Henry David Thoreau

First published Thu Jun 30, 2005; substantive revision Thu Mar 2, 2023

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American philosopher,poet, environmental scientist, and political activist whose majorwork,Walden, draws upon each of these various identities inmeditating upon the concrete problems of living in the world as ahuman being. He sought to revive a conception of philosophy as a wayof life, not only a mode of reflective thought and discourse.Thoreau’s work was informed by an eclectic variety of sources.He was well-versed in classical Greek and Roman philosophy (andpoetry), ranging from the pre-Socratics through the Hellenisticschools, and was also an avid student of the ancient scriptures andwisdom literature of various Asian traditions. He was familiar withmodern philosophy ranging from Descartes, Locke, and the CambridgePlatonists through Emerson, Coleridge, and the German Idealists, allof whom are influential on Thoreau’s philosophy. He discussedhis own empirical findings with leading naturalists of the day, andread the latest work of Humboldt and Darwin with interest andadmiration. His philosophical explorations of self and world led himto develop an epistemology of embodied perception and a non-dualisticaccount of mental and material life. In addition to his focus onethics in an existential spirit, Thoreau also makes uniquecontributions to ontology, the philosophy of science, and radicalpolitical thought. Although his political essays have become justlyfamous, his works on natural science were not even published until thelate twentieth century, and they help to give us a more completepicture of him as a thinker. Among the texts he left unfinished was aset of manuscript volumes filled with information on Native Americanreligion and culture. Thoreau’s work anticipates certain laterdevelopments in pragmatism, phenomenology, and environmentalphilosophy, and poses a perennially valuable challenge to ourconception of the methods and intentions of philosophy itself.

1. Life and Writings

Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817 and died there in1862, at the age of forty-four. Like that of his contemporarySøren Kierkegaard, Thoreau’s intellectual career unfoldedin a close and polemical relation to the town in which he spent almosthis entire life. After graduating from Harvard in 1837, he struck up afriendship with fellow Concord resident Ralph Waldo Emerson, whoseessay “Nature” he had first encountered earlier that year.Although the two American thinkers had a turbulent relationship due toserious philosophical and personal differences, they had a profoundand lasting effect upon one another. It was in the fall of 1837 thatThoreau made his first entries in the multivolume journal he wouldkeep for the rest of his life. Most of his published writings weredeveloped from notes that first appeared on these pages, and Thoreausubsequently revised many entries, suggesting that his journal can beconsidered a finished work in itself. During his lifetime he publishedonly two books, along with numerous shorter essays that were firstdelivered as lectures. He lived a simple and relatively quiet life,making his living briefly as a teacher and pencil maker but mostly asa land surveyor. Thoreau had intimate bonds with his family andfriends (the loss of his brother John in 1842 was a major trauma) andremained unmarried, although he was deeply in love at least twice. Hisfirst book,A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, wasstill a work in progress in 1845, when he went to live in the woods byWalden Pond for two years and two months. This“experiment” in living on the outskirts of town was anintensive time of examination for Thoreau, as he drew close to natureand contemplated the final ends of his own life, which was otherwiseat risk of ending in quiet desperation. Thoreau viewed his existentialquest as a venture in philosophy, in the ancient Greek sense of theword, because it was motivated by an urgent need to find a reflectiveunderstanding of reality that could inform a life of wisdom. This isbecause, according to the belief that philosophy is a way of life,that very way of life “will necessarily be deliberative andreflective”; accordingly, for Thoreau, “thinking about hislife in the woods is central to his life in the woods” (Bates2012, 29). Moreover, it is only after having cultivated “ameticulous and discerning awareness of the particularities ofnature” in one specific place (Robinson 2004, 100) that hebecame able to articulate a vision of the human being’s capacity to begrounded and at home in the world.

His experience bore fruit in the 1854 publication of his literarymasterpieceWalden, a work that almost defies categorization:it is a work of narrative prose which often soars to poetic heights,combining philosophical speculation with close observation of aconcrete place. It is a rousing summons to the examined life and tothe realization of one’s potential, while at the same time itdevelops what might be described as a religious vision of the humanbeing and the universe.Walden has been admired by a largerworld audience than any other book written by an American author,and—whether or not it ought to be called a work ofphilosophy—it contains a substantial amount of philosophicalcontent, which deserves to be better appreciated than it has been.Stanley Cavell has argued that Thoreau is an embarrassment to“what we have learned to call philosophy,” since his workembodies “a mode of conceptual accuracy” that is“based on an idea of rigor” somewhat foreign to theacademic establishment (Cavell 1988, 14). Yet, as Cavell also notes,philosophical authors have more than one way to go about theirbusiness, and Thoreau—like Descartes in theMeditations—begins his argument by accounting for howhe has come to believe that certain questions need to be addressed. Inother words, his method is predicated on the belief that it isphilosophically worthwhile to clarify the basis of your own perplexityand unrest (see Reid 2012, 46). And this is only one way of explaininghow a significant part of the challenge in coming to terms withThoreau is that his philosophy, like Nietzsche’s, has a literaryand poetic quality. The reader is charged with finding the coherenceof Thoreau’s whole philosophical outlook. Accordingly, thisentry attempts to delineate the main themes of Thoreau’sproject, in the hope of serving as an aid and stimulus to furtherstudy. It draws upon Thoreau’s entire corpus, including theworks he left in manuscript that were published after his death.

2. Nature and Human Existence

In his essay “Nature,” Emerson asserts that there can befound in the natural world “a sanctity which shames ourreligions.” Thoreau would agree completely with this statement.But in the same essay Emerson also inclines toward Platonism, statingthat nature is “emblematic” of higher truths, andsuggesting that the material world has value by virtue of being asubsidiary product of mental reality: each natural object is therefore“a symbol of some spiritual fact.” For the most part,Thoreau recoils from the idea that we could find some kind of higherreality by looking beyond nature: in the “Friday” chapterofA Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, he asks:“Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonlytaken to be the symbol merely?” As he sees it, the realm ofspiritis the physical world, which has a sacred meaning thatcan be directly perceived. Accordingly, he seeks “to be alwayson the alert to find God in nature” (Journal, 9/7/51),and to hear “the language which all things and events speakwithout metaphor” (Walden, IV). Thoreau’smetaphysical convictions compel him to “defend nature’sintrinsic value,” in a way that situates him philosophically ina place “far removed from Emerson and mosttranscendentalists” (Cafaro 2004, 132–133). In hisjournal, Thoreau reports that his goal is to “state facts”in such a way that “they shall be significant,” ratherthan allowing himself to be blind to “the significance ofphenomena” (Journal, 11/9/51 & 8/5/51). Evidently,he does not accept that whatever we register through our aesthetic andemotional responses ought to be viewed as unreal. Indeed, Thoreauwould argue that the person who is seldom moved by the beauty ofthings is the one with an inadequate conception of reality, since itis the neutral observer who is less well aware of the world as it is.And he exhorts us to unclutter and simplify our lives, by eliminatingthe supposed necessities that can entrap us when we mistakenlyconstrue them as essential (see Hunt, 2020).

To say that nature is inherently significant is to say that naturalfacts are neither inert nor value-free. Thoreau urges his reader notto “underrate the value of a fact,” since each concretedetail of the world may contain a meaningful truth (“NaturalHistory of Massachusetts”). Note the phrase:the value of afact. Thoreau does not introduce an artificial distinctionbetween facts and values, or between primary and secondary qualities.When we perceive sights, sounds, and textures, we are not standing asdisembodied consciousness apart from a world of inanimate mechanisms;rather, we are sentient beings immersed in the sensory world, learningthe “essential facts of life” only through “theperpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surroundsus” (Walden, II). The philosopher who seeks knowledgethrough experience should therefore not be surprised to discoverbeauty and order in natural phenomena. However, these properties arenot projected onto nature from an external perspective—rather,they emerge from within the self-maintaining processes of organiclife. And the entire environment, the “living earth”itself, has something like a life of its own, one which may be goingwell or badly, containing but not reducible to the biotic existence ofanimals and plants (Walden, XVII). This is what he elsewheredescribes as the “slumbering subterranean fire in nature whichnever goes out” (“A Winter Walk”).

Thoreau remarks upon the “much grander significance” ofany natural phenomenon “when not referred to man and his needsbut viewed absolutely” (Journal, 11/10/51). The worldis rich with value that is not of our making, and “whatever wehave perceived to be in the slightest degree beautiful is ofinfinitely more value to us than what we have only as yet discoveredto be useful and to serve our purpose” (Faith in aSeed, 144). It is when we are not guilty of imposing our ownpurposes onto the world that we are able to view it on its own terms.One of the things we then discover is that we are involved in apluralistic universe, containing many different points of view otherthan our own. And when we begin to realize “the infinite extentof our relations” (Walden, VIII), we can see that evenwhat does not at first seem to be goodfor us may have somepositive value when considered from a broader perspective. Rather thandismissing squirrels as rodents, for instance, we should see them as“planters of forests,” and be grateful for the role theyplay in the distribution of seeds (Journal, 10/22/60).Likewise, the “gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me inthe house to-day is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too.Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than myhoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot inthe ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would stillbe good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass,it would be good for me” (Walden, V). Our limited viewoften keeps us from appreciating the harmonious interdependence of allparts of the natural world: this is not due to “any confusion orirregularity in Nature,” but because of our own incompleteknowledge (Walden, XVI). Thoreau declares that he would behappy “if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wildstate,” since in tampering with nature we know not what we doand sometimes end up doing harm as a result (Walden, X). Inmany cases we find that “unhandselled nature is worth more evenby our modes of valuation than our improvements are”(Journal, 11/10/60).

In nature we have access to real value, which can be used as astandard against which to measure our conventional evaluations. Anexample of the latter is the value that is “arbitrarilyattached” to gold, which has nothing to do with its“intrinsic beauty or value” (Journal, 10/13/60).So it is a mistake to rush to California “as if the true goldwere to be found in that direction,” when one has failed toappreciate the inherent worth of one’s native soil(Journal, 10/18/55). In the economy of nature, a seed is moreprecious than a diamond, for it contains “the principle ofgrowth, or life,” and has the ability to become a specific plantor tree (Journal, 3/22/61). The seed not only providesevidence that nature is filled with “creative genius”(Journal, 1/5/56), but it also reminds us that a spark ofdivinity is present in each human being as well. One ofThoreau’s favorite analogies—not only a metaphor, as hesees it—is that between the ripening of a seed and thedevelopment of human potential. “The finest qualities of ournature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the mostdelicate handling” (Walden, I). What he calls“wildness” is not located only in the nonhuman world; thesame creative force is also active in human nature, so that even aliterary work of art can reasonably be praised as a manifestation ofwildness (see “Walking”;Walden, I). There is“a perfect analogy between the life of the human being and thatof the vegetable” (Journal, 5/20/51), and thoughts“spring in man’s brain” in just the same way that“a plant springs and grows by its own vitality”(Journal, 11/8/50; 4/3/58). Thoreau’s exhortations tofollow the promptings of one’s genius are based on the idea thatby obeying our own wild nature we are aligning ourselves with a sacredpower. What inspires us to realize our highest potential is “theprimitive vigor of Nature in us” (Journal, 8/30/56),and this influence is something we are able neither to predict nor tocomprehend: as he describes it in the “Ktaadn” chapter ofThe Maine Woods, nature is “primeval, untamed, andforever untamable,” a godlike force but not always a kindone.

