Download Thoreau`s Experiment: “I came here to live”

Thoreau’s Experiment:
“I went to the woods because I
wished to live deliberately...”
November 8th, 2010
Thoreau’s Philosophical Idealism
• Thoreau’s political philosophy is based on the ideal of
individualism and absolutist morality—more specifically, a
sense that the power of the individual derived from a
higher law
• Gandhi’s jailhouse writings conclude with Thoreau’s image
of the illusion of imprisonment: “I saw that if there was a
wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was
still a more difficult one to climb and break through
before they could get to be as free as I was” (an idea
cannot be imprisoned: an applied form of a philosophical
idealism as old as Socrates)
• Crucial link between idealism and realism: “In proportion
as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will
appear less complex” (Walden, “Conclusion” 217).
Thoreau as Surveyor of Walden Pond
The Structure of Walden
• Two competing drives in Walden: “an immediate
openness to flux, a responsiveness to a
continually changing world, and…—a desire to
preserve and rescue from that world something
of permanent shape and beauty” (See Martin
Bickman, Reading Walden)
• How do the chapters, especially the early ones,
seem to be paired to reflect these competing
“volatile truths”?
Thoreau’s Use of Language
• If abstract spiritual reality is embedded in
physical reality, then language puns become
the source of serious metaphors: “We should
impart our courage, and not our despair, our
health and ease, and not our disease…”
• Paradox and redefinition: the savage may be
the truly civilized man, the poor are the
worthies of the world
“…in Wildness is the preservation of
the world”
“I WISH TO SPEAK a word for nature, for absolute Freedom
and Wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and Culture
merely civil, — to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part
and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I
wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make a
emphatic one, for there are enough champions of
civilization; the minister, and the school-committee, and
every one of you will take care of that…
Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New
England; though we may be estranged from the South, we
sympathize with the West…The West of which I speak is
but another name for the Wild; and what I have been
preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of
the world” (from “Walking,” 1862, 260,273, 274).
Conversation Starters
• In the bean field Thoreau releases some of his individual control over
himself by saying that only God knows why he does what he does
(referring to planting beans). Is Thoreau advocating God as himself, or
is he actually relinquishing some power to a higher being? If he is
relinquishing power to a higher being, why do you believe Thoreau,
the transcendental control freak, is willing to relinquish to a higher
power in this aspect of Walden? How does hoeing beans become a
metaphor for writing?
• In “Visitors” Thoreau admires the Canadian woodchopper, going so
far as to describe him as an ideal man, however he does think the
woodchopper is defective in one manner. What is his problem with
the woodchopper and why does he think this way?
• In “the village” what does Thoreau say is the chief obstacle to
creating a new vision of life?
• In “higher laws” was Thoreau able to resolve the conflict between
animality and spirituality?
Conversation Starters
• What sort of "persona" narrates Walden? What is the relationship
between the Thoreau who lived in Walden Woods from 1845-1847
and the literary persona?
• What is Thoreau's basic philosophy (or philosophy of basics)?
Choose a few memorable sentences in "Where I Lived and What I
Lived For“: How does he redefine awakening? morning? the
news? How can he travel most by living in one place? What is his
attitude toward time? What is it that he is "mining" for in his
“experiment”?
• How are books and reading important to Thoreau? How does he
say his own book should be read? (How do his ideas on reading
compare with Emerson's in "Self-Reliance"?)
• How do the many metaphors Thoreau uses to describe the ponds
illuminate his concept of the ideal self?
Is Walden a complete text? Who
are we in relation to it? With
what does it leave us?