sometimes. I don’t think we need to go out into nature to truly understand ourselves and the world around us. I think to truly understand ourselves and “transcend” we need to do it in our own way. Nature is wonderful, yes, but we humans are weak and fragile.
We can discover our connections with nature through animals and other people. We are all a part of nature. We all play our own part in the big picture. Nature surrounds us and we live in it. We can go out and make our own connects with nature. We can go and appreciate nature as we live our daily lives. By protecting our world we can truly transcend and appreciate the nature around us.