At one point inWalden, Thoreau quips that heusually does not count himself among the “trueidealists” who are inclined to reject “the evidence of[their] senses” (Walden, XIV). On the other hand, hescorns the sort of materialism that fails to penetrate the innermystery of things, discovering “nothing but surface” inits mechanistic observations (Journal, 3/7/59). Instead, heargues that we must approach the world as “nature looking intonature,” aware of the relation between the form of our ownperception and what we are able to perceive (Correspondence,7/21/41). There are reasons for classifying Thoreau as both anaturalist and a romantic, although both of these categories areperhaps too broad to be very helpful. His conception of nature isinformed by a syncretic appropriation of Greek, Asian, and othersources, and the result is an eclectic vision that is uniquely hisown. For this reason it is difficult to situate Thoreau within thehistory of modern philosophy, but one plausible way of doing so wouldbe to describe him as articulating a version of transcendentalidealism. If Thoreau is indeed “the American heir toKant’s critical philosophy,” as he has been called(Oelschlaeger 1991, 136), it is because his investigation of“the relation between the subject of knowledge and itsobject” builds upon a Kantian insight (see Cavell 1992,94–95). Yet in order to understand why this might be an accuratecategorization, we must proceed from Thoreau’s metaphysics tohis epistemology.

3. The Ethics of Perception

If one were asked to name the cardinal virtue of Thoreau’sphilosophy, it would be hard to identify a better candidate thanawareness. He attests to the importance of “beingforever on the alert,” and of “the discipline of lookingalways at what is to be seen” (Walden, IV). Thisexercise may enable one to create remarkably intricate descriptions ofa sunset, a battle between red and black ants, or the shapes taken bythawing clay on a sand bank; but its primary value lies in the way itaffects the quality of our experience. “It is something to beable to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so tomake a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve andpaint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look”(Walden, II). Awareness cannot be classified as exclusively amoral or an intellectual virtue, either, since knowing is aninescapably practical and evaluative activity—not to mention, anembodied practice. Thoreau portrays himself not from a presumablyneutral or impersonal vantage point, “but from an embodied pointof view” in which his somatic sensory experience puts him“knowingly in touch with” his surroundings (Goodman 2012,36). For such reasons as these, he has sometimes been interpreted as a“philosopher of the senses” (Mooney 2009, 195), who offersan original response to the central problem of modern philosophy as aconsequence of recognizing that knowledge is “dependent on theindividual’sability to see,” and that “theworld as known is thus radically dependent on character” (Tauber2001, 4–5).

One of the common tenets of ancient philosophy which was arguablyabandoned in the period beginning with Descartes is that a person“could not have access to the truth” without undertaking aprocess of self-purification that would render him or her“susceptible to knowing the truth” (Foucault 1997,278–279). For Thoreau, it was the work of a lifetime tocultivate one’s receptivity to the beauty of the universe.Believing that “the perception of beauty is a moral test”(Journal, 6/21/52), Thoreau frequently chastises himself orhumanity in general for failing in this respect. “How much ofbeauty—of color, as well as form—on which our eyes dailyrest goes unperceived by us,” he laments (Journal,8/1/60); and he worries that “Nature has no human inhabitant whoappreciates her” (Walden, IX). Noticing that hissensory awareness has grown less acute since the time of his youth, hespeculates that “the child plucks its first flower with aninsight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanistnever retains” (Journal, 7/16/51; 2/5/52). In order toattain a clear and truthful view of things, we must refine all thefaculties of our embodied consciousness, and become emotionallyattuned to all the concrete features of the place in which we aresituated. We fully know only those facts that are “warm, moist,incarnated,” and palpably felt: “A man has not seen athing who has not felt it” (Journal, 2/23/60). In thisway, Thoreau outlines an epistemological task that will occupy him forthe rest of his life; namely, to cultivate a way of attending tothings that will allow them to be experienced as elements of ameaningful world.

Since our ability to appreciate the significance of phenomena is soeasily dulled, it requires a certain discipline in order to become andremain a reliable knower of the world. Like Aristotle, Thoreaubelieves that the perception of truth “produces a pleasurablesensation,” and he adds that a “healthy and refined naturewould always derive pleasure from the landscape”(Journal, 9/24/54 & 6/27/52). Nature will reward the mostcareful attention paid by a person who is appropriately disposed, butthere is only “as much beauty visible to us in the landscape aswe are prepared to appreciate,—not a grain more. The actualobjects which one person will see from a particular hilltop are justas different from those which another will see as the persons aredifferent” (Journal, 11/4/58). One who is in the rightstate to be capable of giving a “poetic and livelydescription” of things will find himself or herself “in aliving and beautiful world” (Journal, 10/13/60 &12/31/59). Beauty, like color, does not lie only in the eye of thebeholder: flowers, for example, are indeed beautiful and brightlycolored. Nevertheless, beauty—and color, for thatmatter—can exist only where there is a beholder to perceive it(Journal, 6/15/52 & 1/21/38). From all of his experiencein the field making observations of natural phenomena, Thoreau gainedthe insight “that he, the supposedly neutral observer, wasalways and unavoidably in the center of the observation”(McGregor 1997, 113). Because all perception of objects has asubjective aspect, the world can be defined as a sphere centeredaround each conscious perceiver: wherever we are located, “theuniverse is built around us, and we are central still”(Journal, 8/24/41). This does not mean that we are trappedinside of our own consciousness; rather, the point is that it is onlythrough the lens of our own subjectivity that we have access to theexternal world.

