Any Thoreau fans?

Gu3rr1lla

I couldnt tell you how much his writings have influenced my life. I cant stop reading his book - Walden;Life in the Woods. I think he had the most wonderful vision of a society. Even though he wrote about how he would see society he had more admiration of the individual and believed that "there would never be a free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognise the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."

He was a naturalist (though hated labels). I truly believe he wrote with his heart and its very hard to really be critical of his writings - in a sense that he was never a "liberal", "republican", "democrat" etc etc (all that right/left bs if you ask me).

One of the few philosophers who really put into practice what he preached. Left society and went to the woods "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, to discover that I had not lived." (if anyone saw the movie Into the Wild about Chris McCandless - he was greatly influenced by Thoreau).

He wrote that great essay titled "civil disobedience" which influenced Gandhi and ML King.

If you havent read his book "Walden;life in the Woods" i encourage you to read it.

Lol im actually drunk writing this but i a few minutes i just came across a passage from his book which is relative, i think, with the recession:

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

What does this quote mean to you, my fellow philosophers?

thanks for listening lol :pac:

Joe1919

If you like Thoreau, you might also like another fellow American romantic Walt Whitman.

32

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

http://www.daypoems.net/poems/1900.html

PS Did Thoreau influence Yeats?

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

Personally, I think there is part of everyone that perhaps for a while would like to escape from the world and the transcendtal romantics to some extent expresses this mood in their writing.

taibhse

I'm reading Walden at the moment and it does give you a whole different perspective.

The fact that we spend most of our lives working to pay a mortgage which is essentially just a shelter is crazy. We work to acquire more and more "things" when in fact the more you have, the less free you become.

You find people who are chained to the office desks, for 40 years, doing jobs they hate because it's what's expected from society - you should have a house, a spouse and kids.

I suppose Thoreau fits into the tradition of the ascetic going into the wilderness to try to acquire some wisdom, which I can definitely identify with. Now especially, when large institutions which people thought would always be around are coming crashing down and life savings are gone down the drain. It just shows that traditional thoughts might not be as sound as expected.

Just some rambling thoughts:)

Valmont

I have Walden sitting on my shelf, think I'll have to give it a read now.

PaulHardwick

Gu3rr1lla wrote: »

He wrote that great essay titled "civil disobedience" which influenced Gandhi and ML King.

excellent piece of writing.

Pity people are so complacent with their privacy and freedoms these days, a debt that will soon be collected.

Vichy

I like Thoreau somewhat, but I can't agree with much of what he says. I my opinion he was far too democratic. He had a good hot dose of what we might call Unitarianism...or, as it later became in America, Progressivism. This is not to say he was a Progressive. Just that too much democratism 'shines through the cracks' for my taste. He had too much of the Pacifist illusion in his thinking (that violence is futile is a decidedly Universalist Christianity view - it is also absurd. Dead men offer no objections, after all).

However, he is responsible for one of my favourite quotes, "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." Aye.