Henry David Thoreau And The Moral Agency Of Knowing

Author : Alfred I. Tauber
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2003-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780520239159

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Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing by Alfred I. Tauber Pdf

"Tauber's book is encyclopedic—not only a revealing and comprehensive study of Thoreau but also a full vision of the Romantic Weltanschauung and its relevance to contemporary concerns in philosophy, science, and poetics. While this scope is wildly ambitious, Tauber admirably delivers, always informing his parts with the whole, consistently altering the whole with his parts."—Eric Wilson, author of Emerson's Sublime Science "In arguing for the centrally moral and ethical value of Thoreau's works, Tauber is taking a brave stance in these slippery postmodern times…. It's one thing to praise Thoreau for his opposition to the Mexican War, his philosophy of passive resistance, and his fervent opposition to slavery. It's quite another to argue that his entire project—his whole sense of identity, self-formation, and his relation to nature—is part of a deeply moral enterprise….Thoreau's modernity has been defined in many ways in recent years. Tauber adds another important and distinctive dimension to this discussion."—H. Daniel Peck, John Guy Vassar Professor of English, Vassar College

Author : Jonathan McKenzie
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Page : 215 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2016-01-22
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780813166322

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The Political Thought of Henry David Thoreau by Jonathan McKenzie Pdf

"In The Political Thought of Henry David Thoreau, Jonathan McKenzie analyzes not only Thoreau's well-known works but also his journals and correspondence to provide a fresh portrait of the Sage of Walden as a radical individualist."--Publisher description.

Author : Lawrence Buell
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 153 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2023-10-03
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780197684269

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Henry David Thoreau by Lawrence Buell Pdf

"When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond..." Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was a leading figure in the American Transcendentalist movement and the era of U. S. literary emergence, an intellectual with worldwide influence as essayist, social thinker, naturalist-environmentalist, and sage. Thoreau's Walden, an autobiographical narrative of his two-year sojourn in a self-built lakeside cabin, is one of the most widely studied works of American literature. It has generated scores of literary imitations and thousands of neo-Walden experiments in back-to-basics living, both rural and urban. Thoreau's great essay, "Civil Disobedience," is a classic of American political activism and a model for nonviolent reform movements around the world. Thoreau also stands as an icon of modern American environmentalism, the father of American nature writing, a forerunner of modern ecology, and a harbinger of freelance spirituality combining the wisdom of west and east. Thoreau is also a controversial figure. From his day to ours, he has provoked sharply opposite reactions ranging from reverence to dismissal. Scholars have regularly offered conflicting assessments of the significance of his work, the evolution of his thought, even the facts of his life. Some disagreements are in the eye of the beholder, but many follow from challenges posed by his own cross-grained idiosyncrasies. He was an advocate for individual self-sufficiency who never broke away from home, a self-professed mystic now also acclaimed as a pioneer natural and applied scientist, and a seminal theorist of nonviolent protest who defended the most notorious guerrilla fighter of his day. All told, he remains a rather enigmatic figure both despite and because we know so much about him, beginning with the two-million-word journal he kept throughout his adult life. The esteemed Thoreau scholar Lawrence Buell gives due consideration to all these aspects of Thoreau's art and thought, framing key issues and complexities in historical and literary context.

Author : Clifford G. Christians,John C. Merrill
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2013-02-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780826271846

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Ethical Communication by Clifford G. Christians,John C. Merrill Pdf

Proponents of professional ethics recognize the importance of theory but also know that the field of ethics is best understood through real-world applications. This book introduces students and practitioners to important ethical concepts through the lives of major thinkers ranging from Aristotle to Ayn Rand, John Stuart Mill to the Dalai Lama. Some two dozen contributors approach media ethics from five perspectives—altruistic, egoistic, autonomous, legalist, and communitarian—and use real people as examples to convey ethical concepts as something more than mere abstractions. Readers see how Confucius represents group loyalty; Gandhi, nonviolent action; Mother Teresa, the spirit of sacrifice. Each profile provides biographical material, the individual’s basic ethical position and contribution, and insight into how his or her moral teachings can help the modern communicator. The roster of thinkers is gender inclusive, ethnically diverse, and spans a broad range of time and geography to challenge the misperception that moral theory is dominated by Western males. These profiles challenge us not to give up on moral thinking in our day but to take seriously the abundance of good ideas in ethics that the human race provides. They speak to real-life struggles by applying to such trials the lasting quality of foundational thought. Many of the root values to which they appeal are cross-cultural, even universal. Exemplifying these five ethical perspectives through more than two dozen mentors provides today’s communicators with a solid grounding of key ideas for improving discussion and attaining social progress in their lives and work. These profiles convey the diversity of means to personal and social betterment through worthwhile ideas that truly make ethics come alive.

Author : Maurice S. Lee
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2013-06-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199985814

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Uncertain Chances by Maurice S. Lee Pdf

Maurice Lee's study illustrates how writers such as Poe, Melville, Douglass, Thoreau, Dickinson, and others participated in a broad intellectual and cultural shift in which Americans increasingly learned to live with the threatening and wonderful possibilities of chance.

Author : Joshua J. Bowman
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2018-03-16
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781498559034

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Imagination and Environmental Political Thought by Joshua J. Bowman Pdf

This book explores and evaluates Henry David Thoreau’s political thought through the lens of a theory of imagination and considers his legacy for later environmental thought. This book will interest anyone curious about Thoreau’s relationship to environmentalism and the intersection of environmental humanities and politics.