What we are able to perceive, then, depends not only upon where we arephysically located: it is also contingent upon who we are and what wevalue, or how our attention is focused. “Objects are concealedfrom our view, not so much because they are out of the course of ourvisual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear onthem…. A man sees only what concerns him”(“Autumnal Tints”). In other words, there is “nosuch thing as pureobjective observation. Your observation,to be interesting, i.e. to be significant, must besubjective” (Journal, 5/6/54). Subjectivity isnot an obstacle to truth, according to Thoreau. After all, he says,“the truest description, and that by which another living mancan most readily recognize a flower, is the unmeasured and eloquentone which the sight of it inspires” (Journal,10/13/60). A true account of the world must do justice to all thefamiliar properties of objects that the human mind is capable ofperceiving. Whether this can be done by a scientific description is avexing question for Thoreau, and one about which he shows considerableambivalence. One of his concerns is that the scientist“discovers no world for the mind of man with all its facultiesto inhabit”; by contrast, there is “more humanity”in “the unscientific man’s knowledge,” since thelatter can explain how certain facts pertain to life(Journal, 9/5/51; 2/13/52). He accuses the naturalist offailing to understand color, much less beauty, and asks: “Whatsort of science is that which enriches the understanding, but robs theimagination?” (Journal, 10/5/61 & 12/25/51) ForThoreau, the most reliable observer is one who can “see thingsas they are, grand and beautiful” (Journal,1/7/57)—in other words, the beauty and grandeur of the worldreally are there to be seen, even if we are not always capable ofseeing them. We can easily fail to perceive the value of being if wedo not approach the world with the appropriate kind of emotionalcomportment.

Thoreau sometimes characterizes science as an ideal discipline thatwill enrich our knowledge and experience: “The true man ofscience will know nature better by his finer organization; he willsmell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than other men. His will be adeeper and finer experience” (“Natural History ofMassachusetts”). He observes that scientific terminology canprovide the means of apprehending something that we had utterly misseduntil we had a name for it (see Walls 2012, 108). Yet he also givesvoice to the fear that by weighing and measuring things and collectingquantitative data we may actually be narrowing our vision. Thescientist “studies nature as a dead language,” and wouldrather study a dead fish preserved in a jar than a living one in itsnative element (Journal, 5/10/53 & 11/30/58). In thesesame journal entries, Thoreau claims that he seeks to experience thesignificance of nature, and that “the beauty of the fish”is what is most worthy of being measured. On the other hand, when hefinds a dead fish in the water, he brings it home to weigh andmeasure, covering several pages with his statistical findings(Journal, 8/20/54). This is only one of many examples ofThoreau’s fascination with data-gathering, and yet he repeatedlyquestions its value, as if he does not know what to make of his ownpenchant for naturalistic research. At the very least, scientificinvestigations run the risk of being “trivial and petty,”so perhaps what one should do is “learn science and then forgetit” (Journal, 1/21/53 & 4/22/52). But Thoreau ismore deeply troubled by the possibility that “science isinhuman,” since objects “seen with a microscope begin tobe insignificant,” and this is “not the means of acquiringtrue knowledge” (Journal, 5/1/59 & 5/28/54).Overall, his position is not that an imaginative awareness of theworld is incompatible with knowledge of measurable facts, but that anexclusive focus on the latter would blind us to whatever aspects ofreality fall outside the scope of our measurement.

One thing we can learn from Thoreau’s comments on scientificinquiry is that he cares very much about the following question: whatcan we know about the world, and how are we able to know it? Althoughhe admires the precision of scientific information, he wonders if whatit delivers is always bound to be “something less than the vaguepoetic” (Journal, 1/5/50). In principle, a naturalisticapproach to reality should be able to capture its beauty andsignificance; in practice, however, it may be “impossible forthe same person to see things from the poet’s point of view andthat of the man of science” (Journal, 2/18/52). In thatcase, the best we can do is try to convey our intimations of the truthabout the universe, even if this means venturing far beyond claimsthat are positively verifiable: “I desire to speak somewherewithout bounds; like a man in his waking moment, to men intheir waking moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerateenough even to lay the foundation of a true expression… . Thewords which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they aresignificant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures”(Walden, XVIII). We should not arbitrarily limit ourawareness to that which can be described with mathematical exactitude,for perhaps the highest knowledge available to us, Thoreau suggests,consists in “a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of allthat we called Knowledge before … it is the lighting up of themist by the sun” (“Walking”). And perhaps this isnot a regrettable fact: “At the same time that we are earnest toexplore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysteriousand unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed andunfathomed by us because unfathomable” (Walden, XVII).By acknowledging the limits of what we can know with certainty, weopen ourselves up to a wider horizon of experience.

As one commentator points out, Thoreau’s categories—so tospeak—are dynamic, since they are constantly being redefined bywhat we perceive, even as they shape our way of seeing (Peck 1990,84–85). Every now and then “something will occur which myphilosophy has not dreamed of,” Thoreau says, which demonstratesthat the “boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigidthan the elasticity of our imaginations” (Journal,5/31/53). Since the thoughts of each knowing subject are “partof the meaning of the world,” it is legitimate to ask:“Who can say whatis? He can only sayhow hesees” (11/4/52 & 12/2/46). Truth is radicallyperspective-dependent, which means that insofar as we are differentpeople we can only be expected to perceive different worlds (Walls1995, 213). Thoreau’s position might be described asperspectival realism, since he does not conclude that truth isrelative but celebrates the diversity of the multifaceted reality thateach of us knows in his own distinctive way. “How novel andoriginal must be each new man’s view of the universe!” heexclaims, and “how sweet is the perception of a new naturalfact,” for it suggests to us “what worlds remain to beunveiled” (Journal, 4/2/52 & 4/19/52). We may nevercomprehend the intimate relation between a significant fact and theperceiver who appreciates it, but we should trust that it is not invain to view nature with “humane affections”(Journal, 2/20/57 & 6/30/52). With respect to any givenphenomenon, the “point of interest” that concerns us liesneither in the independent object nor in the subject alone, butsomewhere in between (Journal, 11/5/57). Witnessing the riseof positivism and its ideal of complete objectivity, Thoreau attempts“to preserve an enchanted world and to place the passionateobserver in the center of his or her universe” (Tauber 2001,20). It is an admirable goal, and one that remains highly relevant inthe intellectual climate of the present day.

