Henry David Thoreau
Live deliberately; refuse what conscience condemns.
Henry David Thoreau, an essayist, land surveyor and naturalist from Concord, Massachusetts, treated philosophy as a way of living rather than a system of doctrines. His two years in a cabin beside Walden Pond, his refusal to pay a tax that supported slavery and war, and a journal kept for more than two decades connect close attention to nature, economy of means and the claims of individual conscience.
What does a life really require, and what must we refuse to take part in?
Biography
Henry David Thoreau, an essayist, land surveyor and naturalist from Concord, Massachusetts, treated philosophy as a way of living rather than a system of doctrines. His two years in a cabin beside Walden Pond, his refusal to pay a tax that supported slavery and war, and a journal kept for more than two decades connect close attention to nature, economy of means and the claims of individual conscience.
02 /Philosophy
The true cost of a thing is the amount of life exchanged for it; reducing needs frees time for thought, chosen work and attention to the world.
03 /Reading guides
Original introductions to enter the works, discover their central questions and take the reflection further.
04 /Bibliography
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
A first reading.
Living deliberately at Walden
Follow the reckoning of needs, the daily routine and the turning seasons through which Walden tests what a human life really requires.
Walden; or, Life in the WoodsConscience and the law
Examine how the essay moves from one night in jail to an argument about complicity, majority rule and the duties of citizens toward an unjust state.
Civil DisobedienceTravel, friendship and mourning
Read the river journey as an elegy for John and as a workshop for the digressive essay form that Walden would later refine.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers