Philosopher views

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buckley, J.F. DESIRE, THE SELF, AND THE SOCIAL CRITIC: THE RISE OF QUEER

PERFORMANCE WITHIN THE DEMISE OF TRANSCENDENTALISM. (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1997).
Gura, Philip F. and Joel Myerson, eds. CRITICAL ESSAYS ON AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISM. (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1982).
Harding, Walter. A THOREAU HANDBOOK. (New York: New York University Press, 1959).
Honderich, Ted, ed. THE OXFORD COMPANION TO PHILOSOPHY. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Lebeaux, Richard. YOUNG MAN THOREAU. (Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press,

1977).
Moller, Mary Elkins. THOREAU IN THE HUMAN COMMUNITY. (Amherst, MA: The University of

Massachusetts Press, 1980).
Myerson, Joel. CRITICAL ESSAYS ON HENRY DAVID THOREAU’S WALDEN. (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1988).
Salt, Henry S. LIFE OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1993).
Sayre, Robert F., ed. NEW ESSAYS ON WALDEN. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Schneider, Richard J. APPROACHES TO TEACHING THOREAU’S WALDEN AND OTHER WORKS.

(New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1996).

POLITY. (Lawrence, KS: The University Press of Kansas, 1996).

1986).
Wagenknecht, Edward. HENRY DAVID THOREAU: WHAT MANNER OF MAN? (Amherst, MA: The

University of Massachusetts Press, 1981).

HIGHER INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE IS MOST IMPORTANT

1. REFORMATION OF INDIVIDUAL IS MOST IMPORTANT

Walter A. Harding, THOREAU HANDBOOK, 1959, p. 143.

From the beginning of his life to the very end, Thoreau believed that all reform must come from within and cannot be imposed by any outside force. We cannot reform society; we can reform only the individual. When each individual reforms himself, then the reformation of society will automatically follow. Reformation through legislation may achieve temporary results, but lasting reformation will be achieved only when each individual convinces himself of its desirability.

Walter A. Harding, THOREAU HANDBOOK, 1959, p. 147.

If the laws of the state came in conflict with the higher laws of the conscience, it was the conscience and not the state that must be obeyed. It became the duty of civil disobedience.
3. SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT IS THE TRUE METHOD OF REFORM

Henry David Thoreau, WALDEN AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, 1986, p. 13.

In Thoreau’s mind, individual discipline, intellectual growth, and spiritual development were the only true methods of reform, methods that required neither conventions, membership lists, nor contributions. True reform was interior, private, and wholly individual. Reforming one’s self meant discovering the divinity within one’s self.
4. SELF-RESPECT NECESSARY FOR EXERCISE OF INDIVIDUALITY

Henry S. Salt, LIFE OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 1993, p. 104.

In the first place, he is an earnest and unwearied advocate of self-culture and self-respect, and insists again and again on the need of preserving our higher and nobler instincts from the contamination of what is base, trivial, and worldly.
5. INDIVIDUALS MUST CONSTANTLY EXAMINE GOVERNMENT

Bob Pepperman Taylor, AMERICA’S BACHELOR UNCLE: THOREAU AND THE AMERICAN POLITY, 1996, p. 119-20.

We are provided with a constant reminder that we, as democratic citizens, are responsible for independently evaluating the behavior of our government and political community, especially in the face of significant injustice or tyranny. We can think of Thoreau as the first and the greatest American writer to attack the complacency of the emerging American middle class.
6. CULTIVATION OF ONE’S SELF ATTRACTED THOREAU

Henry David Thoreau, WALDEN AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, 1986, p. 12.

Thoreau shared the disappointment and dismay the Transcendentalists expressed concerning the lack of integrity they saw in American life. What most attracted Thoreau to Transcendentalism was not its social activism; he was drawn instead to the Transcendentalists’ attitudes concerning the desirability and necessity of cultivating one’s self.
7. INDIVIDUAL’S SPIRITUAL LIFE MOST IMPORTANT

Henry David Thoreau, WALDEN AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, 1986, p. 9.

He sympathized with the Transcendentalists’ desire to move beyond the surfaces of American life- its commerce, technology, industrialism, and material progress--to a realization that these public phenomena were insignificant when compared with an individual’s spiritual life.

INTUITION AND NATURE SHOULD DETERMINE INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE

1. ONE MUST TRANSCEND SENSES TO ACHIEVE ULTIMATE KNOWLEDGE

Walter A. Harding, THOREAU HANDBOOK, 1959, p. 134.

Thoreau classified himself as a Transcendentalist. If we use the popular definition that a Transcendentalist is one who believes that one can (and should) go beyond Locke in believing that all knowledge is acquired through the senses, that in order to attain the ultimate in knowledge one must transcend the senses, we can unquestionably classify Thoreau as a Transcendentalist.

Walter A. Harding, THOREAU HANDBOOK, 1959, p. 143.

Thoreau went to Walden not to escape from civilization but to discover the true civilization that would permit and foster the greatest development of man’s spiritual nature.
3. SOLITUDE AND RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE INDISPENSIBLE TO INDIVIDUALITY

Henry David Thoreau, WALDEN AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, 1986, p. 7.

Thoreau never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. Thoreau demanded a singular relationship with nature that would allow him to leave behind the average and the mundane so that he could discover the liberating divinity within himself and the world. He pledged allegiance not to the Republic but to the individualism for which he stood.
4. TRANSCENDENTALISTS REJECTED EMPRICIST CONCEPTION OF KNOWLEDGE

Henry David Thoreau, WALDEN AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, 1986, p. 13-14.

The Transcendentalists solved this problem by using other than analytical means to affirm that one soul circulates through all of creation. Rejecting the Lockean sensationalism and Common Sense philosophy then prevalent, which argued that knowledge could only come through the senses, the Transcendentalists insisted that this empirical argument was not responsive to a higher, ultimate reality, the world of the spirit.
5. TRANSCENDENTALISM EMBRACES SUPERIORITY OF INTUITION

Ted Honderich, THE OXFORD COMPANION TO PHILOSOPHY, 1995, p. 879.

The doctrine, [transcendentalism], which stressed the spiritual unity of the world (thus interpreting God in an untranscendentally panthestic way) and the superiority of intuition as a source of knowledge as opposed to logical reasoning and sense-experience. They relied heavily on the distinction of true reason from the merely analytic understanding, the doctrinal corner-stone of philosophical Romanticism.
6. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC LIFE ARE RELATED

Bob Pepperman Taylor, AMERICA’S BACHELOR UNCLE: THOREAU AND THE AMERICAN POLITY, 1996, p. 122.

Thoreau’s claim is simply that the justice and restraint of our economic life are deeply implicated in the justice and restraint of our political life.