4. Friendship, Politics, and Environmentalism

Thoreau’s ethic of personal flourishing is focused upon theproblem of how to align one’s daily life in accordance withone’s ultimate ideals. What was enthusiasm in the youth, heargues, must become temperament in the mature person: the “merevision is little compared with the steady corresponding endeavorthitherward” (Journal, 11/1/51 & 11/24/57). Much ofour time ought to be spent “in carrying out deliberately andfaithfully the hundred little purposes which every man’s geniusmust have suggested to him… . The wisely conscious life springsout of an unconscious suggestion” (Wild Fruits, 166).Character, then, can be defined as “geniussettled”—the promptings of conscience in themselves areonlypotentially moral, until we have integrated them intothe fabric of our everyday existence and begun to hold ourselvesresponsible for living up to them (Journal, 3/2/42). Hence,we need to cherish and nurture our capability to discern thedifference between the idea and the reality, betweenwhat isandwhat ought to be. It is when we experiencedissatisfaction with ourselves or with external circumstances that weare stimulated to act in the interest of making things better.

It follows that the greatest compliment we can pay to another personis to say that he or she enhances our life by inciting us to realizeour highest aspirations. So Thoreau views it as deplorable that“we may love and not elevate one another”; the “lovethat takes us as it finds us, degrades us” (“Chastity andSensuality”). He speaks of “love” and“friendship” as closely related terms which are tainted bythe “trivial dualism” which assumes that the one mustexclude the other (Journal, undated 1839 entry). Clearly,what he is concerned about is the kind of love the Greeks calledphilia—and in his sustained consideration offriendship, as in so many other respects, Thoreau is “squarelyin the virtue ethics tradition” (Cafaro 2004, 127). In hisethical writings, the notion of wishing good on behalf of anotherperson is often taken to a severe extreme, as if he does not think itpossible to ask too much of love and friendship. InA Week on theConcord and Merrimack Rivers, he says: “I value and trustthose who love and praise my aspiration rather than myperformance” (A Week, “Wednesday”). This iswell and good, but Thoreau may be going too far when he proclaims thata friend should be approached “with sacred love and awe,”and that we profane one another if we do not always meet on religiousterms; it is no wonder that he finds himself doubting whether his“idea of a friend” will ever actually be instantiated(Journal, 6/26/40). Nonetheless, as a recent interpreter ofThoreau has pointed out, the “exalted and rarefied ideal”of friendship that he upholds does not imply that a friend is merelyinstrumental to one’s own self-realization (see Hodder 2010,129–142). Above all, Thoreau’s discussion of love andfriendship provokes us to reflect upon what we can and cannot expectfrom our closest human relationships, and on their role in a goodlife.

It would be a mistake to consider Thoreau’s political views inisolation from other aspects of his thought. It is, for example, hisunderstanding of wild nature that informs his sociopolitical ideas. Aswas noted above, nature is a point of reference outside thepolis which can provide valuable moral guidance, reminding usthat society is not the measure of all things. Considering the humanbeing as “an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature,”rather than a cultural artifact merely (“Walking”), helooks to the nonhuman natural world and to our inherent“wildness” as a source of evaluation which can empower usto discover that the standards of our civilization are profoundlyflawed. His conviction that nature provides us with “adifferent, truer, and more significant moral reality” than whatwe find in society provides the “crucial and often overlookedpolitical core” to what has been called his “pastoralenvironmentalism” (Taylor 1992, 12–24). Withdrawing into thenatural world allows us to view the state in a broader context and toconceive of ways in which social values and political structures couldbe improved radically. This includes unjust laws that ought to bereformed, about which more will be said in a moment, as well as theunwritten rules embodied in prevailing expectations about how oneought to live and what matters. Anticipating Heidegger’scritique ofDas Man in section 27 ofBeing and Time,Thoreau describes the source of these culturally prevalent attitudesas the “They” (Walden, I; see also Bennett 1994,18–19) and is critical of their pervasive and corrupting influence,their way of making people content with distorted values. Forinstance, most of his fellow citizens of Massachusetts are able togreet each other politely on the street and in church, thinking ofthemselves as morally decent while remaining complacent to uphold andperpetuate the institution of slavery in America (see “Slaveryin Massachusetts” and “A Plea for Captain JohnBrown”). In denouncing a specific pernicious attitude that iswidespread among his contemporaries, Thoreau also seeks to identifyand analyze the general tendency it exemplifies to defer to publicopinion: for this reason, his project of social critique is not onlyrelevant to his parochial context but has universal implications. Heis acutely conscious of the threat that shared modes of discourse canpose to justice and authentic intersubjectivity.

