Thoreau's Importance for Philosophy PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Thoreau's Importance for Philosophy PDF full book. Access full book title Thoreau's Importance for Philosophy by Rick Anthony Furtak. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Rick Anthony Furtak
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823239306
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Get Book Here
Book Description
Although Henry David Thoreau's best-known book, Walden, is admired as a classic work of American literature, it has not yet been widely recognized as an important philosophical text. In fact, many academic philosophers would be reluctant to classify Thoreau as a philosopher at all. The purpose of this volume is to remedy this neglect, to explain Thoreau's philosophical significance, and to argue that we can still learn from his polemical conception of philosophy.Thoreau sought to establish philosophy as a way of life and to root our philosophical, conceptual affairs in more practical or existential concerns. His work provides us with a sustained meditation on the importance of leading our lives with integrity, avoiding what he calls "quiet desperation." The contributors to this volume approach Thoreau's writings from different angles. They explore his aesthetic views, his naturalism, his theory of self, his ethical principles, and his political stances. Most importantly, they show how Thoreau returns philosophy to its roots as the love of wisdom.
Author: Rick Anthony Furtak
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823239306
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Get Book Here
Book Description
Although Henry David Thoreau's best-known book, Walden, is admired as a classic work of American literature, it has not yet been widely recognized as an important philosophical text. In fact, many academic philosophers would be reluctant to classify Thoreau as a philosopher at all. The purpose of this volume is to remedy this neglect, to explain Thoreau's philosophical significance, and to argue that we can still learn from his polemical conception of philosophy.Thoreau sought to establish philosophy as a way of life and to root our philosophical, conceptual affairs in more practical or existential concerns. His work provides us with a sustained meditation on the importance of leading our lives with integrity, avoiding what he calls "quiet desperation." The contributors to this volume approach Thoreau's writings from different angles. They explore his aesthetic views, his naturalism, his theory of self, his ethical principles, and his political stances. Most importantly, they show how Thoreau returns philosophy to its roots as the love of wisdom.
Author: Lester H. Hunt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350079049
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 185
Get Book Here
Book Description
Henry Thoreau is widely considered to be one of the greatest nature writers, among whose best-known works are Walden and Walking. In this book, Lester Hunt shows that his writings have a compelling philosophical dimension as well. Thoreau seldom argues for his ideas the way other philosophers do. Rather than setting up proofs designed to trap the reader into agreeing with him, he challenges the reader – by means of narratives, jokes, questions, and paradoxes -- to recognize possibilities previously unknown and unexplored. Thoreau's own explorations led him to several distinctively philosophical theories: an intuitionist metaethics, an ethics based on virtue and self-realization, a politics that is fundamentally individualist and anarchist, and a secular religion in which nature is pre-eminent.
Author: Jonathan McKenzie
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813166322
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 215
Get Book Here
Book Description
"In The Political Thought of Henry David Thoreau, Jonathan McKenzie analyzes not only Thoreau's well-known works but also his journals and correspondence to provide a fresh portrait of the Sage of Walden as a radical individualist."--Provided by publisher.
Author: Philip Cafaro
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820336661
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Get Book Here
Book Description
Thoreau's Living Ethics is the first full, rigorous account of Henry Thoreau's ethical philosophy. Focused on Walden but ranging widely across his writings, the study situates Thoreau within a long tradition of ethical thinking in the West, from the ancients to the Romantics and on to the present day. Philip Cafaro shows Thoreau grappling with important ethical questions that agitated his own society and discusses his value for those seeking to understand contemporary ethical issues. Cafaro's particular interest is in Thoreau's treatment of virtue ethics: the branch of ethics centered on personal and social flourishing. Ranging across the central elements of Thoreau's philosophy—life, virtue, economy, solitude and society, nature, and politics—Cafaro shows Thoreau developing a comprehensive virtue ethics, less based in ancient philosophy than many recent efforts and more grounded in modern life and experience. He presents Thoreau's evolutionary, experimental ethics as superior to the more static foundational efforts of current virtue ethicists. Another main focus is Thoreau's environmental ethics. The book shows Thoreau not only anticipating recent arguments for wild nature's intrinsic value, but also demonstrating how a personal connection to nature furthers self-development, moral character, knowledge, and creativity. Thoreau's life and writings, argues Cafaro, present a positive, life-affirming environmental ethics, combining respect and restraint with an appreciation for human possibilities for flourishing within nature.
