Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
INTRODUCTION
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian , philosopher andtranscendentalist. Henry David Thoreau was a complex man of many talents who worked hard to shape his craft and his life. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
Henry's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore; while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity.He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time imploring one to abandon waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.[1] He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Thoreau is sometimes cited as an individualist anarchist.[2
Thoreau's stance was always much less extreme than many of his individual, sometimes inconsistent statements suggest. Theoretically he believed that that government was best that governed least and that the ideal was no government, yet in practice he wanted the state to foster culture
INTRODUCTION
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian , philosopher andtranscendentalist. Henry David Thoreau was a complex man of many talents who worked hard to shape his craft and his life. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
Henry's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore; while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity.He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time imploring one to abandon waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.[1] He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Thoreau is sometimes cited as an individualist anarchist.[2
Thoreau's stance was always much less extreme than many of his individual, sometimes inconsistent statements suggest. Theoretically he believed that that government was best that governed least and that the ideal was no government, yet in practice he wanted the state to foster culture