Thoreau is only half-joking when he tells us that, after becomingfrustrated with society, he turned “more exclusively than everto the woods, where I was better known” (Walden, I).Not only is it true that a degree of solitude and distance from ourneighbors may actually improve our relations with them, but by movingaway from the center of town we liberate ourselves from a slavishadherence to prevailing attitudes. “The greater part of what myneighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad,” he claims,providing this kind of example: “If a man walk in the woods forlove of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as aloafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing offthose woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed anindustrious and enterprising citizen” (Walden, I and“Life Without Principle”). This warped sense of value isall too common amidst the desperation of modern life, with its“restless, nervous, bustling, trivial” activity(Walden, XVIII). Thoreau builds a critique of Americanculture upon his conviction that “the mind can be permanentlyprofaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all ourthoughts shall be tinged with triviality” (“Life WithoutPrinciple”): his polemic aims at consumerism, philistinism, massentertainment, vacuous applications of technology, and the herdmentality that conforms to the dictates of an anonymous“They.” During his life Thoreau spoke out against theMexican War and the subjugation of Native America, and campaignedaggressively in favor of bioregionalism and the protection of animalsand the natural environment. It is outrageous that he is oftenstereotyped as a recluse and hermit. Above all, the political issuethat aroused his indignation was slavery. Because Thoreau understoodphilosophy as a way of life, it is only fitting that philosophicalideals would lead him into political action.

He was an activist involved in the abolitionist movement on manyfronts: he participated in the Underground Railroad, protested againstthe Fugitive Slave Law, and gave support to John Brown and his party.Most importantly perhaps, he provides a justification for principledrevolt and a method of nonviolent resistance, both of which would havea considerable influence on revolutionary movements in the twentiethcentury. In his essay on “Civil Disobedience,” originallypublished as “Resistance to Civil Government,” Thoreaudefends the validity of conscientious objection to unjust laws, whichhe claims ought to be transgressed at once. Political institutions assuch are regarded by him with distrust, and although he arguablyoverestimates the extent to which it is possible to disassociateoneself from them, he convincingly insists that social consensus isnot a guarantee of rectitude or truth. One of the most valuable pointshe makes against the critics of John Brown is that a person should notbe dismissed as “insane” by virtue of dissenting from themajority: Brown’s anger is grounded upon an awareness of thefact that slavery is a violation of human rights, and Thoreau beratesthe law-abiding citizens of Massachusetts for looking the other way(“A Plea for Captain John Brown”). Passively and quietlyallowing an unjust practice to continue is tantamount to collaboratingwith evil, he claims, articulating a principle of noncompliance thatwould inspire the philosophically informed nonviolent resistance ofMahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, among others.

When Thoreau argues that all of Brown’s actions were justifiedbecause he was an inspired reformer with a sacred vocation,he is appealing to something like the notion of natural right. Hisessay in this respect has a more general pertinence to debates aboutthe individual moral reformer in relation to community norms. It alsoraises the issue of whether political violence can be justified as thelesser of evils, or in cases where it may be the only available way ofending injustice. Usually, he prefers nonviolent forms of advocacysuch as creating “counter friction to stop the machine” byopposing, and acting in defiance of, practices and laws that are notrighteous (“Civil Disobedience”). Speaking about the actof protest that led him to spend a night in jail, he expressescharacteristic irony by saying that “I might have resistedforcibly with more or less effect, might have run amok againstsociety; but I preferred that society should run amok against me, itbeing the desperate party” (Walden, VIII). Although attimes it sounds as though Thoreau is advocating anarchy, what hedemands is abetter government, and what he refuses toacknowledge is the authority of one that has become so morally corruptas to lose the consent of those governed. “There will never be areally free and enlightened State, ” he argues, “until theState comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independentpower, from which all its own power and authority are derived, andtreats him accordingly” (“Civil Disobedience”).There are simply more sacred laws to obey than the laws of society,and a just government—should there ever be such a thing, headds—would not be in conflict with the conscience of theethically upright individual.

5. Locating Thoreau

Thoreau has somewhat misleadingly been classified as a New Englandtranscendentalist, and—even though he never rejected thislabel—it does not fit in many ways. Some of his majordifferences from Emerson have already been discussed, and furtherdifferences appear when Thoreau is compared to such figures as OrestesBrownson, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott. A history oftranscendentalism in New England which appeared in the late nineteenthcentury mentions Thoreau only once, in passing (Frothingham 1886,133). And a more recent history of the movement concludes that Thoreauhad little in common with this group of thinkers, who were for themost part committed to some version of Christianity, to a dualisticunderstanding of mind and matter, and to the related idea that senseexperience is unreliable (Boller 1974, 29–35 & 176). Acrucial step in Thoreau’s intellectual development occurred whenhe “disassociated himself from Emerson’s Transcendentalistview of nature as symbol” (Slicer 2013, 181), as one scholarnotes. It was suggested above that a better way of situating Thoreauwithin the Western philosophical tradition is to consider him a kindof transcendental idealist, in the spirit of Kant. For reasons thatought to be obvious by now, he should be of interest to students ofKant, Fichte, and Schelling—all of whom he studied at first orsecond hand—as well as Schopenhauer. Thoreau was a capable andenthusiastic classicist, whose study of ancient Greek and Romanauthors convinced him that philosophy ought to be a lived discipline:for this reason, he can profitably be grouped with othernineteenth-century thinkers, such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, whowere critics of philosophy in the early modern period. Yet he also hasthe distinction of being among the first Western philosophers to besignificantly influenced by ancient Chinese and Indian thought. Heanticipates Bergson and Merleau-Ponty in his attention to the dynamicsof the embodied mind, and shares with Peirce and James a concern forproblems of knowledge as they arise within practical experience.

