Download or read book Thoreau s Importance for Philosophy written by Rick Anthony Furtak and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Thoreau s Importance for Philosophy written by Rick Anthony Furtak and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Thoreau s Living Ethics written by Philip Cafaro and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-01-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Henry Thoreau written by Lester H. Hunt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Walden written by Henry David Thoreau and published by . This book was released on 1882 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Where I Lived and What I Lived For written by Henry Thoreau and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-08-25 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Paradise to Be Regained written by Henry Thoreau and published by Alpha Edition. This book was released on 2023-05-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paradise (to be) Regained, has been considered important throughout human history. In an effort to ensure that this work is never lost, we have taken steps to secure its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for both current and future generations. This complete book has been retyped, redesigned, and reformatted. Since these books are not scans of the authors' original publications, the text is readable and clear.
Download or read book Thoreau s Religion written by Alda Balthrop-Lewis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-21 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boldly reconfigures Walden for contemporary ethics and politics by recovering Thoreau's theological vision of environmental justice.
Download or read book Civil Disobedience written by Henry David Thoreau and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thoreau wrote Civil Disobedience in 1849. It argues the superiority of the individual conscience over acquiescence to government. Thoreau was inspired to write in response to slavery and the Mexican-American war. He believed that people could not be made agents of injustice if they were governed by their own consciences.
Download or read book The Senses of Walden written by Stanley Cavell and published by Viking. This book was released on 1972 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stanley Cavell, one of America's most distinguished philosophers, has written an invaluable companion volume to Walden, a seminal book in our cultural heritage. This expanded edition includes two essays on Emerson.
Download or read book Walden written by Henry David Thoreau and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Thoreau and the Art of Life written by Henry David Thoreau and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring nearly 100 luminous watercolor illustrations, Thoreau and the Art of Life collects eloquent passages from the writings of the seminal author and philosopher. Drawn mainly from his journals, the short excerpts provide fascinating insight into his thought processes by presenting his raw, unedited feelings about the things that meant the most to him. The book reflects Thoreau’s deep beliefs and ideas about nature, relationships, creativity, spirituality, aging, simplicity, and wisdom. By eloquently expressing his thoughts about life and what gives it value, he leads the reader to a closer examination of life. Thoreau’s work asks us to live our own truths with joy and discipline and to recognize that we live in a universe of extraordinary beauty, mystery, and wonder. An avid reader of Thoreau, editor and illustrator Roderick MacIver organized the passages by themes: love and friendship; art, creativity, and writing; aging, disease, and death; human society and culture; nature and the human connection to the natural world; and wisdom, truth, solitude, and simplicity. The book includes a chronology and brief biography. Thoreau’s words of wisdom combined with MacIver’s vivid illustrations of the American landscape will resonate with nature enthusiasts and a broad range of readers interested in art, environmentalism, literature, and philosophy. “It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful, but it is more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.” —Henry David Thoreau
Download or read book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers written by Henry David Thoreau and published by . This book was released on 1883 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Thoreau s Pedagogy of Awakening written by Clodomir Barros de Andrade and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-02-17 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is a poetic and philosophic meditation on Thoreau’s work, highlighting a “Pedagogy of awakening”, that is, a path towards a non-dual and enlightening experience with Nature, a possible answer to the need of addressing the urgency and necessity of our troubled times. The urgency stems from a series of crises that humankind is now facing—epidemiological, environmental, social, political, economic; however, all those crises, as many have already observed, might be better understood as different faces, or different modes, of the same underlying crisis: the Anthropocene crisis, that is, the crisis whose ultimate origins lay at our feet, triggered by the way we, humans, inhabit—and impact—this world. It seems consensual that humankind has never faced such a terrible array of combined crises that, for the first time in history, puts our very survival as a species in danger. A dense fog has alighted on this small and beautiful blue planet, and one can only hope that the pains and suffering we have been through for so long are the pangs of a childbirth—a new beginning, a new promise—, and not the gaspings of a sclerotic organism that is on the brink of its final collapse. Thence, the necessity. The necessity of a new way of inhabiting this world. And I believe that an excellent guide to teach us how to do so is Henry David Thoreau.
Download or read book Henry David Thoreau written by Laura Dassow Walls and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-07-07 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[The author] traces the full arc of Thoreau’s life, from his early days in the intellectual hothouse of Concord, when the American experiment still felt fresh and precarious, and 'America was a family affair, earned by one generation and about to pass to the next.' By the time he died in 1862, at only forty-four years of age, Thoreau had witnessed the transformation of his world from a community of farmers and artisans into a bustling, interconnected commercial nation. What did that portend for the contemplative individual and abundant, wild nature that Thoreau celebrated? Drawing on Thoreau’s copious writings, published and unpublished, [the author] presents a Thoreau vigorously alive in all his quirks and contradictions: the young man shattered by the sudden death of his brother; the ambitious Harvard College student; the ecstatic visionary who closed Walden with an account of the regenerative power of the Cosmos. We meet the man whose belief in human freedom and the value of labor made him an uncompromising abolitionist; the solitary walker who found society in nature, but also found his own nature in the society of which he was a deeply interwoven part. And, running through it all, Thoreau the passionate naturalist, who, long before the age of environmentalism, saw tragedy for future generations in the human heedlessness around him."--
Download or read book The Singular Voice of Being written by Andrew T. LaZella and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Singular Voice of Being reconsiders John Duns Scotus’s well-studied theory of the univocity of being in light of his less explored discussions of ultimate difference. Ultimate difference is a notion introduced by Aristotle and known by the Aristotelian tradition, but one that, this book argues, Scotus radically retrofits to buttress his doctrine of univocity. Scotus broadens ultimate difference to include not only specific differences, but also intrinsic modes of being (e.g., finite/infinite) and principles of individuation (i.e., haecceitates). Furthermore, he deepens it by divorcing it from anything with categorical classification, such as substantial form. Scotus uses his revamped notion of ultimate difference as a means of dividing being, despite the longstanding Parmenidean arguments against such division. The book highlights the unique role of difference in Scotus’s thought, which conceives of difference not as a fall from the perfect unity of being but rather as a perfective determination of an otherwise indifferent concept. The division of being culminates in individuation as the final degree of perfection, which constitutes indivisible (i.e., singular) degrees of being. This systematic study of ultimate difference opens new dimensions for understanding Scotus’s dense thought with respect to not only univocity, but also to individuation, cognition, and acts of the will.
Download or read book Expect Great Things written by Kevin Dann and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in paperback, this thrilling, meticulous biography by naturalist and historian Kevin Dann fills a gap in our understanding of Henry Thoreau, one modern history's most important spiritual visionaries by capturing the full arc of his life as a mystic, spiritual seeker, and explorer in transcendental realms. This acclaimed, epic biography of Henry David Thoreau sees Thoreau's world as the mystic himself saw it: filled with wonder and mystery; Native American myths and lore; wood sylphs, nature spirits, and fairies; battles between good and evil; and heroic struggles to live as a natural being in an increasingly synthetic world. Above all, Expect Great Things critically and authoritatively captures Thoreau's simultaneously wild and intellectually keen sense of the mystical, mythical, and supernatural. Other historians have skipped past or undervalued these aspects of Thoreau's life. In this groundbreaking work, historian and naturalist Kevin Dann restores Thoreau's esoteric visions and explorations to their rightful place as keystones of the man himself.