Author: Henry David Thoreau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: François Specq
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 082034429X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Get Book Here
Book Description
Does Thoreau belong to the past or to the future? Instead of canonizing him as a celebrant of “pure” nature apart from the corruption of civilization, the essays in Thoreauvian Modernities reveal edgier facets of his work—how Thoreau is able to unsettle as well as inspire and how he is able to focus on both the timeless and the timely. Contributors from the United States and Europe explore Thoreau's modernity and give a much-needed reassessment of his work in a global context. The first of three sections, “Thoreau and (Non)Modernity,” views Thoreau as a social thinker who set himself against the “modern” currents of his day even while contributing to the emergence of a new era. By questioning the place of humans in the social, economic, natural, and metaphysical order, he ushered in a rethinking of humanity's role in the natural world that nurtured the environmental movement. The second section, “Thoreau and Philosophy,” examines Thoreau's writings in light of the philosophy of his time as well as current philosophical debates. Section three, “Thoreau, Language, and the Wild,” centers on his relationship to wild nature in its philosophical, scientific, linguistic, and literary dimensions. Together, these sixteen essays reveal Thoreau's relevance to a number of fields, including science, philosophy, aesthetics, environmental ethics, political science, and animal studies. Thoreauvian Modernities posits that it is the germinating power of Thoreau's thought—the challenge it poses to our own thinking and its capacity to address pressing issues in a new way—that defines his enduring relevance and his modernity. Contributors: Kristen Case, Randall Conrad, David Dowling, Michel Granger, Michel Imbert, Michael Jonik, Christian Maul, Bruno Monfort, Henrik Otterberg, Tom Pughe, David M. Robinson, William Rossi, Dieter Schulz, François Specq, Joseph Urbas, Laura Dassow Walls.
Author: Henry David Thoreau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 36
Get Book Here
Book Description
It would seem from this and various indications beside, that there is a transcendentalism in mechanics as well as in ethics. While the whole field of the one reformer lies beyond the boundaries of space, the other is pushing his schemes for the elevation of the race to its utmost limits. While one scours the heavens, the other sweeps the earth. One says he will reform himself, and then nature and circumstances will be right. Let us not obstruct ourselves, for that is the greatest friction. It is of little importance though a cloud obstruct the view of the astronomer compared with his own blindness.
Author: Henry Thoreau
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141964294
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 78
Get Book Here
Book Description
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Thoreau's account of his solitary and self-sufficient home in the New England woods remains an inspiration to the environmental movement - a call to his fellow men to abandon their striving, materialistic existences of 'quiet desperation' for a simple life within their means, finding spiritual truth through awareness of the sheer beauty of their surroundings.
Author: Frédéric Gros
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1804290440
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Get Book Here
Book Description
This philosophical ode to finding joy in simple things explores how walking has influenced history’s greatest thinkers—from Henry David Thoreau and John Muir to Gandhi and Nietzsche. “It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” —Nietzsche In this French bestseller, leading thinker and philosopher Frédéric Gros charts the many different ways we get from A to B—the pilgrimage, the promenade, the protest march, the nature ramble—and reveals what they say about us. Gros draws attention to other thinkers who also saw walking as something central to their practice. On his travels he ponders Thoreau’s eager seclusion in Walden Woods; the reason Rimbaud walked in a fury, while Nerval rambled to cure his melancholy. He shows us how Rousseau walked in order to think, while Nietzsche wandered the mountainside to write. In contrast, Kant marched through his hometown every day, exactly at the same hour, to escape the compulsion of thought. Brilliant and erudite, A Philosophy of Walking is an entertaining and insightful manifesto for putting one foot in front of the other.
Author: Henry David Thoreau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American essays
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Get Book Here
Book Description
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience: This is Thoreau's classic protest against government's interference with individual liberty. One of the most famous essays ever written, it came to the attention of Gandhi and formed the basis for his passive resistance movement.