Contemporary philosophers are increasingly discovering how muchThoreau has to teach—especially, in the areas of knowledge andperception, and in ethical debates about the value of land and life.His affinities with the pragmatic and phenomenological traditions, andthe enormous resources he offers for environmental philosophy, havealso started to receive more attention (see, e.g., Balthrop-Lewis,2019)—andWalden itself continues to be encountered byreaders as a remarkable provocation to philosophical thought. Still,it remains true that the political aspect of Thoreau’sphilosophy has come closer to receiving its due than any of theseothers: whether or not this is because such prominent figures asGandhi and King cited Thoreau as an inspiration, it has resulted in adisproportionate focus on what is only one part of an integralphilosophy, a part that can hardly be understood in isolation from theothers. Even if it is a sign of Thoreau’s peculiar greatnessthat subsequent American philosophy has not known what to make of him,it is a shame if his exclusion from the mainstream philosophical canonhas kept his voice from being heard by some of those who might be in aposition to appreciate it. Then again, as Thoreau himself notes, it isnever too late to give up our prejudices. Others have observed (seeSlicer 2013, 182–183) that, based on the amount of prominentwork on Thoreau as a philosopher which has recently appeared, hisprofile seems to be ever so gradually rising on the Americanphilosophical landscape.

Bibliography

Works By Thoreau

Walden; or, Life in the Woods, ed. Jeffrey Cramer, NewHaven: Yale University Press, 2004. Originally published in 1854.Parenthetical citations indicate with roman numerals which ofWalden’s 18 chapters is the source of eachquotation.
The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, 14 volumes, ed. B.Torrey and F. Allen, New York: Dover, 1962. Originally published in1906. Parenthetical citations give the date of each entry.
The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, ed. WalterHarding and Carl Bode, New York: New York University Press, 1958.Citations give the date of the letter quoted.
Consciousness in Concord: The Text of Thoreau’s Hitherto“Lost Journal” (1840–1841), ed. Perry Miller,Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958. Citations give the date of eachentry.
The Indians of Thoreau: Selections from the IndianNotebooks, ed. Richard Fleck, Albuquerque: Hummingbird Press,1974.
Early Essays and Miscellanies, ed. Joseph Moldenhaueret al., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, ed. C. Hovdeet al., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.Originally published in 1849.
The Maine Woods, New York: Penguin Books, 1988.Originally published in 1864.
Cape Cod, ed. J. Moldenhauer, Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1988. Originally published in 1865.
Faith in a Seed: The Dispersion of Seeds and Other LateNatural History Writings, ed. Bradley Dean, Washington, DC:Island Press, 1993.
Wild Fruits, ed. Bradley Dean, New York: W. W. Norton,2000.
Collected Essays and Poems, ed. Elizabeth Hall Witherell,New York: Penguin / Library of America, 2001. Contains “NaturalHistory of Massachusetts” (originally published in 1842),“A Winter Walk” (1843), “Civil Disobedience”(1849), “Slavery in Massachusetts” (1854), “A Pleafor Captain John Brown” (1860), “Walking” (1862),“Autumnal Tints” (1862), “Life WithoutPrinciple” (1863), and “Chastity and Sensuality”(1865).

