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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... nature in an 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 ...
... nature and God, and drink truth dry? I look upon the discontent of the literary class, as a mere announcement of the fact, that they find themselves not in the state of mind of their fathers, and regret the coming state as untried; as a ...
... Nature , published a year earlier . Thoreau had taken Nature out of the Harvard library twice , once in the spring , then again a few months later . Besides , Thoreau and Emer- son were neighbors and about to become close friends ...
... Nature, Emerson had ably and stirringly examined the nat- ural world as a resource for human development. Now as a ... nature's myriad species and various landscapes—could Thoreau fully reap the harvest of knowledge, expression, and ...
... Nature Emerson had located nature's purpose and value solely in human development . " All the facts in natural history , " he had confi- dently and unequivocally stated , " taken by themselves , have no value ......... The instincts of ...
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 |