Thoreaus Living Ethics

Author : Philip Cafaro
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820336661
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Thoreau's Living Ethics written by Philip Cafaro and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-01-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 : Philip Cafaro
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 082032843X
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Thoreau's Living Ethics written by Philip Cafaro and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 : Philip Cafaro
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820326100
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Thoreau's Living Ethics written by Philip Cafaro and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.".

Author : Rick Anthony Furtak
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 0823239306
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Thoreau's Importance for Philosophy written by Rick Anthony Furtak and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 : Jane Bennett
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 9780742521414
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Thoreau's Nature written by Jane Bennett and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2002 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thoreau's Nature: Ethics, Politics, and the Wild explores how Thoreau crafted a life open to 'the Wild,' a term that marks the startling element of foreignness in every object of experience, however familiar. Thoreau's encounters with nature, Bennett argues, allowed him to resist his all-too-human tendency toward intellectual laziness, social conformity, and political complacency. Bennett pursues this theme by constructing a series of dialogues between Thoreau and our contemporaries: Foucault on identity and power, Haraway on the nature/culture of division, Hollywood celebrities on the Walden Woods Project, the National Endowment for the Humanities on politics and art, and Kafka on the question of political idealism. The pertinence to the late 20th century of Thoreau's pursuit of independent judgment, ecological foresight, and moral nobility becomes apparent through these engagements.

Author : Alda Balthrop-Lewis
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108835104
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Thoreau's Religion written by Alda Balthrop-Lewis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-21 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boldly reconfigures Walden for contemporary ethics and politics by recovering Thoreau's theological vision of environmental justice.

Author : Alfred I. Tauber
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520239156
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing written by Alfred I. Tauber and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-05 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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 : David Robinson
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801443138
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.3X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Natural Life written by David Robinson and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robinson tells the story of a mind at work, focusing on Thoreau's idea of "natural life" as both a subject of study and a model for personal growth and ethical purpose. "The best, most thoughtful, most carefully worked out account of Thoreau's major ideas."--Robert D. Richardson, Jr., author of "Emerson: The Mind on Fire"

Author : Lester H. Hunt
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350079022
Total Pages : 185 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Philosophy of Henry Thoreau written by Lester H. Hunt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry Thoreau is widely considered to be one of the greatest nature writers, among whose best-known works are Walden and Walking. In this book, Lester Hunt shows that his writings have a compelling philosophical dimension as well. Thoreau seldom argues for his ideas the way other philosophers do. Rather than setting up proofs designed to trap the reader into agreeing with him, he challenges the reader – by means of narratives, jokes, questions, and paradoxes -- to recognize possibilities previously unknown and unexplored. Thoreau's own explorations led him to several distinctively philosophical theories: an intuitionist metaethics, an ethics based on virtue and self-realization, a politics that is fundamentally individualist and anarchist, and a secular religion in which nature is pre-eminent.

Author : Laura Dassow Walls
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022634469X
Total Pages : 668 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Henry David Thoreau written by Laura Dassow Walls and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-07-07 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[The author] traces the full arc of Thoreau’s life, from his early days in the intellectual hothouse of Concord, when the American experiment still felt fresh and precarious, and 'America was a family affair, earned by one generation and about to pass to the next.' By the time he died in 1862, at only forty-four years of age, Thoreau had witnessed the transformation of his world from a community of farmers and artisans into a bustling, interconnected commercial nation. What did that portend for the contemplative individual and abundant, wild nature that Thoreau celebrated? Drawing on Thoreau’s copious writings, published and unpublished, [the author] presents a Thoreau vigorously alive in all his quirks and contradictions: the young man shattered by the sudden death of his brother; the ambitious Harvard College student; the ecstatic visionary who closed Walden with an account of the regenerative power of the Cosmos. We meet the man whose belief in human freedom and the value of labor made him an uncompromising abolitionist; the solitary walker who found society in nature, but also found his own nature in the society of which he was a deeply interwoven part. And, running through it all, Thoreau the passionate naturalist, who, long before the age of environmentalism, saw tragedy for future generations in the human heedlessness around him."--