Philosophy Book
Chapter Twenty Five: Henry David Thoreau
Brief Biography of Henry David Thoreau with Summary of
Ideas, Portrait & Quotes
This webpage contains a brief overview of the recently published
book 'Philosophical Sketches'. Below you will find a short Chapter summary
on Henry David Thoreau, the book cover and back page text, links to other book
chapters, and introduction. You can buy this book online at our Cafepress Philosophy
Book Shop (Book Details: 90 pages, 30 full page portraits, 8.5 inches by
11 inches, $19.50 USD)
Hope you find it interesting,
Geoff Haselhurst & Karene Jade Howie
Chapter
Twenty Five: Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, pacifist, tax
resister and philosopher who is famous for Walden on living simply amongst
nature and Civil Disobedience on resistance to civil government (when it acted
immorally). He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked
the Fugitive Slave Law. His most lasting contributions were in extensive writings
on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings
of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern environmentalism.
Thoreau embarked on a two-year experiment in simple living on July 4, 1845
when he moved to the forest around the shores of beautiful Walden Pond, as
a guest of his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, a fifteen minute walk from his family
in Concord, Massachusetts. On a trip into town, he ran into the local tax collector
who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes (1846). Thoreau refused,
purportedly for his opposition to the Mexican-American War, (1846-1848), for
which he spent a night in jail. His later essay on this experience, Civil Disobedience,
influenced Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.. Thoreau
left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847. Thoreau died of tuberculosis in 1862,
in the town of his birth, Concord, and was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
... (see book for more)
Simplify, Simplify. ... Rather than love, than money, than fame,
give me truth.
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor
even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its
dictates, a life
of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.
I went to the woods because
I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and
not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to
live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation,
unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the
marrow
of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that
was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner,
and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then
to
get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the
world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give
a true
account of it in my next excursion.
We are enabled to apprehend at all what
is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the
reality that surrounds us. We can never have
enough of nature. (Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854)
A lively and concise journey through the central
ideas of thirty famous philosophers. From ancient Indian, Greek and Chinese
Philosophy to modern Western Philosophy, this book explores the changing foundations
of human knowledge and their effect on how we think and live.
Includes full page portraits, brief biographies and selected quotes from some
of the greatest minds of human history on the universal subjects of Truth,
Reality, Nature, Cosmos, Wisdom, Morality, Mind, Education, Politics, Art,
Religion & God.
Written for the lay person, while remaining true to the original ideas, this
is an engaging account of the Metaphysical foundations of Philosophy that is
both illuminating and thought provoking. (Cover Photograph: Plato & Aristotle
- The School of Athens by Raphael)
Philosophy Book
Philosophical Sketches: Chapter Headings & Content Summary
Publisher / Online Bookstore Details
Space
and Motion Publications
Online print on demand publishers of books on;
Philosophy, Physics, Metaphysics, Truth, Reality, Evolution, Ecology, Nature,
Education, Politics, Fine Art, Erotic Art, Nature, Cosmos, Wisdom, Morality,
Mind, Religion & God.
http://www.spaceandmotion.com/books/online-book-publishing.htm
Related Pages: Henry David Thoreau
We also have a nice philosophy web page on Henry David Thoreau;
http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Henry-David-Thoreau.htm
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"When
forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time
and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter. ... Physical
objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended.
In this way the concept 'empty space' loses its meaning. ... The particle
can only appear as a limited region in space in which the field strength or
the energy density are particularly high. ...