Selected Works by Other Authors

Alexander, Samuel, 2019, “The Search for Freedom, Sustainability,and Economic Security: Henry David Thoreau as Tiny House Pioneer,”Ethical Perspectives, 26: 559–582.
Andersen, Nathan, 2010, “Exemplars in Environmental Ethics:Taking Seriously the Lives of Thoreau, Leopold, Dillard andAbbey,”Ethics, Place and Environment, 13:43–55.
Arsic, Branka, 2016,Bird Relics: Grief and Vitalism inThoreau, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Balthrop-Lewis, Alda, 2019, “Exemplarist EnvironmentalEthics: Thoreau’s Political Asceticism against SolutionThinking,”Journal of Religious Ethics, 47:525–550.
Bates, Stanley, 2012, “Thoreau and EmersonianPerfectionism,” in Furtak, Ellsworth, and Reid 2012,14–30.
Bennett, Jane, 1994,Thoreau’s Nature: Ethics, Politics,and the Wild, London: Sage Publications.
Black, Tim, 2021, “The Structure of Thoreau’sEpistemology, with Continual Reference to Descartes,”International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 11:269–288.
Blakemore, Peter, 2000, “Reading Home: Thoreau, Nature, andthe Phenomenon of Inhabitation,” inThoreau’s Sense ofPlace, ed. Richard Schneider, Iowa City: University of IowaPress, 115–132.
Borjesson, Gary, 1994, “A Sounding ofWalden’s Philosophical Depth,”Philosophy andLiterature, 18: 287–308.
Buell, Lawrence, 1995,The Environmental Imagination,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cafaro, Philip, 2004,Thoreau’s Living Ethics: Waldenand the Pursuit of Virtue, Athens, GA: University of GeorgiaPress.
Callicott, J. Baird, 1999,Beyond the Land Ethic, Albany:SUNY Press.
Cavell, Stanley, 1988,In Quest of the Ordinary, Chicago:University of Chicago Press.
–––, 1992,The Senses of Walden,expanded edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Originallypublished in 1972.
–––, 2000, “Night and Day: Heidegger andThoreau,” inAppropriating Heidegger, ed. J. Faulconerand M. Wrathall, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,30–49.
Chapman, Robert L., 2002, “The Goat-stag and the Sphinx: ThePlace of the Virtues in Environmental Ethics,”Environmental Values, 11: 129–144.
Dann, Kevin T., 2017,Expect Great Things: The Life and Searchof Henry David Thoreau, New York: Penguin Random House.
De Andrade, Clodomir B., 2022,Thoreau’s Pedagogy ofAwakening, Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books.
Dull, Carl J., 2012, “Zhuangzi and Thoreau: Wandering,Nature, and Freedom,”Journal of Chinese Philosophy,39: 222–239.
Eldridge, Richard, 2003, “Cavell on American Philosophy andthe Idea of America,” inStanley Cavell, ed. RichardEldridge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 172–189.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1836 [1993], “Nature,”inEssays: First and Second Series, ed. John Gabriel Hunt,New York: Gramercy / Library of Freedom, 1993, 282–297; originallypublished in 1836.
Foucault, Michel, 1997,Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth,ed. Paul Rabinow, New York: The New Press.
Frothingham, Octavius B., 1886,Transcendentalism in NewEngland: A History, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Furtak, Rick Anthony, 2003, “Thoreau’s EmotionalStoicism,”Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 17:122–132.
–––, 2007, “Skepticism and PerceptualFaith: Henry David Thoreau and Stanley Cavell on Seeing andBelieving,”Transactions of the Charles S. PeirceSociety, 43: 542–561.
Furtak, Rick Anthony; Ellsworth, Jonathan; and Reid, James D.,editors, 2012,Thoreau’s Importance for Philosophy, NewYork: Fordham University Press.
Garber, Frederick, 1977,Thoreau’s RedemptiveImagination, New York: New York University Press.
Goodman, Russell B., 2012, “Thoreau and the Body,” inFurtak, Ellsworth, and Reid 2012, 31–42.
Hahn, Stephen, 2000,On Thoreau, Belmont, CA:Wadsworth.
Harding, Walter, 1962,The Days of Henry Thoreau: ABiography, New York: Dover.
Heidegger, Martin, 1996,Being and Time, Joan Stambaugh(trans.), Albany: State University of New York Press.
Hodder, Alan D., 2001,Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness,New Haven: Yale University Press.
–––, 2010, “’Let Him Be to Me aSpirit’: Paradoxes of True Friendship in Emerson andThoreau,” in Lysaker and Rossi (eds.) 2010, 127–147.
Hunt, Lester H., 2020,The Philosophy of Henry Thoreau:Ethics, Politics, and Nature, London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Jolley, Kelly Dean, 1996, “Walden: Philosophy andKnowledge of Humankind,”Reason Papers, 21:36–52.
Kuklick, Bruce, 2001,A History of Philosophy in America:1720–2000, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Lysaker, John T.; and Rossi, William (eds.), 2010,Emerson andThoreau: Figures of Friendship, Bloomington and Indianapolis:Indiana University Press.
Mahoney, Brendan, 2016, “Engaging the Sublime without Distance:Environmental Ethics and Aesthetic Experience,”EnvironmentalEthics, 38: 463–481.
McGregor, Robert Kuhn, 1997,A Wider View of the Universe:Henry Thoreau’s Study of Nature, Urbana: University ofIllinois Press.
McKenzie, Jonathan, 2016,The Political Thought of Henry DavidThoreau, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
Milder, Robert, 1995,Reimagining Thoreau, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Mooney, Edward, 2009,Lost Intimacy in American Thought:Recovering Personal Philosophy from Thoreau to Cavell, London:Continuum.
–––, 2015,Excursions with Thoreau: Poetry,Philosophy, Religion, London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Moran, Michael, 1967, “Henry David Thoreau,” inThe Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, New York:Free Press, 8: 121–123.
Nagley, Winfield, 1954, “Thoreau on Attachment, Detachment,and Non-Attachment,”Philosophy East and West, 3:307–320.
Norton, Bryan G., 1999, “Pragmatism, Adaptive Management,and Sustainability,”Environmental Values, 8:451–466.
Oelschlaeger, Max, 1991,The Idea of Wilderness, NewHaven: Yale University Press.
Peck, H. Daniel, 1990,Thoreau’s Morning Work, NewHaven: Yale University Press.
Plotica, Luke Philip, 2017, “Singing Oneself or LivingDeliberately: Whitman and Thoreau on Individuality and Democracy,”Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 53:601–621.
Raden, Audrey, 2017,When I Came to Die: Process and Prophecyin Thoreau’s Vision of Dying, Amherst: University ofMassachusetts Press.
Reid, James D., 2012, “Speaking Extravagantly: PhilosophicalTerritory and Eccentricity inWalden,” in Furtak,Ellsworth, and Reid 2012, 43–67.
Richardson, Robert, 1986,Henry Thoreau: A Life of theMind, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress.
Robinson, David M., 2004,Natural Life: Thoreau’s WorldlyTranscendentalism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Saito, Naoko, 2012, “Is Thoreau More Cosmopolitan thanDewey?,”Philosophy and Literature, 7:71–85.
Sattelmeyer, Robert, 1988,Thoreau’s Reading,Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sayre, Robert, 1977,Thoreau and the American Indians,Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Slicer, Deborah, 2013, “Thoreau’s Evanescence,”Philosophy and Literature, 37: 179–198.
Slovic, Scott, 1992,Seeking Awareness in American NatureWriting, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Tauber, Alfred, 2001,Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agencyof Knowing, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress.
Taylor, Bob Pepperman, 1992,Our Limits Transgressed:Environmental Political Thought in America, Lawrence: UniversityPress of Kansas.
–––, 1994, “Henry Thoreau, Nature, andAmerican Democracy,”Journal of Social Philosophy, 25:46–64.
Vilhauer, Benjamin, 2008, “The Theme of Time inThoreau’sCape Cod,”The ConcordSaunterer, 16: 33–44.
Walls, Laura Dassow, 1995,Seeing New Worlds: Henry DavidThoreau and Nineteenth-Century Natural Science, Madison:University of Wisconsin Press.
–––, 2012, “Articulating a HuckleberryCosmos: Thoreau’s Moral Ecology of Knowledge,” in Furtak,Ellsworth, and Reid 2012, 91–111.
–––, 2017,Henry David Thoreau: A Life,Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ward, Andrew, 2007, “Ethics and Observation: Dewey, Thoreau,and Harman,”Metaphilosophy, 38: 591–611.
Wilshire, Bruce, 2000,The Primal Roots of AmericanPhilosophy, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UniversityPress.
Wilson, Jeffrey, 2004, “Autobiography as Critique inThoreau,”Journal of Philosophical Research, 29:29–46.

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