Author : John R. Shook
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 944 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2016-02-11
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781472570567

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The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers in America by John R. Shook Pdf

For scholars working on almost any aspect of American thought, The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia to Philosophers in America presents an indispensable reference work. Selecting over 700 figures from the Dictionary of Early American Philosophers and the Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, this condensed edition includes key contributors to philosophical thought. From 1600 to the present day, entries cover psychology, pedagogy, sociology, anthropology, education, theology and political science, before these disciplines came to be considered distinct from philosophy. Clear and accessible, each entry contains a short biography of the writer, an exposition and analysis of his or her doctrines and ideas, a bibliography of writings and suggestions for further reading. Featuring a new preface by the editor and a comprehensive introduction, The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia to Philosophers in America includes 30 new entries on twenty-first century thinkers including Martha Nussbaum and Patricia Churchland. With in-depth overviews of Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Noah Porter, Frederick Rauch, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, this is an invaluable one-stop research volume to understanding leading figures in American thought and the development of American intellectual history.

Author : Philip Cafaro
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2010-01-25
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780820336664

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Thoreau's Living Ethics by Philip Cafaro Pdf

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.

Author : Rick Anthony Furtak,Jonathan Ellsworth,James D. Reid
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2012-08-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780823239306

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Thoreau's Importance for Philosophy by Rick Anthony Furtak,Jonathan Ellsworth,James D. Reid Pdf

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.

Author : Eric Weiner
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2021-08-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781501129025

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The Socrates Express by Eric Weiner Pdf

The author retraces the journeys of forefront intellectuals from Epicurus and Gandhi to Thoreau and Beauvoir to illuminate how their practical and spiritual lessons can be applied in today's unsettled world. Eric Weiner combines his twin passions for philosophy and global travel in a pilgrimage that uncovers surprising life lessons from philosophers around the world, from Marcus Aurelius to Arthur Schopenhauer, Confucius to Montaigne. Traveling by train (the most thoughtful mode of transport) he traversed thousands of miles, making stops in Athens, Delhi, Massachusetts, Coney Island, Frankfurt, and points in between, to recapture philosophy's original purpose: teaching us how to lead wiser, more meaningful lives. From Socrates and ancient Athens to Simone de Beauvoir and twentieth century Paris, Weiner's chosen places and thinkers provide important signposts as we navigate today's chaotic times.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : English literature
ISBN : UOM:39015066121057

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Nineteenth Century Prose by Anonim Pdf

Author : Peter H. Kahn, Jr.,Patricia H. Hasbach
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2013-01-25
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780262312837

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The Rediscovery of the Wild by Peter H. Kahn, Jr.,Patricia H. Hasbach Pdf

A compelling case for connecting with the wild, for our psychological and physical well-being and to flourish as a species We often enjoy the benefits of connecting with nearby, domesticated nature—a city park, a backyard garden. But this book makes the provocative case for the necessity of connecting with wild nature—untamed, unmanaged, not encompassed, self-organizing, and unencumbered and unmediated by technological artifice. We can love the wild. We can fear it. We are strengthened and nurtured by it. As a species, we came of age in a natural world far wilder than today's, and much of the need for wildness still exists within us, body and mind. The Rediscovery of the Wild considers ways to engage with the wild, protect it, and recover it—for our psychological and physical well-being and to flourish as a species. The contributors offer a range of perspectives on the wild, discussing such topics as the evolutionary underpinnings of our need for the wild; the wild within, including the primal passions of sexuality and aggression; birding as a portal to wildness; children's fascination with wild animals; wildness and psychological healing; the shifting baseline of what we consider wild; and the true work of conservation.

Author : Andrew McMurry
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0820325309

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Environmental Renaissance by Andrew McMurry Pdf

Through contemporary environmental philosophy and emerging paradigms in complex systems theory, Andrew McMurry presents a new reading of Emerson, Thoreau, and the green tradition in American thought. McMurry analyzes Emerson and Thoreau's foundational roles in the formation of the two main currents in American environmentalism: the managerial, or "shallow," and the radical, or "deep." The author draws, in particular, on Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela's theory of autopoesis and the social systems theory of Niklas Luhmann. These theories, says McMurry, give us the conceptual tools to update Emerson and Thoreau's philosophies of nature, literary aesthetics, and attitudes toward pastoralism for the current age of environmental risk and uncertainty. McMurry's systems approach helps us to recast essentialist, ultimately debilitating binaries such as nature/culture, wilderness/civilization, and wild/tame along the lines of a suppler, richer distinction: that between self-organizing systems (like language or society) and their environments (defined simply as whatever cannot communicate with the system). Such an undertaking also allows McMurry to reflect on the systemic obstacles that ecocriticism, as a genre enabling positive environmental practices, must confront if it is to be theoretically coherent. Sophisticated and socially relevant, Environmental Renaissance is both a call for critics to broaden their parameters and a warning about rhapsodizing on nature while our very life-support systems are crumbling.

Author : Branka Arsić
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 409 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2016-01-04
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780674495388

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Bird Relics by Branka Arsić Pdf

Branka Arsic shows that Thoreau developed a theory of vitalism in response to his brother’s death. Through grieving, he came to see life as a generative force into which everything dissolves and reemerges. This reinterpretation, based on sources overlooked by critics, explains many of Thoreau’s more idiosyncratic habits and obsessions.

Author : Henry David Thoreau
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 125 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 1999-05-31
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780547345871

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Uncommon Learning by Henry David Thoreau Pdf

"It is only when we forget our learning that we begin to know," Thoreau wrote. Ideas about education permeate Thoreau's writing. Uncommon Learning brings those ideas together in a single volume for the first time.