Thoreau's Living Ethics: Walden and the Pursuit of VirtueUniversity of Georgia Press, 25 de jan. de 2010 - 288 páginas 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. |
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... effort to foster humility and restraint in our use of the natural world. This is all to the good, yet here as elsewhere positive ideals motivate at least as well as negative proscriptions. Development of an ethics of environmental ...
... effort and achievement. He speaks of "being a man" and "a great soul" and of respecting one's genius. All these terms are foreign to modern ethics, which focuses largely on spelling out particular rights and on justifying egalitarianism ...
... efforts, Emerson says, is "self-trust," closely allied to the virtues of "bravery" and "freedom."18 Here is ... effort and accomplishment. A social order or moral theory that fails to recognize and demand such greatness, no matter how ...
... effort. Yet success lies within our power. Emerson's very phrasing suggests and encourages this thought: "the time is already come, when [our lives] ought to be, and will be, something else." The "ought" has come in its due time; the ...
... effort. How the future author of Walden must have thrilled to these words: "Nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. . . . The ancient precept, 'Know thyself,' and the modern precept, 'Study nature,' become at ...
Conteúdo
1 | |
16 | |
Virtue | 45 |
Economy | 76 |
Solitude and Society | 106 |
Nature | 139 |
Politics | 174 |
Foundations | 205 |
Death | 230 |
A Note to the Reader | 237 |
Notes | 239 |
Bibliography | 259 |
Index | 265 |